Excerpt from my unfinished novel, The Boys of Summer

The blades of emerald and juniper grass whisper songs of summers gone. Gone with the gentle wind of halcyon days lost to solitary years. Songs of blush lemondes and flushed cheeks from runs to distant hills. The hills nestle against the twilight blues of the crisp lakes we swam in on brutal nights. Our mothers would come searching the grassy shoreline with flashlights, waiting until we resurfaced, giggling until we were shivering from night breezes and stern threats of taking away our bedroom doors. The water is the same twilight blue of the shutters that covered the dining room windows that I would sit below, staring up at the peeling paint exposing the wooden frame. Waiting for Ms. Fields mother to swing the shutters and curtain open and tell me Ginny would be done with breakfast in 5 minutes; she would toss me an orange and warn me not to take her past the far hillside of the lake. Tiny waves break the blue and reveal distant periwinkle skies, the same color as Ginny's old lacey Sunday school dress. The comforting color I would seek out in the church classroom behind the stairs when Mrs. Langston would separate us to stop our giggling at the imagined smell of Noah’s Ark. Slow rolling clouds smell like the rainy days that wouldn't end.

A faded film scene, gold faded into blue when Ginny stopped coming for the summer. The puzzle piece trees don't interlock and catch me. Untouchable skies are too close to the ground, pressing down on my head and refusing to let go until I crumple into the earth to fossilize and become the oil that they're drilling for beyond the hills. The lake is shallow. I can reach the bottom in the middle, but I’m more at risk of drowning now that she's gone. From early June to late August, Ginny and I lived in the lake. Those all too short summers when she stayed with her grandmother, who demanded to be called “Great Fields.” From September to May, Great Fields lived alone in the wilting house with only my mother and I next door to keep her company. Ginny stopped coming after Great Fields died and left the house to her. No one came back for the house; nothing lives there anymore.