The Summer We Pretended to Be Brave

We were sixteen and thought the world was ending every other week.

That summer, the heat was relentless — the kind that melted the horizon into a soft blur. Our small town buzzed with cicadas and gossip, and every day felt both endless and already slipping away.

Maya had just broken up with her first boyfriend. Jonah had bleached his hair blue with drugstore dye. I had just finished my sophomore year, feeling both too old and not nearly old enough.

We were three kids trying to figure out what being alive actually meant.

One night, sitting on the hood of Jonah’s beat-up car, we made a list.

“Things to do before school ruins us again,” Maya said, chewing the end of her pen.

Jonah grinned. “Like a bucket list for emotionally unstable teenagers.”

“Exactly.”

We wrote:

Sneak onto the roof of the old movie theater.

Swim in the lake at midnight.

Tell the truth to someone who deserves it.

Drive with no destination.

Do something that scares us.

It felt important — like writing a spell that might save us from turning into the kind of adults who forget how to dream.

The first thing we did was the roof. It was easier than we thought. Jonah boosted me up, then Maya, laughing so hard we nearly fell. From up there, the town looked like a snow globe someone had forgotten to shake — quiet, shimmering, unreal.

We lay there in silence, the sky a velvet blur of stars. Jonah played “Landslide” on his phone, the volume barely a whisper. Halfway through the song, none of us spoke. It was like we’d stumbled into a moment too fragile to name.

I remember thinking: This is it. This is what being young feels like. Not the parties, not the chaos — just this stillness, this suspended second before everything changes.

We didn’t finish the list in order. Life never lets you do things neatly.

The lake came later — August, the air heavy with the promise of school creeping back in. We parked miles away and walked barefoot through tall grass, laughing at every snapping twig like we were twelve again. The water was freezing, shocking, alive.

Maya screamed when she jumped in. Jonah cursed so loud a bird flew off the dock. I stood there for a second, heart racing, and then dove. The cold hit me like a reset button. When I surfaced, gasping and laughing, I felt something electric. Maybe courage. Maybe peace.

For a moment, under the moonlight, we were infinite.

We never got to number three. Maya moved away before the summer ended. Jonah got a job in another city. By September, we’d all become names in different time zones, liking each other’s posts but rarely speaking.

One rainy afternoon years later, I found the list tucked inside an old notebook. The ink was smudged, the paper folded, but it was still there — proof of who we were.

I sat on my apartment floor and traced the words. For a second, I could smell the lake again. Hear Jonah’s bad singing. See Maya’s hair whipping in the wind on that roof.

I thought about how we’d promised to be brave — and how, in our own imperfect ways, maybe we were. We jumped when we were scared. We spoke when our voices shook. We loved like time wasn’t real.

I didn’t cross anything off. I didn’t need to. Some promises aren’t meant to be completed — only remembered.

That summer, we thought bravery meant being loud, wild, reckless. Now I know it was quieter than that. It was showing up. Staying honest. Holding on when you wanted to let go.

Every now and then, when I drive past that old theater or hear “Landslide” on the radio, I smile.

Because for one summer, three lost kids believed they could stop the world from spinning — and for a little while, we almost did.