Chapter Text
School had let out only a week ago, and already trailers and carloads of families were piling into our small riverside resort. The river was the best thing about this place – everything else sucked. There was only one movie theatre in town and they only showed a few movies, and none of the movies they show are any good. To see a good movie, Gustus would sometimes drive Anya and me to the closest city, where they maybe had two movie theatres. Earlier this year I turned 8, and for my birthday party we went to the bowling alley, which only has four whole lanes. There's one grocery store, one Wal-Mart, and no Target. I've been to a Target twice in my whole life. Every time I go there, I get popcorn while Gustus and Anya shop. I like it at Target.
I live at the resort with my cousin Anya and my uncle Gustus. Gustus owns and runs the resort, and Anya is gonna start working at the convenience store on the resort this summer for the first time. Anya is older than me by five years so she's the boss of me when Gustus isn't around. But Gustus is the official boss of me. My parents used to own this resort, and when they died back when I was five years old, they left this place to Gustus. He says that eventually this place will be mine, but I don't want this place cause it's in a sucky town.
Sometimes I dream about running away to some big, fancy city, like Las Vegas or Los Angeles or maybe even as far as New York City. I've never been to any of those places, but Anya says when I'm old enough she's gonna take me to Vegas. She's a big fat liar though cause she's never been to Vegas either. She'd probably get us both lost.
“Lexa! Go help that family unload their car!” My uncle Gustus called out to me from where I was lying on the dock. I didn't want to go help the family unload their car – their suitcases looked bigger than me. Typical city slickers that overpack – don't they know you only need a swimsuit and a pair of shorts around here? What else could they do, other than swim and bake in the heat? Get dressed to go into sucky town to see a sucky movie at the suckiest movie theatre in the whole world? Lame.
Anya rolled her eyes as I peeled myself off the dock and walked my very slowest to the car. I know Anya rolled her eyes cause it's like I could feel it in my bones. She rolled her eyes from where she was standing under the awning of the convenience store. I know it.
When I finally got to the car, there was a big man trying to get a suitcase out of the car. He was telling his kid which way she should push at the suitcase from her spot in the trunk to help him get the suitcase out of the car. The mom was being a mom and rolling her eyes at her kid and her husband and occasionally sighing. I remember my mom doing that stuff before she died. I think all moms do it.
“Can I help?” I asked. I was already very sure that I would be able to help, cause these guys were pushing that suitcase out all wrong, that's why. The kid wasn't pushing from the right part of the suitcase, and that's why it got stuck.
“You sure you wanna help? I think Clarke's got it covered,” The dad said to me. I shook my head at him.
“She definitely doesn't got it covered,” I said as I hopped into the trunk and sat on my knees next to this blonde girl. Her hair was kinda curly and really blonde and she was real pale, probably the palest person I've ever seen. I was already pretty tan and my hair was brown and really curly. Gustus and Anya always had to put it in braids to keep it out of my face, especially in the summer when it would get so hot my hair would stick to me all over.
I grabbed the suitcase and pushed it out of the trunk, and maybe the other girl helped a little bit. I think I did most of the work though, specially since as soon as I got there I managed to get the thing out. I hopped out of the trunk, and the dad said thanks and the mom just pushed all the bags into their cabin.
The other girl hopped out of the trunk and put her hands on her hips.
“I woulda got it outta there eventually, you know,” She said, looking at me kind of like she was angry at me. “You didn't need to help.”
“My uncle told me to, so I had to do what he said. Anyways, I'm the one who got that thing outta there, you should thank me for it,” I said as I pushed some hair out of my face that was flying around in the breeze.
“My dad already said thanks,” The girl huffed. “What's your name anyway?”
“I'm Lexa. What's your name?”
“I'm Clarke. My dad already said my name. You must not be a real good listener. My teacher at school says I'm a real good listener.”
I crossed my arms at her.
“Hey kid, I don't care what your teacher says about you. It's summer now, no school anymore.”
Clarke stuck her tongue out at me at the same time that her mom was coming out of the cabin to lock up the car. I was gonna grab Clarke's tongue and shove it back in her mouth, but her mom crossed her arms and looked real upset at Clarke.
“Clarke Griffin, what have I told you about sticking your tongue out at people?” The mom said.
“Not to,” Clarke replied. Her cheeks were getting all red and embarrassed-like and I was glad about it. I almost smiled.
“That's right. I don't want to see you doing that again. Now apologize to....” The mom looked at me, and I realized I was supposed to say my name.
“I'm Lexa.”
“Right. I'm Abby. Now, Clarke, apologize to Lexa.”
Clarke huffed and crossed her arms across her chest and kicked at some dirt. I don't think she really wanted to say sorry.
“Sorry, Lexa.”
“It's ok,” I said. I smiled at her. I didn't really forgive her, but I thought it was funny that she got caught.
Clarke's mom, Abby, gave Clarke five dollars and told her to go and get ice cream with me and asked me to show Clarke around. I agreed, but on the inside I really wanted to go and watch Looney Tunes.
I grabbed Clarke's sweaty hand and dragged her to the convenience store. Anya was in there stocking up the ice cream freezer.
“Hey, Anya,” I said. Anya stuck her head out of the freezer and looked at me and Clarke.
“Hey, pipsqueak. Who's your friend?”
“Her name is Clarke. I gotta show her around the resort, but I think we're gonna get ice creams.”
Anya gestured towards the freezer.
“Be my guest,” She said before walking over to the cash desk. Clarke chose an ice cream sandwich thing while I took a push pop. Clarke handed Anya the five dollar bill and didn't want any change. Anya rose her eyebrows at me when Clarke didn't want the change, so I shrugged at her. People from the big cities were weird.
“What's her name?” Clarke asked me before we left.
“Anya. She's my cousin,” I said as I tore the push pop wrapper off and started eating.
“Bye Anya! It was nice meeting you,” Clarke said as she opened the door for us to leave.
“Bye guys. Nice meeting you too, Clarke,” Anya replied, looking confused at Clarke's politeness. I was confused too.
“You're real polite.” I said. Clarke shrugged.
“Not always,” She replied. I clearly already knew that since she had stuck her tongue out at me not even ten minutes ago.
“Where are you from anyway?” I asked.
“Washington, D.C.” She answered.
“That's a long drive.”
She nodded.
We walked towards the dock, which was my first stop on the tour of this place.
“This is the dock,” I said. Clarke looked at me like I was dumb.
“Obviously.”
She was kind of right. We left the dock and I pointed to the area to the left of the dock.
“That's where all the cabins are,” I said. I then pointed to an area further down the riverbank, where there were some houseboats. “That's where all the houseboats are.”
I pointed towards the convenience store.
“That's where the convenience store is. Behind it there's a laundromat,” I said. I then pointed to the right of the dock. “That's where the office and my house are.”
“You live here?” Clarke asked me. I gave her a look that said 'duh.' “All year long?”
I gave her another look that said 'duh.'
“Wow,” Clarke said. “Is it nice here in the winter? Does it snow here?”
“It gets colder in the winter, but it doesn't snow. I've never seen snow in my whole life,” I replied. Clarke was getting chocolate crumbs all over her face from her ice cream, and for some reason I wanted to clean her mouth off for her. I was the one who grabbed the napkins from the cash desk before we left. Clarke didn't seem to be very prepared for life. Without napkins, life is a mess.
“You have crumbs and ice cream on your face,” I said as I handed Clarke a napkin. I handed her a second napkin also when I noticed the mess on Clarke's face was bigger than I thought.
“Your tongue is orange,” Clarke giggled as she wiped around her mouth and basically missed all the crumbs and ice cream on her face.
I sighed and grabbed another napkin – being around this girl was depleting my napkins way faster than usual. Next time I'm gonna have to grab extra napkins, cause Clarke is a messy eater. This time I cleaned Clarke's face and managed to get all the mess off it.
“Thanks,” Clarke said as she looked down at her feet and smiled a little. Maybe she wasn't so bad after all. I mean, she didn't try to push me into the water when we were on the dock, which is what Anya normally does. It was nice to be on the dock and not worry about maybe drowning in the river.
“There's some swings behind my house, wanna go there? I've got a slide too. Not a metal slide, but a plastic slide. Cause a metal slide would fry your butt.”
Clarke's eyes went wide.
“I don't wanna fry my butt.”
“It's ok, the plastic gets hot but it won't fry your butt,” I said, very serious.
Clarke looked relieved and let me grab her hand so I could take her behind my house. We walked past the office, where my uncle Gustus was sitting and he knocked on the window as we walked past. I waved at him, but Clarke got scared by the knocking.
“Who was that?!” She said as we kept walking by.
“That's my uncle Gustus. He runs this place.”
Clarke nodded. When we got to the swings, Clarke and I rock paper scissors'd to see who would go on the swings first. I only really had one swing back there, cause Anya didn't like swings anymore cause she was too big, she said. Clarke won the rock paper scissors, so she got to go on the swings first while I got to use the slide. It was just like I said – hot, but not fry your butt hot.
“Ok, so the rules are, you can swing for 100 swings and then we switch,” I said. Clarke shrugged.
“Why do you get to make the rules for the swings?”
“'Cause these are my swings, that's why,” I replied, and Clarke shrugged again and nodded.
“What's it like here? Like in town and at school and stuff?” Clarke asked me.
“Pretty sucky. The movie theatre doesn't even show good movies,” I replied. “There are 15 kids in my class, and it's been the same 15 kids since kindergarten. I know everyone in the school and everyone knows me. What's your home like?”
Clarke looked at me with surprised eyes.
“Wow,” She said. “I can't even imagine that. I only have a few really good friends, and they're the only people I know anything about from school. I have two best friends. They're named Octavia and Raven. Octavia has an older brother named Bellamy and he's probably about as old as Anya.”
“Why'd you come here this summer?” I asked. Clarke shrugged.
“I dunno. Normally I go to camp with Octavia and Raven, but this year my dad said he wanted to get away. He has work to do or something like that. So him and I are gonna stay here all summer. My mom has to go back to Washington D.C. in a week, cause she can't take a lot of time off work. She's a doctor at the hospital.”
“Wow, a doctor. That's pretty cool,” I said. Clarke nodded and got off the swings.
“It's been a hundred swings,” She said. We switched, just like we said we would.
“What does your dad do?” I asked. Clarke cringed at how hot the plastic on the slide was.
“He teaches at a university. I think he teaches people how to build things.”
The rest of the day kept going like that, with Clarke and I taking turns on the swing and slide until it got too hot outside. Clarke's mom came looking for her and told her to put a hat on or come inside because of the heat.
“I think I wanna go inside,” Clarke said. “I'm missing my favourite show. But can we play later tonight or maybe tomorrow?”
“Sure. You can just knock on my door whenever,” I said. Clarke smiled at me and waved bye while she followed her mom back to their cabin.
That night, Clarke came and knocked on my door and we lay down on the dock and watched the stars and made shapes out of them until Uncle Gustus and Abby yelled at us to come inside.
“I'm glad you're making a friend, Lexa,” Uncle Gustus said to me as he watched me brush my teeth. He said he didn't trust me to brush every tooth. When I was done brushing, he braided my hair again cause it got messed up today cause of the swing and the slide. “Clarke seems nice.”
“She's pretty nice, I guess. She likes Taylor Swift music,” I said. Uncle Gustus made eye contact with me in the mirror and made an impressed face.
“Taylor Swift is great,” He said as he finished up my braid. “You like Taylor Swift, too, don't you?”
I rolled my eyes at him. “Obviously, Uncle Gustus.”
“That's good, Lexa. Just don't forget, Clarke has to leave at the end of the summer. I don't want you to get hurt, sweetie.”
I looked down at my feet and nodded.
“Yeah, I remember.”
Uncle Gustus leaned down and kissed my forehead.
“Ok, Lexa. Now time for bed.”
That's how most of the summer went by. It went by so fast. Every day was hot and sunny, and every day Clarke and I would swing and slide and swim in the river and eat ice cream. Clarke would put sunscreen on my shoulders when Anya would forget and she would let me borrow her extra hats. Clarke's bathing suit was a pink one piece and mine was a green one piece. Clarke eventually learned to swim just as good as me, cause I taught her how. My Uncle Gustus taught Clarke's dad, Jake, how to drive the boat and sometimes Jake or Uncle Gustus would take Clarke and Anya and me out on the river. Those were fun days.
Clarke's mom left and came back and left again a few times, but she was nice. Sometimes she would invite me over for dinner and Clarke and I would race to see who could finish eating first. Sometimes Jake would invite me over for dinner, too, but he could barely cook anything. I would've said no to Jake, except Clarke would look at me in a way that said she really wanted me to come over so I would say yes and eat his horrible food. I would invite Clarke over for dinner too, except sometimes her and Anya would get into undercover food fights whenever Uncle Gustus wasn't looking and then the next day he'd find peas or corn under their place mats and ask me how it got there and I'd have to lie and say I didn't know.
A few days before Clarke and her dad left for good, her dad came over to my house and installed something on our computer so Clarke and I could talk to each other during the school year. Our internet was kind of slow some days, but I liked the idea of talking to Clarke during the school year.
The day Clarke left, she came over to my house first thing in the morning. I wasn't even really awake yet, but she walked right on into my bedroom and woke me up.
“Lexa, get up, I'm leaving today.”
“What?” I asked as I sat up in bed and rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and pushed my hair out of my face.
“I'm leaving today. I gotta go home,” Clarke said. She looked like she was gonna cry. Her cheeks were pink and the sunburn on her nose was peeling. When she first came here I thought she was the palest girl I'd ever seen, but now she was tan and it was clear our summer together was over.
“I don't want you to go,” I said kind of quiet. “I wish you lived here, in this suckfest town.”
“I don't wanna go either,” Clarke said. “But my dad says we're coming back next summer. And we can talk to each other every day on the computer!”
“It's not gonna be the same as having you here,” I said. Clarke grabbed my hand.
“I know. I'm sorry,” She said. “I hope this year speeds by real quick. That way it'll feel like two weeks before I'm back here.”
I laughed at her.
“Two weeks? It's gonna be way longer than that,” I said. Clarke nodded.
“I know. I'm gonna miss playing with you, Lexa.”
“I'm gonna miss playing with you too,” I said. “Can you eat breakfast with me? Uncle Gustus got your favourite choco pop cereal at the grocery store.”
Clarke smiled and hugged me.
“Sure, I can have breakfast with you.”
While Clarke and I ate, Uncle Gustus braided my hair. Anya had already finished eating and was drinking a glass of milk. I think even Anya was sad to see Clarke go.
“Anya?” Clarke tried to get her attention.
“Yeah?”
“Can you braid my hair like Uncle Gustus does to Lexa?”
Anya shrugged and stood behind Clarke and braided her hair.
Clarke smiled at me when breakfast was over.
“Now we match,” She said. I smiled. It was funny to see Clarke with my braids, but I liked it.
I walked Clarke out to her car and helped her dad pack their suitcases in the trunk. He high fived me and promised to see me next summer. Clarke gave me a hug that was super hard and she kind of squeezed me too hard but I smiled and I squeezed her back. Her hug didn't hurt that much anyway. Clarke leaving hurt more than her hug did.
“Promise me we'll talk every day on the computer,” Clarke said. I promised her.
And then she got into the car and her dad started to drive back to Washington, D.C.