"Summer" by Elaje López

"Seeing her feet, Layla marveled to herself that Summer had high arches. And blisters. Those were dancer qualities. She wondered if Summer was a dancer."

Today’s story completely swept me up inside its world on my first read, and has only continued to enchant me more and more on every read. Every detail feels so perfectly noticed and rendered, every emotion so honest and evocative. I love how deeply it makes me feel — for the narrator, and also alongside her, with her, as her. Truly one of my favorite things a story can do — wrap me up inside its world and make me feel.

Excited and honored to get to publish and share it, I hope you feel as magically swept up by and into it as well!

—Aaron Burch

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“Summer”

It happened the first time Summer had worn her hair in a ponytail. The first few days sitting next to her, Layla observed Summer’s everyday outfit–a tank top, jean shorts, sneakers, her blonde curly hair tumbling down her back. She never pushed it behind her ears or moved it out of her face. She only ever played with the ends, braiding them three strands at a time so that at the end of a particularly boring class session she would be left with tiny little braids, microscopic enough that only Layla, who was watching the movements of her fingers, would have noticed them.

So it was that fourth day, when Summer’s hair was in a ponytail, that Layla noticed two things: one, that she had freckles on the back of her neck. And two, that Summer had also changed another thing about her appearance today: she was wearing flip flops. Seeing her feet, Layla marveled to herself that Summer had high arches. And blisters. Those were dancer qualities. She wondered if Summer was a dancer. She hadn’t yet really spoken to her beyond the initial “hi” on the first day that they had sat next to each other. Was it weird that she was staring at her feet? She looked up, pretending to copy down what was written on the board without paying an ounce of attention to what she was writing in her notebook. Having looked back down, Layla noticed Summer’s toenails were painted white.

A few days after that, the class had to complete a particularly difficult worksheet, and Summer (hair down again) twisted toward Layla and finally cracked the glass that Layla herself had been too timid, or maybe too afraid of making a mess, to break. “Do you understand number 3?” she asked, and Layla, startled, looked down only to realize she hadn’t started number 3 yet.

“No, sorry,” she said. Although, looking closer at the problem, it was a simple enough limit. But when she looked back up, Summer had already returned to the territory of her own desk, and Layla wondered if she had imagined the interaction altogether. Solving the problem herself quickly, she took a deep breath and then mimicked Summer’s casual twist as best she could, sliding her paper over just a few inches onto her desk.

“Did you figure it out?” Summer asked without looking up.

“Yes–you just substitute 1 for x–here, and then…” Layla gestured vaguely at the steps she had written out on her paper (more detailed than normal, for fear that Summer wouldn’t understand them and would instead go back to ignoring her rather than thinking she was helpful and worth talking to). Summer studied them. And copied them down. And looked back at Layla, unsmiling.

“Thanks.”

“No problem,” replied Layla. Her palms were sweating a little. And then, because of her dread at having to re-crack the glass if she were to lose the momentum of the conversation, Layla stammered, “Do you dance?”

Summer looked up again. “Dance?”

Layla nodded, then caught the sight of–mercifully–a pointe shoe keychain hanging off of Summer’s backpack that she hadn’t noticed before. She pointed triumphantly at it. “I noticed your keychain,” she said, endlessly grateful that nothing about her observations of Summer’s appearance made its way out of her mouth.

Summer looked at it, then looked back at Layla, nodding slowly, and finally smiling just the slightest bit. “Yeah. I’ve done ballet since I was a kid. I’m actually looking for a new studio,” and at this she rotated more towards Layla, the worksheet temporarily forgotten. “Do you dance?”

Layla was filled with euphoria at having the right answer once again. “Yes. At the studio downtown, Center Stage. It’s the best one in the area.” Then, realizing a window of opportunity was opening, she added, “You should check it out. You could definitely join.”

Summer looked at her calculatingly, not unlike the way she had stared at problem number 3. “I definitely will,” she replied, turning back to her worksheet, but this time Layla knew it was with an awareness of her presence rather than a disregard for it, and she felt strangely proud when the bell rang and she walked out without looking back once.

Later that week, Summer appeared in the advanced ballet class, her hair braided back into a low bun and her black open back leotard tucked underneath her black tights. Layla watched her make her way to the empty spot in the middle of the barre, looking effortless and almost bored as she swung her leg up onto it to stretch her hamstring. Trying not to look like she was trying to catch Summer’s eye, Layla turned and started to stretch her hips. As Miss Jenny strode into class, she immediately began by introducing Summer to the class, which gave Layla an excuse to stare more prolongedly at her, as everyone else was too. When Miss Jenny informed the class that Summer was attending Cameron High School and that everyone who also went there should make an effort to seek her out, Summer actually turned to catch Layla’s eye. And winked.

Later that night, Layla stood in her mirror and imagined that she was Summer and her reflection was the view that Summer had of her during class, and she winked just like Summer had. It wasn’t the same.

A few weeks earlier than Layla would have even expected from herself, she worked up enough of a facade of normalcy to ask Summer if she wanted to carpool to and from dance.

“Sure, but I don’t have my license yet, so it would just be you driving us,” Summer said, looking not at Layla but at her own hair in the mirror as she pulled bobby pins out of her bun.

“That’s fine. I drive myself to rehearsal most days anyway,” Layla said quickly, realizing only a second too late that that made her sound desperate. Summer didn’t seem to notice or care, though, and only nodded as she continued to accumulate bobby pins in her hand.

“Do you want my number? I can text you when I need a ride,” Summer replied, finally turning towards her, her hair now free from its confines and billowing out over her shoulders. Nodding, Layla handed over her phone, watching her curls shift in place as Summer typed her number into it.

Their time spent together in the car was still punctuated by small silences, but the growing frequency of their car rides made their conversations flow more easily. Layla learned new things about Summer–that her family had moved from New Hampshire because her mom got a new job, that they had three dogs, that she thought their calculus teacher Mr. Porter was hot (“it’s just the way he looks when he’s writing at the whiteboard that has a special something,” prompting a giggle out of Layla that she had learned gave Summer a pleased look when she did it). It wasn’t just Mr. Porter, also–Summer talked about the boys they went to school with, running through their names as if ticking boxes on a checklist on the afternoons when Layla would drive from school to rehearsal to home.

“And Nick–what do you think of him?” Summer asked, suddenly changing course from her rather monologue-like survey of the boys in their math class. The two girls had stopped for smoothies before going to dance, and they were sitting side by side on a bench. Layla ran the cold surface of her cup along her leg, feeling the wetness from the condensation leaving a trail behind.

“I don’t know. He’s not really…I don’t ever really talk to him,” Layla decided on. She thought back to their time in school together, searching her memories for one positive or even neutral interaction she had had with him. She could only remember one thing about him, which was that Nick’s family had gotten their elementary school science teacher fired for bringing her wife to school to assist in their annual Day of Science activities.

“Why not?” Summer asked teasingly. “Do you think he’s cute?”

Layla considered if a resounding no was the answer Summer was looking for and decided that it was not. “No, he’s fine. I’m just not interested in him like that.”
“Who are you interested in, then?” Summer asked, smiling a little as she leaned forward and stole a sip out of the smoothie still in Layla’s hand. Layla stared down at it as hard as she could, unable to look anywhere else.
“I don’t really think I like anyone in our grade,” she mumbled.

Summer leaned forward, drinking her own smoothie. “Do you get your eyebrows threaded?” she asked suddenly. “They look so good.”

Layla ran a hand unconsciously across her thick brows. Was Summer making fun of her? It was hard to tell sometimes. “My mom does them, yeah.”

Summer snorted. “Can she do mine? They’re a disaster,” and Layla looked at her, thinking about how her blonde hair meant her arms were smooth and her eyebrows thin, while she knew Summer looked at her and saw her thick dark hair on her arms, on her face, on her head, but still told her she liked it. And maybe that was her way of saying she liked her. That they were friends.

That night, Miss Jenny seemed to sense the students’ lagging concentration and plunging energy levels, clapping her hands and suggesting they have a turning competition. “Fouettés, don’t be afraid to add some tricks in there, and whoever falls out of it last wins,” she called, moving to the front to make room for the students to get into lines. Summer flashed a grin at Layla, who wrinkled her nose at her.

“I hate turns,” she grumbled.

Summer laughed. “You’re just scared because you know I’m going to win.”

“I would never let that happen.” Layla wanted to hear the laugh again.

“You can say that all you want, but you know it’s a lie,” Summer teased, poking her. Layla felt dizzy as Summer squeezed her arm around her bicep and pivoted back to the front of the room, smirking. “But I’ll enjoy knocking you off your high horse.”

So that was what the laughter was about–dance always seemed to put Summer in a bubblier mood, the usual face of cool boredom replaced by one of concentration, her hair frizzed and bouncing around her face. Summer loved knowing she was one of the best, if not the best, in their class. And Summer loved turns. She knew she was going to win. She wouldn’t touch Layla like that otherwise, Layla rationalized to herself.

Miss Jenny switched on the music, a loud, pounding pop ballad so different from the usual rhythmic piano pieces that they usually danced to. As they all prepped together, Layla steeled herself and prayed for her adrenaline to make its way to her legs in order to direct her focus to the real task at hand. Slowly, they all began to fouetté, up, down, up, down, and her quad muscle began to burn. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw one girl spin out of control, catching herself by falling back onto her lifted leg. One down. Layla squeezed her pelvic muscles and reinvigorated her up, down, up, down, up, down motion, feeling herself fall into the same rhythm as Summer, who hadn’t wavered off the beat of the song at all. Suddenly, Summer switched to the downbeat–down, down, down, down, she pliéd into four lowered fouetté turns before returning back to her original turn pattern.

Layla refocused herself, doubling her efforts to maintain control over her turns, doing her best to ignore Summer’s perfect long leg helicoptering its way around the space beside her. One by one, the other students slowly fell out of their turns, landing gracefully in lunges or teetering uncertainly into a standing position once again. Soon, they were the only ones left.

“Who’s it going to be?” called Miss Jenny, and everyone started to cheer. She quickly scrawled their names in whiteboard marker across the mirror: LK for LAYLA KAZEMI and SH for SUMMER HAYES in big bubble letters. “Start counting!” she shouted, and over the music, the other students began to chant while she struck tally marks for each of them: “One…two…three…four...five…”

Layla was panting. She could feel a drop of sweat marking a slow course from between her shoulder blades downward. Her peripheral vision was filled with Summer, still turning just as quickly as before. She suddenly felt a burst of energy tighten her muscles, as she squeezed for even an inch more of turnout, pushing through the cramp developing in her standing foot. The chant continued: “Ten…eleven…twelve…” Layla could hear herself grunt as she continued, up, down, up, down, her thigh now burning, trembling ever so slightly the more she continued.

Suddenly, she caught a sight of Summer in the mirror; she had drawn her foot into her knee, and was completing the turn sequence with a double, a triple, a quadruple pirouette, drawing her arms up like a bird attempting flight, only to bring them back down as she finished in a lunge and then promptly fell down onto the ground in a dramatic display that had the other students jumping up and cheering. Cheering now for Layla, who was also attempting a clean pirouette to stop, although she felt herself teetering to the side as she lost her balance. She fell in an awkward pile next to Summer, who was now stretched out on the floor watching her finish her turn sequence. As everyone else clapped, and Miss Jenny called out their scores, Summer smiled at her again.

“Congrats, little Miss Perfect,” she said. “But I let you win this one. You better watch your back next time.”

Swallowing hard through her rapid breathing, Layla wondered idly if Summer’s sarcasm sometimes inspired a little too much fear to write off completely.

A month later, in the dressing room before their dress rehearsal for the Christmas ballet show, Layla stood in the corner tugging on her tights. She had done her makeup before putting on her costume, a choice she was now regretting, as the makeup felt both like it was congealing on her face and like it would slide off into a sweaty clump on the floor any second. Summer sat on a chair facing the mirror next to her in her sports bra and sweatpants, adding the finishing touches to her own makeup. She spritzed her face with setting spray, and Layla felt the mist of droplets make their way to settle on her arm.

“What do you think?” Summer asked, and Layla turned to see Summer widening her watering eyes at her while fanning her face vigorously. The heavy black eyeliner made her blue eyes appear like the crack of sunlight breaking free of shadow. “Putting on fake eyelashes always makes me cry,” she said, now moving from fanning her face to blocking the tears from making their way down her face by vigorously pressing her index fingers under her eyes.

“You look great,” Layla said. She was wishing she also had thought to buy fake eyelashes. Or that she had blue eyes. Or anything other than what she had. She pictured her mask of makeup cracking and falling onto the floor and shattering at Summer’s feet. Her tear situation finally under control, Summer stood up and began to dig around for her own costume to change into. Layla turned back to her own dresser and slowly began the meticulous process of sliding her leotard onto her torso without taking her shirt off and exposing her upper body at all. Once it was on, she began to search for her tutu. Two bobby pins slipped from her bun and clattered onto the floor as she bent down to look underneath her chair.

“Oh–you lost some–hold on,” Summer said as she also bent down to pick one up, and as she straightened, handing one to Layla, Layla immediately realized that Summer was topless and hadn’t put on her leotard yet. She froze, and then bent back down immediately to blindly grab for the other pin, feeling a jolt of horror at the fact that Summer probably noticed her looking straight at her.

Unfazed, Summer rummaged through her bag in search of her own leotard. Layla’s focus was entirely on appearing completely preoccupied with digging through her own bag in parallel to Summer, knowing full well that she was now dressed and had nothing to be rummaging for. And yet she couldn’t help but steal one more look at the crest of Summer’s smooth skin, her scapula, which Miss Jenny had so many times praised for staying so impressively in alignment during class, which Layla had so fervently wished was her own. Not because it was perfect, but because then she might have a reason to run her hand over it. None of the other girls seemed to have such disgustingly visceral reasons to envy Summer’s technique, though. They all seemed content with being motivated to work harder rather than feeling a pressing desire to turn around and watch Summer move her arm through the port de bras one more time.

“I got this lipstick, but I think it looks weird with my complexion. Too dark,” Summer said, reaching into her makeup pouch and pulling a golden tube out. She tossed it to Layla, who fumbled to catch it, as she finished pulling up her leotard straps. “Try it on.”

Layla uncapped it, and stared at the dark, shiny lipstick inside, the sharp tip just barely softened from swiping across Summer’s lips perhaps only once. She looked into the mirror, and slowly swiped it across her lips. She smeared it across, and then back again, feeling the smooth silky press of it on her mouth. Pulling the lipstick away, she suddenly realized it didn’t look quite right. Summer caught a glance at her in the mirror.

“Oh–you overlined it. Hold on, I can fix it.” Rummaging again through her makeup pouch, Summer found a tissue, and turned back to Layla.

“Thanks,” she said, taking it out of Summer’s hand. Or she tried to. Summer held on.

“Let me just do it,” she said, the slightest hint of a smirk on her face. “You don’t want to risk messing it up more, do you?”

She leaned in and began to wipe ever so softly at the top of Layla’s lip, reaching out to cup her chin in order to hold her face in place. Layla imagined Summer’s hand pulling away and leaving an imprint on her face, finger markings on the exact places she was holding onto her. She felt her heartbeat pulsing into those exact spots and wondered if Summer could feel it, a push, a pressure to indicate the reaction to her fingers that Layla desperately wanted to quell. If she did notice, it seemed she was determined to expand her ownership of Layla’s face, as she finished touching up the lipstick on her lips and moved her palm to splay across the underneath of her chin, squeezing her fingers slightly and sending a hot rush of feeling into Layla’s cheeks.

“You look great. You have gorgeous lips. I need you to wear lipstick more often,” she said with a breeziness that convinced Layla that Summer did not, in fact, notice how she was feeling after touching her face, because nobody could be so cruel as to say something as catastrophically life-altering as “you have gorgeous lips” after knowingly inflicting such feelings.

Throughout the performance, Layla rubbed her lips together again and again, aching for the same warm touch, feeling the borrowed lipstick smearing around her hungry lips.

The Friday after their final performance, Summer asked her if she wanted to go to a party.

“Come on, please,” she wheedled, as Layla pulled in front of her house after school. “If you drive my mom will definitely let me go, because your mom is so strict that she knows we won’t get into any trouble.”

Layla sighed. “I have to ask her first.” She considered lying and saying that she wouldn’t be allowed to go at all, but Summer reached out and poked her.

“It’ll be fun. And we don’t have to stay for too long. You can just stick with me the whole time!”

With promises to her mother that she wouldn’t let “that white American girl trick you into sniffing drugs,” ringing in her ears, Layla picked up Summer that night as promised and they pulled up to a large house unknown to her. Walking up the front steps to the door, Summer grabbed her hand.

“Don’t leave me,” she insisted.

“Ouch, okay, squeezing really hard!”

“Sorry,” Summer said distractedly. She turned to Layla, halting them in front of the front door. “Does my makeup look okay? Did I mess up my eyeliner?”
Layla looked carefully at her face. Summer’s dark eyeliner made her blue eyes even more startling. Layla suddenly hated her, a dark and clawing feeling roaring deep in her chest.

“No, it’s perfect,” Layla said, mirroring her smile. Summer squealed and squeezed her hand.

“Okay, let’s go in!” And with one swift motion, Summer pushed the door open and dropped Layla’s hand. Layla felt her push past her into the house, the sudden absence of a hand in hers restricting her momentum forward. She had the sudden urge to run. But instead her feet were moving, and her arms, and she was pushing the door open too to follow Summer inside.

It didn’t take long for Layla to be left alone; she stood next to Summer for a while, but quickly came to the realization that she felt a lot more comfortable talking and laughing loudly with people that Layla had grown up with than Layla herself was. When Layla saw Summer down a third Jello shot, she decided it was time to find a different corner to stand in, or risk looking like Summer’s pet puppy the entire night. After awkwardly inching along the wall of the living room, she finally found a familiar face in Priya, a girl in their ballet company, who was standing by the couch.

“Hey.”

“Hey, Layla. I feel like I never see you outside of dance.”

“I know,” she said, feeling self conscious. “It keeps me busy.”

“Or are your parents as strict as mine?” Priya asked in a half-joking tone.

“Well, that too,” Layla acquiesced. “That’s the only reason I’m not drunk. Also because I’m driving,” she added hurriedly.

Priya nodded glumly. “Me neither. And I had to leave the house in this,” she said, gesturing down at the thick green sweater tied around her waist. “Some people are so lucky.”

Layla felt a genuine smile come on her face. “They don’t even know how good they have it.”

“They really don’t. Like look at her,” Priya sighed, gazing longingly across the room at a couple sharing a chair, the boy whispering into the girl’s ear as she laughed. “I would never be allowed to get drunk enough to do that.”

Layla turned to look and felt as if she’d had a bucket of ice water dropped on her head. It was Nick. And the girl leaning in to whisper into his ear now was Summer. Layla couldn’t tear her eyes away as Nick smiled, wrapped his hand around the side of her face, and kissed her.

“They are so cute,” Priya whined. “I hate my life.”

Layla nodded, avoiding Priya’s eyes for fear that she would see on her face…well, she wasn’t sure what her face would have communicated, but it was not something she wanted Priya to know. Instead, she said something incoherent about needing to find a bathroom, pushing her way through the small throngs of people and up the stairs.

She found a small room–what looked like a child’s bedroom, maybe–but she didn’t care enough to pay attention to anything surrounding her. Instead, she paced back and forth, then veered towards the window, yanking open the shutters and pushing the window open as hard as she could so she could breathe in the night air. She inhaled and exhaled hard, finally calming down enough to hear the faint sounds of voices and laughter downstairs, and to feel the bump of the music playing from the speakers. This would be okay for her, she decided. She would stay up here for thirty minutes and then go down and tell Summer she needed to go home, at which point Summer would hopefully be sitting on a different chair, one far away from even the faintest thought of Nick and his smile and his hand on her face.

“Hey,” said a voice, and Layla whirled around.

It was Summer. She looked at Layla’s face as if in search of something. “Are you okay?”

Layla tried to look utterly neutral. “Yeah. Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

The bite of her words seemed to convince Summer of quite the opposite, and she took a step closer. Layla slid a foot backwards, trying to move without making it too obvious.

“Are you sure?” she asked. “You looked like…”

“Like what?”

She bit her lip. “Like you wanted to punch me in the throat.” Her perfect lip. Layla wished she could bite it. She took another slow step back.

“When?”

“Just now,” Summer said, pointing back at the door. “Before you ran up here all crazy.”

“I–I didn’t run up all crazy,” Layla heard herself insisting, then silently reprimanded herself for sounding so childish. What was wrong with her?

“Okay, fine. Then why did you look so mad?”

“That wasn’t aimed at you. More at Nick. He’s…uh…he’s kind of mean.” There’s no way this is real life, Layla thought, maybe a dream. Or she slipped through a crack into an alternate dimension where she would only say the stupidest possible things that come to mind.

Summer reached her hand out and pulled at a stray loose string on the sleeve of Layla’s sweater. She watched the pad of Summer’s thumb rub across the piece of thread. She couldn’t look up because she wasn’t sure she could keep Summer from finding what she had been looking for on her face.

“He’s mean?”

Layla swallowed. “Forget it.”

Summer looked up at her and Layla made sudden eye contact with her. She was still playing with her sweater.

“I don’t like seeing you upset,” she said quietly, and suddenly all Layla could see was the way her face looked when Nick had kissed her, all soft and open.

“I’m not upset,” Layla whispered back.

“I know you’re lying,” she said, and a jolt of fear ran through Layla. She could feel it, could picture it in her mind, as if all the blood in her body turned from red to purple. She felt horribly exposed, in the way only Summer could make her feel. And she could think of absolutely nothing, not a modicum of anything, that would be worthy to open her mouth and say in that moment. So she stared. Like she always did. Except now Summer was staring back.

Layla knew it was because she was drunk. She told herself it didn’t matter. But Summer’s eyes began to slowly slide down her face until Layla was positive they had reached her mouth. And they stayed there. And stayed. And Layla felt like she had entered something that she could never come back from, was feeling something she had never felt before and that would irrevocably alter the way she felt about everything forever. She would never feel anything except this again.

And then someone was stumbling up the stairs, and opening the door, and Nick was there. “Summer? Summer!” he exclaimed, seeing her now from several feet farther away from the door than she had been the moment before it opened.

“Summer, I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” he slurred loudly, and that was the last thing Layla heard over the hum in her head telling her she needed to move, now, before she shattered into a billion pieces all over the floor, making an awful mess on the carpet. She pushed past the oblivious Nick, down the stairs, through the crowd of drinking strangers, out the door, onto the curb, running and running and running until she reached her car, until she yanked the door open and sat inside and nobody, nobody could see her.

The next day’s ride home from dance was decidedly quiet. Layla drove, resolutely, refusing to look over at Summer. She justified it in her head–it was because Miss Jenny had pushed them extra hard today, making them do planks in between barre exercises and making them repeat every combination that even one person messed up. They were tired. Both she and Summer had sweat marks on their leotards, she had noted during class, right before snapping back into her promise to herself not to watch Summer’s body.

“Nick asked me to be his girlfriend,” Summer said, fingering the lettuce hem at the bottom of her shirt. Layla had just pulled up in front of her house, and at that statement, felt her stomach fill with hot shock. She unbuckled her seatbelt. They sat in silence.

“And I said yes,” Summer added.

Layla continued to say nothing.

What could she say? What could she say, what should she say, how was this happening, why was this happening–and as Summer finally unbuckled her seatbelt and made to leave the car, Layla found what she was looking for, pulled straight from the pit of her stomach up to the acid of her tongue.

“Why?”

Summer looked at her. “What do you mean why?”

Layla was suddenly afraid. But Summer’s gaze was pinning her to her seat in a way that she knew she wouldn’t be able to escape without backing up her question.

“Why did you…why would you…say all those things to me only to…I don’t know,” she petered out, pathetically, so pathetically, she was always pathetic. What else was new? This was what Summer would recognize in her.

“Say what things to you?”
Pathetic–

“Layla?”

–pathetic–

“Layla.” And Summer’s voice, and the look of seriousness so strained it almost looked like disgust, snapped her back into focus. “What is wrong with you?”

She didn’t know. But there was something wrong with her, wasn’t there? Everything always felt wrong. Why would this have been any different?
“Last night, you were being so…” Nice? Caring? Close to her? She didn’t know how to express just how physically painful it was to have to try to articulate.

“So what?”

She was silent.

“So what, Layla?”

“I don’t know, okay?” And Layla finally exploded out of herself. “You come to me, and you do all these things, and then you turn around and it’s like I’m not even there, and then Nick,” she gestured wildly, not knowing what she wanted to say, “he just comes right in and he’s the one you want.” She dared to look Summer in the eyes. They were wide, horrible, blue, so blue.

Suddenly the door was open and then slammed shut. Summer was yanking her backpack out of the backseat and marching out of the car and across the street to her house. Layla got out and started jogging after her.

“Summer, wait! I’m sorry. Wait, wait, I didn’t mean it,” Layla called after her, reaching for her arm as she ran up behind her. “Please, please, please–”

Summer wrenched her elbow out of Layla’s grasp, but instead of continuing to run as Layla had feared she would, she grabbed Layla’s arm, and all of a sudden Layla was the one getting dragged, all the way over to the enormous leafy tree growing at the end of the street next to Summer’s house. Layla was being pulled around to the side of the tree and hardly had time to register the feeling of rough bark pressing against the back of her tank top before her vision was filled with golden hair and Summer pushed her shoulders back and kissed her.

It was as if this great and powerful Thing inside her was filled with yellow light, and for the most part Layla had focused on pushing it down, down, down, like a rubber ball in a pool of water, forcing it down, down, down, until it lived somewhere nobody could see. But when Summer’s face reached for hers, she lost her grip on the ball and it shot up through the water, and it felt like there were sparks igniting her bones and sinew and blood like kindling, flames shooting upwards until she was a burning girl, bright and shining and covered in fire. She wanted to run, because Summer would see, would see the yellow orange flames that before she could have hidden, would see them and back away for fear of catching fire herself. But Summer’s eyes were closed.

She kissed her and kissed her and Layla stood so still that she could feel herself growing into the tree, her neck expanding upwards until it became the trunk and her toes turning into roots growing out farther and farther into the ground. But then Summer’s hands moved down her shoulders, sliding down to grip her elbows, and Layla felt the great Thing alight upon her arms so that they reached up to push upwards until her hands were feeling Summer’s chin, her hair, her face, reaching and reaching and reaching until they had grown into a tree together, a trunk and roots and branches with yellow leaves growing to keep the house company.

A car door slammed shut down the street. Summer flinched backward, wrenching herself away from Layla, recoiling as though she’d been shot. Layla stood completely still. She watched Summer as she backed away, looking at the ground, a look on her face so wild that Layla suddenly wondered if she was going to hit her.

“I have to go,” she said. And then she was running, scooping up her backpack, disappearing into her house.

It was that moment that replayed over and over again in Layla’s mind that night. Not the kiss, which would inspire such a terrifying feeling in her that she felt like she would throw up. That was unfathomable enough that she could push it away. But Summer’s face afterwards–it wasn’t what people looked like in movies, really, or at all how Layla thought people would look after being kissed. Images pushed their way into her mind, mixing and melting into each other–the way Summer looked that night at the party, Nick’s heavy eyes when he stumbled his way into the room they had been standing in, Summer pushing her, her backpack lying on the ground. She dug the heels of her hands into her eyes, rubbing hard as if she could scrub all of it away.

The next day, Summer wasn’t in calculus class. She wasn’t at school at all. The shock Layla felt at walking into class, having spent the entire night bracing herself for what it would be like to sit next to her, only to find that Summer wasn’t there, was unthinkable. She didn’t, couldn’t do anything for the entire day. All she could do was twist around to check if the door would open. It never did.

By the time she got to ballet that evening, Layla had begun to entertain the possibility that she was never going to see Summer ever again. As she stretched at the barre before class started, she felt the thought fill her mind, and it was so impossible, so all-encompassing, that she suddenly couldn’t breathe. When class began, she knew her limbs were moving, but she was convinced it must be some outside force manipulating them. Her mind felt completely disconnected from the rest of her, and she carried out the ballet exercises with the mechanical precision of a voodoo doll. She was so preoccupied by her engulfment in Summer’s disappearance that when she saw Summer enter the classroom, she thought for a second she imagined it.

But a minute, two minutes, three minutes passed, and yet there she still was–murmuring an apology to Miss Jenny, hurriedly throwing off her sneakers and setting down her bag, jamming on her ballet shoes and taking an empty spot at the barre. No longer could Layla avert her gaze and pretend like she wasn’t searching for Summer in every mirror in the studio. She gazed blatantly at her every chance she got during class. But not once did Summer even glance in her direction.

When class ended an unimaginable 53 minutes later, Layla felt herself moving with a growing anticipation and the heaviness of relief. Somehow, everything had become entangled in her mind, the way waves take the place of each other when they reach the sand. Summer had kissed her, and she had disappeared. The only person who had ever touched Layla, and it made her disappear. All day, those possibilities had been crashing on the shore of her mind, and nothing could have stopped her from chasing Summer out of the studio and into the parking lot.

“Summer! Summer, wait,” she finally had the courage to call out, and to her relief, she actually stopped and turned slowly toward Layla. They stood silently, Layla at a loss for words as she met her eyes.

“You weren’t in calculus today,” she decided on.

“I was sick.”

“Oh.”

“I’m feeling better now. So I came to dance.”

“Right.”

Summer nodded once, then slowly turned to walk away. Layla suddenly realized what was wrong. She was being so stupid–of course Summer wasn’t going to say anything. She was the one who was brave enough to make the first move, and now it was Layla’s turn. Wasn’t that what it was always supposed to be like at the beginning of something like this: someone walking off the cliff, and the other person taking the chance at diving after them? It was her turn to dive. She reached out and grabbed Summer’s wrist.

Summer whirled around, then looked down, then back up. She looked straight at Layla, her face blank. “Yes?”

“Aren’t we going to talk about…you know…yesterday?”

“What about yesterday?”

Layla hesitated. Was she really going to make her say it out loud? The price for a kiss was quite a lot of bravery, then. “You know, at your house. When you…when we…”

“When we what?”

Layla saw nothing. She searched Summer’s eyes and found nothing. Just a cold, cold stillness.

“When we kissed,” she whispered. It came out weakly, not so much a statement of fact as she knew it to be, but almost a question. If they really had kissed, wouldn’t it have been easier to admit?

“We…” Summer’s chest rose and fell slightly. Layla felt her palm sweating onto her wrist, but she didn’t dare let go of Summer. That was the only thing tethering her to the day before, the only thing that made her sure it was real: the smoothness of Summer’s skin that was no longer a surprise but a familiar sense.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Summer finally said. She pulled her wrist from Layla’s grasp.

Layla felt her hand, limp, fall back down to her side. She watched as Summer hitched her bag higher onto her shoulder and turned, walking away.

And Layla watched the glass recrystallize in front of her, clear and unbroken and designed for nothing but a clarity of sight.

STORY:
Elaje López is a Californian and recent Columbia graduate. Her work has previously appeared in Star 82 Review.

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ART:
Nina Semczuk’s writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Review, Sinking City Literary Journal, Coal Hill Review, and elsewhere. Her art, pottery, and comics can be found online and around the Hudson Valley.

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Next Tuesday, we’ll feature a bonus interview with Elaje about this story!

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