We Were the Summer

We were sixteen and seventeen, barefoot girls chasing heat through sunburnt fields and quiet lanes that only we knew. Anna always had a camera, old and heavy, the kind that clicked loud and smelled like dust and memory. We called ourselves artists, drinking sky with our eyes, finding poems in the cracks of pavement and fenceposts. That day, the light was gold, melting over the long grass like honey. We wandered too far. No path, just instinct, following the hum of a world that felt endless. She wanted a photo on the edge of the railway bridge, arms out like wings, wind tangling her dress. I laughed. I teased. I turned my head. And then — a sound too large for the world. The train. A scream swallowed by steel. Time collapsed into metal and air and the soft thud of something falling. I ran to where she had stood. Only the camera remained, cracked open, the film spilling out like a wound. Afterwards, they said it was an accident. That she didn’t see it coming. That it was no one’s fault. But I had turned away. I, who should have seen. I, who knew that sound a half-second too late. Now I carry summer like a burden, the sun a cruel reminder. Every photo I take is missing her shadow. Even now, years and years on, I cannot cross a railway bridge without feeling my hands shake. Some things are too sharp to forget. Some girls are made of light and leave you in the dark.