Cruel Summer | ✓

chapter fourteen

Riley may be less exhausted than me and she may not be fighting a stitch, but I have longer legs and I am too sore a loser not to beat her to her car. It costs me, though. I can hardly breathe after the three-mile race back to the start of the trailhead, which started out friendly enough until I realized she was going to beat me and I had to kick it up a gear.

"You're competitive," she says with a laugh when she reaches me, fishing her keys out of her bag to unlock her mud-splattered Honda Civic. The shade has moved since she parked here and the car's been sitting under the full sun; it's like stepping into a sauna, even worse when I am already sweating buckets from pushing it too hard. My elbow brushes against the buckle and I swear it's hot enough to give me a third degree burn.

"Just one of my fatal flaws," I say, panting. Riley gets the windows open and sticks the aircon on full blast but it comes out warm.

"It takes a minute to kick in," she says as she pulls out of the dirt and onto the road into town. We pass the turning for Ponderosa Way, trundling down the winding road at no more than forty miles per hour. Riley's a safe driver, verging on cautious, her hand resting on the gearstick like she might have to get into reverse real quick.

"Thanks for this," I say, my words coming out more measured and less ragged once I've got control of my breathing. "Everyone in Fisher is so nice to strangers."

"Yeah, but you're not, like, a real stranger. You've been coming here for years and you're staying with my mom's best friend. Just because you're kinda new to me doesn't make you a stranger."

"I like that."

She doffs an imaginary hat. "Plus, we're used to meeting new people here. We're excellent at it, I like to think. Some resort towns are weirdly rude to and about their tourists, but it's a symbiotic relationship — we need them or half the stores in Fisher wouldn't survive. We treat us well, they spend more money, they tell their friends about this cute, quaint little town a couple hours outside of Boise, and boom." She mimics an explosion with her hand.

"Boom?"

"The cafe can afford to hire extra staff. Eileen Wiseman gets to sell her home for triple what she paid for it and move to California to be with her grandkids. We don't die the slow death of a lot of towns like ours."

"I guess I never really thought of it like that," I muse. "When we used to come as a family, I kind of felt like we were taking over. I'm not gonna lie, I never felt bad about it — I was a kid — but we really invaded this place."

"Oh, you guys definitely invaded. Pretty impressive, really, for one family to stand out so much in this town's collective memory when we see tens of thousands of visitors every summer." She laughs, flexing her hands on the steering wheel.

"Shit. We were outlaws."

"Oh, yeah. For sure. I was so jealous. You guys always looked like you were having so much fun, and, okay, this might be TMI but I had the biggest crush on your brother."

"My brother?"

"Grayson, right? The tall one?" She holds her hand above her head.

"He's the oldest, yeah. He's twenty-seven now."

"I mean, obviously nothing ever happened — he was so cool and I was way awkward back then and I spent my life at the cafe — but I used to, like, accidentally give him a free cookie and watch him out on the lake on my break."

"Holy shit." I snort a laugh, my arm trailing out of the window to catch the breeze. "Grayson is not cool. He thought he was hot shit back then but in reality he spent every summer trying to look like he got all the girls and ended up with none. You should've made a move. He would've fallen at your feet."