The stories we told our parents, regarding the road trip or that we were all working at a summer camp in upstate Maine, were absorbed without incident. We told them it was a wilderness camp, so there would be no mail. No phone calls. Nothing. When I told my parents, I think my dad might have nodded while he turned the page in the newspaper, and my mother said something like, “Okay, honey, have a nice summer,” while staring wistfully out the kitchen window.

Neither Tom’s nor Shirley’s parents had any concerns. Mary told her father, but he was so drunk when they had the conversation that she wasn’t completely sure he took it in. She told us her mother was happy she could get out of the house for a time.

While the projects we did might make it sound like we were hard workers, let me settle that point at once—we spent the majority of our time lounging in the water, taking naps, going on hikes, swimming, kayaking, lying on the dock and staring at the stars, making out with our respective significant others, and falling asleep on the deck or in the living room to the sound of the crickets and the loons and the cicadas. We slept in until noon almost every day, worked until dinner, and relaxed late into the night.

On one of those late nights, when the air was warm and the waves came in off the lake in steady ripples, Tom and Shirley and I sat on the dock, staring at the moon. Mary stood up and stretched, her form a reed bending here and there. She started walking the long dock back to the cabin.

“You going to bed?” Shirley called after her, disappointment in her voice.

“I’ll be back.” She laughed, her words floating back to us.

Her departing form was backlit by the single outside light that hung by the rear door of the cabin. She was a gracefully moving shadow, and I couldn’t take my eyes off of her.

“Man, you’ve got it bad!” Tom shouted, hooting out into the dark void that hung over the lake. It felt like we were the only people left on the planet.

I grinned and lay on my back, staring up at the sky. Shirley laughed. The heavy summer air swallowed the sounds we made, left me feeling melancholy and reflective. It was hard to believe how quickly my life had changed—the previous summer I had been aimless and on my own.

“What a summer,” I said.

“I don’t want to go back to real life.” Shirley sighed.

Even Tom was serious. “Nothing like it,” he said, and I thought I could almost detect a huskiness in his voice, a depth of emotion he usually managed to cover up with something boisterous.

I stood up.

“You too?” Tom asked.

But I didn’t turn for the house. I walked the ten steps between us and the end of the pier, stared out over the water, and dove in.