Surrender

Going to California seemed like a fun idea. Spending my days in the sun and the sand, sticking my toes in the beautiful ocean water, and letting the sweet breeze ruffle my hair sounded like they’d add up to the world’s most perfect summer. But then my parents dropped the major bombshell: the vacation was going to be just the three of us.

Maybe, if the circumstances were a little different, it wouldn’t have sounded so bad, but just thinking about it made my stomach turn nervously. Not having my best friend Erica was one thing, but spending any amount of my time with my parents, who had recently taken up a liking to fighting over almost everything, was one of my least favorite pastimes. I’d figured that the announcement of a divorce was forthcoming, and this kind of a grand gesture only solidified the hunch.

But they admitted nothing when I’d narrowed my eyes suspiciously, my best attempt at getting a confession. They just shared a fast glance and asked, “Olivia, honey, aren’t you excited?”

I was, but I wasn’t. Going away for the summer was a fun prospect, especially the summer before my freshman year of college, but it was a weird one, too. Part of me wanted to spend my last time as a carefree teenager at home with my best friend, getting ice cream and iced coffee, singing a lot of Demi Lovato songs, and watching Teen Wolf.

But I nodded anyway and said, “Yeah, of course I am.” And with that, it was planned that we would leave the night after my graduation, and we would return the week before Labor Day. Almost three whole months.

Erica was horrified. She threw herself back on my bed, grasping my most precious teddy bear, Roger That, and sighed so loudly that I debated admiring her lung capacity out loud. “You can’t leave me,” she insisted in a whine. “I’m going to be alone! For three months! Alone. Do you know what this is going to do to my mental health?”

“I think you’ll be okay,” I assured her, holding up a pair of light denim shorts for her to appraise. She narrowed her eyes as she debated before finally shaking her head, a signal to throw the garment to the side. “You still have Lauren and Whitney, right?”

She sighed again. “I guess. But they’re not you. You’re my best friend. Who am I going to talk to about Teen Wolf? Or Chris Evans?”

I laughed a little. “I’ll have my phone, so you can still talk to me. I’ll probably depend on your updates, frankly, since I don’t think my parents are going to want to watch Teen Wolf with me.” I turned to her and scrunched up my face before mocking my mother using a high-pitched, nasally voice: “Why is that boy shirtless? They’re supposed to be teenagers? Why are they kissing like that?!”

“Ew,” Erica giggled. “Yeah, okay, so neither of us is really winning in this situation.”

I raised my eyebrows in agreement as I folded my tie-dyed maxi dress and laid it gently in the suitcase in front of me. The thing was nearly full, so I hoped I had a large enough variety of clothes to keep me from going insane. I didn’t know how close we’d be to a shopping mall, and for a shopaholic like me, the thought of not being able to shop for the entire summer was making me feel anxious.

After tapping the cover of the suitcase shut, I climbed onto my bed next to Erica and lied down, propping my head up on my hand. “I kind of want ice cream,” I told her, pouting ever so slightly. “But I haven’t eaten dinner yet.”

“Who cares?” Erica laughed, climbing off the end and extending a hand to me. “There’s only so much longer before we’re full-blown adults and eating ice cream instead of dinner will be off-limits.”

The idea of being an adult made my stomach pang with fear, so I grabbed her offered hand and got pulled to my feet, tugging down my shirt as the two of us stumbled out of my room, nearly tripping over the shoes I’d taken out of my closet to pack away in my suitcase.

My mom was in the kitchen, sitting at the island and flipping through a furniture magazine lazily. The house was warm, since the air conditioning still wasn’t working perfectly after being off all winter long, making the baby hairs around her face stick out like rays of sunshine. She looked tired, probably from arguing with my dad and working a full-time job, but I figured it wouldn’t do any good to point it out.

“We’re getting ice cream,” I announced, stuffing my phone in my clutch and scratching the back of my neck. “Do you want anything?”

She seemed to debate for a second before shaking her head. “No, I’m okay. Thank you, baby.”

I knew my dad was outside on the patio reading, so I poked my head out of the sliding door to ask him the same question. He declined, too, saying that the last thing he needed before going on vacation was ice cream, slapping his nearly flat stomach like it was a protruding mass. I rolled my eyes, making sure he noticed me, before meeting back up with Erica and pulling her out the door.

“My dad drives me crazy with his weight,” I grumbled as we climbed into her Impala. “He’s always talking about how fat he is and how disgusting he is, and it’s like, he’s forty-five and can run ten miles in an hour or something. How many middle-aged men do you know who could do that?”

“I can’t do that,” Erica chuckled, putting her car in reverse and allowing it to roll slowly out of the hilled driveway. “And my dad would faint at the idea.”

I exhaled a sharp breath out of my nose and watched the houses and trees pass by outside the window. Thinking about dealing with nobody but my parents for an entire three months was such a daunting idea. I loved them, of course, but they had the kinds of quirks that could make me insane within a single dinner, never mind being with them eighteen hours a day (when sleeping was added into the equation, of course) for the entire summer.

“This was a good idea,” Erica mused as we walked up to the ordering windows. “I’m suddenly seriously craving some coffee chocolate chip ice cream with hot fudge, whipped cream, and walnuts.”

“So a sundae,” I corrected with a laugh, only glancing at the menu. I knew I wanted mint Oreo, but I figured I should see if anything caught my eye immediately, just to be fair to the other flavors.

“Whatever,” Erica snubbed, snickering ever so lightly to show that she was kidding. “And you’re getting mint Oreo, right?”

I knew I was a little too predictable for my own good, but there were worse things to be. “Yeah.”

I would have elaborated, but the woman ahead of us in line had cleared out, leaving Erica standing in front of the window, so I didn’t want to distract her. In the few minutes that we’d been waiting in line, about twenty more people arrived, dispersed in front of the various windows, and I didn’t want to make anyone wait too long and have them get grouchy at me. I didn’t handle grouchy well.

The girl at the window was bubbly and sweet, and if I had more than a dollar left in my wallet after I paid for my ice cream, I would have given her a larger tip. Friendliness, to me, sometimes seemed like a dying art, and I liked to reward it wherever I could find it.

Once we both had our desserts in hand, Erica already digging her spoon down to the bottom to get every layer in one spoonful, we traveled across the parking lot to the grassy area set up with boulders and picnic tables for families to gather around and enjoy the fresh air. There was a young couple about twenty feet away from us with a toddler who kept picking the dandelions to give to his mother. There was a small pile on her thigh to show how long it had been going on, and her husband/boyfriend next to her was giggling uncontrollably as he watched the little boy waddle around in search of more yellow weeds.

“You’re staring,” Erica observed, raising her eyebrows to show her disapproval.

“Maybe. But look at them! Don’t they just warm your heart?”

“Kinda,” she admitted. “But that doesn’t mean I have to stare them down.”

I scrunched up my face at her before settling myself down on a boulder, allowing enough room next to me for her to settle down, too.

“You know, this ‘You Going to California’ business is going to suck.” She took a bite of her ice cream and spoke as she chewed the walnuts and chocolate chips. “So you’re going to be gone all summer, and then we’re going to colleges on different sides of the state in the fall. This friendship is going to fall apart.”

“Way to look at the bright side,” I commented drily, stirring up my ice cream. “We have about a hundred different ways we can talk through technology. I think we’ll be okay.”

“Skyping and texting can only get us so far.” We both took another bite and chewed silently, but I could see the wheels turning in her head. “Okay, let’s make a promise right now: you have to call me every other night, no matter what. Even if it’s just five minutes to catch up.”

The idea of Erica actually being able to stick to a five-minute phone call made me laugh a little, since she was easily the most talkative person I’d ever met. But I knew the last thing she needed was me invalidating her concerns, so I nodded. “Sure, every other night. I can do that.”

The grin on her face made it worth humoring her. “Great. Let’s say around nine thirty, so that it’s not too early and not too late.”

I nodded wordlessly, my spoon hanging out of my mouth, which made her smile even wider.

“So let’s talk about the guy situation,” she mused, turning to face me, sitting with her legs criss-crossed in front of her.

I groaned loudly, hiding the fact that a light flush was already starting to spread across my cheekbones, but she wasn’t deterred.

“Hey, don’t be like that! Are you seriously not the least bit concerned that you’re eighteen years old, and you’ve never had a boyfriend?”

“Not really,” I mumbled. I thought about it sometimes, whether it was strange or not that I never had a boyfriend, a kiss that meant anything, or had sex at eighteen years old, but I always concluded pretty quickly that there was nothing wrong with it. Eighteen may have seemed old to us, but eighteen, in the grand scheme of life, was nothing. At least, that was what I hoped. “Plus, we’re starting college in September. That’s a whole new rush of people to choose from. If I’m meant to have a boyfriend, it’ll happen then.”

“Or you could start with a bit of a summer fling to practice so you’re seasoned and ready in the fall.” I didn’t like the glint in her eyes; it was quickly transitioning from mischievous to crazy, and I didn’t want to deal with any crazy.

“I don’t want to be seasoned,” I responded, feeling the heat in my face intensify. “I’m going to be with my parents all the time; the last thing I want to think about is sneaking off with some stranger to lose my virginity behind a cabin or something.” The very idea made me feel like shuddering; I had nothing against what Erica had done, sleeping with the guy she’d liked for a week for her first time, but I had a romanticized idea of my own ascension into womanhood, and it involved someone I truly loved and trusted.

If I could ever find anyone who fit that description, anyway.

Erica sighed and shook her head. “Well, I can’t really force you to do anything, since I’m going to be stuck here. But at least promise me that if you’re on the beach in your little floppy hat and some guy hits on you, you’ll entertain it? Don’t shut out everyone just because you’re afraid of not knowing how to do anything and you know your parents could show up any minute. It adds excitement to the whole thing.”

I hesitated before turning and looking at her pleading, concerned expression. So I sighed and agreed, “Sure, I’ll at least entertain it. But I seriously doubt that’s going to happen.”