Summer has slid through the rain drain, and now I’m left with a dry road filled with flowers in the cracks that I want to grow. Seventy-four days are gone in the blink of an eye. I feel as if only a week ago I was finishing up my freshman year final exams.

Yet it didn’t feel short in the moment. The days were long and either jam-packed or dull and empty. Even if all the days had been of the latter, I wouldn’t trade my summer for anything. But I didn’t have a choice; school came, and summer was pushed into my memories.

Gone are the days of spontaneous sleepovers in the middle of the week. I won’t find myself turning up at my friend’s house in Holland to see Black Widow. I won’t be spamming my old Canon camera with photos of Mary-Kate, Alicyn, and me. We won’t be filming unboxing videos of us opening mystery Minecraft keychains and yelling when I get an ugly gold sword and they both get endermen. I doubt I will be getting any more photos of me posing with Nerds candy by an underwear display.

Gone are the days of the Barry County fair. I will take no more photos of my face in a wooden cutout picture with Alicyn’s feet in the other cutout. I won’t be prancing around the fairground with a plastic tiara on my head. Waking up at seven in the morning to help with Kayce’s pigs and rabbits and Alicyn’s sheep is in my past. 

Gone are the days of my trip to Chicago. Maya, my mom, and I will not have to wait in the kitchen section of IKEA for Maya’s mom. No one will be praising me for finding an amazing breakfast restaurant and getting us there right before a mass of people showed up. I will no longer be taking photos of Maya in her IKEA bucket hat while she sits on a display toilet. I won’t be berated for sitting in the IKEA bathtubs or lounging in the one back at the hotel—I was fully clothed in an empty tub.

Gone are the days of getting stuck in the middle of the lake. Millie won’t have to jump into the water to unhook our anchor from a sailboat mast. Grace and I won’t be struggling to hold the entire mast by a small rope. Emmy won’t be on the phone with her dad, trying to figure out a way to get unstuck. I won’t be yelling about dumb decisions minutes before. 

Instead of my quiet, yet chaotic, summer, I get stressful school. I’ve unintentionally traded in my long, hot days of summer for days in school, freezing next to a vent.