“I hope you had a lovely day too, milaya.” Her keys jangle as she puts them next to her bag on the laminate counter, eyeing the bowl of salted edamame sitting in front of me. Normally I’d have popcorn mixed with a healthy dose of M&Ms like I’ve been having every day since I got back, but after seeing Jasmine, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Unfortunately, soybeans were the next most appealing snack in the house. “And I didn’t realize you needed to be told, given you were inseparable this summer. She didn’t call you?”

I refuse to dignify that with a response and dig my teeth into another pod to scrape its insides.

“Ah. If it helps, it was a pretty last-minute decision, from what I gather. Declan didn’t even enlist my help. I only found out today, when he told me to order flowers to his house to welcome her home from her first day.”

I am slightly mollified by this, but still irritated overall. “Can I go to Shannon’s for dinner?”

She sighs. “It’s your first day of senior year, Larotchka. Possibly your last first day of school ever while living at home. Can you please humor your mother and tell her about it over frozen pizza?”

Now I feel like an asshole. It’s not my mother’s fault Jasmine is a jerk. “What kind of toppings do we have?”

“Only half a jar of olives, but they’ll be delicious because they were added with love.” She kisses the top of my head. “Go do your homework and I’ll call you when it’s ready.”

I go to my room, but I don’t start my homework. Instead, I head into my closet and stand on the lowest shelf to reach the scrapbook hiding on the highest one. Shannon would laugh her ass off if she knew I’d made something so sentimental. For that matter, so would Jasmine. But I’m relieved to have it, to have evidence this summer was real and not some wild delusion.

And there they are: ticket stubs from the movie theater in Kill Devil Hills, the Elizabethan Gardens, the Lost Colony show, and the ferry to Knotts Island. Photographs taken hugging lighthouses and pretending to fly in front of the Wright Brothers memorial. Papers from ice-cream cone wrappings, smooth shells from the beach, a joker from a well-used deck of cards, and even a cherry stem Jasmine tied into a knot with her tongue at a house party. There’s no shortage of memories in these pages.

Truth is, I don’t need snapshots or wrappers or stubs to remember this summer, despite some of it being hazy even while it was happening. Hell, even though I came back from that first party drunk as balls, I still remember every minute through at least the first three shots.