This one is for that summer

It was the type of summer commemorated in memoir. In fiction. In television. In movies. I already had Daniel Stern's voiceover in my head. It was a summer of being together. Together we were something more than. Our neighborhoods. Our schools. Our families. Our futures.

Those quiet summer nights. Running around a small town. Being anywhere that wasn't our parents' houses. Becoming part of the energy of the night. In the in-the-process-of-being-torn-down- Hills parking lot. Sitting on the hoods of cars. Searching for stars against the street lights. At the Garden Drive-In. Staying for every double feature. On the bench on Market Street. Drinking 40s of root beer out of paper bags. Daring a cop to confront us. Driving pitch black, winding, back roads. Windows down and the music blasting out into the night. We were comfortable and content. Yet restless and electric. We owned that small town that summer. But each night we knew. We were outgrowing it. And each other. Crossing out the days we had left.

I left that August for New York. Nick the following fall. Rianna went to Philly for grad school. It took Mark a few years, but he is in California now. Even when we come back. Move back. To visit our families. It's not the same. It never can be. Our small town has morphed. Into a suburb we don’t recognize. But those summer nights. When we were seventeen still float through us like ghosts. And their memory chills us. As we drive those back roads with the windows down and the music blasting into the night.