August Countdown

Jasper woke up on Monday morning and looked at his calendar. Someone had circled next Monday in red marker — the first day of school. He counted the days in between.

Seven. That was it. Seven days left of summer.

He sat up in bed and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper from under his pillow. It was his Summer Fun List, the one he'd written way back in June when the days felt like they would stretch on forever. Back then, summer had seemed as big as the ocean.

He smoothed the paper out on his knee and read it.

Build a fort in the woods. Catch a frog. Make a comic book. Camp in the backyard. Have a lemonade stand. Teach Biscuit a trick. Find a fossil.

Not a single thing was crossed off. Not one.

"Seven days," Jasper whispered. "Seven things. One a day."

He jumped out of bed, grabbed his sneakers, and didn't even tie them.

Monday: Build a fort in the woods.

Jasper dragged sticks and branches to the edge of the trees behind his house. He worked all morning, leaning long pieces against the big oak, weaving smaller ones through the gaps. By lunchtime he was sweaty and his arms were scratched and his fort was... well, it was leaning. A lot. He stepped back to look at it, and one whole wall slid down like a sleepy dog.

He rebuilt it. It fell again.

He rebuilt it again, and this time he propped a rock against the bottom, and it held — mostly.

"Good enough!" he declared. He sat inside for exactly ninety seconds before a stick poked him in the ear.

He crossed it off the list anyway.

Tuesday: Catch a frog.

Jasper spent the entire morning at the pond behind Mr. Hendrix's yard, crouching so still that his legs went tingly. He saw three frogs. He lunged at all three. He caught zero frogs. What he did catch was a handful of mud, a soggy leaf, and a very unhappy beetle.

On his eleventh try, a tiny green frog — no bigger than a grape — landed right on his shoe, like it had simply decided to be caught.

"Ha!" Jasper said.

He held it gently and looked at its gold eyes, and it looked back at him like it was not one bit impressed. He set it down by the water and it disappeared with a ploop.

Crossed off.

Wednesday: Make a comic book.

This was the one Jasper had been most excited about back in June. He'd imagined a whole superhero — Captain Turbo, with rocket boots and a pet falcon. He'd planned twelve pages, full color, with a villain and everything.

He sat at the kitchen table with his markers and got to work. But drawing Captain Turbo's face took forty-five minutes, and it still looked more like a potato with eyes. The falcon looked like a cloud. The villain looked like a different potato.

By dinnertime, Jasper had finished three pages instead of twelve, and the story ended right in the middle of a sentence: "Captain Turbo flew toward the—"

He stared at it. He wanted to feel disappointed, but actually... the three pages were kind of funny. The potato hero was growing on him.

Crossed off. Sort of.

Thursday: Camp in the backyard.

Jasper's dad helped him set up the tent, and Jasper arranged his sleeping bag, a flashlight, two granola bars, and Biscuit the dog, who took up most of the tent and smelled like warm corn chips.

At first it was perfect. The stars were out. A cricket was chirping. Jasper felt like a real adventurer.

Then he heard a rustling.

Then a louder rustling.

Then Biscuit growled at something Jasper couldn't see, and that was enough. Jasper grabbed his sleeping bag, his flashlight, his granola bars, and his corn-chip dog, and they all went inside and slept on the living room floor.

"It still counts," he told Biscuit. "We started outside."

Biscuit yawned so wide his tongue curled.

Friday: Lemonade stand.

Jasper made a sign: JASPER'S LEMONADE — 50 CENTS — VERY LEMONY. He squeezed eleven lemons. He added sugar. He added water. He set up a table at the end of the driveway and waited.

His first customer was Mrs. Parekh from next door. She took one sip, and her whole face puckered up like she'd bitten into something electric.

"That is..." she said, "...very lemony."

Jasper added more sugar. His second customer was his dad, who didn't really count but paid a whole dollar. His third customer was a jogger who drank the entire cup without stopping and said, "Kid, I needed that."

Total earnings: three dollars and fifty cents. Total lemons sacrificed: eleven. Jasper felt like a business legend.

Crossed off.

Saturday: Teach Biscuit a trick.

This one should have been easy. Biscuit was a smart dog. He already knew sit and stay and lie down and where's your ball?

Jasper tried to teach him shake.

Biscuit stared at him.

Jasper held a treat in front of Biscuit's paw and said, "Shake!" in his most encouraging voice.

Biscuit ate the treat without moving his paw even slightly.

They tried for an hour. Biscuit learned nothing new. But Jasper did notice that whenever he laughed, Biscuit's tail wagged so hard his whole body wiggled. And whenever Jasper flopped on the grass in defeat, Biscuit lay down right next to him and rested his chin on Jasper's arm.

"You already know the best trick," Jasper said, scratching Biscuit's ears.

He crossed it off.

Sunday: Find a fossil.

The last day.

Jasper went to the rocky creek at the edge of the park, the one his neighbor Marcus said was full of ancient things. He turned over stones. He dug in the clay bank with a stick. He examined approximately one hundred rocks and found approximately zero fossils.

The afternoon stretched on. The sun sank low. Jasper sat on a flat rock by the water and looked at his list. Everything was crossed off now — sort of — but nothing had gone the way he'd imagined back in June. The fort fell down. The comic book was three pages of potatoes. He'd slept inside. The frog had caught him. And he was definitely not holding a fossil.

He turned one last rock over in his hand, ready to toss it in the water.

And there, pressed into the flat side like a thumbprint — a tiny spiral. A shell shape, curled tight, printed in stone a million years ago.

Jasper held it up to the fading light. It was small. It was not the giant dinosaur bone he'd dreamed about in June.

But it was real. And it was his.

He put it in his pocket and walked home.

That night, Jasper sat on his bed and looked at the list one more time. It was wrinkled, mud-stained, and had a lemonade splotch in the corner. Every line was crossed off in a different color because he kept losing his markers.

None of it had been perfect. The summer hadn't been what he'd planned — not the seven days, and not the seventy days before them, either.

But when he closed his eyes, he could feel the frog's tiny cold feet on his shoe. He could hear the cricket outside the tent. He could see Mrs. Parekh's puckered-up face and Captain Turbo's potato head and Biscuit's whole body wiggling with joy.

Jasper folded the list carefully and put it in his desk drawer. Then he pulled out a fresh piece of paper.

At the top, he wrote: STUFF TO DO THIS FALL.

The list was already long before he turned off the light.