Last Summer

01. Emi

My favorite word is petrichor.

/'petrī,kôr/ according to the dictionary and whatever all those symbols mean to help you pronounce it correctly.

It's that pleasant, earthy, wet smell in the air.

You don't get that in Las Vegas. The air there smells more like dry heat and dirty poker chips.

But in North Carolina—it is like a burst of true happiness.

Every summer when my car started it's climb up the mountain, I rolled down my window and breathed it in. The wind would whip through my car and fill my nostrils. Then the memories would come pouring back—just like they say scents tend to make them—one after the other. Year after year. All of my best moments replayed through my mind as I winded up the highway.

On the top of that mountain was my favorite place. Camp Wilde Woode.

It was situated on a glistening lake, three cabin rows deep, and held the dreams of thousands of girls.

Camp was like a second life. Escapism at its finest.

I escaped every year from seven to seventeen. I'd leave the city and my mom and dad behind—not that that was anything new—and embrace the outdoors.

I was always alone a lot. Only child. Independent.

Casinos stay open 24/7, and when we needed money for clothes or books or college, my parents picked up another shift—well, a lot of shifts—mom as a black jack dealer and dad as a casino manager.

I was okay with it because that's who I was at heart. I was confident in myself. I didn't really need anyone. I tended to be more emotionless in the grand scheme of things.

But at camp, it was like a big family, like I had one hundred sisters. I liked that—the three month change. By the end of the summer though, I was usually ready to go back to being alone. Extroversion had gotten old, and it was time to revert back to introversion.

This was going to be my last summer before I was off to UNC for college in the fall. The last time I drove through the camp gates. The last time the lake came into view. The last time with my best friend.

I hugged Piper hard.

She squirmed and muttered from between my boobs, "Let go, Emi," but she was a tiny speck of a human, so it wasn't difficult to hold her in place.

"I'm so glad we're back here," I sang. I added a sway for emphasis until Piper clawed my arms. "You can't be cranky on the first day."

"You can't manhandle me because I'm four foot eleven," she said, pinching me in the armpit.

"Ow," I cried dramatically and released her. Back on my side of the cabin, I fell back on my thin mattress. "This summer has to be amazing." I tried to breathe in the petrichor—nothing. I'd been there since early morning and had already gotten used to it. Instead, I eyed the wooden beams that ran in both directions across the ceiling and were covered in names going back to the 1930s.

Sybil '41 Best Summer Ever had probably passed away by now. Morbid. She had pretty handwriting though—cursive, which is obsolete no matter how much every teacher tried to say otherwise. No, middle school didn't force me to use it. No, high school didn't force me to use it. And I seriously doubted college would either.

Piper pushed her brunette bangs to the side and continued to fill her wooden dresser. "Isn't every summer?"

I should stop thinking about dead Sybil. "Yeah, but this one has to be even better."

And it would be. I was going to make sure of it. Piper and I were finally counselors together in the same cabin—granted it was to eight tweens we'd be "in charge" of.