THE SUMMER I MET
CONRAD FISHER

The town of Cousins wouldn't be the same without the Fishers. A fact well known by revisiting tourists and even the locals. Susannah Fisher oozed flowers and sunshine, and her presence turned the small town from a dot lost on a map to a luxury getaway beach town.

I knew the Fishers like a paying customer knows the dolphins at SeaWorld. Through the glass, and from a distance. Not really at all.

I met Susannah before I met anyone else. Susannah liked to do her chemotherapy in Cousins. She always says the salt air heals her more than radiation.

I remember the first time I spoke to her. My mum had a chemotherapy session earlier that day and had left her wallet behind. I went back to the hospital to get it for her. The Hospital always struck a sense of fear into my mum, which she clouded with irritation so that the feeling wasn't as scary. So, I went for her.

Susannah was walking out of the room, her head wrapped in a colourful bandana with expressive florals and swirls. She smiled at me, one that made her face light up and the sparkle in her eyes dance. Her smile always did that to her face, no matter how small.

She asked me about my life and other mundane details. She asked about the colourful Spiderman shirt I wore and about any hobbies I had. She didn't ask about my left eye, the heterochromia paired with the white hairs littering my brow and lashes that always sparks instant conversation. She saw beyond the surface, the small details of personality.

From then on, I visited Susannah during her chemo. We talked, played Uno, and got extra pudding cups from the nurses. Once my Mum had finished her treatment, I'd stay behind just to wait for Susannah to show up.

The time I met Conrad Fisher was different to when I met Susannah.

My Mum had just finished her chemo, and we were leaving the Hospital. Visits with her were always tense, full of disappointment, and the years of absence between us pushed us in different directions. But how could I say no to her?

My Mum got angry about something I said or something someone else said. Usually, it was something small that would set her off, and then, everything good and coloured turned rotten and greyscale-- she could never see the good.

She got angry, accused me of not caring about the situation--about her cancer. I did what I always did, nodded and agreed. It was easier to let it play out than it was to try and change the narrative in her head.

She stormed off like she always did, and I let her. Regina Moore could only ever regulate herself alone. Maybe that's why she couldn't handle a child, the noises and lack of personal space too much for her.

So, I sat in the hall of the Cancer Ward, my feet scuffing against the polished floors.

He sat down a chair apart from me, his eyes focused on me as if he was trying to find my thoughts written on my sleeves. I turned to him, his eyes slightly wide behind his glasses as if he thought I was a statue.

"What?" I almost snapped at him, feeling my shoulders tense up as if I were my mother.

Don't get me wrong, Regina Moore was not a bad person, just a scared one.

He didn't say a word, holding his hand out with a pudding cup sat in his open palm. I stared at him for a second, blinking to make sure he wasn't a blurry figment of my imagination.

Silently, I reached over and took the pudding from his hand, sliding the wooden spoon off of his palm and into mine.

He sat next to me as I silently ate the pudding, extending it over to him for a spoonful of his own. It's like he knew I needed silent comfort, someone next to me to know that I was real without the burden of a conversation.

I went to Regina's place after that, feeling ready to talk to her and fix things. I found her sobbing, her apologies coming out broken as she begged me to forgive her for being the way she was. She wished she were more like Susannah, she said. She wishes she could pretend everything was fine and have small talk with me.

"You don't need to be more like her, Mum. You're not her, you're you. I love you," I reassured her, sitting on the floor of her cluttered lounge room. She always had trouble letting things go.

She had reached her hand out to stroke my face, her thumb brushing over the light patch of skin near my temple, "You don't know how much it means to me to hear you say that,"

Regina would never say it outright for fear of swaying my decisions, but me hanging out with Susannah bothered her more than it brought me comfort. So, I stepped back. I still smiled at Susannah in the hallway and had small conversations in passing, but I shifted my focus to Regina, on rebuilding.

I still saw Conrad, but never more than a wave or a few words exchanged as we waited for the old vending machine to work.

The summer Regina died, no one sat next to me in the hallways. The Fishers weren't in their holiday home, they were somewhere else, and I was here.

I barely knew Regina. She left when I was four and didn't return till I was closer to eleven. But, being without her felt like having one lung, one side of myself left. She was a complicated person, a person who reacted and saw things in black and white. She was my Mum, one half of me floating in the wind and sinking into the ocean.

The following Summer, the Fishers returned, and I was still behind the glass, looking in on the things that floated in clear waters and glided.

I ran into Conrad again a few weeks before summer. He came early to their beach house to help his Mum set up for his family and The Conklins, who were basically the Fishers' extended. He had matured since the last time I saw him, his head extending past mine as his glasses were nowhere to be seen. We were going in the same direction. So, we went together.

Conrad was deeper than I thought he would be. I could tell his brain worked harder than others, and he felt things more deeply than he'd ever show. His heart bled on his sleeve, and his eyes sometimes reflected that.

We exchanged numbers, both of us knowing without the need for confirmation that we understood a complex and big part of each other that normal people can't relate to. You can't fake the hole a parent with cancer leaves in you, you can't explain the shape and ridges either.

I smiled hard at my phone that night, my head at the end of my bed with fairylights spraying light on my face.

I asked him what happened to his glasses. He said he got bitten by a radioactive spider and didn't need them anymore. A reference to one of my childish cartoon baby tees, the one I was wearing when I met his Mother.

I remember my smile turning to confusion as Susannah's name appeared on my phone, a red and green button flashing in my face. Without hesitation, I clicked the green button and waited for her voice.

As she spoke, my heart clenched and my stomach twisted.

Her cancer was back, and she wasn't planning on treating it.

Why she confided in me? I don't know. Maybe, she needed to let it out, to know it's real. She needed someone familiar with the toxin to hear her and understand why she wouldn't continue. She knew that was me, that I had seen what it looks like when you waste the end of your life on hopeless treatment.

I didn't respond to Conrad for the rest of that night.

⤷ 🪸 ⋮ AUTHORS NOTE ༝

okay prologue is out who cheered?

now, like I said, this book won't follow the show entirely. hence, susannah getting treatment in the cousins hospital and conrad arriving to cousins early that summer along with her. so, if there's any detail that conflicts with the show and it's timeline, it's bc of this.

im hoping the updates for this aren't too irregular, hopefully i can establish more while the hype for tsitp is still around lmao

I was going to write in third person bc i feel like conrads insight is important to his character BUTTT miscommunication is a bitch and it makes the yearning grow fonder. but, dont worry, conrad will still have his tells.

anyways, lmk what you think !