SUMMER SEVENTEEN XXIII

START OF MY second week on Beechwood, we discover the roof of Cuddledown. It’s easy to climb up there; we just never did it before because it involves going through Aunt Bess’s bedroom window.

                The roof is cold as hell in the nighttime, but in the day there’s a great view of the island and the sea beyond it. I can see over the trees that cluster around Cuddledown to New Clairmont and its garden. I can even see into the house, which has floor-to-ceiling windows in many of the ground-floor rooms. You can see a bit of Red Gate, too, and the other direction, across to Windemere, then out to the bay.

                That first afternoon we spread out food on an old picnic blanket. We eat Portuguese sweet bread and runny cheeses in small wooden boxes. Berries in green cardboard. Cold bottles of fizzy lemonade.

                We resolve to come here every day. All summer. This roof is the best place in the world.

                “If I die,” I say as we look at the view, “I mean, when I die, throw my ashes in the water of the tiny beach. Then when you miss me, you can climb up here, look down, and think how awesome I was.”

                “Or we could go down and swim in you,” says Minho. “If we miss you really bad.”

                “Ew.”

                “You’re the one who wanted to be in the water of the tiny beach.”

                “I just meant, I love it here. It’d be a grand place to have my ashes.”

                “Yeah,” says Minho. “It would be.”

                Tiffany and Taeyeon have been silent, eating chocolate-covered hazelnuts out of a blue ceramic bowl. “This is a bad conversation,” Tiffany says.

                “It’s okay,” says Minho.

                “I don’t want my ashes here,” says Taeyeon.

                “Why not?” I ask. “We could all be together in the tiny beach.”

                “And the littles will swim in us!” yells Minho.

                “You’re grossing me out,” Tiffany snaps.

                “It’s not actually that different from all the times I’ve peed in there,” says Minho.

                “Gack.”

                “Oh, come on, everyone pees in there.”

                “I don’t,” says Tiffany.

                “Yes, you do,” he says. “If the tiny beach water isn’t made of pee now, after all these years of us peeing in it, a few ashes aren’t going to ruin it.”

                “Do you guys ever plan out your funeral?” I ask.

                “What do you mean?” Minho crinkles his nose.

                “Y’know, in Tom Sawyer, when everyone thinks Tom and Huck and what’s-his-name?”

                “Joe Harper,” says Taeyeon.

                “Yeah, they think Tom, Huck, and Joe Harper are dead. The boys go to their own funeral and hear all the nice memories the townspeople have of them. After I read that, I’ve always thought about my own funeral. Like, what kind of flowers and where I’d want my ashes. And the eulogy, too, saying how I was transcendentally awesome and won the Nobel Prize and the Olympics.”

                “What did you win the Olympics for?” asks Taeyeon.

                “Maybe handball.”

                “Is there handball in the Olympics?”

                “Yeah.”

                “Do you even play handball?”

                “Not yet.”

                “You better get started.”

                “Most people plan their weddings,” says Tiffany. “I used to plan mine.”

                “Guys don’t plan their weddings,” Johnny says.

                “If I married Nick, I’d have all yellow flowers,” Tiffany says. “Yellow flowers everywhere. And a spring yellow dress, like a normal wedding dress only yellow. And he would wear a yellow cummerbund.”

                “He would have to love you very, very much to wear a yellow cummerbund,” I tell her.

                “Yeah,” she says. “But Nick would do it.”

                “I’ll tell you what I don’t want at my funeral,” says Minho. “I don’t want a bunch of New York art-world types who don’t even know me standing around in a stupid- reception room.”

                “I don’t want religious people talking about a God I don’t believe in,” says Taeyeon.

                “Or a bunch of fake girls acting all sad and then putting lip gloss on in the bathroom and fixing their hair,” says Tiffany.

                “God,” I quip, “you make it sound like funerals aren’t any fun.”

                “Seriously, Jessi,” says Tiffany. “You should plan your wedding, not your funeral. Don’t be morbid.”

                “What if I never get married? What if I don’t wanna get married?”

                “Plan your book party, then. Or your fashion designing? Art opening?”

                “She’s winning the Nobel Prize and the Olympics,” says Taeyeon. “She can plan parties for those.”

                “Okay, fine,” I say. “Let’s plan my Olympic handball party. If  it’ll make you happy.”

                So we do. Chocolate handballs wrapped in blue fondant. A gold dress for me. Champagne flutes with tiny gold balls inside. We discuss whether people wear weird goggles for handball like they do for racquetball and decide that for purposes of our party, they do. All the guests will wear gold handball goggles for the duration.

                “Do you play on a handball team?” asks Taeyeon. “I mean, will there be a whole crew of Amazonian handball goddesses there, celebrating victory with you? Or did you win it by your lonesome?”

                “I have no idea.”

                “You really have to start educating yourself about this,” says Taeyeon.  “Or you’re never going to win the gold. We’ll have to rethink the whole party if you only get the silver.”

LIFE FEELS BEAUTIFUL that day.

                The four of us Liars, we have always been.

                We always will be.

                No matter what happens as we go to college, grow old, build lives for ourselves; no matter if Taeyeon and I are together or not. No matter where we go, we will always be able to line up on the roof of Cuddledown and gaze at the sea.

                The island is ours. Here, in some way, we are young forever.

A/N: It's been so long. And I'm sorry to say that I'll be in a hiatus for awhile. I'm going to further my studies :( Bye guys! Wait for me to come back and finish this story.