I hate summer

It was so hot that summer that the dog went nuts. She took to knocking over furniture for no reason. When it got dark, she would go out back and hunt fruit. You could see her out in the moonlight, pouncing on fallen apples like they were trying to go somewhere.

I was convinced, that summer, that eating salty food made you less thirsty. This is obviously bullshit, but my eleven year-old self took his own opinions very seriously, and tended to make sustained efforts to convince everyone else that they were correct. So there I was, sweating like some kind of Saint's relic in my second-hand Lakers jersey, eating salted peanuts, shell and all, while the dog knocked Aunt Betty out of the hammock and I wondered why nobody paid me any attention.

When it was September and the heat hadn't broke yet, my dad buried four whole chickens, bone in, at the four corners of the yard. He said the earth was angry. Couple days later it finally rained. Too late for the yard, though; it was just wet and dead. But I sat out in the rain anyway, burnt grass sharp and wet under my palms. The dog laid down on the porch as if nothing had even happened, and I thought to myself that maybe eating all those salty foods hadn't helped out after all, and that maybe if I never mentioned it again no one would ever remember anything I'd said about it.