Turning eighteen wasn't exactly what I expected it to be. I expected some kind of massive revelation... an epiphany that would change everything, but none of that happened. Sure, things had changed but only in minor ways. My acne had cleared up and it turns out that potatoes can turn into French Fries. I think my boobs finally decided to stop growing... thank God. And it was finally June, which meant Megan and I had one final summer together.
Megan is a hard thing to describe. She's as if a rock star made love with Mother Nature and gave birth to some kind of charismatic forest nymph. She didn't know what it was like to be a potato; she has always been a French Fry. With her ever-green hair, her forever-smile and her incredible-everything else. Her popularity was legend, the main character of her own little indie film. She managed to get along with everyone and for some unknown reason I became her best friend.
An odd choice.
I'm much easier to describe. My hair is brown. My eyes are brown. My skin is brown. It's brown all the way down. I am nothing remarkable and nothing remembered, and I am okay with that. The coolest and lamest fact about me is that I know every lyric to every Smiths' song ever. But I am not a light that never goes out. I'm like a dying fluorescent tube that hums and buzzes and pisses everyone off. I know I shouldn't really complain about my high school experience. Once Megan adopted me as her best friend, everyone else seemed content to go along with my eternal presence at her side. I went to most parties, if it didn't coincide with Book Club, and I was never left out of the conversation. Megan made everything better.
She says that I undersell myself and that I'll find my chosen family at college; people who will care about my strange passions and quirks. "A star that will shine when it finds a new galaxy" as Megan would put it. She's so certain that I'll blossom into a wonderful young woman, but all I can think about is that she won't be around to see it. This is my last summer with Megan before she wanders off overseas to some preppy college that I could never afford to attend. We'll talk every single day, but it won't be the same. The end of an era. The end of our era.
There will be a very large Megan-sized hole in my life. And I am not looking forward to it.
"Alright. Hear me out. You. Me. Sevenstream. Right now. No clothes."
My daydreams dissolved like sherbet powder on my tongue, fizzled out and died. Megan towered above me, her arms spread wide like she was caught in religious ecstasy, preaching before an invisible crowd. A crowd of one. I couldn't help admire how she lived in her own little world, on her own little stage. Sprawling back onto the cushy grass, I loved the way that it felt soothing and tender on my exposed skin. The sun kissed my body, and I felt the warmth course through my veins as if I were a cat sunning itself in the midday heat.
"Elle, are you even listening?" Asked Megan from above.
"Little Miss Daydream." She tutted.
"Megan. Of course I'm in. You don't even have to ask."
"This is going to be... The. Best. Summer. Of all time. The SOAT!"
Megan looked down at me with the usual mischief and wonder in her eyes. The kind of alluring gaze that older women write about in unimaginative romcom books. Megan has this authority over me that I would never reveal to her. Our friendship is the closest thing I've ever felt to a romantic connection, but she'd laugh it off and kiss me on the cheek, and that would be that. So, I've learned to suppress this secret, this unspoken attraction to the girl that everyone is attracted to. I'm not original, a little predictable even, but she's graceful and cute and everything in between, and it doesn't help that she's a frequent offender in my wet dreams. As she reached out for my hand, I had no choice but to submit, to take her hand and let her lead me to whatever adventure she had planned for us.
And so, we drove to the outskirts of town with the whole day ahead of us.
We walked hand in hand, as we often do, through the well-trodden path of squashed weeds and dried out ferns that would lead us to Sevenstream. No one else knows about this place, A) because we found it and named it, and B) because it's several miles out of town and no one has bothered to include it on tourist maps. The winding path that we've been walking since we became sophomores feels like an old friend, the dappled light seeping through the canopy overhead, smiling down on us, protecting us as we leave the real world behind and enter our sacred space. I almost tripped as we wound around the last turn and as I looked up something was different; the haven had been transformed.
There were fairy lights wrapped around the looming branches, twinkling like little stars against the shadowy sanctuary. Oodles of pillows were piled in the centre of a mosquito net hanging from one of the many branches. And mixed in with the sound of the stream was a soft crackle, the subtle sound of a fire, emanating from... a laptop inside the pillow fort.
"Holy. Shit. Someone discovered our place! And probably had sex here!"
"No, you doofus. I did this. Me. Megan." She beamed at me. "Do you like it?"
"It's... cinematic." It was actually... romantic.
And it really was. I felt like I was in a movie, in her movie. And I felt like one of the stars.
"But why?"
"Because our final semester was fucked but you always helped me with my assignments and studies, and I thought you deserved this. You know, Little Miss Valedictorian and all that. We're adults now Elle. Eighteen. This is it. The beginning of everything. And I know you wouldn't have wanted a big party, so it's just us and the stream, for as long as you want. There are supplies in the hollowed-out tree too." She punched me softly on the arm.
"You've thought of everything."
"Yep. I even bought condoms." She punched me again, this time a little harder.
I gazed around at our spot and felt like heaven had made itself a little nest betwixt the forest and stream. Now as I paid closer attention, I could see the little details. Most of the pillows were from my house and some from hers, meaning our parents were in on this, or at least, wondering where our pillows had wandered off to. The fairy lights were solar powered, with the little panel hiding all the way up the tree on the highest branch, meaning that Megan had risked her life to make this little scene for us. The mosquito net was not one you could buy in a store, there were imperfections in the stitching connecting it to the top frame; she must have made it herself. All this effort... and all for us... If I believed in magic, this is what it would feel like.
As I span around on my feet, I smiled in bliss. It was going to be the greatest summer of all time. Of course it was, because Megan was never going to let the very last one be anything but spectacular. And as I stopped spinning, and stopped myself from falling over, I saw something even more spectacular.
"Uh, Megan?"
Megan was stripping off her clothing. In front of me. Like it was the most natural thing in the world.
"You weren't listening, were you?" She laughed.
