Summer Forever

07.

I first met Sky when I was twelve.

Back then, the Nauti Buoys only consisted of Austin, Connor, and me. Really, we weren't even the Nauti Buoys yet because River hadn't joined us yet and we hadn't given his dad's boat its legendary name.

River came that summer, but Sky came first.

She arrived in Shellside Bay two weeks before school started, and everyone knew about her arrival within two hours. She was the talk of the town. Everyone was whispering about the moving truck that had parked outside the little blue house that had been empty for the past six months.

We weren't friends right away, but when she joined the group, it was like she was always meant to be one of us.

The day we met, she was standing outside of her new house, helping her parents unpack the moving truck. I had been riding past on my bike with Austin and Connor and stopped in front of her driveway.

We stared at each other for a moment. She was paler back then, untouched by the glaring sun of Shellside Bay's summers. She was coming from a town closer to the city, but further from the beach. Back then, she hadn't even touched a surfboard yet.

Her hair, though, was just the same. It was unruly and wild but, back then, cropped to her shoulders—just like mine was.

She touched the ends of her hair as she stared at me, then flashed me a smile.

"Looks better on me," she said.

I gaped at her in disbelief that she'd said that to me, that those had been the first words out of her mouth—and then I started to laugh.

▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔

Sky was gone as quick as she'd appeared.

Her cousin had broken the news to the family and chaos had broken loose. The marriage certificates were already signed, and the baby was already brewing in her womb, but Sky's family would be damned if there was no real wedding ceremony.

And so, Sky had been summoned back to her cousin's hometown to plan a wedding in less than a month. A wedding that would hopefully distract from the fact that her cousin's baby would be born two months 'early', when the time came.

My room seemed ten times larger without her clothes strewn on the floor, or her duffle bag tucked in the corner. I even missed her cold toes against my legs in the middle of the night.

I sat on my bed, lying on my stomach as I revised a lecture on statistics. We had a test coming up and I still couldn't wrap my head around the concept of a null hypothesis. And there were so many Greek letters. I groaned, pressing my hands against my face. This was maths, why were there so many Greek letters?

I knew I would regret dropping out of the higher maths class in high school. I hadn't expected to go to university—and I definitely hadn't expected to need to do maths for a degree in marine biology.

I used to be good at this stuff. Now, it seemed the letters floated meaninglessly on the page, only there to make my life harder.

Outside, music was pounding. I could hear the quiet clink of drinks and chatter beneath the pounding bass of River's speakers.

He was throwing another party and, while it was less chaotic than the previous one, I'd had my fill of parties for the term. I was preoccupied. Not only did I have a statistics exam soon, but I also had a practical exam for my biomolecular science lab, and then an essay due for my biology class. It was piling up.

I wanted to tear my hair out.

I glared down at my blank paper, my pen hovering over the page. I'd listened to the lecture twice now and I had nothing to add to my original notes. It hadn't helped at all.