I wish I could say that my second to last week in Holden was a montage of ice cream cones, car rides with all the windows down, aloe vera on sunburnt skin, and shaking sand out of every piece of clothing I owned. I wish I could say it was everything I'd imagined and more.

But I'd honestly never imagined a tropical storm could put me under house arrest.

The first few days were the worst, because the flooded roads meant that none of us could really go anywhere. At least not in a car. Blake and his new iPhone jogged over to Rachel's house every morning so he and I could FaceTime with the others while we collectively lounged around and bitched about the weather.

When the torrential rain eased up on Wednesday, we were finally able to congregate in one place and partake in the kind of mundane indoor activities that I'd imagine kids from the 1950s wasted their lives away with—card games, hide-and-go-seek, Pictionary (which was mostly Blake and Jesse competing to see who could come up with a more phallic depiction of whatever they were supposed to draw).

On Friday afternoon, the rain stopped.

Which was good, because our creativity—and patience—had also run dry.

"Left foot blue!" Jesse said. "Honestly, Blake, are you color blind?"

Blake, who was spread across my aunt's floor with one hand on green, another on blue, and both feet on red, groaned in frustration.

"Not color blind," he grumbled. "Just—not—flexible—"

Lena, whose right arm was tangled around Blake's left leg, sighed in annoyance.

"Don't you dare kick me in the face," she warned.

On cue, Blake's foot slipped out from underneath him (I'd told him not to wear socks) (dumbass). He keeled to the side, knocking into me. For one glorious moment, I thought I might actually be strong enough to hold him up—and then my wobbly little arms gave out and we both went crashing to the floor.

Two hundred pounds of boy landed on top of me.

Lena whooped in triumph. It was her fifth consecutive win of the day.

"Not fair!" I croaked. "I was doing so well."

I'd been getting lucky with the easiest spins. I was about as flexible as uncooked spaghetti, so it truly felt like a miracle that I'd just had to hold a downward dog position for a good ten minutes.

"Can we play something else now?" Alissa huffed from Rachel's couch, where she was painting her nails powder blue. "Something less physically demanding?"

She held her hand up to her lips and blew against her third coat of polish.

"I second that," I wheezed as Blake rolled off of me.

There was a moment of silence as we all tried to think up a good idea.

"Wow," Jesse murmured. "It's really quiet right now."

We all realized, simultaneously, that Jesse was right. It was really quiet.

Because the rain had stopped.

Alissa slapped her bottle of nail polish down on the coffee table and lurched off the couch.

"Toss me my flip-flops," she said to no one in particular. "I'm out of here."

"Can we go to the beach now?" Jesse piped up.

"Sure, yes, fine," Alissa blurted. "Whatever. Last one in the water is a rotten something."

"Egg," Blake mumbled.

"Bless you," Jesse told him.

This friend group is a train wreck, I thought.

"We can't go swimming," Lena snapped. "I'm checking Twitter right now. The coast guard still doesn't want anyone in the water. And I'm not walking around on cold, wet sand for two hours."

Rachel, who'd been in the kitchen for the better part of the day attempting to craft the perfect cauliflower crust pizza, appeared in the doorway. Her wild curls were tucked up in a tight bun and there were riced cauliflower bits all over her black T-shirt dress.

"Hey, kiddos, I think the rain stopped!" she said, sounding chipper at the prospect of finally being able to kick us out of the house so she could have some peace and quiet. "Why don't y'all run down to the beach? Go swimming. Last one in's a rotten whatever."

"Egg," Blake repeated, exasperated. "It's a really common saying, guys."

"How's the pizza coming along, Ms. Lyons?" Jesse asked.

Rachel sighed. "It won't get crispy. I think I'm giving up."

"Did you try adding a little corn flour?" he suggested.

"Come on, Gordon Ramsay," Alissa huffed, hauling Jesse to his feet with a fistful of his shirt. "You can exchange cooking advice later. Let's go. Anywhere. Starbucks. I don't care."

"If you kids want a little field trip," Rachel said, "you could all come to Marlin Bay with me to see my mural. It's finished. The unveiling ceremony is tomorrow, technically, but it's going to be so crowded and pretentious. If we head out soon we might be able to make it to the hospital before the sun sets."

Alissa clapped her hands together.

"Perfect. I love it. Let's do it."

And so there was a great deal of muttering and looking for shoes and jackets and wallets and Jesse's car keys, which had somehow migrated out of the back pocket of his jeans and onto the top of Rachel's microwave. He couldn't offer an explanation for this phenomenon, but Lena assured us that it happened all the time and was no cause for concern.

Outside, the pavement was wet and there were small whitewater rapids flooding into the storm drains along the curb.

Alissa, Lena and Jesse jumped in the Jeep. Blake called shotgun in Rachel's car, so I was relegated to the back seat—which was fine with me, because that meant Blake had the responsibility of selecting the music, and I got to stare out the window while I secretly catalogued the songs he chose.

He was surprisingly big on Coldplay. It could've been a pretentious thing, if it weren't for the fact that I caught him mouthing along the words like the big nerd he was.

We reached the hospital just before sunset really began, when the sky was painted pink along the horizon and the broken clouds were outlined in purple. This sight—when paired with the musical stylings of Coldplay—was an almost tear-jerking aesthetic.

Rachel pulled into a parking spot on the far side of the lot, where there were plenty of open spaces for Jesse to squeeze in beside us.

The air in Marlin Bay was a little warmer than in Holden.

I tipped my face up towards the sky, letting the sunlight warm my skin, as we all walked towards the alley between the two halves of the hospital.

It dawned on me that Blake and I were returning to the scene of the crime—our first kiss.

It seemed a little silly that the memory of it could make my entire face flush with heat, given that we'd progressed well beyond the nervousness and uncertainty of a first kiss. I'd told the boy I loved him. You'd think I could walk through a parking lot with him without turning into a puddle.

But this wasn't just any parking lot. It was the place where I'd had my first kiss. The place where my aunt had worked all summer. The place where a very young Blake had learned what it meant to lose a mother.

It was a very important parking lot.

I stopped for a moment. Felt the wind on my face. Took a deep breath. Smelled the ocean.

Sometimes—when we're very lucky—we realize we're somewhere we'll always remember while we're still standing there.

The others walked onward, laughing and chattering. Blake was the only one who seemed to notice that I'd come to a complete halt in the middle of the parking lot. He circled around to face me, eyebrows pinched in question.

"You good?" he asked.

I nodded. "Just being sentimental. Give me a minute."

Blake rolled his eyes but stepped forward, so he could hook one of his pinky fingers around mine. I exhaled a shaky breath and gave his finger a squeeze.

"This is the most emotional I've ever seen anyone get about a painting of sea life," he said.

I sniffled.

"It's the parking lot, actually."

Blake glanced around and shrugged.

"I've seen nicer."

I opened my mouth to tell him to stop joking around and let me be dramatic about this.

Instead, he beat me to it.

"Look, I get it," Blake murmured, his eyes falling on our linked hands. "I like this parking lot, too. It's kind of important to me. But there are hundreds of thousands of parking lots in the world, and we're gonna make out in as many of them as possible, okay?"

It was dumb. It was such a dumb sentiment.

But it was perfect.

"Blake," I whispered. "That was beautiful."

"I've been reading a lot of poetry."

"I can tell."

"Gotta get ready for AP Literature this year."

I pinched his cheek, like an overly affectionate grandmother. Then, because it was kind of fun, I smooshed his lips together so he looked like a fish.

"Why?" Blake asked, voice distorted and tone withered.

"Just trying to commit the moment to memory," I said. Then I let go of his face and gave his nose a quick boop. "Alright. I'm done."

Blake nodded, like we'd just completed some kind of business transaction.

Then we turned and followed after the others.

The parking spots between the two halves of the hospital were roped off and cluttered with stacks of white plastic chairs and collapsible tables (for the unveiling the next night, no doubt).

The facade of the back building, where I'd seen the half-finished mural more than a month ago, was sheltered by scaffolding that held up an enormous tarp.

"They put this up this morning," Rachel explained. "We kept it uncovered so the kids could watch us while we painted, but the board wants a big reveal for the donors. You know. Like, ta-da! Here's what your money paid for!"

She did jazz hands, for added flair.

"How much did the tarp cost?" Lena asked dryly.

Rachel waved her off.

"Those people are all millionaires. We could plaster this whole wall in gold flakes and they wouldn't care."

"That'd make a cute Insta background," Alissa mumbled, more to herself than to anyone else.

Rachel pulled the end of the tarp up, so we could slip behind the scaffolding.

The mural really was something special. All the larger-than-life cartoon children, with their various skin tones and colored shirts and disabilities and athletic pursuits, were painted with smiles. At the far end of the wall, the crowd of children dissolved into an underwater scene, where sea turtles and starfish and smiling fish wove through tendrils of seaweed.

It was like something out of a Pixar movie.

But I only had a brief moment to take in all the Disney-grade cuteness.

Because it appeared that we weren't the only people who'd come to see the mural before its unveiling.

A short, muscular boy in salmon pink board shorts stood beside a black duffle bag on the pavement, a can of spray paint in his hand and a dumb, horror-struck expression on his face.

"Ethan!" Alissa exclaimed.

Holy shit, I'd forgotten about Ethan.

There was a drawn-out moment in which we all stared at Ethan, and he stared at us, and it became apparent that we'd caught him in the act of vandalizing the mural outside of the pediatric wing of a hospital.

"Um, dude," Jesse said. "What the fuck?"

That was Ethan's cue to drop the can of spray paint and book it out of there.

It was like watching something off the Discovery Channel. Or Planet Earth. The slow-motion sequence in which an antelope (or whatever) spots the cheetah lurking in the tall, dry grass and decides it doesn't want to be dinner.

Unfortunately for Ethan, Lena Fletcher was her own brand of elite predator.

Like a cheetah, she shot off in pursuit.

On Planet Earth, the cheetah chases the antelope for, like, ten minutes. And even that's edited down, so you only see a few near misses followed by an eventual bloodbath.

Lena caught up with Ethan in about three seconds.

She lunged, grabbing his board shorts by the belt loops and yanking them clear down to his ankles, and Ethan tripped forward and ate asphalt harder than any human being in the history of reality prank shows.

This is how the Marlin Bay police found Ethan—with his board shorts around his ankles, one of his front teeth knocked clear out, and Lena Fletcher's arm hooked around his throat in an iron chokehold.

Alissa, Jesse, Blake and I stood and watched as they ushered him into the back of a cop car, handcuffed and barking something about how his parents were gonna sue for the necessary dental work.

Jesse just laughed and nudged Alissa with one of his boney elbows.

"Hey, remember when you wanted to date that guy?" he asked.

Alissa didn't look amused.

"Don't rub it in," she grumbled.

Jesse threw an arm over Alissa's shoulder, smiling despite the withering (but quietly amused) look she leveled at him, and waved at Ethan through the window of the cop car.

Blake was staring up at the hospital. I followed his line of sight to see children crowded around the windows on the third floor, watching the action below with wide eyes and excited smiles.

"Well," Rachel said, hands on her hips as she and Lena walked back over to us, "they took our statement. It sounds like they've got a pretty solid case against him for—"

"Being a giant asshole," Lena interjected.

"—attempted vandalism," Rachel finished.

We turned in unison to watch the Marlin Bay police cruiser pull out of the parking lot and disappear off into the sunset.

"I always hated that guy," Blake said.

Lena and Jesse hummed in agreement.

"So," Rachel drawled. "You kids wanna grab some dinner?"

It wasn't at all the way I'd imagined my summer coming to an end.

It was better.