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Summer begins inside. It's strewn across a red couch, staring up at a white ceiling, flipping through a brown-weathered book, picking up her phone, and swiping, swiping, swiping (it’s called rotting these days), but Katie thinks she’d feel the same—no, worse—outside. A heat dome, they called it. Well, Parvati told her yesterday when Katie called during her evening walk (it was weird her sweat was choking and not cooling). Avoid peak sun hours, don’t forget to drink water, and pay extra attention to your dog while you’re at it. Easy, no problem, for Katie who’s wasting—no, resting—away her Saturday. Really, though, weekends do something to her brain, like the work week has CTRL+ALT+DELETED away her ability to organize and make productive decisions on how to divide her time, so she can’t choose if she wants to read, draw, write, stretch, meditate, or literally any wind down and relax activity that isn’t rotting when Padma sends the text.
It’s 8:22 PM.
Katie swipes through her phone some more. She doesn’t know what she’s looking for. Maybe that it’s not true? But that’s never the case these days (what happened to fake news?), so she gets up, calls for her dog, and they go on their walk. They cross the street, her neighbor is turning the big five-oh, and she has to tell her dog to stop sniffing the celebratory signs. Katie leads her dog through the usual loop, the one that sticks to the main road only, and she’s about to take her dog home when they pass a garage, the door wide open, where she sees hanging on the wall—red, white, blue, thirteen stripes, and fifty stars—before she veers them left to a street they’ve never been.
The next morning is the same. She takes her dog out early when the sun isn’t as harsh. Birds are chirping, one neighbor is working on his car, while others are coming and going, and the grass is still green (obviously, sprinklers are still running). She cuts their loop short because the heat catches up faster than she thought and goes home to… well, she still can’t choose if she wants to read, draw, write, stretch, meditate, or literally any wind down and relax activity, so she ends up cleaning. She does her bathroom, the kitchen, the nook, the dining room, the study where she finds herself strewn across a red couch, staring up at a white ceiling, flipping through a brown-weathered book, picking up her phone, and swiping, swiping, rotting as she checks the news to see if it was all fake. When it’s not, she sleeps, and when she wakes, her mom says let’s eat out tonight. They go to some chain for steak but order salads with salmon, which Katie finishes before remembering she stopped eating fish.
Across the land, down in the water, and under a waning moon, a mother and her baby are trying to sleep. They ebb at the surface, two ripples in the night, in need of rest after a long day of searching. Their echoes traveled the sea, where once upon a time, it swam with treasures to be caught, to be had, to be nourished for another day to come. But these days, their echoes are lost to the world above, like the treasures they can no longer find (where are you, where are you, she asked, as if anyone could hear). Her baby nestles closer, but not in ask, as if they know that no one is listening, and she decides then and there, tomorrow they will go south (to take a chance) but for now, for now, she sings a lullaby.
Summer is wet. It itches down his leg as sweat trickles over the cluster of regret for missing where the mosquitoes had made a nest. But Dean’s tire needed air, so even if he wanted to run, he couldn’t, otherwise this trip was for naught, except he sort of already knew when the news said they’d gotten six inches of rain. Still, exercise never hurt anyone, and it’s better to know sooner rather than later if his trail is gone or not. He doesn’t know what inclines him to keep going when he sees the first puddles, or why he keeps pedaling when the water deepens and his feet are splashing with every fall and rise around until his bike stops on its own and he’s tumbling for a swim.
Almost.
If he wanted to, he could, he was hoping to make it to the main road at the end, except even if he did, he still can’t walk to check on the playground that’s been there since far before him. He’s reluctant to turn around, quitting never sat well with him, but dad did warn him it’d probably be underwater anyway and there’s no point in crying over spilled milk, son, so Dean picks up his bike. He turns around and walks the route back but his knuckles go bone-white from his grip on the handlebars. Black, sturdy, imprinted, and unable to forget the place where dad taught him how to ride.
Somewhere south, a mother is frightened awake by an awful sound. At first, the screech sounds too close, too much—she tries not to exert too much effort, she cannot waste energy, but she has to make sure—it’s not her baby. Her baby is still asleep, floating by her side. The sun is warm and wonderful on the scales of their backs, but now she thinks they're not safe in the open and moves them to a hole. She taught her baby how to find lower ground and make a space to hide from predators or the unknown like the awful sound still going and even though it’s not her baby, yes, her baby is still with her, she would rather that sound (who are you, who are you, she helplessly wonders) stop altogether. But alas (she can only wonder), that’s why they have this hole, where she allows them to submerge into the water once more for slumber and it’s not until she feels her baby’s breath on her that she remembers hearing that screech once before when in a hole like this one, her mother, too, could only for now, for now, keep her close.
Summer is unbearable. It's in the way he can't breathe when he steps outside because the air is so thick, he may as well be sinking. Harry probably should have stayed inside (heat dome, bro!) but he didn’t want to lose a weekend doing nothing just because no one wanted to play ball today (what ever happened to rain or shine?). Whatever, unlike his friends (but are they really if it’s only at their convenience?), he takes on the day (at his own risk). He starts at the market right by his house and strolls until a sandwich for breakfast calls. There’s a park nearby, and all the spots under a tree are taken, so he takes a scorching bench in the sun (but he would rather burn than thank the mosquitoes for forcing him into pants). These are no conditions to people watch (everyone can only lounge anyway), so after he’s done eating, he catches a bus he thinks he’s taken before (but then it takes a different turn and he can’t find it in himself to get off when a seat opens for him to find reprieve under the AC). All fine, all good, he’s next to the window, so he’s got a good view and stays on until the last stop, where for a blink he considers if he should get off or let the bus take him home when a flash of blue catches his eye.
Ah.
He should go… and he’s sitting back down until the driver informs him this is the last stop of his shift and he’s not going to take Harry home, so now Harry’s getting off and sinking in air again. It’s worse here, humidity collects by the water, what is it about water, even the mosquitoes can’t stay away, something about life cycles and reproducing, well, maybe if they got rid of water, then mosquitoes would finally die, and now he’s standing on a bridge, staring at his reflection in the water and wondering why he didn’t die.
He was four when it happened. His mother loved the water, so much that she took them to the lake all the time to swim, so much that when a current tried to take them both, she got him back on the boat, and he can’t remember if there was anything more than her push, because why didn’t he turn around and pull her back up with him instead of letting her sink like him every summer when he remembers she’s gone and now he’s crouched at the bridge, his head in his hands, wondering if he should jump when he hears a laugh from behind (above?), as a little girl tells her dad to look up, look up!
Over the water, a mother is guiding her baby through the air. It’s still new to the baby, who has only recently learned how to use its wings. It’s one thing to muster the courage to jump, but staying up is a different beast altogether. No one knows this better than a mother, who learned from her mother and is now passing what she knows to her baby, who for the time being is still struggling to keep up. She feels their struggle in the mornings when their muscles ache from trying yesterday and now they don’t want to try anymore as she makes them eat the breakfast she caught earlier because they must keep trying. She feels the way they want to give up now, still lagging behind the others, as she sings them the song of you must keep going! They’re almost there, the other side, just over the water, where she’s prepared a reward for them, as she spreads her wings to full breadth and shows them how far, how high they can soar so long as they don’t give up. They still can’t follow, but that’s okay, it’s going to take time, as she brings herself back down to them for now, for now, so that her baby knows he is never alone.
Summer is endless. It’s a constant stream she can’t stop following no matter all the ways she tries to turn it off. But Padma feels worse when she doesn’t stay in the know, so she keeps the noise on, but at intervals. A ten minute timer to be exact, where she takes in as much as she can, before she’s cut off (for her own good) to get on with her life, which doesn’t feel real anymore but it’s Monday so she’s got to pretend and can barely get out of bed.
At 9 AM, she’s brushing her teeth and putting on sunscreen even though her job keeps her inside all day (bluelight has risks, too, in her opinion). At 9:10 AM, she’s logged onto her computer and checking her emails (it’s all spam). This is the point in the morning where she gives herself ten minutes. But ten minutes turns into twenty, twenty into thirty, thirty into forty, forty into her first meeting of the day, as she puts her phone away and quickly combs through her hair before the camera is on and everyone says good morning (is it?). Then they go down a line and everyone talks about what they did that weekend, including her, who’s got to leave out the part where she didn’t do anything, because how could she and how can they talk about nothing and everything except the bombs?
There were three.
(Are there more? How many? Why? What about the families, the mothers, the children, they're babies, they’re starving, they’re dying, their bodies, their bodies…)
But who’s counting?