Nina Moreno - Our Way Back to Always

To us,

before, now, tomorrow, and every timeline in between

AUGUST

I AM STILL waiting for the perfect summer my twelfth one promised me. That was the year Pap El sold mangonada Popsicles in the town square, Sam and I started a YouTube channel, and my parents let my curfew stretch past dusk. That miracle was only because everyone in Port Coral reported our whereabouts anyway, but the freedom was intoxicating. And it was that summer when two preteenshigh on spicy, sweet mangodiscovered the Port Coral High tradition known as Beach Day.

On the first Saturday of every August, incoming seniors take over our local beach with all their drama, excitement, and bass-heavy speakers. Sam and I spied on them from the harbor like they were starring in a music video. Which made sense, since watching them made me feel the way Janelle Mone songs did: bold, carefree, and flushed with new feelings. They were so alive, with their broad shoulders and filled-out bikinis. Sam sat beside me, just as enraptured. We couldnt wait for high school, and that spicy mango excitement went into penning our bucket list of all the things our thriving future high school selves would do.

But Popsicles melt, summers end, and Sam Alvarez turned thirteen and into an idiot.

And now after almost five years, I found that cursed list in a notebook after digging through my closet last week. Clean your room, Mom said. You have to become more organized! But now look at me: cursed. Because by reading that little slip of paper, I opened a tomb. This was breaking-a-mirror bad. Ive earned myself seven years doomed luck, because it turns out that Ive barely accomplished anything Seventh-Grade Lou dreamed up for herself. And while Im used to being an underwhelming disappointment to everyone else, letting my bright-eyed former self down is brutal.

So its time to remedy that.

From my perch at the edge of the bathtub, I shout, Mom! I need shaving cream!

The door whips open and my heart jumps. My mother never enters spaces quietly. What? Why are you in your bathing suit?

Im going to the beach. I gesture to my stubbly legs. But I ran out of my coconut stuff. The shaving cream is so fancy, it calls itself butter. I stole it from Elena when she moved out, and I was stretching it out by saving it for special occasions.

Mom searches the cabinet, then tosses me a metal can.

I catch it, disappointed. This one is Dads.

So? The other one was your sisters.

Dads smells like mint and medicine and does nothing in the way of helping me feel bold and carefree. I lather one leg. I smell like an old man now.

You and your picky nose. I think it smells nice.

You would. Im attracting all the wrong energy.

I get enough of the energy talk from your sister. She checks her watch. Hurry up, Elena should be here in ten minutes. A towel, sunglasses. Vamos, nia!

She leaves but doesnt get far, as I hear her call down the hallway, And your brother will be late for tutoring if he doesnt get up now! You get one more warning!

I finish in five and smooth (also stolen) lotion over my legs before slipping into denim shorts (not stolenmy hips sailed past Elenas last year). My suit is a dark blue one-piece with sunflowers all over it. And while Im confident I could fill out a two-piece just fine these days, I like the coverage and retro appeal.

I turn one way, then the other in front of the mirror. Nerves twist my stomach, and I press a hand against my fluttery middle. I try to call back the taste of spicy mango and bright-eyed moxie, but I am now so far from the person I thought Id be back then. Id imagined parties, great kisses, and midnight adventures, and I cast it all in a washed-out filter that made high school look like an indie teen movie. But where Sam became a golden social butterfly, for me, school hours mean acquaintances whose tables and circles I move through like a stray cat. Its fine, because I save all my quests for home, where my throne is a gaming chair and my computer lets me disappear into another hyper fixation with like-minded souls in servers and online RPGs.

And maybe I dont have a lot of friends because my abuela is right, and all that screen time really has melted my brain along with forcing me to need these reading glasses. I slip them off my nose. To my uneasy reflection, I murmur, Were really in it now, Janelle.

Back in my bedroom, I find Jupiter in my beach bag. My orange tabby cat is too big for it, but she doesnt care. I snap a picture for her account. Hers, not mine. After documenting the many feral cats and kittens I fostered last year, a post about Jupitermy feline assistantwent viral. She now has over a hundred thousand followers.

My personal account is private and has twelve followers, two of which are my older sister and younger brother.