July
I laughed with my friend as we swam at his house. Carson and I had been friends since he moved near me in first grade; it was the summer before our tenth grade year. I smiled and laughed genuinely with him but there was sadness there. Deep beneath where I knew that he would be gone soon after the month was over. I was spending almost every free hour I had with him. He was my best and closest friend. We had other friends sure we had a lot of other friends. We had built up this huge friend group, we were both very charismatic individuals. He was sort of a ladies man who didn’t date much and I could get along with pretty much everyone for no reason. We had lots of friends but we were the two. We had lockers adjacent to each other, we rode the same bus, participated in the same activities, and we lived near each other on the lake. We were inseparable and did pretty much everything together. We climbed up the ladder to get onto his dock and air dried lying on towels. We called it tanning but neither of us could tan, we just burned. It was a running joke with us, along with a lot of things. I was clean then. I was happy. I had everything, a job-though I didn’t like it very much-, a best friend, a good family. It was one of the happiest summers of my life but maybe that was because we both knew he was leaving in August; maybe it was because we were growing closer as friends. Whatever the reason I look back on July with a smile on my face. We went bike riding, swimming, to band practice. We were in the Fourth of July parade together. We always had so much fun and there was no one who could stop us.
Carson had two going away parties, one for friends and on for family, my two friends-Lucy and summer-and I went to both of them. The friends one was an absolute blast, Carson had invited almost all of our school friends and we all went out on his parent’s pontoon boat. We jammed out to music and danced until we stopped somewhere to eat. The food was great and the conversation was better. We talked about all sorts of things, that we could discuss openly with his dad present-which is pretty much everything-while eating sweet potato fries and jalapeño poppers. The girls stole the guys shoes so we could go inside-none of us had brought ours- and we looked around and checked out the gift shop and just did random stuff.
On the way back we stopped in this little bay to swim. We turned up the music and stripped down to our swimsuits and dove in fearlessly. We had a dance competition with the other boat in the bay. I remember it all so fondly.
I had a job that summer. Sometimes I would go to Carson’s house after work just to complain. My job was closer to his house than to mine so it was easy. I hated that job, I tolerated it though, and I wasn’t a quitter. Cleaning wasn’t my forte and I hated doing it like most teenagers. The only reason I had it was because I felt it was time for me to get one, it was nice having money.
There was another party for Carson’s going away, it was mostly for family but a coulple of friends and I went just to show up. The house was getting empty but there was still enough furniture to seat almost everyone. Carson was mad that we showed up at first but then he accepted it. It was fun, we were able to meet a bunch of his cousins from out-of-town. It was only a couple days before the moving trucks came and on the drive home I cried, silently, because I hadn’t really realized it, but I loved Carson, whether it was more than a friend or not I still loved him will all of my heart and I didn’t want him to leave me, ever, because that was all that ever happened. I trusted and loved people, then they left. I don’t know how much he understood of this love I had for him, but it was enough and everyone else knew that his move would affect me the most.
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