That Summer Sound

5:04 AM. Saturday.

She was late tonight.

I pressed my pencil to the page and waited. The streetlight on our corner had been flickering since September, casting the sidewalk in this stuttering orange that made everything look like an old film reel. I'd drawn that light so many times I could do it in my sleep, which was ironic, because sleep and I had stopped being on speaking terms around this time last year.

The insomnia wasn't new. The ritual was.

Every Friday night became Saturday morning the same way: I'd give up on sleeping around 3 AM, move to my desk, flip open whatever sketchbook was closest, and draw until the sun came up. And every Saturday morning, somewhere between 4:45 and 5:30, the girl across the street would appear at the end of the block.

Heels in hand. Always.

She'd walk down the center of the empty road like it belonged to her, shoulders set in this way that started confident and ended tired, mascara smudged, dress from last night creased, and she'd pause at her front door for exactly long enough that I could capture the shape of her deciding whether to go inside.

I called her Heels-in-Hand Girl in my sketchbook margins. Which was stupid, because I knew her name. Everyone knew her name. She was in my kitchen three times a week eating my cereal and being my sister's favorite person on earth.

But at 5 AM, she wasn't Josie Dunne, Homecoming Court, three thousand followers, center of every room. She was just a silhouette walking home in the dark.

I liked her better as a silhouette. Less complicated.

5:09. There she was.

End of the block, same as always. The flicker of the streetlight caught her hair first, then the angle of her bare shoulders, then the heels dangling from two fingers. She was walking slower tonight. Head tilted back, like she was looking at something in the sky, or maybe just tired of looking at the ground.

My pencil moved before my brain caught up. The slope of her shoulders. The curve of her neck where it met her collarbone. The way her free hand trailed at her side, fingers slightly open, like she'd just let go of something.

She paused at her front door. Longer tonight. Seven seconds, eight, nine. She pressed her forehead against the wood and just stood there, and I stopped drawing because something about the image felt too private even for a sketchbook.

Then she straightened, opened the door, and disappeared.

My lungs loosened. I hadn't noticed them tighten and looked down at the page. Three-quarters of a silhouette. No face, never a face. I couldn't see it from this distance anyway, just shapes and posture and a body that was performing for nobody.

I closed the sketchbook. Stared at the dark windows of her house. Nothing moved.

Three hours later, I was in the kitchen pretending to be invisible, which was easy because I'd been practicing for seventeen years.

"PENN."

Sadie's voice could shatter crystal at fifty yards. My twin sister had two volumes: Broadway and Louder Broadway.

"What."

"We're out of the good cereal."

"There's oatmeal."

"I said GOOD cereal. Josie's coming over and she only eats the cinnamon kind."

I poured coffee into the mug I'd been nursing since 6 AM and said nothing, because Josie coming over was not news. Josie was always coming over. Josie had been coming over since freshman year, when Sadie decided they were soulmates and Josie decided Sadie was her person and they both decided I was the furniture.

The front door opened. No knock. She never knocked.

"I brought cinnamon cereal!" Josie's voice carried through the hallway like she was performing to the back row of a theater, and I heard Sadie shriek in response, and then there was laughing and the sound of grocery bags and two people who existed at a volume I would never understand.

She came into the kitchen.

Different. The 8 AM version was always different. Hair washed and dried in loose waves, makeup fresh, outfit deliberate, that smile that said she had it figured out. She was wearing a yellow sundress and sandals, and she looked like she'd slept ten hours instead of three, and the transformation from the girl at the front door to the girl in my kitchen was so complete it made my chest feel strange.

"Morning, Penn." She set the cereal on the counter. "You look like you haven't slept."

"I haven't."

She laughed. It was the 8 AM laugh, the one that filled rooms. Sadie appeared behind her and they immediately started talking about someone named Tyler and something that happened at the party last night and I picked up my pencil and started drawing the coffee mug because that was what I did. I drew whatever was in front of me, and I was invisible, and that was fine.

Josie said something I didn't catch and Sadie screamed laughing and Josie looked over at me with this expression I couldn't read, half amused and half something else, and I dropped my pencil on the tile.

It rolled under her sandal.

She bent down, picked it up, and handed it back. Our fingers touched. Brief. Nothing.

"Thanks," I said.

"You draw a lot."

"Yeah."

She was looking at me. Actually looking. Not the casual peripheral awareness of someone passing furniture, but focused, like she'd just noticed the furniture was breathing.

"Josie!" Sadie called from the living room. "Come look at this."

She went. Of course she went. But in the doorway she glanced back, and the glance lasted one second longer than it needed to, and I filed that second away in the part of my brain where I kept things I'd draw later.

She never looked at me.

She just did.