last summer//Stuart Pennebaker

The swimming pool had become the blue rectangle around which Molly and L’s summer-world revolved. It had taken almost six months for the builder their parents hired to excavate the ground, almost twice as long as promised. It rained a lot that winter, plus there were some roots to get out, then he had to lay the cement, apply the various chemicals that would keep the swimming pool in the ground, plus some other stuff that must have been really complicated given how much it made their parents yell at each other, but just in time for June, the swimming pool was filled, and once the pool was full of cool blue water, Molly and L. rarely left their backyard. Their own oasis.

L was floating on their back while Molly read a library book, stomach down, on a striped towel. Molly was always reading a library book. She liked the pool but what she really, truly loved was lying next to the pool, dipping a hand in when she grew warm, rolling her whole body in when she was really hot, then climbing out and starting the process over.

“Molls,” L demanded, “Play STAR with me.”

“I’m reading,” Molly said, her voice dreamy, distracted. “And it’s not that fun with just us two.”

L tossed a quarter into the deep end of the pool, dove in to retrieve it. It was tails up, heads down. No luck. L stayed at the bottom of the pool as long as they could, until black spots started to appear at the edges of their goggles. When L surface, Molly was sitting up. Their dad’s car had just turned in the driveway for lunch. He got out, walked into the house quickly, didn’t raise a hand in a wave or holler hey girls like he did when he was in a good mood.

“Fine, I’ll play,” Molly said. She got in the pool. Her back was significantly more tan than her front from all the laying around and reading she’d been doing. L did not point this out, that Molls looked like a little like a penguin with her pale stomach and brown shoulders.

Molly and L swam to opposite sides of the pool. L went first, shouted out the letters T and S and Molly shouted back Toy Story. And then they were off, racing to each other’s respective sides of the pool.

L beat Molly, by a hair, yelled STAR as loud as they could the moment their hand touched the opposite wall.

“Hey, you didn’t even ask for a hint,” L, said when they were done gasping for air. They were wearing swimming trunks and one of their Dad’s giant t-shirts that read UNIVERSITY of MISSISSIPPI and could still swim faster than their longer-legged sister. L was a child with skin the color of parchment paper, nearly translucent, and had learned the hard way the first week of the swimming pool that they needed to be as clothed as possible while in the sun.

“Too easy,” Molly said. “We watched Toy Story last weekend.”

L didn’t think it was that easy. They watched a bunch of movies, all the time. They squared off to play again, Molly hollering out TBWP for The Blair Witch Project, which L. had never even seen. Not fair, but L still beat Molly in the race part of the game. Molly was always better at guessing the letters of the movies and L always swam faster.

“You’re right,” L said, “This isn’t fun. I’m going to get a popsicle.”

“Wait,” Molly said. Their dad’s car clicked in the driveway, the engine settling in the hot summer air. A few blocks away a dog barked. “Let’s do another round. Or play something else.”

Just then, a wasp caught L.’s attention. It skipped over the pool’s surface, dipping down to the cool water, then making a sharp jag back up into the air, its skinny legs just barely brushing the surface. It looked almost magic, its delicate legs like a butterfly’s, despite the big stinger that looked black and violent against the blue water in the sharp afternoon sun.

L dunked their head underwater. When they came up for air, the wasp had flown too close to the water and was stuck. Its legs wriggled and its wings beat faster than L’s heartbeat, but the wasp still couldn’t rescue its insect body from the pool.

“Aw,” L said.

“What?” asked Molly.

“The wasp, look. It’s stuck.”

Molly swam to the shallow end, where the wasp was writhing. She cupped her hands and tried to scootch the wasp closer to the edge of the pool, but she pushed too hard and the water pulled the wasp under in an inadvertent, Molly-made typhoon.

“Shit,” Molly said. L laughed, a hiccup of a giggle. Molly almost never did anything bad.

Molly went under, used her hand to scoop up the wasp, dumped it onto the hot slip of concrete that bordered the blue pool, but it was too late, the wasp had been submerged for too long and its wings were ruined. Plus it had still somehow managed to sting Molly.

“Shit!” Molly said again. She jumped out of the pool and used the edge of her plastic bookmark to scrape the stinger out. Her face was red and tears were forming in the edges of her eyes.

“It’s okay,” L said, uncertainly. They were a little freaked by their usually placid, patient sister getting all worked up.

“Goddammit!” Molly said. “I hate being out here all day! I’m so bored!” She crouched down and put her head between her legs. L could see their sister’s back shaking. The wasp must have really gotten her, L thought.

“Well, Molly, lemme see it,” L said. “I saw on TV you can suck the venom out of a bite.”

“No,” Molly said, but L swam over to Molly anyway, climbed out. By the time L got there, Molly had stopped crying and was sitting on her towel, in her usual station on the pavement. The back screen door slammed open, interrupting L, who had just opened their mouth to tell Molly they were going to go the fridge in the garage and get a popsicle, but the look on Molly’s face, eyes wide, like the rabbits they scared out of the brush on the fringe of the backyard when they came out early in the morning, quieted L. Their dad didn’t speak. He had his overnight bag in hand, the third or fourth time this summer already. L sat down next to Molly, their back to the driveway where their dad was silently climbing into his shiny car, preparing to drive away from them. L held their sister’s hand, put her palm to their mouth, bit down gently, like they saw the guy on TV do. Then they put Molly’s hand down with a gentleness new to them, palm-up on the damp towel. Molly’s face was still red but drawn back now, like she’d gone somewhere else.

“Feel better?” L asked. Yes, Molly nodded. Yes.

L tried so hard to believe her.

Stuart Pennebaker (she/her) is the author of the novel Ghost Fish, forthcoming from Little, Brown (August 2025). She grew up in South Carolina and now lives in New York where she works and teaches for Gotham Writers Workshop.