It was just the four of us, and it had been that way since before i could remember. S, T, M, and P, that would be me. We grew up in a little hinky dink town called Hadley. A town where people only come to visit if they’re going to Umass graduation, or to leaf peep (aka look at the leaves as they change color), sounds fun doesn’t it. Hadley is the type of town, where the biggest things that happens all year long is asparagus season ends, and corn season begins. Almost everyone who lives here has a dream of getting out, but no one ever does. Just like our parents before us, we were destined to be born, live, and die, here in Hadley, but we changed the wheels of fate. And this here, is the story of how we spent our final summer together.

Let me start off by giving you some background information here.

I was sitting at the farm stand located on 136 East Street, the same place I had been sitting at for the last 2 summers. It was a boring job, but it paid good money. Peter (aka Skippy), my boss, was pretty ornery and i was pretty bored, so I decided to call up one of my closest friends, S.

“Hey S it’s P”, I half said half sighed in boredom. “Hey what are you up to?”, she said in response “Let me guess bored as always at the stand”. “Hey how did you ever guess” I said, “Am I really that transparent”. “No not at all, so do you want me to come down and keep you company?”, S snickered. See S was the kind of friend who would do almost anything for you, she would give you the shirt off her back if you needed it. “Well only if you want to, I won’t make you come”, I said longingly. “Nah, it”s okay, be their in ten minutes”, she said.

Ten minutes later it came as a surprise to see S peddling her way over. “okay, S why did you ride your bike down here? You have a car, or did u forget?”, I said, thinking she may have forgotten about the car she’d gotten as a graduation present. S may have been one of the top ranked students in our class, but to put it nicely, she could be a major ditz. “Ya I know I have a car dumb a**, but it’s literally running on fumes, so I left it in the garage.” S said sarcastically. “Well miss thing I have something to tell you, that will cheer you up for sure”, I said intriguingly.

The four of us knew that what we had together wasn’t going to last much longer. We were all headed in separate directions, all in which to fulfill our dreams.

S was headed to Wesleyan in Connecticut, where she planned to be pre-med. When S was 15 her grandfather, who had been diagnosed with cancer many years before passed away. It was probably one of the hardest things she would ever go through, but it only made her stronger as a person, and more dedicated to her studies.

Then there was M. She was leaving us to go to New York. Ever since she was 5 years old, she had wanted to become a veterinarian specializing in Horses, so she was going to Cornell. From the viewpoint of those who didn’t know us the way we knew each other, it seemed as if it was a miracle that M got into college at all, not to mention a top ranked school, but the three of us, S, T, and I knew a different M than the people in town knew. Yes, she may have been a major party animal, who loved to drink, hook up with guys, and go mudding late at night, but we just knew her as a free spirited girl. She loved driving around town, with the windows rolled down, listening to country music. She was actually pretty smart, but her parties tended to get in the way of her studies. Even though her grades could have been better, she got really good SAT scores, and got into almost all of the schools she applied to.

Then there is T, or as I like to call her M’s partner in crime. T was faced with a rather hard life. At the age of 7, her father died in a house fire, leaving her mother a single parent of 2 with no place to call home. T was crushed and to this day she still isn’t completely over her father’s death. Being faced with so much sorrow and pain in her life, you would think she would never be able to go on, but she did the exact opposite. When she pulls out of her driveway at the end of the summer she’ll be heading towards Elm’s College in Massachusetts, to become a maternity nurse.

Finally there’s me. I’m the dreamer of the four of us. When M and T were out at a party,  I was home writing in my journal. Unlike M, I hadn’t realized my dream early in life. In fact, when I was younger I thought I was destined to become a singer. Then in the beginning of 9th grade, when I got to write my first creative writing piece, I knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I would become a journalist. That day when I got home from school, I went online and looked up schools with great journalism programs. Their was a large amount, including Syracuse, Columbia, and Brown, but I knew where I wanted to go right after I read about the Whiffenpoofs. I would be a Yale girl all the way. So after doing some of the best studying known to man and participating in as many extracurricular activities as possible I actually got in. That acceptance letter was my golden ticket, I would get to fulfill my dream and major in Journalism like I always wanted to.

Because we knew we didn’t have much time left together I came up with a plan to keep us together the whole summer. Don’t all dreamers do that? Over the many years we had known each other, and the many changes we all went threw, their was one thing that stayed constant. Every summer, we all went to the beach with our families, just never together. So my plan was simple. Instead of going to the beach for a week with our parents (what a fun way to spend the summer before going off to college), we would go to the beach for a month with each other.The four of us had worked for years so we could afford a beach house. It might not have been so practical, now thinking back on it, to spend a lot of money the summer before going away to college, but it was an attempt to keep a lifelong friendship together, and that’s priceless.

After work that day S can home with me. We went swimming in the pool and tried to think of a way to tell M and T about the plan. We logged onto my facebook and T was logged on along with M.

Me: Hey guys I’m so glad you were signed on tonight. S is at my house and we have an idea we want to run by you.

M: Hey what now?

T: Ya whats the news

Me: Well here it goes, you know how we are going to colleges in different parts of New England and we will like barely see each other ever again?

M: P calm down we r going to c eachother again you don’t need to worry

T: No M, P is right. S is going to medical school and she’ll be in school way longer than 4 yrs and you are gonna be in school for a long time too. P is gonna go off to NY and forget all about us and I’m gonna be stuck delivering babies in a hospital! OMG we will like never see each other ever again. : (

M: T snap out of it and P continue on (you see what you started)

Me: anyways back to what I was saying before well my parents already agreed to it and so did S’s.

M: and…

Me: Well we found this absolutely gorgeous beach house in Misquamicutt, RI and the woman heard how we were going off to college in the fall and she ended up having some major flashback to her high school yrs. So she talked my ear off for a good 20 minutes about that and then she said that she knew what it was like and she offered to let us rent it for $1000 for the whole month. And that’s dirt cheap especially since the utilities are included. Houses usually go for a couple grand more a month down there. So we would all pay $250 and then the lady said that her family owned some fancy restaurant across the street from the house and they need waitresses for the summer. We could make enough money for the house plus extra for spending money our fresh yr. And FYI the beach is a total party past 10.

M: ok you had me at party, but idk if the rents will let me go

Me: oh ya that could be a problem just suck up and give an inocent smile and they’ll let you (maybe a little begging required)

Me: if little church girl S convinced her parents to let her, so will yours

T: I’m already dieing in anticipation! What about you M?

M: sure why not sun and beach guys? sounds sweet

Me: ok ttyl girlies bye

So it was set, maybe not in stone, but M could be pretty convincing so we figured she could convince her parents to let her go. Right after I logged off S and I just remained silent for a minute. We couldn’t believe it. July couldn’t have come soon enough.

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More to Come . . .