“You’re such an asshole, Chase.” She carefully combs her long, black hair until it falls in a perfect sheet down her back. Then she smiles at me, ignoring Ryan. “Chelsea, it’s so good to see you.” She doesn’t mean it. She leans in and taps my shoulder blades with her palms. Her hugs are ten thousand times worse than Ryan’s. Her brows crease in a display of concern, her big brown eyes wandering over my face. “You look rested.”
“Thanks, Mila. I’m all sane again.” It’s what she means byrested. It grates on me when people use those little euphemisms.Rested. People should say what they mean, or shut up. I know what they’re thinking. That it’s not okay tosaythat they believe I lost my grip on reality, but it’s perfectly respectable to treat me like it. Like a girl made of glass, poised to topple and shatter. Like I’m a different person now somehow. I thought long and hard about words likesanein the hospital. Some of the girls in group didn’t like words that aren’t precise and clinical, words that aren’tdepressionoranxietyorbipolarorpost-traumatic stress disorder, but some of the others thought the messy words likesane, and the others, thenot sanewords, were important too—because those are thewords other people use like weapons against us, like sharpened scythes, and the only way to make them feel dull and blunt is to allowourselvespermission to use them. I like that idea. It feels naked, armorless, to have certain words hurled at me, and have my own mouth sewn shut against them. So I will not allow my mouth to be sewn shut. Not against the wordsane. Not in reference to myself. I am as sane or not as I have always been. But I am not rested.
“Great!” Mila smiles at Chase and disappears back into the living room, like she did what she promised and she’s done with me.
Chase rolls his eyes. “Sorry. Mila’s a little… awkward about… personal stuff.”
I wave my hand vigorously. “Stop. None of that. We’re not here for me.” I flick my eyes over to Ryan. His pale eyes are fixed on the lake, the last rays of sunlight bringing out ginger highlights in his sandy hair, his hands shoved into the pockets of his beige shorts.
Chase flips the back of Ryan’s collar up to get his attention. “You all right, bro?” Chase says playfully, but there’s a gentle undercurrent of concern in his voice.
“Just thinking.” Ryan draws the words out, his eyes faraway.
Chase shoots me a troubled glance. I don’t know what to say. I wasn’t expecting this weekend to be easy. Part of me really was hoping for it to just be me and Kennedy, a chance to work out what happened betweenus.But the invitation said all of us, and I guess that’s only right. It’s always been all of us. The Summer of Eagles, when we first came to the lake house. The Summer of Flickers, when Kennedy and I firstkissed on the Fourth of July. Every summer a bird, named for Emily’s peculiar obsession, even at age eight. Our teacher had encouraged her and named our class the Eagle Eights. That’s how it started. Eagles for eight. Nightingales for nine. Thrushes for ten. It strikes me that this summer will go nameless, and the weight of it, the sadness, is unbearable. We aren’t in sync anymore. Emily’s gone. I’m a year behind. We should all be seniors now. Together. Emily always had the most marvelous birds at her fingertips. Flickers. Firecrests. I imagine them like little cinders swooping through a starless sky, sparking light in the darkness. I owe her a name. It’s the least I can do when I can’t do anything at all.
“Summer of Egrets,” I say suddenly.
Chase shakes his head.
“What?”
“You never explain your thought process. How you get from A to B. I can never keep up with you.”
I twist the left corner of my mouth into something like a smile. “Isn’t that the fun of it?”
“Egretsis perfect,” Ryan says. He grins ironically. “It sounds likeregrets.”
Chase’s eyes linger on him for a minute, and then he smiles. “I’m glad you came, Ry. I have a good feeling about this year.”
Chase always has a good feeling. Even when things are going spectacularly wrong. Maybe that isn’t always such a good thing. Maybe sometimes a bad feeling is a gift. A warning. A red flag on dangerous waters. And too many good feelings rise like a fog and swallow those little red flags up until it’s too lateto act. We do need to talk about what happened between all of us. Because if things hadn’t gone so wrong in this house, if each of us hadn’t played our own part in the destruction of our happy little family, then Emily would probably still be alive.