August. The last weekend of summer.
Izzy gazed out of her cracked bedroom window to the small town street below, watching taxis and clumps of people her age go by, sneakers glowing white in the streetlights. They were all obviously on their way somewhere: from the train station to the bars on the main street. Maybe into the city, where Izzy went once a year if she was lucky. A guy her age, arms around his gf, wove around people on a scooter; Izzy listened to their laughter fade down the street—Shoebottom Road, a strip mall thoroughfare that once boasted a Taco Bell Express, but now had nothing but empty storefronts. Except for one: her mom's store, which made beautiful—if outdated—things, dresses and suits and hats. Izzy still lived with her mom and dad in the apartment above it, though they all lived just as much in the store itself.
Other people had Sunday scaries. But Izzy had September scaries: summer was almost over, and she hadn't done one single interesting thing.
When Izzy had imagined her life after college, she never pictured still being here, on her childhood bed, living in her laptop in her tiny room that had no fewer than 6 frilly princess-themed lamps, bought for Izzy when she was a toddler by her grandmother, growing from every laquered wood surface like mushrooms. She thought she'd be one of the people outside, on her way somewhere.
Her phone pinged, drawing her away from the window and back to her usual setup: laptop open with a halfscreen split between Netflix and TikTok. Izzy knew she wasn't going out tonight.
Her summer highlight reel was so far embarrassingly short: she saw the Barbie movie with her best friend Meg plus some of her friends. And she went out for coffee with Meg a few times. And that was it. That was literally it. Izzy couldn't populate her feed if she tried, and the shame sometimes felt like fire against her skin.
But there was something hopeful, floating in on that humid end-of-summer breeze: August meant the summer wasn't over yet. August meant she still had a chance to something, anything. Would she make it out? Or would this be another summer wasted? The package that arrived this morning whispered hope. Izzy still hadn't opened it.
just listen to it
Izzy reread the message on her phone, a bit puzzled. Meg was begging now; her texts had become desperate. Meg was usually never up this late and she never sent Izzy songs. What the fuck was she up to?
Izzy listened intently—only the sounds of laughter and cars floated in from outside. Her mom was still out. She opened the song Meg sent her, hit play, then waited; finally, a lone beat cut across her room. It was the hottest day of the year so far, and Izzy lifted one foot, then the other, from the old brown shag carpeting in her room, feeling the soft air from outside across her soles. The single drum beat was joined by a guitar that seemed to melt into the summer air. The music was dark and hypnotic, with a low hum that floated underneath the melody. Izzy tried to imagine the lead singer, lips together, making the sound that filled her bedroom.
Her mom was out, but she would be back soon. Izzy leaned out her bedroom window, checking for signs of her parents' car. She always meant to do something exciting when her parents were out. She looked back inside at the big bowl of cereal on her desk: that was her big rebellion for the night, an extra bowl of cereal.
Izzy hated that she was 22 and still listening for her mom coming up the stairs.
Another ping went off: this time, it was Izzy's BeReal alarm. Izzy looked around her room and grimaced, laughing a bit at herself. What was there to take a photo of? A photo of her cousin Lydia popped up on the app: one tit almost out of her shirt, mid-twerk, at a party of some sort. Like a normal person her age.
Izzy stood and went to her mirror, a big, brown, smudged thing like the rest of the heavy 70s furniture that had always been in her room, like it had grown out of the shag carpeting. She looked at herself in the mirror, still in her work drip. Or anti-drip: 100% polyester, beige, and with enough ruffles to be a fire hazard. She had tried to turn the outfit into a clean girl look with some gold earrings and slicked back bun, but it wasn't working—the skirt and blouse and vest (yes, vest) were fucking crazy, with buttons and epaulets from the uncool part of the 80s. The part her parents were still stuck in. She didn't hate her body or her face; she had done the work on body acceptance. But did anyone look good in beige ruffles? Like, anyone alive? Why did she have to wear these fits every day? Why couldn't the store sell something from the last ten years? Izzy had tried to gently hint to her mother that they might consider some new suppliers. But her mom wanted to please her own mother, who had selected the suppliers herself when she opened the store, who was gone now. Izzy had been named after her grandmother, Elisabetta, who came here with nothing and had build a business with her bare hands. Izzy's mother Eleanor ran the store, and someday, it would be passed onto Izzy. She had gone to university nearby for business for that purpose, with minors in literature and music. Izzy had always told her mom that she would take over the store and loved working there; Eleanor had no reason to believe otherwise. Izzy didn't know how to tell her the truth—that she wanted out. Izzy could barely tell herself.
She hated that she lived at home, in the apartment above the store. She hated that she was inside when everyone her age was outside: talking, dancing, being with each other. Izzy flopped back down on her bed as the song ended, and went back into her laptop. She scrolled Pinterest, past hundreds of pics of interesting people doing colorful, beautiful things: pretty towns where you could walk everywhere, big group picnics in big city parks, dresses she had nowhere to wear, rooms with a reasonable number of lamps.
Izzy went to the door of her room and cracked it open, looking down the hallway both ways. Her parents door was right next to hers. The hallway was empty.
She couldn't hear anything.
She walked over to her closet.
Izzy had spent a long time living in her laptop, but she could feel that tonight, something was different: something had been building all summer. Since June, she had successfully kept three secrets from her parents, and that small separation felt like a huge step toward outside, where a better life was definitely waiting for her—if she could just walk downstairs and down the door. If she could just lift her feet. Izzy felt hopeful that night that she could: it was only August, and there were a few days of summer left. She could turn it all around.
Her phone pinged again with another message from Meg: concert tomorrow ?? you said stay up, this is staying up
And just like that, all of Izzy's yearning and planning turned to lead in her stomach. A concert? Go to a concert? It was like Meg asked her casually to go to another planet. Her phone pinged again.
see you in the PIT ! the pit is where it all happens
It was from her cousin, Lydia. 20. Whereabouts unknown. Lydia, who hadn't been home in months. Lydia, who was out right now, at a post-show party in another city. She always messaged her out of nowhere and never revealed exactly where she was: but it sounded like she was coming the city nearby for the concert tomorrow night. Izzy hadn't seen her in almost a year. An accident two years ago had flung Izzy's and Lydia's lives apart and careening in different directions, unlikely—in Izzy's mind—to ever join up again.
Meg was 23 and married and happy and had all the things. Ya, 23 and married. She had a house, an electric car, and pretty soon, a baby, probably. She had done everything right: she asked her husband out in university, in the first class the first semester, in a lecture that she and Izzy took together. Izzy watched her do it: Meg just walked over, smiled, said something about coffee after class, and that was it. To Izzy, this was more impressive than going to space. Meg said after that she had been rejected by guys a bunch of times before and you just had to get used to it, but Izzy didn't really believe her. Someone as beautiful as Meg, rejected? Meg said it was the price of admission for dating, in one of her barely concealed pieces of advice to Izzy. But Izzy was waiting for someone to come and find her, but at the same time—in some part of her—Izzy knew that hope was expectation without reason. She slumped down in her bed and played the song again, closing her eyes. Her mind flashed back to her ex, from... last summer? She couldn't believe that it had already been a whole year. She tried to shake it off, but she couldn't help it. That feeling of his hands on her hips sometimes washed over her in moments like this—his fingers in her mouth, his teeth on her neck—when she was alone in her room, another night in. can't :( i have to work tonight was a common message from her phone. And a total lie.
A moment of self-awareness burst through the sound of the hum on her phone's speakers: Roger? She missed Roger? This was bad. She had to get out. She could almost see The Boulder in the middle of her room (the name she and Meg and given for Izzy's main flaw, a flaw so excruciating Roger broke up with her the second she told him about it). The Boulder wouldn't go away on its own. And Izzy wanted it gone.
More than anything.
Meg was part of a club called the marrieds—or at least, that's what Izzy called them in her mind. Girls just a little older than Izzy who seemed to have it all figured out years ago, populated by Lauren (tall, serious soccer player, serious anxiety), Sophia (tiny, yogi, "wellness lifestyle coach"), and Mia (former friend of her cousin Lydia, former lunatic). It felt like a club Izzy would never get to join.
Her phone pinged again, with another message from Meg: come on, music babe! maybe they'll pull us up on stage and you can solo, lol
Izzy listened cautiously; she couldn't hear her parent's car in the drive or feet on the stairs, so she turned up the song Meg had sent. It was good, actually. Really good. Holy shit, it was like Queen by Perfume Genius but better—it sounded like summer. Like a summer spent not in her room in her parent's house. She checked the title: it was something by Will someone or other, who she hadn't listened to a ton before. Truthfully, she had been kind of living under a rock since the accident and hadn't crawled back out after the pandemic, which had moved all her classes online and crammed her entire life back into her brown bedroom.
That voice.
Raspy and strong, the voice was crying out for something.
Izzy eyed her closet.
She creaked the closet's old accordion doors open. She had to use her whole bodyweight to shift aside the heavy hangers of polyester, the many sunken ruffles in brown and black. Her whole wardrobe was from the family store. Anything else was a betrayal. But Izzy had betrayed her family for the first time this summer, and the dress she had ordered in secret had arrived this morning. She ripped open bag and a river of silky green flowed into her hands. The betrayal was green and short and in a natural fabric that didn't make her fingers itch, with an open back so her body could breathe.
She stuffed the package it came in further back in the closet as a reflexive precaution, and held the dress up in front of herself in the mirror. It was beautiful. It made her look her actual age. It was a dress you could go on a date in; an actual date, not a "come over, my mom's asleep" situationship drip. A dress you might wear after someone asked you out for a drink or dinner or maybe one of those carnival dates—a date everyone had seemed to have been on, except for her, with cotton candy, a ferris wheel, and a cheap stuffed bear won at a huge cost at a booth.
She picked up her phone and turned up the song again. She opened the message from Meg.
Izzy took a deep breath, and typed very fast: yes. let's goooo.
Meg immediately messaged back: wait, what? really? HIGH KEY THRILLED.
Several skulls followed. Meg explained the band: Will sounded like Perfume Genius but like better and the drummer was a snack but their new lead guitarist was a WHOLE MEAL and the opening girl band was supposed to be super amazing. Meg wrote several paragraphs about the drummer, and mentioned that Lydia had invited her, and none of the other marrieds could make it (sad face). Meg seriously stanned Will.
Light struck the back of the mirror. Izzy gasped; her door was open. She peered around the mirror to see her mother's soft silhouette illuminated by the hall light behind her.
"Izzy? You're still up?" Eleanor took a step forward.
"Just about to go to sleep. Let's talk in the morning, I'm beat," Izzy countered, stepping closer to the mirror to hide the dress.
Her mom stepped into the room. She wore an outfit in a similar fabric, but somehow, the ruffles worked on her. Izzy had no way of hiding her betrayal.
Her mom's mouth dropped open at the sight of the green satin. "That's not from the store."
"Sorry," Izzy said. She turned away from her mother, blocking as much of the dress as possible. Guilt was breaking over her like waves, landing in dull thuds on her back and shoulders.
Her mother looked the dress up and down. She smiled—a painful smile, the one she put on when her heart was breaking. Izzy fought every instinct she had to make up a story, about how the dress was delivered here by mistake, or how Meg had given it to her, and the clothes from the store were so much better. But Izzy had been trying to tell the truth lately, to not just blurt out any lie to mollify whoever she was trying to please at that moment.
They could hear the TV flick on downstairs. Izzy knew her dad was on the sofa, beer in hand. The show was always the same: some old man yelling about the woke mob and Roe v Wade. Every time Izzy tried to gently talk to her father, something came spilling out of him that was worse than she could have imagined he believed. You have a daughter, Izzy wanted to say. How could you think that?
Her mom was now looking around her daughter, toward the open closet, where the second secret was hiding. Izzy took the hanger from around her neck, put it back in the closet, and closed the doors.
"I might have to close early tomorrow. I'm going to a concert with Meg."
"Oh, okay. Mrs. Shepherd is coming in after her shift—the dress for her daughter's wedding. I can take that one."
"Thank you," said Izzy. And then, it just came out, involuntarily: "It's an indoor concert and I needed something really light, because apparently it can get up to, like, a hundred inside. I didn't want to ruin something nice from the store."
Eleanor nodded. She seemed to relax a bit. Izzy exhaled, relieved. Her mom stepped back toward the door, and they said their goodnights.
Izzy listened to her footsteps fading down the hall. She looked down at her phone, to group chat she was now in with Lydia and Meg. The guilt was relentless—maybe she should cancel. She should take the appointment with Mrs. Shepherd. Her mom would be run off her feet; she looked so tired. She started to type her excuse text, something she had turned into an art: "that's a bit out of my budget for now, but you guys have a great time and take soooo many pics for me *crying*." She should be given an honorary degree in excuse texts. But the concert was such as spontaneous plan, Izzy hadn't had the notice to mention a headache a few days before, building to an illness that would make an easy out.
they were freeeeeee no cap. you're friends with a mega influencer, Lydia wrote. To Izzy's knowledge, Lydia had about 4,372 followers and followed more than 10,000 people.
see you on the floor tomorrowwww 7 PM do not BE LATE this is a real tour not a drill
Izzy grinned—she couldn't help it. She had never been to a concert, let alone one this massive. A thick breeze swept in from outside. She went over to her closet and peeked at her dress, the green standing out like a single flower in a field of sun bleached grass.
Every secret Izzy kept was another room she could live in. And she could decorate those rooms any way she liked, and dance in them, and invite just who she wanted into them. She wanted to build an entire house of them, a house of her own.
Tomorrow, on the last day of summer, her life was going to start. For real this time. Izzy put her headphones in, turned the song up again, and played it from the beginning, Will's voice seeping into her veins.