Status Updates From Für einen Sommer unsterblich

«We sit down on the blanket he's brought and drink the sodas he's brought, and I don't want the night to end. I think, I could stay here. I could live right here. And then for some reason I'm thinking about the Claude I was before this summer, the girl who didn't know that people go away and love can change its mind. This is how I feel in this moment on this beach under the moon with this boy - like me again. »

"Want to walk?"
"Yes."
So we do. The waves catch us sometimes and the water is warm. There is no one awake but us, and we are the only ones in all the world. Jeremiah Crew and Claude Henry. Just the two of us. (…)
"We don't have to talk about your par-ents, but if you need to, this is a good place to do it. I've had a lot of conversations with myself at night on this beach."

« I catch my breath. I know in my bones that this is one of those deathbed moments, one I will always remember. (…) It's a wild ride through the darkness, the fireflies twinkling like fairy lanterns. I try to hold on to the moment because I don't want it to end. I want to spend forever driving through the night with Jeremiah Crew. »

« I am going to kiss you right now because I've been thinking about kissing you all morning. I'm telling you this because it's going to be a fucking incredible kiss, so I want you to brace yourself. I know you promised me you wouldn't fall in love, but I completely understand if that changes after this. I will now await your blessing."

« (..) and this isn't any Claude I know. This is some girl with short hair who makes out with strange boys on strange beaches. And she likes it, this girl. She likes him. She's not thinking about what comes next or what could happen. She's not making him someone he's not or wishing he would be the one. She's not overthinking him or herself. »

« I look at him and he looks at me, and in that moment I feel like he knows me better than anyone.

"Moonlight suits you, Captain."

"'Captain?"
His eyes go to my hat.

I say, "It's a fisherman's cap."

"Fisherman' doesn't have the same ring to it."

"What happened to "Lady Blackwood?"

"'Captain' is better." »

« "So what happened with your parents?"
And maybe it's this strange, magical night or the way his voice has gone soft or the flash of his smile in the dark or his bare feet, but for whatever reason, I do something I haven't done in weeks.
I open my mouth and talk.
I tell him without editing.
And he listens. And listens. »

"So tell me. If you weren't trying to drown yourself and you weren't drowning, what were you doing out there?"
"I don't want to talk about it."
"I don't believe that for a second. You've been yelling and talk: ing every time I've seen you."

« It can get kind of nerve-racking when you realize how isolated you are trom the actual world here. But all the scary stuff doesn't really compare to getting lost in your own mind. »

I walk over to her and follow her gaze to the tube of cortisone cream and can of Off! that sit there. There's a note taped to the bug spray: For Her Ladyship. It's worse if you scratch them.

(…) I flip the paper over and there is my phone number, exactly as I wrote it. And below it: ‘Phones don't work here. If I want to find you, I'll find you.’

"Let me go. I don't need saving. I grew up on the ocean."
"I don't care if you're part dolphin. I need you to chill the fuck out, Ariel."