The Sun Shines Brightest in June (Completed) gxg

Prologue of Sorts

June. National Caribbean-American Heritage Month. National African-American Music Appreciation Month. National LGBT Pride Month. To many different people around the world, it is a month of many different celebrations. It is the month, which holds the official first day of summer, and when I was a child, it was the month than the school year officially ended in.

June meant warm weather, but also light breezes that kept the temperatures from soaring too high. It meant sundresses, flip-flops, and sipping lemonade through a twisty straw in my back yard. It meant relaxing in the pool, late night bonfires, and sleeping in the next morning. Most importantly, though, June meant Klara.

My parents owned a summerhouse in northern Minnesota, just off of Lake Superior. I should say co-owned if I want to be completely honest. Steven Jacobs, more commonly known as just Steve, owned half of the place as well.

Steve had gone to school with my father. The two of them met in the 4th grade and were best friends for years, until Steve moved halfway across the country for college. Coincidentally, about a month after I turned nine, they found themselves in Minnesota, both searching for a summerhouse. My family always lived in Minnesota, so that wasn't entirely shocking that we would be there, but Steve and his family lived in New York. It seemed strange that they would chose a summerhouse so far from home.

My father explained that Steve and his family chose Minnesota, because that's where he was originally from. The chance that they ended up picking the same house in the same place to look at, though, was purely by chance. Once they both got to the house they recognized each other immediately, and, after a very brief period of contemplating the idea, they decided to get the place together.

My mother had mixed feelings about this, of course. After all, my father's childhood friend that he hadn't seen in years and his strange family moving into our summer house with us? It was sort of an unsettling idea for her, but once she met Steve's wife Cathy all hesitation flew out the window. Cathy Jacobs and my mother hit it off like two long-lost, identical twins that had just discovered each other's existence, though they looked absolutely nothing alike.

Luckily for me and my younger siblings, Steve and Kathy had two children of their own, Timothy and Klara Jacobs. Klara was twelve, two years older than me, and Timothy was eight. We met them a year after our parents signed the papers for the summerhouse. It was the first year we all finally got to go, since the months prior had been used for a small amount of renovation.

Those summers were the best summers of my life, although it seems only parts of them stuck in my memory. I tried to keep a journal once, but I never remembered to write in it often enough. So, I guess if these are the parts I actually remembered to jot down, well then, they must have been the very best parts.