This is it. At last. The first rite of passage to manhood. All the stuff the kids in junior high had been talking about incessantly.

I close my eyes, purse my lips and lean forward. I’m guessing Jennifer is, too, so it must be pure luck if our lips meet before our foreheads do. I’m caught off-guard by the sweet scent of cherry Kool-Aid on her breath.

It is not meant to be. Out of the fog and haze embroiling our brains in that heady moment, I make out Jennifer’s name being called. It’s not from her mother but the whiny voice of Janay, her younger sister. Maybe the little imp wants to ruin her sister’s moment of truth.

I lean back and open my eyes. I realize I’m sweating, but Jennifer is embarrassed. She doesn’t say anything, just puts her glasses back on and runs off. Guess I won’t ever get kissed now, I tell myself with a deep sigh.

I guess I’d better get back to the party before I am missed and adults begin to wonder. I’m not that far away from the backyard, just on the other side of the trailer in the driveway, in fact, but it is next to a copse of trees and obscured in the shadows thrown by the fast-approaching dusk.

I am at my family’s summer home on Cape Cod. It’s off a small street in the town of Halifax, Massachusetts. We’ve come here for summer vacation since 1977 – me, my twin brother, my older brother and my three stepsisters. 

The cookout is an annual end-of-summer thing, except it is not close to the end of summer this time. All of my parents’ friends are here, along with a few relatives and some friends of my stepsisters. There is plenty of barbecued chicken and potato salad. And beer. Always lots of beer. I swear my family keeps Anheuser-Busch and Schlitz in business.

There is laughter and volleyball on the front lawn. Someone is down the hill, at the garage door playing lawn darts or Jarts, as the box called them. According to the government, it’s now an “adult” game but we kids still play it. 

Then again, every time I see an adult playing lawn darts, he has a beer in one hand. That always works when one is holding an iron horseshoe or pointy Jart. I could probably sue Schlitz for the big purple bruise I got on my left leg last summer when Uncle Horace missed the horseshoe spike by ten feet.

I walk out to the street. It is quiet, which is good for reflecting. Yeah, okay, so I’m fifteen but I have reason to be sentimental. This is going to be my last summer here in this house in Halifax, by the Cape, at least for the foreseeable future. Dad’s company had just opened a new plant in Kent, Washington. We’d be moving there in a week, so my twin brother and I could get registered for school.

My older brother Derrick was already in college and just home for the summer. Two of my stepsisters – Jean and Celeste – were also adults. Sandy was about to enter her senior year in high school, so it was decided she would stay with her sisters in the house until she graduates. Then, the house would be sold. Kent, Washington was just too far away (and too expensive) to fly back to Cape Cod.

It had been a fun ride while it lasted. I remember all the games of baseball we played down here in Halifax. There would only be three or four of us neighborhood kids but we improvised. The batter was also the catcher, but the pitcher was also the ump, so we could still strike out. One guy patrolled the entire outfield where the wall was either the fence across the street or a passing car. As you can guess we hit a lot of home runs, including one that went from the driver's side of a passing car and out through the passenger window. The driver swerved, hit the brakes but, to our relief, kept on driving.

If we didn’t play ball, we’d ride our bikes all around the neighborhood but we had our limits. My brother Derrick broke that imaginary boundary line once and rode all the way to Kingston, but got lost in the dark. In Massachusetts, Halifax and Kingston are the "sticks." My dad had to go find him and there was hell to pay.

My twin brother Martin and I never ventured far past the old railroad bridge after that. Besides, we had the railroad. Oh, how I remember all the pennies we wasted by stacking them on the tracks and letting the freight trains fuse them together. 

I once did that trick with six quarters but it backfired on me later when the ice cream truck came by and I didn’t have enough money for a popsicle. 

If we were lucky, we’d ride up Brandeis Circle, cut through the woods and go up to Silver Lake. That was the source of the water supply for the entire area and it was illegal to swim there, for obvious reasons. Every now and then, though, we boys would catch a glimpse of Marsha and Roberta, two girls who lived on the same street as my summer home, as they smoked cigarettes and skinny-dipped. Marsha was the bombshell and Roberta was, basically, Mutt to Marsha’s Jeff or Costello to Marsha’s Abbott but fifteen-year old boys don’t care.

I know I didn’t care. Of course, I didn’t have a shot at Marsha (none of us did) but Roberta was right next door. I think she liked me too, but she was white and I was black. That might fly in another decade or so, but this is 1982 and I still faced the status quo (one of those new words I learned in school, but didn't know how to use in a sentence until now). In a different era, Roberta might have been my first kiss.

That’s life, right? It doesn't listen to what kids say nor does it care. 

Like at this moment.  thought I would grow to adulthood in Massachusetts. Graduate from Medford High School. Take Leslie or Gwendolyn or Monique or Lisa or Julie to the prom. 

This sudden change eats at me. I am leaving all my friends, not just my summer friends in Halifax, but all my classmates back home in Medford. I just finished my freshman year in high school and now I may never see my friends again.

It doesn’t seem fair. It is like my innocence has been taken away. The world has intruded on my childhood.

I hear footsteps on the gravel of the driveway and turn to see my twin brother running up. He’s got a look on his face and I think maybe he knows about my attempted kiss with Jennifer. Instead, though, he says it’s almost time.

Oh man, I almost forgot. The highlight of the evening. I get to the backyard just as the adults gather around the picnic table. They make room for the kids to get up closer.

Strung across the trees in the backyard, from the edge of the back of the house to the woods twenty feet away, there are strands of lights, you know, the kind they sell at True Value or Ace, next to those giant torches that are supposed to keep the mosquitoes away or guide planes in for landings on the street. Of course, we don't use the torches because the appropriately-named Off spray is enough to keep even the dogs away.

Anyway, the strings give us light for the barbecue to continue because the outside lights on the house don't even illuminate the driveway. However, on each line, there are three mason jars hung. I know because my brothers and I punched the holes in the lids to put the string through so my father could get up on the ladder and hang them. Unfortunately, the sharp edges of the holes kept cutting the string, so we had to wrap the string around the neck, just under the lid and hope the string did not slip off from the weight of the glass jar.

Inside each jar, we put a handful of fireflies. My dad cuts off the string lights, while one of my stepsisters turns off the outside lights. It’s pitch black, save for the partial moonlight.

Now, we don’t control Mother Nature but sometimes this effect works, sometimes, it doesn’t. It didn’t last summer. I hope it will this year because it will be my last year for it.

As if on cue, the fireflies begin to light up. Some flash; others burn for a while. Most do their little dances, maybe to attract a mate, maybe to look for a way out of those jars.

The effect is magnificent. The glow of one firefly isn’t much but a handful in each jar light up the backyard like a miniature fireworks display. The younger kids gush and guffaw, while their parents hug them and point to the different kinds of light given off. 

For a short while, all is right with the world. Everyone is innocent. Kent, Washington is a million miles away.

Then, it’s over. The fireflies have had enough of playing for the crowd. The unnatural lights come back on and reality comes crashing back down. My father and older brother get ladders to take the jars down. We have enough so each family with children can keep one. My brother hands our jar to me and I go back to the other side of the trailer. I hope maybe the pitch blackness there will get the fireflies to dance again.

That’s when a figure steps out of the darkness. Scares the bejeezus out of me, but it’s Roberta, from next door. I’m surprised to see her, to say the least. My family is friendly enough toward Roberta’s but they’re a conservative Republican family and blacks in Massachusetts tend to lean Democrat. I could have been wrong but Roberta’s parents barely said more than hello to us every summer.

She says hello to me and then tells me to hold the fireflies above my head. I think maybe that will get the flies to dance but when I look down at Roberta again, she steps forward and plants a real kiss on my lips. It is long and hard, pushing me back against the side of the trailer.

I feel warm inside and I don’t want the kiss to end. I have heard that Roberta was “easy” and I think my stepsisters said Roberta was a girl who “put out” to be more popular than Marsha. I can only guess at what they meant and, with each passing second of the kiss, I think I get worldlier.

We finally break for air and I need some badly. Roberta looks impressed and then has to remind me to bring the mason jar back down. She smiles coyly and says that, if I wasn’t moving away, who knows what might have happened between us. 

The way my body feels, I know what she means. Alas, some things will never be. Roberta goes back into the copse to find her way back to her house, leaving me confused and happy at the same time. 

I step away from the trailer and let the summer night breeze wash over me. The barbecue is breaking up and reality and the world return. The guests are leaving and the cleanup has begun.

Jennifer’s parents will stay, heading inside to play cards and drink more beer. Man, the adults could put away some beer. And whiskey. And gin mixed with that awful club soda I once mistook for ginger ale. 

Derrick will join them now that he is an adult, though he will be disappointed when he only gets a sip of whiskey watered down with a lot of ice, like they do to you at the movie theater with the sodas. My twin and I and Jennifer and Janay will go down to the basement to play some Atari or watch Creature Feature on Channel 56. In a little bit, we will all get a big bowl of ice cream and settle in for the evening.

That is our usual way to end the night during our summers in Halifax. Tonight, though, I try to infuse the memories of tonight deep into my brain. They'll have to last for a long time. Tomorrow, we will head back home to our regular house in Medford, to help finish packing up the place before the movers come at the end of next week.

Janay and Gary play Asteroids. Jennifer makes goo-goo eyes at me. I think she still wants that kiss.

As I eat my ice cream, I notice a light to my left. It is coming from the old bar on the other side of the basement our dad turned into a big room for his sons. It is from the mason jar I put there, on the top. 

The fireflies are dancing again. 

I smile. 

If only for a few moments, I am innocent once again.