Dead Dog Summer

Summer is sticky, like syrup.

Even now, with the sun almost gone and the moon slowly taking its place, full and bright, there’s sweat running down the backs of your thighs, your neck, pooling together where the skin of your stomach meets once you sit down. Makes you feel like a kid again, all boney knees and frayed shorts, T-Shirts that are either too big or too small, always hand-me-downs from your brother and sisters.

The location doesn't help.

Been maybe ten years since you’d last been here, maybe longer, but you hadn't forgotten how to jimmy the lock just so, make it do that little clicky-sound, and then the gate was open, just wide enough for you to fit through even now, a little taler and wider.

You’re lucky, really, that the community pool seems to still be stuck in the nineties, no cameras or alarm systems anywhere.

Now your bare feet skim the waters surface, all that blue smelling strongly of chlorine.

There’s a fly floating just past your toes, dead, and a ladybird struggling a bit further away. Some mornings, you remember, when you and Cole would arrive earlier than any of the other kids, both too glad to be out of the house, too hot already to stay in the sun, you’d be greeted by death. 

A squirrel once, face down in the water, and there was that raccoon, too. 

But you hadn't been able to forget about the dog, stealing in through a hole in the fence, and his big, milky eyes, still open where his head was bobbing against the ladder, again and again. Had seen his face for weeks whenever you closed your eyes and hadn't set foot in the pool for just as long.

Kids have an ability to overcome, though, that you are now often jealous of, and so one morning you’d just stopped being scared, went swimming again like nothing ever happened. 

There’s nothing bigger than a few insects floating around now, which you’re thankful for. Your stomach is twisted up enough as it is.

Ten years since you’d last seen Cole, too. In your memory, his face is haggard and thin, cheekbones too prominent, lips chapped, the way he had looked that day you left town, laughing on your bedroom floor about a joke only he was privy to.

He hadn’t believed you, about college, about leaving, and then once he did he became mean about it. 

“Won’t be long until you’re back here.“ Cole used to say, his smile sharper than it should be.

“Maybe.“ 

You already knew by then that he wasn't looking for real conversation, just someone to spit words at, wouldn't remember them the next day anyways. When he was sober again, all that shit out of his system for a few hours, and you’d have your Cole back for a short while. The one that buried the dog after it drowned in the pool, put his arm around your shoulders while you cried.

“You’re not better than me.“ One of his favorites. You never thought you were. The two of you too alike for that, the only things separating you a bit of luck, sometimes yours, sometimes his, and the different ways in which you punished yourselves.

Yours was pain, his was drugs. One was just easier to hide than the other.

Now, waiting to meet him for the first time since that night so many years ago, it feels almost like waiting for a stranger. No one should ever be judged for the person they are at eighteen, and you wonder who he’ll be now, ten years down the line. Maybe just an older version of the high, strung-out Cole that used to climb into your window at night, eyes red and too wide, pupils blown, talking either too fast or too slow to make sense of it all. But then, maybe he’ll be a version of the Cole you knew at ten and twelve and fourteen, face still a little chubby, smiles crooked but genuine, learning to play your favorite song on the guitar until his fingers bled, beating you at Mario Kart, sharing a bed during sleepovers. 

It’s what you’re here to find out, and the evening air feels static with possibility. Mosquitos start to buzz around you, attracted by the smell of your sweat, the glow of your phone, opened to the last message you sent him. The moon is bright enough that you don’t need a light to make out your surroundings and the pool water reflects them back to you, a give and take.

Summer, to you, had always been a season of surrealism. Days felt slow and full of possibility, bike rides through the neighborhood, skinned knees and elbows, eating popsicles in front of the gas station, licking the syrup from your sweat-sticky skin, salt and sugar. Felt like every moment was already a memory, a little bit hazy, flickering at the edges. Most of those moments you can’t recall in clarity now, only feelings puzzled together to make them into something that was once real, but there’s one thing that is true in all of them. Cole is by your side.

The minutes tick by like molasses, the only sounds the buzzing of insects and the cicadas hidden in bushes. The ladybird in the pool has stopped struggling. Cole isn’t here yet.

Of all the possibilities, him not showing up hadn't occurred to you as one. And you still won't let it. 

Back in your hometown, back at the community pool where you spent so much of your childhood, you can’t help but fall into old patterns. Which means: you still believe in Cole.

Your mom always used to say you were hopeless when it came to him, waiting in front of the door, leaving the window open at night, even in those last two years when all he did was hurt himself and the people who loved him. 

You can’t help it though. At seven years old, the both of you had taken a knife and cut twin lines into your palms, pressed the skin together, small hands holding tight until it was impossible to say where your blood stopped and his started. Ever since then you felt like a part of you would always be fused to Cole, would always love him.

It had never been about romance, the two of you, but even as a friend he had been the love of your life. Is so, even now. You have never stopped missing him. Pathetic, maybe, that it’s been ten years since you not only saw him last but had any kind of contact, and still here you are, waiting for him.

But summer has, for you, always been a time when impossibilities became possible, when everything felt magnetic, and so why not try.

It gets later. You hadn't planned on staying so long, on letting evening become night, only because tomorrow’ll come quick and unwanted and you will have to get up early. 

But you also hadn't planned to leave without seeing Cole. Talking to him, forgiving each other for the mistakes you made while you were still so young. 

You were the one that had chosen the pool as the place to meet, thought it would be impossible not to find back to each other here. 

To sit side by side, legs dangling, toes grazing water and not become some version of the kids you were together. Mosquito bites on your skin that Cole would pick until they’d bleed, a sunburn on your nose. And then suddenly no time would have passed, no work to get back to, no small apartments and bills and doctors appointments. Only an infinite summer in front of you, every day open to become whatever you’d want it to be.  

But there are no footsteps behind you yet, no clicky-sound coming from the gate. You can’t help but feel a little nervous, thinking about getting back to your childhood home, getting your outfit ready for tomorrow, finishing your speech, all these things you still have to do.

You know the dress, black and somber, needs to be ironed, thrown into the bottom of your suitcase carelessly. And you still haven't found the right words to put to paper, thinking about all those faces staring up at you tomorrow, and how you’re not sure you deserve to stand up and talk anyway.

It had taken you ten years, after all, to reach out.

You unlock your phone, want to send Cole another message, ask him where he is, and the last one you sent stares back at you.

Your thumbs almost slip against the screen, slick and sweaty. It’s still much too warm, even though the sun is finally gone. 

The message is the only one in the thread, no checkmarks next to it. None for “read“, and none for “received“.

Ten years it took you to do even this, send a few simple words, and by now you can’t remember why. What had the two of you done to each other, that was so hard to get over? There was no fight, no betrayal, only two stupid kids trying their best. You had never even planned, that day you left him asleep on your bedroom floor while you put your bags in the car, for that to be it. Thought you’d call the week after and the two of you would talk like you used to.

You never did and neither did he.

Such a disappointing ending to the most important thing in your life.

And now, ten years later, and still it took a call from his mom to get you to reach out. Too little, too late. 

You read the words on your phone again.

“Your mom just told me, but I can’t believe it. Meet me at the pool?“

Cole had never answered and still you knew he would come.

Because it is summer, sticky like syrup, and impossibilities become possible. And because it is Cole, and you always believe in him.

He’s not here. 

You are not ready to give up, to accept that you’ll never be kids together again, that you’ll never get the chance to be adults together. 

That the next and last time you’ll see Cole will be tomorrow, in his best suit, when you’ll have to say goodbye. He’ll look like he’s sleeping, your mom reassured you, and you remember him at 18, curled up against the floorboards of your room, sweating out drugs against the wood, the way you left him, and know it won’t be true. Asleep, Cole was never still, always twitching and mumbling. 

Sweat is drying against your skin and insects keep dying in the pool.

You are waiting for something you know won’t come. Someone. You are wasting time making wishes that aren’t going to come true. Hopeless, is what your mom had called you and maybe you haven’t changed as much since you’ve been eighteen. Maybe Cole hasn't either. You’ll never know. Too little, too late. You’ll only ever remember him two ways, the memories hazy and flickering at the edges: eighteen and mean and pumped full of drugs or twelve and smiling and full of only good things. There is no in between in the foggy maze of childhood summers left behind in your mind.

The mosquitos are swarming now. As a kid, everything is a small kind of adventure: mosquito bites and sunburns and dead animals in the pool. Now, all of it becomes nuisance. 

The phone slips from your fingers, thumbs too slippery after all, and lands in the water with a splash, the loudest sound all evening.

For a second you just stare at it as it sinks deeper and deeper, hits the ground and lies there, screen still blue and relaying your last and only words to Cole back to you, then you slide forward, use your hands to push yourself away from the ledge and jump after it, hitting the water like a wake-up call. 

When you close your eyes just before you hit the surface, you see the dog again, eyes milky white and open, head bobbing against the ladder again and again and again.