Caroline Doering, ’26
“So that’s it, then?”
My voice was stark against the pleasant drone of the stereo. Every so often I could hear the soft click of the CD restarting to the first track. This must have been the second, maybe third time it’s replayed.
She kept her eyes steady, looking out at the rolling hills instead of straying toward me. Her leg hung out over the lip of the trunk. It dangled in the air, and the tall grass rose up to meet her. Weeds kissed her ankle.
“I don’t know how long you expected this to last,” was all she murmured. “It was just for the summer, anyway. Who cares if he found your letters? It’s not like he’s going to be finding any more.”
The CD skipped again. It always did at this song. A long scratch slivered through its center. We had been out driving one night when a rabbit had darted across the road. She yelled at me to stop, and I had hit the brakes so hard the CD case came flying from the back seat. We had spent the next hour pulled over, collecting the disks that had fallen out, taking inventory of those damaged. She wanted to throw them out, pay for new ones, but the scratch never bothered me. Even as the stereo tried to power its way past the scratch, even as her lips pursed at the sound of it, I closed my eyes to listen.
“Don’t be like that.” I could feel her gaze at my temple. “Don’t tell me you thought…?”
“I don’t know what I thought.” I shifted, bringing my knees up to my chest. “It wasn’t as if I thought too hard about how this would end. Not exactly something I wanted to think about.”
“They never would have accepted this. You know that. You know my parents. You knew this from the beginning. It was fun while it lasted, really. At least we get to think back on that.”
I opened my eyes to look at the long stretch of hills. This place had been beautiful in May. Now the colors were fading to the dull hues of autumn. Dandelions lost their vibrant yellow petals, replaced instead with ghostly puffs of white. The bluebottles had become scarce. The little that remained were wilted, their stems bowing at the weight of their petals.
“Hey.” Her foot nudged mine. “There’s still some summer left. Maybe August will be kinder.”