Echo's Of A Lost Summer

I remember the smell of sun-dried grass, crisp and golden, as though it were yesterday. The way it crunched beneath my sneakers as I ran through the field—chasing nothing and everything all at once. That summer seemed endless then, a golden blur of light and laughter. Now, it feels like an ancient artifact, buried beneath years of silence and regret.

The first time I met Sam, I was sitting at the edge of Hollow Creek, my bare feet submerged in the cool water. The world had gone quiet in that lazy way it does during the late afternoon. The cicadas hummed like a distant orchestra, and the sunlight dappled through the trees, painting the water in molten gold.

“You’re in my spot,” a voice said behind me.

Startled, I turned to find a boy my age with a fishing rod slung over his shoulder. He was tall and gangly, with unruly brown hair and a grin that seemed permanently plastered to his face.

“Your spot?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

He nodded solemnly, though his eyes sparkled with amusement. “Yup. Reserved since 1987.”

“It’s 1994,” I pointed out.

“Exactly,” he said, as if that clarified everything. Then he plopped down next to me, uninvited but entirely welcome.

That was Sam. Brazen, quick-witted, and utterly impossible to dislike. By the end of the afternoon, we were inseparable, our laughter echoing through the hollow as though we’d known each other forever.

Sam had a way of turning the ordinary into something extraordinary. A dilapidated barn became our fortress, a broken bicycle transformed into a time machine, and the dusty attic of his grandmother’s house held secrets that rivaled the treasures of King Tut’s tomb. Every day was an adventure, and every adventure felt like a small rebellion against the mundane world of adults.

I remember one particularly hot afternoon when Sam decided we should build a raft. The idea came to him after watching Huck Finn on VHS.

“We’ll sail down the creek and see where it takes us,” he said, his eyes alight with mischief.

“It’s barely deep enough for a canoe,” I protested, but he was already rummaging through the junk pile behind his grandmother’s shed.

The resulting “raft” was a precarious assemblage of plywood, empty oil drums, and fraying rope. Against all odds, it floated. Barely.

We spent the afternoon drifting downstream, armed with peanut butter sandwiches and Sam’s dad’s binoculars. It was a disaster, of course. The raft capsized within an hour, and we waded back to shore, drenched and laughing so hard our sides ached. But in that moment, with the sun setting and the water shimmering around us, I felt invincible.

It wasn’t until the end of summer that I noticed the cracks in Sam’s carefully constructed world. His father’s car was parked in the driveway less and less, and his mother’s laughter grew brittle, like glass on the verge of shattering. Sam never talked about it, and I didn’t press. We were kids. We weren’t supposed to understand things like divorce or loneliness. But the weight of it lingered, unspoken, like a storm cloud on the horizon.

One evening, as we lay on the grass watching the stars, Sam turned to me and said, “Do you ever think about running away?”

“Where would we go?” I asked.

“Anywhere,” he said, his voice tinged with longing. “As long as it’s far from here.”

I didn’t know what to say. At thirteen, the world beyond our little town felt vast and unknowable. But I understood the desire to escape, to carve out a place where nothing could hurt us.

That was the last summer we spent together. By the time school started, Sam had moved away to live with his father in some city I’d never heard of. He left a note in my locker on the first day of eighth grade. It was short and hastily scrawled, but I still have it tucked away in a box somewhere:

Don’t forget me. I won’t forget you.

I tried to write back, but every letter felt inadequate. What could I say that he didn’t already know? That the creek felt empty without him? That I’d stopped going to our spot because it hurt too much? In the end, I said nothing, and the distance between us grew until it was insurmountable.

Years passed. Life happened. I went to college, got a job, fell in love, and fell out of it. I told myself I’d moved on, but every so often, I’d catch myself thinking about Sam. Wondering where he was. Whether he ever built another raft or watched the stars with someone else.

And then, last summer, I found myself back in our hometown. My mother had passed away, and I’d come to settle her affairs. The house felt foreign, as though it belonged to someone else. The walls were lined with photos of a life I barely recognized. But the memories came flooding back, vivid and unrelenting.

One evening, unable to sleep, I wandered down to Hollow Creek. The field was overgrown, the path almost completely hidden by weeds. But the moment I reached the water, it was as if no time had passed at all. The creek still sparkled in the moonlight, and the cicadas still hummed their endless song.

“You’re in my spot,” a voice said behind me.

I turned, half-expecting to see Sam as I remembered him: lanky and grinning, with mischief in his eyes. Instead, I found a man who looked like he’d stepped out of an alternate timeline. His hair was shorter, streaked with gray at the temples. His grin was softer, more reserved. But his eyes—those were the same.

“Sam?” I whispered, my voice catching in my throat.

He nodded, his smile widening. “Took you long enough to come back.”

We spent the night sitting by the creek, talking as though no time had passed. He told me about his life in the city, his failed marriage, and the small bookstore he now owned. I told him about my mother, my restless search for something I couldn’t name, and the hollow ache I’d carried for years.

“I missed this place,” he said, skimming a stone across the water. “But I missed us more.”

I didn’t reply. What could I say? That I’d missed him too? That I’d spent half my life chasing shadows of a friendship I’d thought was lost? Instead, I reached for his hand, and he didn’t pull away.

As the sun rose, painting the sky in hues of pink and gold, I realized something. The past wasn’t a place we could return to, no matter how much we longed for it. But it wasn’t gone, either. It lived on in our memories, in the echoes of laughter and the warmth of an old friend’s touch.

And for the first time in years, I felt whole.