In Summer

You first know by the taste of the air. The people standing in the queue at the local ice-cream shop lift their shirts away from their skin, fan at themselves with a free hand, glance up at the sky. They comment on the quality of the atmosphere— stuffy, they say. Stagnant. But when you take in a deep lungful you can feel the tangibility of the moisture-laden air, full, rich, alive. Then comes the wind. A sudden breeze sends people scrambling to recapture their paper napkins, fluttering away like so many errant birds. Hands dart out to pin flyaway items against the tops of picnic tables. An empty plastic cup escapes to skitter across the pavement. Behind the parking lot, the stand of lindens begin to flash the pale undersides of their leaves in unison. A storm brews.

The shop is a favorite of the local citizenry. Everyone refers to the proprietor with fondness, and her husband was probably half the town’s grade-school teacher. Everyone knows her, knows them. The side of the shop’s whitewashed cinder-block wall bears brightly-delineated images of other local landmarks. A number of your peers have secured summer jobs there. They are friends with one another. They are friends, of course with Mr. Oddslot and Mrs. B. They seem to embody the spirit of small-town America, where everyone knows everyone else and there is a distinction between natives of the town, and outsiders.

The queue has shortened up, and you and your friend finally reach the counter. You sneak glance while she handles the transaction. The girl at the counter, as you had rather hoped against, is someone you know. Closer than acquaintances, but certainly not friends.

“Oh hey,” she says in greeting, but offers nothing else. Then: “What can I get for you?”

Another gust of wind, and you beat a hasty retreat to the blue minivan out in the lot, shielding your high-piled cones from the first drops of rain. There is some distance between you, but also enough to talk about. She had insisted on catching up, so you do that, sitting in the minivan you’ve borrowed from your parents. A slow plunk-plunk starts overhead, hollow and metallic.

Odd, that this friend who frequents this ice-cream shop more than you, who rarely comes, seems more out of place here than you are. Odd, to think you have lived in this town my entire life. Somehow, you are not alike, they and you, you and all these people out there, those people withdrawing under striped awnings and under the eaves and into their cars. Odd, that.

It rains.