The Summer I Lost the Bear

I never thought my first kiss would happen while wearing a giant foam bear head, but here we are.

It started with the hair. Two weeks before freshman orientation, I'd dyed it midnight blue—temporary, I swore, just for the summer. My mom freaked. "What will people think?" she'd say, shaking her head like I'd announced I was joining a cult.

Then came the vitamin drama. Dr. Chen said I wasn't getting enough B12, so now I had to take these horse-pill supplements every morning. "It'll help with energy," Mom promised, as if chugging vitamins would fix that I was socially awkward and hadn't spoken to anyone from school since June.

The worst part? The cat barn shift at the fair. Someone had to feed the colony of barn cats, and apparently, I'd drawn the short straw. The cats hated me. Especially this gray one with a judgmental stare who'd knock over the food bowl if I was two minutes late.

"You're too tense," said Marcus, the only other sophomore there. He was supposed to be doing bear mascot duty, but he'd ditched the costume to hang out with me. His actual uniform was stuffed behind the hay bales, its fuzzy brown head staring at us like a creepy audience.

"I'm not tense," I snapped, hair falling in my eyes as I refilled water bowls. "I'm just doing my job."

Marcus laughed. "You're, like, vibrating with stress. Here." He held out a gummy worm. "For your nerves. Better than those vitamins your mom's always posting about on Facebook."

I took it. His fingers brushed mine, and I felt that weird electricity everyone's always talking about in books. The cat from earlier—a black one now, weirdly affectionate—wound around my ankles, purring like a tiny engine.

"So," Marcus said, leaning against the barn door, "your hair is actually kind of awesome. Not gonna lie."

My face burned. "My mom hates it."

"Yeah, well, what does she know?" He stepped closer. "I like it. It's... you know. Brave."

Outside, someone called for the bear mascot—probably another kid needing help with a game. Marcus groaned, but before he could grab that foam head, I caught his wrist.

"Forget the bear," I said. "Stay here."

He looked at me, really looked at me, with those dark eyes that made my chest feel tight. "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

We sat on a hay bale while cats wandered around us, and I told him about the vitamins, the hair drama, how I was terrified of high school because I'd never been kissed and everyone seemed to have their life together except me.

"Same," he said, like it was that simple. "I'm literally in mascot therapy because I'm too anxious for sports."

We laughed so hard the cats scattered.

And then, surrounded by escaping cats and abandoned bear costumes, still smelling like hay and gummy worms, he kissed me.

It wasn't movie-perfect. Our noses bumped. I'd just taken my vitamin, so I probably tasted like artificial cherry. But when he pulled back, grinning like an idiot, I thought: maybe this year wouldn't be so terrible after all.

"Okay," I said. "That happened."

"Yeah," Marcus said. "That happened."

The judgmental cat reappeared, meowing loudly, like we'd interrupted something important. Some nights are just like that—weird and perfect and nothing like you expected, even with vitamin aftertaste and an audience of barn cats.