That Summer

by Sarah Dessen

Everyone can reach back to one summer and lay a finger to it, finding the exact point when everything changed.

it was really over, I was home. It was a different world and I sat in the quiet of my room that night, wishing I was back in the sand, with sky and ocean so close, lost in the thick of it all.

“four weeks in Europe. It’s what you wanted to do in college but could never afford. Now you have the money, so why not go?”

Everything looks different when you’re older, not staring up at the world but down upon it.

You can’t love anyone that way more than once in a lifetime. It’s too hard and it hurts too much when it ends. The first boy is always the hardest to get over, Haven. It’s just the way the world works.”