The Last Summer

Girl in the Woods by Vincent Van Gogh, 1882

The Last Summer

By Sigrid Vasquez

  It was the summer of eight years ago, I could still remember. Everywhere, there was laughter and children playing. I remember how my friends and I skipped rocks by the cool lake in the morning, then our mothers would yell at us to come home and have lunch. After that they would nag and tell us to siesta, but not one of us really liked to sleep when there was much playing to be done. We would sneak out, all four of us girls: Martha, Poleng, Elay and I. We’d run for the little park right around the corner where our first task would have to be picking and making bracelets or necklaces with santan while talking and chatting and telling stories. We always had something to talk about, the girls and I. And not just the childish girly things like what to play next or how Elay’s older brother King picked on her again. Honestly, at our ages, I consider ourselves fairly more mature than others, or at least more curious and open. Ha, if only I could…

Anyway, when we’re satisfied with our little adornments, we’d play more physical things like hide-and-seek or tumbang-preso. Yes, us four girls were not very much into playing dolls or bahay-bahayan like the others. We ran, we skipped and we hopped more than most of the girls in the park. I think that’s the reason why we had more boy friends than the other girls; I saw that the boys didn’t really much like to play those silly girly things. Of course, we didn’t think those games were silly, we also played those (Poleng had many dolls), most of the time we just prefer to play games where we had to run and be sweaty ("amoy-araw", my mother would call me).

In all honesty, it was nice to play with the boys of the park. Actually, it was nice to be friends with them, period. They have all this energy and wit, and they never seem to run out of crazy ideas. I know we’re different from the other girls and to be frank, I think we’re superior to them for some obvious but ineffable reason. But being friends with the boys made me feel a whole new level of different. There was something about being with them that made me, in particular, feel challenged, like I have to live up to them and what they know. And little by little, I learned their ways and all. I could sometimes tell what they were going to do, what they were going to say. I guess you could say I’ve started to figure them out. For someone as curious as me, that is not a good thing. See, they lose their value once I’ve figured them out. I realized I had to find another with a challenge to keep my curious vibes in control.

One summer day, while making the biggest santan necklace after Poleng dared me to do it, Elay spilled something about a new boy in the neighborhood. He became friends with King, and he’s older than us. He was staying at his uncle’s house for the summer. I was so excited to meet this boy but I didn’t know why. Maybe because of my clever deductions, I realized that he must have more energy and wit than the regular boys in the park and would be overflowing with the craziest ideas. I shall befriend this boy, and we will have the best summer.


So for a few days, I tried my best to catch his attention. I hid better, ran faster, hit cans and balls better so he’ll notice me. One hot Thursday afternoon, right after the girls and I snuck out, I saw him sitting alone by the sidewalk, drinking his soda. The girls knew I was trying to get his attention, so they helped me make the prettiest santan bracelet to wear. The plan was, since Elay knew the boy, she would introduce me to him.

“Kuya, this is my friend,” said Elay.

“Nice bracelet,” he said.

“Thanks. My friends made this for me,” I answered.

He smiled at Elay. When she left to go back to santan accessory-making, he looked at my bracelet and asked if he could wear it. I grinned and carefully took it off and gave it to him. He smiled at me.

“I noticed you were a good player at this park. It’s like you’re trying to catch my attention,” he said.

“Um, yeah actually, I kind of am,” I shyly answered. I knew it; I knew this boy was good. He was so much better than the other boys he could even tell that I was trying to get him to notice me. The other boys were too stupid and shallow to even imagine that. Already I was so eager to be friends with this new boy.

“Okay then. How about we watch a movie? There’s no one home, my uncle left for work. What do you say?” he asked as he returned my bracelet.

Like I even had to answer! I waved goodbye to my friends while they watched me walk with the new older boy in town because he had asked if I wanted to watch a movie with him. This was the most exciting thing that has happened to me this summer.

His uncle’s home was small but relatively spacious. There were only a few basic furniture, like one would expect in a house where only a man with no wife or children lives. I noticed there were only two doors inside the house and on the small couch there were bedroom pillows. I sat down on the couch while the boy went into one door and came out holding a stack of CD’s. He picked one and put it inside the player and sat beside me while we waited for it to load.

“What are we watching?” I asked.

“I figured since you wanted to get my attention, I want to get yours,” he replied with a smirk.

I didn’t know what to feel when he said that. I was excited and anxious and my arms and stomach felt ticklish and shivery. I looked around, and I noticed there were clean curtains around the windows and fresh rugs by the doors. I felt the boy scoot closer to me as the movie started.

It was about two adults, like someone slightly older than the boy. I couldn’t figure out what was happening since they moved a lot but didn’t really speak much. I was confused. The boy was watching intently, and I noticed he bit his lips a lot during the movie. “They are kissing, and I want to kiss too,” he said when he noticed I was looking at him.

After it was over, he asked if I liked what we watched. I didn’t answer; somehow it felt weird to talk to him about my opinion on the movie. He moved closer to me, and he touched the santan bracelet I was still wearing. He carefully took it off and placed it on the near end table. Then he touched my arm, my shoulders, my neck. I remember not looking at him; I didn’t know why but it felt weird and wrong to look him in the eye. His one hand moved up to touch my hair softly while his other hand was on my knee. I could feel him looking at me, yet I couldn’t look at him

I walked home in time for supper. As usual, I could hear my mother nagging about how I’ve been playing outside the entire day instead of doing chores around the house. Suddenly I felt like I wanted to stay inside the house and do chores for the rest of the summer. I sighed, finished my supper and went to my room. I was tired, but I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned but my eyes were still wide open. I couldn’t stop hearing voices, the most striking and repeated were that of Elay’s, saying, “Kuya, this is my friend.”

The summer ended. Honestly, I couldn’t remember most of it. The last time I saw that new boy was the end of the summer, where I saw him getting in his mother’s car while she talked to his uncle. He saw me looking at him, and when our eyes met I saw his were sad and seemed scared. He was older, maybe the last summer of his childhood was so long ago. I didn’t know when mine was either, or at least, I didn’t know it was the last until it was over and the next one didn’t seem so much like it. How should I? I was only a child in the summer of eight years ago.