The summer I turned fifteen was the hottest summer in the recorded history of our whole county. I knew because it was on the news. I always knew what was on the news. While other families sat together and watched sitcoms, my family watched the news.
I spent most of my summers barefoot, because sweating inside your shoes is the most disgusting feeling I knew of. It still is. Everyone wore shoes that year, though. Even the really tough kids couldn’t walk on the hot sidewalk with no shoes.
My neighbour Chloe and I spent all summer together, but we only had enough energy to do two things: swimming and lying in the shade. I remember once she and I walked through the woods looking for a stream. We heard that it was glacier run off. Cold enough to give you hypothermia. Cold enough to turn your feet blue. Cold enough to freeze you insides so bad you could never digest food right, or bear children.
We were totally psyched.
In the forest we finally freed our feet of their shoe-shaped bonds on the smooth dirt paths. It was softer and cooler than the pavement. We watched our steps carefully for stones and thistles. Every now and again we stopped to proclaim over some found treasure. Shattered glasses, broken jewellery and scribbled shopping lists filled our pockets. We never did any thing with them, we just kept them. In addition to our usual finds, Chloe discovered something bizarre. There was a magazine, just off the path. The cover portrayed a tangle of sweaty limbs, which could only lead the viewer to believe that the people in the middle were having a pretty good time. Right after picking it up, she dropped it.
“Is it dirty?” She asked.
I gave her a look, “Obviously.”
“No, not—” she blushed, “Not dirty like boobies dirty. Crud and bugs dirty.”
I shook the pages. Several fat earwigs scattered to the ground. “No,” I said.
We started to look at it, but I didn’t like it. It made me want to be somewhere else. I tried to make her throw it back in the bushes, but instead she tucked it under her arm and kept walking. Eventually, we found the stream, but it was only a trickle. It wasn’t even that cold. There was no reason to stay long, but we did anyways. We sat in the woods for a long time, just thinking.
Chloe snuck the magazine into the house wrapped in her towel. Later we cracked an egg on the sidewalk and watched the foggy parts turn white.
It was the hottest summer ever.
You know I never actually tried frying an egg on the sidewalk. I’m not sure my childhood is complete now…