Member-only story
1991–1992
Four seasons in memory
1. Summer
In the summer when you were a teenager, you’d climb out your bedroom window.
It went like this: Someone, almost always a boy, would come to the window, tap, tap, tap. You’d sit up from the bed, where you waited fully clothed under your blue-and-green floral Laura Ashley bedspread, and arrange the pillows into a five-foot-six lump that vaguely resembled a sleeping person, her body and face covered by blankets.
Using your arms, which were strong from gymnastics, you’d boost yourself up to the windowsill, bringing one foot, then the other, to meet it. A few feet below, an air-conditioning box awaited you. You’d slide down to it, butt against windowsill, and from there it was a quick jump to the grass, glossy and wet from the sprinkler, followed by a jog of 100 or so feet to the curb. You prayed your gossipy, religious neighbors wouldn’t see you as you hustled yourself to the idling car.
The minutes, sometimes hours, you spent waiting for the arrival of whichever boy you momentarily liked, your heart pinballing around in your ribcage, were terrifying, exhilarating. You felt like you might vomit, but the rush you got from defying your mother and her overly strict rules (you lived in an Evangelical town and were not Evangelical; she was proving a point) was so bracing that the…
