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Summer Roberts is a pretty girl.
It’s the first thing she ever really knows about herself.
By the time she’s old enough to walk, she already knows what’s expected of her. She knows she’s meant to act a certain way, look a certain way, think a certain way. She knows she’s meant to charm a boy, preferably a rich one, and marry him. And she knows that absolutely nothing else will ever be expected of her.
Because Summer Roberts isn’t the type of girl who’s going to change the world.
***
Marissa Cooper is her best friend in the entire world and most of the time Summer kind of hates her. Marissa is a pretty girl too, but somehow, she manages to be smart and funny and kind at the same time.
Marissa is the kind of girl boys fall in love with. Summer is the kind of girl boys want to sleep with.
Case in point: Luke Ward kissed Marissa on the bus ride home from a field trip in fifth grade and they’ve been together ever since. And Summer isn’t jealous. She’s not.
***
Summer lies to Taylor Townsend. She has absolutely no intention of inviting the other girl to her birthday party. But she needs that poem right now because everyone is watching, and she can’t let them see her be anything less than perfect.
She feels a little bad about the lie though, because Taylor is nice, if a little strange. But Summer isn’t supposed to like her, and she definitely isn’t supposed to invite her anywhere.
And Summer always does what she’s supposed to. Except for maybe her homework (ew).
***
Summer has never been more angry at her dad than when he tells her she has to go to Seth Cohen’s stupid party when literally everyone else will be at Luke’s having actual fun.
He just doesn’t understand how important this is. How easy it would be for her to fall off the pedestal she’s built for herself. Summer doesn’t have friends, she has admirers, and they would turn on her in an instant.
“I hate you!” she screams at the top of her lungs, slamming her bedroom door with all her might so it shakes on its hinges. She takes an odd sense of pride at her own power.
***
In the end it doesn’t matter because Summer doesn’t go to either party. Instead, her mom leaves her, and she doesn’t leave her room for five days.
She cries until her skin is red and blotchy and her eyes are swollen. She cries until she looks as ugly and twisted up and broken as she feels.
Summer Roberts isn’t nice or smart or funny and she doesn’t have a mom. But after five days she stops crying and she cleans her face and brushes her hair and puts on makeup until she’s pretty again. Because pretty is all she has left.
***
Summer knows everyone thinks she’s sleeping around. And that’s exactly the way she wants it to look. Then at least no one wonders why one of the most popular girls in school doesn’t have a boyfriend.
She bats her eye lashes and runs her hands over arms and torsos and smiles that pretty smile of hers. She even kisses the boys sometimes, lets them cop a feel, but she never lets it go further than that and she never lets it mean something. Those boys don’t get to take anything from her. Not her virginity and not her cold, dead heart.
***
Summer likes being drunk. There’s always a pleasant buzzing under her skin when she drinks. And alcohol tastes like freedom, even if it burns a little on the way down. For a moment she doesn’t have to be perfect, because no one expects anything from a drunk girl.
But pills scare the crap out of her. She sees things getting passed around at parties, but she avoids them like the plague. She doesn’t want to end up like her stepmother, unconscious and completely numb to the world. And she thinks it might be far too easy to end up that way.
***
Summer is at a party full of exactly the type of men she’s supposed to marry and the most interesting conversation she’s had all night is with Seth freaking Cohen.
Cohen, who looks at her like she’s something more than just pretty, who quotes her poem back to her, and remembers the only truly kind thing she’s ever done. Cohen, who calls her on her crap but seems to want her anyway.
Maybe that’s why she kisses him.
***
Marissa is her best friend in the entire world and right now her body is limp as Ryan lifts her up into his arms and her head falls back at an odd angle and Summer feels like she can’t breathe.
Cohen is standing next to her, and Summer can’t watch this. She can’t watch her best friend die, so she hides her face against his shoulder and feels absolutely nothing about the way his arm wrapping around her makes her feel safer than she has in years.
***
She likes Seth Cohen, and she isn’t quite sure what she’s meant to do with that information except keep kissing his infuriating dork face. And that isn’t what she’s supposed to be doing, but for once she doesn’t care.
She gives him her cold, dead heart and he breaks it.
***
Cohen picks Anna Stern and Summer couldn’t care less. Really, it’s fine.
Except that now when she bats her eye lashes and runs her hands over arms and torsos and smiles that pretty smile of hers, she thinks about him. And even when she kisses them, the nameless, faceless boys, and lets them cop a feel, she remembers how safe she felt in his arms.
***
Marissa picks Ryan. And Ryan picks her back. And Summer is not jealous. She’s not.
But she doesn’t talk to Holly anymore and Marissa has Ryan and Seth has Anna and Summer is all alone. And that wasn’t the way it was supposed to go.
***
She gives Cohen her virginity.
She gives him everything because he stands in her bedroom and looks at her like she’s worth something and says all the right things and she forgets that he’s the boy who broke her heart. She forgets that love is stupid and weak and only ever ends.
***
He says they should slow down.
Cohen stands in front of her with his hand out and she takes it. They slow dance in his room. And there’s nobody watching and no one to judge her. And her head fits so perfectly against his shoulder and his arms hold her so tight and she remembers why she felt so safe.
When she falls, she trusts him to catch her. She’s never done that before.
***
And that scares her because she knows better than this.
Knows that he’ll leave. Knows that he’ll get bored. Knows just how easy it will be for her to fall off the pedestal he built for her.
So, she does what she’s always done when she gets scared, she pulls down her mask and throws up her walls. Because if Seth Cohen is going to break her heart, she can’t let everyone watch it happen.
But Seth doesn’t let her run or hide or push him away. Instead, he climbs up on a coffee cart and tells the world he likes her. Her.
He holds out his hand and she takes it. They stand on the coffee cart and kiss. And everybody is watching, and everybody is judging her. But their lips fit together so perfectly, and his arms hold her so tight, and she likes how safe she feels.
***
He leaves her. Just like everyone always does.
He named his boat after her and she thinks he loves her but it’s clearly not enough.
And just once, just once, she wanted to be enough. She wanted to be the person worth staying for, worth fighting for, worth something.
Seth is the first person who ever makes her believe she could be. And then he changes his mind.
***
Zach Stevens is everything she’s supposed to have and nothing she actually wants. He’s perfect and her dad loves him and it’s easy. When she’s with him, it’s so easy and she forgets for a moment that her mom left and the boy she loved sailed far, far away.
Zach would be the easy choice, he might even be the right choice, but Summer doesn’t know how to not be in love with Seth Cohen anymore.
She runs away from perfect and easy and what she’s supposed to do. She runs to Cohen and she kisses him upside down in the rain. You could say that she picks him. But it’s not really a choice.
***
They go back to the way they were.
It takes a while because Marissa and Ryan are somehow even more of a mess than they are. But then there they are, the four of them, like old times.
Summer doesn’t have admirers anymore; she has actual friends, and she stops waiting for them to turn on her.
***
It’s senior year and everything they do starts to feel like the last time. Marissa doesn’t go to her school anymore and Summer misses her. But Cohen is there, and the world finally seems to be taking a break from trying to tear them apart.
Ryan is there too, and Summer wonders when he stopped being just Marissa’s boyfriend or Seth’s best friend and became one of her people. She wonders when she started having people at all.
***
College applications come faster than she expects them to and suddenly the list of things that could tear them apart gets a lot longer. But Summer decides she isn’t going to be the girl who gets left behind anymore. If Cohen is going to Brown, then she’s going with him.
And Summer’s not just a pretty girl anymore. It turns out that she’s smart and funny and kinda nice too. And maybe she’s even the kind of girl who only falls in love once.
***
She fights for him. She stands on top of a coffee cart and holds out her hand, but he doesn’t take it. She stands on top of a coffee cart and begs him to love her, but he doesn’t anymore.
And Summer thought she knew what it would feel like when her heart broke. She thought it broke when her mom left. And she thought it broke for those few terrifying hours she thought Marissa might die. And she thought it broke each and every time Cohen hurt her. (It’s a long list, she has it written on a napkin somewhere.)
But this is the moment it shatters into a million pieces.
***
Summer needs to be drunk right now. There’s always a pleasant buzzing under her skin when she drinks. And alcohol tastes like forgetting, even if it burns a little on the way down. For a moment she doesn’t have to be hurt, because she doesn’t have to remember him.
She’s numb to the world and she thinks that it was far too easy to end up that way.
***
Seth Cohen is the biggest idiot on the whole entire planet. A self-sacrificing, giant dummy. And he could have just told her he didn’t get into Brown. He didn’t have to go and break her heart.
But he loves her. He loves her. And none of the rest of it matters.
***
The four of them sit by the side of a pool that means something to her friends she might never understand, and it’s somehow exactly where she belongs.
They talk about the past and Summer remembers a time when she would never have imagined choosing this over a party.
But then, she didn’t know what she was missing back then.
Marissa is leaving and everything is changing. But sometimes, Summer knows now, change is good.
***
Cohen gets into RISD and Summer’s world makes sense again. She’s going to be the girl who goes to college with her high school boyfriend. She’s going to be the girl who knows (even when she’s only eighteen.)
She throws her arms around him, and he holds her close and it’s the safest she’s ever felt in her life.
***
Marissa Cooper was her best friend in the entire world but now she’s dead. And absolutely nothing about Summer’s world makes sense without her.
She’s not the pretty girl and she’s not Marissa Cooper’s best friend and she’s not even sure she’s still Seth Cohen’s girlfriend, because she hasn’t talked to him in weeks.
She knows people change when they go to college, but Summer feels like she becomes no one at all. Marissa is dead, but Summer is the ghost.
She really misses her friend.
***
Ryan is falling apart, so it doesn’t matter that Summer is barely holding herself together, because he needs her.
She goes home. And it would be easy, she thinks, to slip back into this life that isn’t hers anymore.
But then Seth tells Ryan the story of them, and it’s all so tangled up, Seth and Ryan, Seth and her, Ryan and Marissa, Marissa and her, and Summer doesn’t know how to untangle her grief from him.
She runs away from pain and grief and the boy she doesn’t know how to love anymore. She runs back to Brown and becomes someone else. You could say it’s destiny. But it feels like a choice.
***
They grow back together.
It takes a while because Marissa is gone, and Ryan is broken, and Summer is still more of a mess than anything else. But then there they are, the three of them, and it’s nothing like old times, but it’s something.
And Summer still doesn’t know who she is, but she’s working on it.
***
In the drawing, she looks so beautiful, and she wonders if maybe this is how Seth has seen her all along. A force of nature. A fighter. If it is, she might finally understand it; why he loved her.
She thinks she might love her too, this girl she’s becoming.
Until it all falls apart.
She gets kicked out of Brown just when she finally starts to feel like she belongs.
***
Taylor Townsend might be her best friend in the world now, and Summer can’t quite wrap her head around that. But she doesn’t totally hate the idea.
Taylor holds up the bag with a pregnancy test and says she’ll face the answer, whatever it is, with her. And Summer has never been quite so scared in her life, but at least she’s not alone.
***
Seth asks her to marry him, and she says yes.
But she’s not pregnant and as much as she loves him, she doesn’t want that life, not anymore. The one she was supposed to have. The boy and the marriage and absolutely nothing else.
She wants more.
***
Ryan and Taylor fall in love. And there’s something poetic about it. Taylor slipping so seamlessly into their group, filling the gaping whole Coop left behind.
It’s not that Taylor replaces Marissa, no one could ever do that, but she makes Ryan smile in a way Summer has never seen before, and they’re a little bit less of a mess than they’ve ever been.
So, then there they are, the four of them, and Summer thinks new times aren’t all that bad.
***
Seth holds up a framed sheet of wrinkled lined paper and Summer thinks it might be proof they don’t belong together.
Because she’s not the girl he thought she was. And she’s not even the girl he fell in love with. She’s changed too much.
But Seth promises he loves her anyway. This her, and whoever she becomes next. And she believes him.
Even if she’s pretty sure she has to leave.
***
The world shakes and crumbles around them, but Seth’s arms are around her and she feels safe, and she wants to stay there, in that little bubble where nothing can hurt her.
So she does.
***
Seth hands her the flyer and tells her she has to go. But it doesn’t feel like the end of something. It feels like the beginning.
And maybe going somewhere else doesn’t always mean leaving. And maybe she can have more.
She hugs Ryan and Taylor, and she thinks these are my people.
And she kisses Seth, but it’s not a goodbye.
***
She watches him get smaller and smaller as the bus pulls away, until the very last moment when she can’t see him anymore, and then she turns around to face her future.
And she has no idea what it will look like. But she knows she won’t have to act a certain way, look a certain way, think a certain way. She knows she has a boy and she’ll probably marry him someday. But first she has a lot of work to do.
Because Summer Roberts is exactly the type of girl who’s going to change the world.