The Summer Nothing Changed

The coaxial cable lay coiled like a dead snake on my bedroom floor, my dad's weekend project abandoned halfway through. 'Just need to tighten the connection,' he'd muttered three days ago, before getting called into work again. I stared at it, that dusty reminder of how everything in my life felt half-finished lately.

'I'm literally dying of boredom,' I texted Maya, watching the three dots bounce. 'My dad's baseball trophies are judging me from the shelf. Remember when he signed me up for that league?'

'lol the disaster season,' she replied instantly. 'u forgot how to run and ran into the fence'

'Shut up 😭'

I rolled onto my back, phone falling to my chest. That summer had been brutal — my parents' divorcing, my friends fragmenting into new friend groups, me stuck in the middle of everything like the wrong piece in a puzzle I hadn't even agreed to solve. Now it was July, everyone was at camp or on vacation or doing literally anything cool, and I was here watching dust motes dance in the afternoon light.

The bear mask from that school play last year — the one I'd bailed on because stage fright hit like a freight train — hung on my wall. I'd kept it. Some weird nostalgia for the person I almost was, the version of me who could do things without overthinking them into oblivion.

My stomach growled. Kitchen.

Mom had left all her supplements on the counter again. The vitamin gummies sat next to her laptop, a sticky orange cluster. I popped two, chewed them aggressively like I was punishing them for existing. Same routine, same house, same restless feeling humming under my skin like an engine that wouldn't turn over.

'Hey,' Maya texted. 'Jordan's having a bonfire tonight. You should come.'

'I don't really know Jordan that well'

'Neither do I that's the point dummy. New people. New vibes. Cccaaannn you make ittttt'

I looked at the unfinished cable. The bear mask. The baseball trophies from a sport I'd never loved. All these pieces of someone else's life that I'd been trying to squeeze myself into for sixteen years.

'Yeah,' I typed. 'I'll be there'

Something shifted — small, real, mine. The summer wasn't over yet.