Days of Summer

“Joe! Wake up!” Frankie’s excited voice said to me while shaking my shoulder.

“5 more minutes.” I managed to mumble to him while rolling over onto to my side, but that only egged him on more to start full out pushing me in the back while telling me to wake up.

I let out a groan and rolled over onto my back, slowly opening my eyes and rubbing them and letting out a loud sigh.

“What’s up Frank?”

“We’re home!” he said excited with a huge grin coming across his face.

“That’s cool. I’ll be up in a minute.” I said with very little enthusiasm, and I watched as his smile turned down a notch before he turned around and walked back towards the front of the bus.

Don’t get me wrong, I love being home…but after my last summer, it kinda put me in a bummer mood to be home back in California.

“What’s up man?” Kevin concerned voice made it’s way towards me and I cringed, knowing that Frankie had told him about how un-ecstatic I was about being back home.

“Nothing. I’m just tired.” I stated while stretching my arms and shutting my eyes, just so I didn’t have to look at him.

He could always see right through me.

“No. Now spill.” he ordered and I heard him take a seat on Nick’s bunk, parallel to mine while his eyes practically burned holes through me.

“I really don’t want to talk about it, ok? I’m just…not….Joe today.” I stated, fumbling over my words as I got out of my bunk and made my way towards the front of the bus to greet everyone but Kevin caught my arm and held me in place.

“Does this have something to do with her?” he asked as his eyebrows rose up on his face.

“No.” I instantly snapped back and then immediately wanted to take it back because it had everything to do with her.

“Whatever lets you sleep at night man. But you need to cheer up because you promised Frankie you’d take him to Disneyland when we got back home. And since we’re home, you have to take him.” he said before letting go of my arm and walking away.

“Crap!” I sighed loudly under my breath and brought my hands up to my face while falling into my bunk again.

“I just saw the house! We’re almost home!” Frankie’s excited yell echoed throughout the quiet bus and it instantly reminded me of last summer.

“Nick! Kevin! Frankie! WAKE UP! We’re home!”

I heard a grunt and two ‘leave me alone’s” from the three, but I didn’t care.

I was finally home.

California. Home Sweet Home.

I caught a glimpse of our house when we turned onto the street to start the incline of the hill.

“Guys! We’re almost home! Get up, Get up, GET UP!” I yelled at them, pulling off Nick’s blanket and throwing it onto Kevin while shaking Frankie in his bunk.

“For someone who was all excited about touring, you’re pretty excited to be back home.” Kevin said after throwing Nick’s blanket at me.

“Well of course man. Do you know what summertime means in California?! Out of town girls, always in swimsuits and always looking to have a good time. And I’m always a good time!”

“Someone’s a little full of himself…” Nick said while scratching his head of curls with one hand and rubbing his eyes with the other.

“It’s not called being full of myself Nick when it’s the truth.” I shot back at him, bouncing on my toes from how excited I was.

“Now get up! And don’t make me have to come back here again!” I ordered while giving Frankie and Kevin another nudge to get them to wake up before running to a window to check out the scenery I was missing for the past 2 months.

“There’s nothing like California in the summertime.” I mumbled to myself, goofy smile on my face as I looked at all the girls rollerblading down the sidewalk or chatting on their phones.

“This is gonna be a summer I’ll never forget.”

“Ugh. Stupid irony!” I yelled through my hands and the pulled my blanket over my head to try and get rid of all my last summer memories.

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“Joe, how come your not like yourself today?” Frankie asked while walking into my room and taking a seat on my bed while I unpacked everything.

For a ten year old, he was highly intuitive.

“Whatcha mean little man?” I asked while sorting through my clothes and putting them in different piles to indicate what was clean and what was dirty.

“I don’t know. You’re just not…you, today. Last summer you were freaking out about being back home for summer and now your not. What happened last summer that makes you not like it?” he asked looking at me quizzically.

“You really wanna know?” I asked while looking up at him for more than a few seconds and stopping my sorting of clothes while he nodded his head quickly with a smile on his face and bringing his legs up onto my bed and crossing them like a pretzel.

I took a seat next to him and let out a loud sigh while throwing the shirt that was in my hand towards the dirty pile on the floor before I said anything.

“I met a girl.”

“So. You meet lots of girls.” he stated with a quick shrug of his shoulders and a confused look on his face.

“Yeah, but…” I trailed off thinking about the right way to put it. “This girl…she was….different.”

“Different?” he asked. “How? Like foreign different?”

I let out a small laugh from how he categorized different and shook my head before answering him.

“No. Not foreign different. She made me feel different. And to make it simple, I fell for her. Hard and fast. I never saw it coming.” I said, feeling a tug at my heart from actually saying it out loud.

“You always fall Joe. I don’t get it.” he stated which made me laugh again.

“Thanks for that Frank.” I said sarcastically while ruffling his hair. “I fell in love with her in matter of a few short days. Let’s just leave it at that.”

I got from my bed, my stomach clenching and my heart still feeling like it was being tugged at, and started going through my clothes again.

“Was that why you weren’t home a lot last summer? Cuz you were always with her?” he asked me, causing me to smirk at him a little bit and then nod.

“Wow. Was she fun?” he asked, his eyes wide with wanting to know information.I nodded again to him before answering.

“Yeah. She was the best. I could’ve seen her everyday and still would’ve never gotten bored.”

“That’s cool. I wanna meet a girl I want to spend that much time with.” he said while looking somewhat in a daze while I laughed at him.

“Frank, you’re 10. You don’t need to be looking at girls. Don’t they still have cooties?”

He snapped out of his daze and gave me a devilish smile before getting up from my bed.

“No. Joe, that was so last summer. Girls are cool now.” he said with a wave of his hand to dismiss what he thought of them last summer before he left my room.

I smiled after him from his statement and then turned my attention back towards to unpacking.

“Hey bro. How ya feeling? Kevin said you were a little blue this morning.” Nick stated from my doorway.

I jumped slightly from not expecting him to be standing there and looked at him munching on an apple with his arms and legs crossed, leaning on my doorway.

“No. I’m fine. I was just tired this morning. I didn’t sleep good last night.” I stated and then went back to sorting my clothes.

Yes, I have a lot of them. Don’t judge me.

“More like every night man.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, glaring back at him.

“Nothing. Just that you haven’t been very…Joe…since last summer.”

“Why does everyone keep saying that? I’m still Joe!” I retaliated back to him, my anger bubbling up quickly from his statement.

Talking about the past was not a good thing for me. Even though everyone always says it’ll help you in the end. But for me, it does the complete opposite. It just makes me relive memories that I’ve tried to erase, which then gets me in a bad mood. Especially when half of them aren‘t good memories I‘m reliving.

“No you’re not man! You haven’t been since last summer. You’re not carefree anymore. You’re always quiet and let’s face it, you’ve never been quiet since you were like 3 and then to top it all off, just now. You’re getting mad at me for saying something. You’re always the one to brush it off and let it go. But look at you know, you’re getting all red in the face and I can see it in your eyes that you’re pissed.” he listed off, his anger starting to get the best of him.

“What happened last summer?” Nick ordered more than asked me.

“Ya know what? Get out!” I ordered him, pointing my finger away from my room and walking towards the door to shut it on him.

“Whatever. I’ll just go to Kevin since he was with you more last summer than I was. He’ll know what happened and he’ll tell me.” he said back to me with a look in his eyes that was practically saying, ‘If you don’t tell me, I’ll find out some other way and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

“Nick, no. Don’t go to Kevin. I’ll tell you.” I said and he relaxed in my doorway while I held my door open.

“When I’m ready. It just…I need some time. Ok?” I asked him, my anger slowly going down from having yelled at him.

We never fought.

None of us four did, and when we did, I was normally the one always trying to make a joke.

I was never really the one actually involved in the fight, just an innocent bystander. And it scared me a little bit to hear him yelling at me and me yelling back.

“I don’t want to push you or anything, but you better get over it and tell me because I don’t know how much more of this Joe I can live with.”

And with that he pushed himself off my doorway and stormed off down the hallway, leaving me ashamed and pitying myself all over again.

Just like I’d been doing since last summer.