Sunshiner

“Wake up,” she whispered in my ear.

“Mmh? What?” I mumbled groggily, rolling over in my bed to see Candace towering over me with a grin like the sunrise. “Oh, so you’re talking to me now?” I asked. It had been three days since the party on Devil’s and all Candace had done was hang out with her group of friends. It wasn’t hard to tell that she was avoiding me. But why she was avoiding me, I had no idea.

“I got over it,” she said simply and sat down on my bed, crushing my legs.

“How did you get in here, anyway?” I grumbled, trying to kick her off but she wouldn’t budge.

“Snuck in,” she said. “It wasn’t that hard. You don’t even lock your window.”

“I’ll be sure to start doing that,” I stated bitterly. I was always in a bad mood in the mornings.

“But then you won’t be getting any pleasant visits from me!” she protested jokingly.

“Oh trust me, there isn’t anything pleasant about it,” I said, and she just grabbed my pillow and thwacked me over the head with it repeatedly.

“Ow, you’re hurting me!” I whined immaturely, laughing as I tried to block her pillow attacks. She threw it at me one last time and then hopped off the bed.

“Come on,” she said, tugging on my arm in an attempt to drag me off of the mattress. “Let’s go.”

“Why?” I groaned, throwing my sheets over my head. “It’s so early.”

“We used to do this all the time when we were kids,” she answered. “Remember the times when you would wait outside for me in the mornings? You don’t do that anymore. I miss it.”

I peeked over the sheets and looked at her. “You do?”

“Yeah. I do.” Right when I thought we were having a moment, she reached out and grabbed my wrist. “Now let’s go.” At that, she gave one final pull on my arm and I was practically hurled out of bed. I landed on the floor painfully with an “Oomph.”

I glared up at her and she smiled innocently. “This better be good, or I’ll be mad for being literally dragged out of bed with no reason.”

“It is good,” she said, nodding.

“So what are we doing, then?”

“Oh, you know,” she said vaguely, and I was suddenly under the impression that she didn’t have anything planned out at all. Chances are she only woke me up because she was bored and I was the closest person that she could bother. “Wandering around. Going to the Lake. Wreaking havoc on the town. The usual.”

“The usual isn’t good enough,” I shot at her. “Not good enough for seven in the morning, at least.”

“All right, we’ll just have to find something interesting to do,” she said, rolling her eyes at my pessimism. “Now, are you coming or not?”



“This is stupid,” I announced fifteen minutes later as we trudged down the dusty roads of Dayton.

“I’m sorry that all of my ideas aren’t interesting enough for you,” she snapped. “It’s not like you’ve come up with any great ideas.”

I really didn’t understand why we hung out together, especially if we argued most of the time. I suppose that way back in middle school we had gotten so accustomed to spending our time together and falling back on that habit now just seemed instinctual. We didn’t discuss it or question it, nor did we really want to. Hanging out was like our guilty pleasure since we were technically supposed to be enemies.

“I’m hungry,” I suddenly stated.

“Yeah, me too.” She scrunched up her nose, as if agreeing with me disgusted her. “Let’s go to my house. My mom can cook us breakfast.”

Fortunately her house wasn’t too far away, and within ten minutes Candace and I were gathered around her kitchen table while her mom busied herself with making us pancakes. I had only been in Candace’s house a few times, but nonetheless it brought back old memories. The pictures on the wall were still the same and the old wooden table we were sitting at still had the faded KASEY WAS HERE engraved on one of the legs, where I had deviously scratched it in one time when I was younger.

Although the house seemed to remain unchanged, its inhabitants didn’t. Candace’s mom had changed just as much as her daughter had. Mrs. Harlow (she was one of the frigid mothers who demanded to be called Mrs. out of respect, unlike most of the other moms who gladly allowed the kids to call them by their first names) used to hate me with a passion, since I used to pee in her rose bushes as a prank. Unfortunately, instead of angering Candace it had angered Mrs. Harlow, and ever since then she had some sort of sick pleasure in yelling at me all of the time. Whenever she caught me doing something wrong, she was sure to embarrass me in front of my friends and my mom, and thus her hatred for me became a mutual feeling between the two of us.

But as soon as I had stepped through Candace’s front door, Mrs. Harlow was all smiles and hugs and cheek-pinching. She was actually happy to see me again and I was afraid I had stepped into an alternate universe when she actually kissed both of my cheeks in an adoring fashion. She began question me about my life, what college I was going to, and so on, but thankfully Candace had stepped in and pulled me away from that conversation, telling her mother to “just make us some damn pancakes already.” No one in Dayton had the nerve to speak to Mrs. Harlow like that, but I guess Candace did. I was surprised that Mrs. Harlow didn’t yell at her daughter at all, but I think that she had decided to let it slide since was just happy that her daughter had brought me over.

However, Candace’s attitude did not stop Mrs. Harlow from attempting to talk to me from the other room. “Normally I don’t cook for Candace’s company,” she was saying, “since I usually make her take care of her own friends. You know, to teach her some etiquette.”

Candace rolled her eyes and made a gagging face, and I smiled but said to her mom, “Yeah, I know what you mean, Mrs. Harlow. Candace can definitely use some of that etiquette stuff.” Candace kicked me in the shins under the table and I had to stifle a laugh.

“But I’ll gladly do it for you, Evan,” Mrs. Harlow went on. She was one of the few people who still used my first name. I didn’t even refer to myself as Evan anymore; I called myself Kasey even in my thoughts. Back at home-home, though, it was different – I had made sure no one discovered my middle name. “I’m just glad that Candace has you as a friend. Actually, I’m glad she has friends at all.”

“Mom!” Candace shouted.

“I don’t mean it that way, sweetie,” Mrs. Harlow said as she walked into the room, carrying two plates of steaming blueberry pancakes. “I’m just glad that you’ve some nice company to spend your time with. Because we both know you don’t have too much of that left.”

The mood in the room suddenly turned much darker at those words, and I looked over at Candace to see her glowering at her mother with such a hatred that even I was afraid. “Get out, mom.”

Mrs. Harlow ignored her daughter’s fury and just rolled her eyes, but nonetheless she stepped out of the room without another word.

“What was that all about?” I asked as I took a bite of food.

“Nothing,” she growled and cut away at her short stack violently. “Just forget it.”

“What did she mean by – ”

“She’s just referring to the fact that summer’s so short, that’s all,” she said hastily. “In two months we’ll be going off to college, and she was afraid that I wouldn’t have any friends over the summer since I’ve been away for so long. She’s been pestering me about it for weeks.”

Candace was a terrible liar – and it takes one to know one. On top of being able to lie out of my ass and still have people believe my bullshit, I also had an eerie talent of being able to pick up when someone was lying to me. This happened to be one of those times. But Candace’s words made sense; perhaps her mom had really been worried about her having friends. Maybe Candace was telling the truth…but was also hiding some little detail from me. That would explain why it seemed like she was lying.

I shrugged it off as a mother-daughter-feud sort of thing and proceeded to devour my breakfast. Whatever was going on between Candace and her mom, it was their business. And it was probably something girlie. I didn’t really care.

“Where’s Bear at, anyway?” I asked out of the blue. I could vaguely recall memories of Candace’s dad being in Dayton; I remembered that she looked almost exactly like him, only she had her mother’s eyes.

“My dad? He doesn’t vacation in Dayton. He stays at home-home because always works during the summers,” she told me. “You remember that, right?”

“Oh, yeah,” I said, nodding my head. My own dad had done the same thing. I remember how excited my mom got at the end of the summer because it meant that her long-awaited reunion with her husband was getting nearer. I thought it was funny and stupid at the same time, and I always made grossed-out faces when my mom would run into my father’s arms as soon as we got home and then kiss him right in front of me. But then that one summer came when we went home and he wasn’t there waiting for us.

“He’s going to visit a lot more this summer, though,” Candace went on, interrupting me from my thoughts.

“Why?” I asked.

She shrugged. “He just…wants to see me more, I guess.”

I found that statement odd since Bear and Mrs. Harlow were married and Candace saw him all the time at home-home. But once again, I shrugged it off as nothing.

When we were done with breakfast we had to wash our dishes. That was something I never did in my own house, but Candace told me that if we didn’t clean up then her mom would be pissed since she had made us breakfast and everything. When that was out of the way, we wasted no more time and were heading down to the Lake before it was even eight o’clock.

The path in the woods that lead to the Lake was always the prettiest in the mornings. The bugs weren’t out yet since it was still a bit too chilly and the morning dew had yet to be dried out by the sun. The little droplets glistened on every leaf and blade of grass, looking as if the stars had fallen out of the sky and had landed at our feet. The sun pierced through the canopy of the trees, illuminating everything in a golden glow and making the world look like it was captured in an ancient sepia photo. As pretty as the woods were at this time, however, I couldn’t seem to look at anything except for Candace. In the bronze light, she just seemed so…wow.

The twinkling laugh of the stream flowing beside me blended in with the songs of the birds. The mud squished between my toes as I walked, and everything in this moment screamed summer. This was it: this was exactly what I looked forward to every year. It was this feeling that I lived for. And now that Candace was here with me, everything seemed to be perfect.

“So what are we gonna do?” Candace asked, breaking the silence that had fallen between us without me even noticing it.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I was assuming you had a plan.” I secretly felt sort of happy that we had absolutely nothing to do. Sure, it was fun when we had a nice prank planned out or some party to look forward to later that night, but days like this were the epitome of a lazy, relaxing summer day. Sometimes, sitting around and just thinking about what to do was more fun than actually doing it.

“How about the rope swing?” she suggested.

“Frankie Fat-Ass snapped it two years ago. Don’t you remember? We made fun of him for it for weeks.”

She shook her head. “I wasn’t here two summers ago.”

“Oh. Right,” I said, and then we fell into another silence again. “Do you want to go out in my boat?” I asked after a minute. “We could hit up the Deep Docks.” The Deep Docks were the best place to go if you wanted to go swimming; they were located at the deepest part of the Lake, so the waters were refreshingly cold and no matter how deep you dove in, you never had to worry about hitting the disgusting black muck at the bottom.

“I have a better idea,” she said. “I think we should – ” But her words were abruptly cut of as she fell into a fit of coughing. At first I thought that she just choked on her own spit, and I laughed a little, but the smile was wiped clean off of my face as she doubled over, still coughing. Her breaths came in high-pitched gasps as she gulped for air and her hacking was so bad it was almost violent. I was afraid that she was going to puke a lung or something. The coughing just wouldn’t stop.

“Shit, Candace, are you okay?” I asked and placed a hand on the small of her back. She tried to answer me, but her coughing hadn’t yet subsided, so she settled for a shaky nod of the head. “Do you want me to get you some water or something?” I asked, and this time she shook her head no.

Finally, Candace fell quiet and stood up. Her cheeks were flushed and I could see that her eyes glistening with tears from coughing so forcefully. “Are you okay?” I asked again, now with a gentler voice. I tried to make eye contact with her but she avoided it, almost as if she was embarrassed by what just happened.

“I’m fine.” Her voice was raspy and pained, sounding nothing like the boisterous voice she usually had. I opened my mouth to speak, but she interrupted me: “Really. I’m fine. Just pretend you didn’t see any of that, okay?”

“But you – ”

“I just cough sometimes, all right?” she snapped, her tone suddenly taking on a razorblade edge. “Everyone coughs. Get over it.”

I wanted to ask more questions. I wanted to find out what was wrong. But Candace had already turned her back on me and was walking away, and I knew that she wouldn’t listen to anything else I had to say. Candace had a way of getting what she wanted and if she didn’t want to talk about this anymore, well, then we wouldn’t talk about it. That was that.

“Let’s go to the Deep Docks,” she said resolutely, and I had no choice but to continue following her down the path to the Lake.