“Cool,” Marlow says, chewing on her rice, “I can’t wait to tell kids at school about my forest-goddess half sister.”
“And I’ll tell them about my little half sister who is infinitely more glamorous than me, and I’ll charge them to come over for makeup tutorials.”
“What about me?” Max asks. “I’m the odd one out now?”
I shake my head. “Never. I’ll proudly tell people about my half brother who can’t go for a walk in the rain without taking a mud bath.”
“Really? That’s the best you can do?” He tosses his last scrap of egg roll at me. “It’s been twice. Only twice.”
I rub my chin, considering. “I think we’ve only walked in the rain twice, though. So, two for two.”
Marlow chuckles. “I better be invited next time so I can see for myself.”
“Oh, most definitely.” I grin as I reach for the fortune cookies at the bottom of our takeout bag. I toss one cookie to Marlow, one to Max.
“You know what?” Max catches the cookie, crunching it with his fist. “One sister was already more than enough. I should never have gone public with it today. Can I undo that?”
“Nope. No undoing gossip in Green Woods. I’m sorry, though—you’re not just the half brother who falls in the mud.” You are so much more. You are so many things. “You’re the boy who tastes color. And the boy who paints sunlight.”
“The boy who paints sunlight?” Max’s white smile lights up the dark hillside. “I like that one. I approve.”
I crack open my cookie, hold the small slip of paper by the lantern:
Make family your friends, and friends your family.
Noah is the first to show up for our Labor Day picnic.
It’s early still, an hour before I expected anyone. The moms are on a last grocery store run, and I’m lying in the hammock with some lemonade, wondering how the day will go.
“I made that weird fruit salad you love so much,” he says, dropping a plastic tub on the picnic table.
“Strawberry Ambrosia Salad?” I ask, clasping my hands across my heart as I jump up from the hammock to join him.
He nods. “Sounds more like a flower than a salad if you ask me. And if the moms are curious, you have to lie and say I used marshmallows and Cool Whip sweetened with agave.”
“Will do,” I say, popping the lid off and swirling my finger along the edge of the fluffy pink cloud, scooping up a generous dollop to put in my mouth. It’s as sugary as cotton candy and tastes like childhood and summer dreams and breaking rules. I take a second dollop. A third.
“Adequate?” he asks, smirking at me.
I sigh. “Perfection. Thank you, dear friend.”
He smiles at me with those deep blue eyes, bluer than ever under today’s clear sky. “You’re welcome. Dear friend.”
Mimmy and Mama bustle into the yard a few minutes later, setting the table and lighting the grill, trays of garden veggies and homemade hummus and fancy cheeses cluttering up the table next to my Ambrosia Salad. Noah is called upon to help make beet burger patties in the kitchen, and soon Ginger and Vivi are here, too, unloading the bag of end-of-summer-blowout-sale sparklers and poppers and firecrackers they bought for tonight.
And then I catch movement along the woods from the corner of my eye. Max steps out first, leading the way. Marlow is close behind him, scowling as she picks some prickly branch off her shirt. Elliot. Joanie.
Mimmy had been the one to invite them—all of them—over a pitcher of iced tea after she and Mama had spent hours in their yard pruning shrubs and tree branches and breaking up the old patches of garden, prepping the soil for new life. I assumed Joanie would politely decline. She surprised everyone when she said yes.
Noah and Max give each other a nod of acknowledgment, and Ginger throws an arm around Max like they are best buddies, introducing him to her girlfriend, Vivi. Marlow compliments Ginger on her cat-eye frames, and Ginger exclaims jealously over Marlow’s yellow pleather short-shorts. Joanie makes small talk with Mimmy as they clear space on the table for Joanie’s pasta and potato salads, and Elliot sidles up next to Mama by the grill.
I stand still, watching it all happen around me in disbelief. These people—all in one place. A little awkward and stiff, maybe, conversations slightly stilted, but still together. Trying.
Ginger catches my eye and waves me over. She’s in the middle of one of her stories about diner life—Vivi chiming in at the punch lines, Max, Marlow, and Noah all laughing along.
I take a deep breath, close my eyes, etching this image permanently in my memory.
School starts tomorrow morning, bright and early. Senior year. This, right here and now, is our last true moment of summer, no matter what the calendar might say. Our terrible, beautiful summer is going to be over.
But nothing about today feels like an ending.
Nothing at all.
Epilogue
nine months later
“IS this the tenth time you’ve cried today?” I ask, smiling as I lean across the kitchen counter to swipe at the tear running down Mama’s cheek. “Or the eleventh? I’ve lost count. Let’s see,” I say, holding one finger up in the air. “First time was when Mimmy played ‘Pomp and Circumstance’ to wake me up this morning, and then you—”
“Ha ha,” Mama says, catching my hand in hers and squeezing tight. “Very funny.”
“I think it’s actually ticked up even higher, sweetheart,” Mimmy chimes in from across the kitchen as she spreads coconut crème frosting on her cooled pineapple cake. Cake that we’ll be taking to dinner next door shortly, along with the lemon drop cookies Mimmy baked first thing this morning. “You missed at least one good cry during the actual ceremony, and then another during pictures. Unless we just count that whole period as one long cry, because I’m not sure she fully stopped at any point.
