text: Regret Vera looked at me. School was just out and we had agreed to go to her house after school. Our English teacher had given us an assignment: write a two-page story about a strong feeling you've had this school year. Both her and I had a hard time coming up with a topic, so we had agreed to sit together and write our stories. “Let’s go!”, Vera said. When we came out of the school building, the sun was shining. For the last couple of days or so, it had already been cold outside, autumn was clearly coming. But today, it was bright outside and pretty warm. We started walking towards Vera’s house. She lives half an hour away from school, outside our village. We walked past the lake. There were tiny waves on the lake that made the sunlight dance in a million miniature suns. There was the small beach and the jetty where we had spent so many days during the summer. “I want to sit on the jetty”, Vera said. That was a great idea. I was feeling quite hot already, and we would have our feet in the water while discussing what we would write about. We sat down and took off our shoes. “Cooolllld...!”, I yelled when I dipped my toes. Vera laughed. After a while, it just felt good. We talked about many things, but English class wasn’t one of them. The sun was still shining. A woman with two children had arrived at the little beach at the far end of the jetty. The children started to play on the beach, and I heard their mother raise her voice and say “stay in the shade!”. A couple in their 30s had laid down on the other side of the jetty and were tanning. The man had taken off his shirt, and the woman was wearing a bikini, or? no, she was actually just in her underwear. This day had surprised everyone with it’s summeriness. “Let’s take a swim!”, Vera suddenly said. “Ha ha, yes, let’s!” I said, thinking she was joking. “I’m serious!” “But...” “Yes, we don’t have our bathing suits. But, noone will see us or even care! We just jump in quickly!” “OK, but...” “Yes!”, she exclaimed, “I knew you were up for it!” And before I could say anything else, she started unbuttoning her jeans. I fumbled a bit with my dress. Vera was already pulling her jeans off her legs with great force. Her wet feet were sticking to the inside. I was touching some of the buttons on my dress. “It’s going to to feel so wonderful in this heat!” Vera said while folding up her jeans. She put them down neatly next to her shoes and socks. I looked at the mother and her children. They were digging a hole and filling it with water from the lake. “Not in the sun!” the mother shouted. I looked at the tanning couple. They were on their backs with their eyes closed and softly talking with each other. What if someone else came? I was clenching the buttons of my dress. Vera had taken off her top and was undoing her bra. I stared at her. “I am going to go in, what are you waiting for?” she laughed. Vera now stood on the edge, with her back towards me, her arms stretched upwards. She was breathing in and out deeply, preparing for the cold rush that would come when she would enter the water. I saw the freckles that started in her neck and went down all the way towards her lower back. The pattern looked beautifully symmetrical. Her skin was browned by many days of sun. She had no tanlines to speak of. I could see the fine detailed imprint that the underwear she had just worn had left on her body. It somehow reminded me of the emperor’s new clothes. She looked back at me. “The last one in is a rotten herring!”, she yelled, lifted up her arms and dove in the water. She made a perfect curve. Her feet were slightly apart when they disappeared into the water. A few seconds later she came back up. She swam back to where I was sitting and looked up at me. “Are you not coming?” she asked, using her normal voice. “That’s okay”, some seconds later. She swam away. I watched her moving in the water. The sunlight was still dancing on the waves, although now the pattern was different, from this close to the water. I closed my eyes and could almost feel how being in the cold water must feel for Vera, how the rush of just jumping in and not worrying about anything must feel for her. Vera swam to the wooden platform with the jumping tower that was floating in the water a small distance away, where the water was deeper. She climbed onto the platform and then to the top of the tower. “Geronimo!” she shouted when she let herself fall down all the way into the water. I watched. I saw the tanning couple were sitting up and were looking at Vera too, with smiles on their faces. I was still holding a part of my dress in one hand when Vera came back and climbed the steps back on to the jetty. She sat down next to me and brushed the water off her body with her hands. “The water was lovely!” she said. This time only to inform me, the tone of voice she had used earlier to try to convince me was gone. My window of opportunity was gone too. “Let me just dry up in the sun and then we go home, okay?” When we arrived at Vera’s house, her mother was wondering where we had been. She saw Vera’s wet hair and laughed, “okay, I thought so!”. She made lemonade for us and served cookies. We didn’t really make much progress with the story writing. When dinner time came, I said I had to go home and went outside. I started walking back to the village. It had become cloudy and it was a bit chilly in the air. I pulled my jacket out of my bag and put it on. When I walked by the lake, the water looked grey and uninviting. Summer was definitely over.