Cruel Summer | ✓

chapter three

There's only one major road into and out of Fisher, ID-55N carrying me the hundred or so miles from Boise to the home of my yearning. When it gets to the last ten miles, I can't sit still, stretching and searching for sights I know but I'm approaching from a different angle — from Butte, we dropped down from the north and drove along the entire western edge of the lake, skirting round to our cabin on the east shore. Coming up from the south, I make it to the town center before I catch a glimpse of the water but those old feelings come flooding back. There's a different smell out here. Clean and fresh, woodland and country air and good memories.

The ice cream place on Main Street still has a scoop missing from its sign, eight years after Emmett stole it during a high energy game of Truth or Dare. There's a line snaking down the sidewalk, berry-brown kids and their sunburnt parents waiting for a taste of Pine Lake Creamery's finest before summer's over. School starts in two weeks, the comedown from the long summer break, but this time my vacation is just beginning. To commemorate the first day of the month, I play August by Taylor Swift as I roll through town in search of my hotel. Unlike the Best Western and the Holiday Inn Express and the Main Street Inn (and that isn't all of them — people round here love to vacation in Fisher), Lake View Hotel is right on the water, nestled amongst Pine Lake Coffee Roasters, a bistro, a pizzeria and a thrift store. Virtually every building along Main Street is an eaterie of some kind but we almost never ate out as a family. Too many of us, too expensive, why bother when the kids are happy with pasta and marinara sauce?

I would come into town with Ashley and Connor, though. We'd walk the twenty minutes or grab a couple of bikes from the garage — Ashley didn't know how to ride and had no intention of learning so she'd perch on the handlebars, much to the horror of our parents. Well, her mom. I used to think Aunt Jessica was such a ballbuster but I get it now. We were feral. All she wanted was a bit of order and peace and respect and not even her own husband supported her attempts to discipline us. We must've been a fucking nightmare of a group.

I park around back amidst a crop of ponderosa pines, so giddy with delight to be back here after so long that I don't care how run down this hotel is and I don't care about the funny smell in the parking lot. I'm home. And I'm early. With ten minutes until check-in opens at four, I sling my backpack over my shoulder and walk down to the lake's sandy shore. A soft beach slopes down to the water, dotted with families enjoying the late afternoon sun. A boy and his dad are building an impressive sandcastle fort; a group of middle-aged women are gossiping behind a windbreaker; there are towels and inflatables and floaties all over the place. We never came to the main beach much — why would we when we had a private patch at the end of our garden? — but I love it here. It's so vibrant, and I love the sound of kids playing, the splash of people swimming in the blue water. I suck in a deep lungful of Idaho air and exhale the last three days, cleansing my system. This was the right decision.

Made it, I send to the girls with a photo of the lake, the sun glinting off the surface. I slip out of my sneakers and peel off my socks to push my toes into the hot sand. It's eighty-two degrees today. I feel it in the sun on my back, the warm breeze, a welcome change from the cloying hundred degrees in Austin. I'm a Montana girl: heat doesn't come naturally to me. It almost never rises above eighty in Butte so my years in Austin have been a shock to the system, one I'm still getting over after more than half a decade. I never acclimated. I have to wonder if that constant heat was adding fuel to the flames of my anxiety. The thought has me checking the weather for Mom and Dad's new cities.

Seventy-five for Mom. One hundred nine for Dad. Jesus. I think I know who I'll be begging to take me back after this trip. A major tally goes in the mental pro-Mom list: chances of boiling alive in Rapid City much lower than in Phoenix. Not that I've actually explained my situation to either of them. Our communication over the last few months has been sporadic, ever since they announced their separation and I lost hope in love and rather than pestering them for answers, it's been easier for me to shut myself off.