The Last Summer

By R. L. Nguyen

Today’s the last day of the endless summer.

Sirens squall outside, and an east wind rattles the living room window screens. I lift the photo frame from the mantel, smudging dust that crusts the glass no matter how often I wipe it.

The kitchen faucet whooshes. I glance over my shoulder.

“Almost ready?” Jack holds our big steel canteen under the stream of water.

“Mm-hmm.” We’d learned to conserve moisture when the drought started, opening our mouths sparingly. When the photo in my hands was taken, we could smile wide. My husband’s face is gaunter than when he proposed in our favorite spot by the ocean. The radiant September sunset in the picture is missing the smoldering horizon line we’re used to now.

If we’d known what was coming… My mouth crackles as I swallow.

Drip, drip, drop; our final water ration disappears into the canteen. Jack shakes his head with the tight-lipped grin we’ve substituted for laughter since we started using ground acorns for flour.

The acorns ran out three days ago.

He gives me a nod and screws on the canteen lid. I walk over, patchworked shoes slapping the laminate, and slide the photo frame into his open backpack on the counter. He wedges the canteen among the last of the acorn pancakes in a Tupperware, a tin of homemade sunscreen, a mesh shade covering, and our picnic blanket.

Everything we’d bring on a beach day, apocalypse-style.

I zip the backpack and sling the strap over one arm out of habit. But he shakes his head and takes it, easing it between his jutting shoulder blades. I reach for our worn N95s by the sink and stretch the elastic of one to fit over his curly hair. His grin disappears, but its shape wrinkles the dirt-stained mask. I slip on my own.

Our eyes signal: time to go.

Jack elbows the front door open, then the screen door. I follow him onto the porch and wait as he locks both. This place will decay and collapse, or vanish beneath slow clouds of dust billowing down the street.

But for now, we’ll leave it in order.

We step off the porch and amble down the sidewalk. Everyone else already followed the siren’s howl downtown. I can just make out silhouetted pickup trucks and our neighbors clambering aboard. When we’d realized the dust was coming for our coastal town, just like it had for the rest of the continent, we all knew limited gasoline and water meant limited seats on the convoy out. It was Jack and me, or Shanna from next door and her five-year-old daughter.

Neither of us hesitated.

Right now, Shanna and her daughter are strapping in for a long ride to no one knows where. There’s not another town for miles, but maybe they’ll stumble upon something.

While Jack and I find a good spot to watch our world end.

We take a left turn a few blocks before downtown, just close enough to make out the faded lettering on the diner sign where we used to get milkshakes. Cows were one of the first things to go during the food shortage, but I still dream about asking Jack to finish my shake because I can’t.

I slip my hand into his and our bony fingers intertwine.

The street slopes downhill, lined with tree stumps. Mrs. Greene’s withered azaleas rustle to our left. I thought she’d never abandon them. Though they’d abandoned her when they stopped blooming.

At the beginning, we’d all had our reasons to stay.

Jack and I had the beach.

As we reach the edge of town, it comes into view—pale, blurred sand that runs into the glistening expanse of water. Desalination was the city council’s first strategy when things started to go wrong. But there wasn’t enough to irrigate crops, and we wouldn’t last long on water alone.

Past the last empty house, asphalt becomes gravel. We crunch down it, bumping into each other like in the honeymoon days when we couldn’t get close enough for long enough. Ahead, the horizon sharpens as we leave the dust smog behind. No clouds to shield us; they say the atmosphere’s too torn to hold much longer.

For the convoy’s sake, I pray it does. All I ask for us is an afternoon.

Instinctively, we turn right at the end of the gravel. Our dune’s curve sweeps northward, offering a hug. Still hand in hand, we break into a trot, sand lapping over the tops of our shoes. College kids again, home for the summer.

The sirens fade into the rolling waves.

Even if there’d been seats on the truck, nowhere could be home but here.

Oxygen scorches my throat through the condensation inside my mask as we halt under the dune’s shoulder. Jack lowers the backpack and opens it. I grab the picnic blanket, shaking away folds while he stakes and stretches out the shade covering. There’s no point, since we’re facing the raw, inflamed disc of the sun, low over the ocean. But this old habit of ours might help with the night chill, if there is a night.

We sit cross-legged on the blanket. Jack takes a pancake as I unscrew the canteen, pull down my mask, and tip a mouthful of liquid onto my desiccated tongue. I pass it to him and lean across, reaching into the backpack.

“Jack?” I rasp, pulling out the photo frame. Glare bounces off the glass, but I can still make out our younger faces. “Do you ever wish we’d have known what would happen?”

“No.” He doesn’t hesitate. “Because we’d have never known it would be worth it.”

Because it is. The life we’d planned—with a house and ice cream and people we love—evaporated with the water that never rained back down. But we’re still here. Left behind to watch the sun set, hand in hand with wedding rings on.

We started here. It’s not such a bad place to end.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

R. L. Nguyen is a child of immigrant parents who found her place to belong in fictional worlds. Her classical education and studies at the Author Conservatory feed her quest after truth and beauty. When she’s not writing magical characters finding victory in darkness, she can be found reading Shakespeare, singing opera, and training her dogs in rural South Carolina.

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