'It's not like we had a ton of them in the Hudson River,' I said, nudging the accelerator. The closer we got to Eden Manor, the wider my grin spread. We were back in the upper peninsula of Michigan and surrounded by trees taller than most buildings. 'I can't believe you'd never swum with dolphins before,' said James as I drove down a rough dirt road that didn't see much use. The one after my first six months with Henry, however, blew every single summer my classmates ever had out of the water. After she got sick, my summers were spent in the hospital with her, holding her hair back as the chemo attacked her system or flipping through the television channels looking for something to watch.

On her days off we spent our afternoons in Central Park soaking up the sun. My mother worked as a florist, and because most of her income went to paying for that school, we never left New York City. By the time we reached high school, the same glitzy stories got told over and over again: escapades in Paris with supermodels, all-night parties on the beaches in the Bahamas with rock stars-every student vied for attention with exploits that got wilder every year.īut my story was always the same. When I was a kid, each fall my teachers had the class write and present one of those horrible 'What I Did Last Summer' essays, complete with pictures and funny anecdotes designed to make a classroom full of bored students pay attention.Įach year I sat and listened as my classmates in my New York City preparatory school talked about how they'd spent the summers in the Hamptons or in Florida or in Europe with their rich parents, or au pairs, or as we grew older, boyfriends and girlfriends.

Goddess Interrupted by Aimee Carter