Free The Summer We Came to Life by Deborah Cloyed

three so much I just couldn’t imagine how it would disappear. And maybe if my love lingers then it can help you somehow, when you need it.
    â€œâ€˜Love you, Belly. A penny for your precious thoughts.’”
    I looked closer to see what Isabel was doing. She was stroking a shiny penny taped at the bottom of the entry.
    Isabel closed the journal and lay back on the bed. She looked at me with wide eyes, a technique that dries out watering tear ducts. Thought I’d invented that technique.
    I must’ve looked like a dead bug, still stuck in the web of Mina’s words, with no reply coming to rescue me. When Ifinally wriggled free, I found myself still holding two very heavy bags. I dumped them on the other bed, while Isabel stared at the ceiling. She was crossing and uncrossing her toes.
    â€œYou remember Mina with those baby rabbits?”
    I shuddered in the humid room. “You really wanna talk about that now?” I whispered like someone might hear us. Who?
    â€œMina never got over it, Sam. She told me whenever she looked at that maple tree, she thought about the bunnies.”
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    Mina’s backyard, Springfield, VA, 1993
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    Mina’s father loved yard work. In Virginia, there’s plenty of it year-round. He left Mina and me to cook ramen noodles with frozen peas so he could rake leaves. He couldn’t watch our homespun dance recitals because there was grass to cut. And there was no time for algebra help as long as mulch needed to be spread around.
    Sometime when we were freshmen in high school, Mina worked up the courage to ask her dad if yard work was more important than her. He only frowned in response, but he let a whole week go by without even entering the yard.
    The following week, as if Mina had angels at her beck and call, a neighborhood kid knocked on the door to ask if her dad needed help with the yard.
    Not just any kid. Brandon Bateman. The hottest kid in school. A junior. He had thick dark hair like Tom Cruise and tan muscles from playing football. Mina and I had a new pastime. We drank Cherry Cokes at the kitchen table and watched Brandon go back and forth with the lawnmower or dig up weeds or prune trees. With military efficiency, we took turns offering him more water or clean towels. He knew we were watching and giggling. One day he strategicallytook his shirt off and poured his glass of water down his muscled chest. The next Saturday, Isabel and Kendra joined us.
    We passed two happy summer months, until one day Mina’s father strolled out of his study and caught us at our schoolgirl peep show. He was so flustered he barely could find the words. “Out!” he managed, and we scattered like bats from sunlight.
    Isabel and Kendra took the following weekend off, but I was a fixture at the Bahrami house. The next Saturday, when Mina and I rounded the corner to the kitchen, we came upon her father sitting at the table, still as a paperweight, his chin resting on his knuckles, watching Brandon work outside the window. I figured he would have fired him after the last weekend, but instead he sat staring at him with the saddest eyes I’d ever seen. Both Mina and I froze, completely unsure what to do. It felt like hours—those moments we watched her father unveiled as a complete stranger but somehow more knowable. Mina inhaled and exhaled raggedly as if she were reminding herself how to breathe.
    He fired Brandon when he was done that day.
    The next Saturday I planned to stay home. It made my father uncomfortable. He took his coffee to the basement as usual and mumbled about how he was off to the hospital soon and could I take out the trash and how come I wasn’t at Mina’s. I sighed and left for Mina’s house, not knowing what to expect. Even still, I was unprepared for what happened.
    A note on Mina’s front door told me to come around back. In the backyard, I found Mina pushing the lawn mower. She was bent over with her arms extended