It was the summer before college. Everything already felt different, like when you know a storm is coming because the air feels charged, heavy. That's how it was the whole month before leaving for Columbia. Everything charged, heavy, waiting.
Sarah and I, we'd spent years stitching our days together with the kind of threads you don't think will ever unravel: after-school talks, impromptu plays in my garage, racing on our scooters, endless rounds of Mario Kart, the kind of laughter that leaves you gasping. She moved into my neighborhood not long before all this, became my best friend seemingly overnight. It was simple then.
But that month, everything was heavier. We knew I was leaving, stepping into a different life where she wouldn't be a few doors down. We both felt it, this shift, like the last slow climb of a roller coaster before it all speeds up and changes.
The night before I left, when common sense said I should be packing, Sarah and I went for a walk instead. Just needed to be out, under the sky, walking the streets we knew by heart. It started off silent, the kind of silence you only have with someone who knows all your stories already. Then, bit by bit, it all started pouring out.
We talked about everything — how much we'd miss this, how strange it felt to be moving on. She opened up about her stepdad, Rick, the kind of details you can't just tell anyone. Her mom, too, how there were words of love but actions didn't match. Hard stuff, heavy stuff. We laughed too, couldn't help it — remembered the time I ran full-speed into a tree playing football, or how everyone knew I liked Nick even when I was trying to get with Tori.
We wandered into deeper stuff, like what's the point of all this, why were we here, on this street, in this moment. I told her I wasn't sure about God anymore. She said she felt the same but was still trying to keep her mind open about everything.
We talked about the kids from the neighborhood, like Colton and Jared, the ones we grew up with but somehow grew apart from. And all our inside jokes, the ones nobody else could get. Through it all, we kept walking — past midnight, past our old haunts, past the versions of ourselves we were leaving behind.
By the time the sky started to turn a little lighter, signaling morning was on its way, we'd run out of words. Felt like we'd said everything that needed saying. Walking back home, there was this feeling of… I don't know, lightness? Like putting down something heavy you didn't know you were carrying.
Now, it's different. College, life, it all moves fast. We don't talk as much — my fault really, missed calls, unanswered texts. But that night, it changed things. Made me realize how rare it is to find someone who lets you just be you. Changed how I walked into my new life, carrying that feeling with me.
In a way, I guess we all move on, get caught up in our new worlds. But some walks, some talks, they stick with you. They shape you in ways you don't expect. That walk with Sarah, it's one of those. Even if we're not calling every day, even if life's taken us in different directions, that night is a reminder. A reminder of who I was, who she was to me, and how, no matter where we go, we carried a piece of that time, that conversation, into everything that came after.
It's not about clinging to the past, but about understanding how it shapes us, pushes us forward, teaches us to be a little kinder, a little more understanding, a little more us. That's what stays, long after the summer ends.