The Boys of Summer, Excerpt

A lifetime passed before Ginny came back from the kitchen. Maybe not a lifetime, but long enough that I had learned the lights above the fireplace flicker every 4 seconds, but you have to be focus to notice it. But I wasn't focused, I'd flipped through the pile of books beside her bed three times over. I kept going back to the Bible on top of the stack, still in perfect condition—not even a crack in the spine. It was exactly the same as the day Great Fields tied a ribbon around it and told Ginny she hoped she'd do what's right. That sentence must have been born from our friendship because there wasn't a day in Ginny's life she hadn't done what was right.

She willingly went to church on Sundays and never stayed out past midnight, even after I'd talked her mom into extending her weekend curfew—on the promise that we'd clean the dishes every week after church that summer. Ginny never cashed in on the curfew, but she'd still polish the forks and knives while I'd draw in the church bulletin on the counter.

The bedroom door creaked open and Ginny whispered, "it would be so much easier if you carried anything up here. I almost broke the bottle twice."

"Why'd you bring that one? I put the one from last week in your drawer."

"What drawer?" Her eyes got wide as she sat on the floor and set out the bottle and cups.

"Your sock drawer. And the bottle you have is filled with water."

"Why would you do that?" Ginny quietly panicked, "My mom will kill me!"

So overdramatic. "Oh please, she hasn't looked in that cabinet in the entire time I've known her."

Ginny rubbed her temple, "She has been on me for weeks. You have to tell me if you hide liquor in my room, unless you want me to be grounded for the rest of my life."

"If you get grounded, I'll climb the walls like Romeo." I stood up off her bed, "What light through the window breaks? Ginny is the sun!"

She laughed and pulled at my ankle, "Keep your voice down!"

I crouched down and held her giggling face. "Oh, give me my Ginny! And when I die take her and-and give her whiskey and love and courage and-and I don't know! I never finished the damn play!"

She slowly clapped, still quietly giggling, "That was terrible. You are terrible and I think maybe you shouldn't have anymore to drink."

"I only had three beers at Jackson's! You made us leave before he got into his dad's cabinet."

"Okay, then you may have one more drink and then I'll read you Romeo and Juliet until you fall asleep."

"Sounds good to me." I changed out the bottle and crouched to the floor.

"What were you reading?" Ginny asked while I poured vodka into her cup.

"Hmm?"

"The book you were reading when I came in, which one was it?"

"Just that old Bible that Great Fields gave you."

Ginny hummed, eyes locked on the rim of her cup.

"Why do you keep it on your nightstand if you never read it?"

"I do read it." She said quickly. "It's not old." She lifted her cup to her mouth.

"Yeah, it's actually very nice. Great Fields does like the finer things." I took a swig.

"No, she doesn't," Ginny mumbled into her cup, not taking anything into her mouth.

"What'd you say?" I mumbled into mine.

"Nothing."

"No you definitely said something."

She put her cup down. "Grandma doesn't like the finer things. Her favorite verse is about the meek inheriting the earth."

"Well, then why'd she give you such a nice Bible?"

"Maybe it was for you." She joked, "Maybe she thought you'd read it, see the light, and find a way to heaven."

"And keep from dragging you to hell?"

She said nothing.

"Virginia Fields!" I gasped, setting my cup down.

"But you said it!"

"God, maybe I am a terrible influence." I flopped forward over her legs and laid my forehead straight on the floor.

"No, you're not." The bottle and cups clinked as she moved them under the bed.

"I know, I can't get you to stay out after midnight, so I definitely can't get you into hell."

"Maybe if we commune with the devil and sacrifice a virgin, we can be in the same pit of fire forever." She joked lazily.

"I think we'd get tired of each other."

"But we'd be stuck there."

"Yeah,” I hummed in thought and turned my head to look at the fireplace light, “but you‘re the only virgin I know, so I’d have to kill you and sacrifice is probably like a straight shot to heaven."

“Maybe...I don’t know if I’d want to go without you though,” Ginny huffed and laid back onto the hardwood. We made a lopsided cross on the floor.

“No,” I mumbled, feeling the floor for her right hand with my right hand, “you should go. As long as you let me go to hell first. Live your life without me.”

She didn’t answer. I felt her right hand slip up to my elbow as her breathing slowed down. The cold wood finally lulled me to sleep as the fireplace light flickered on.