On the last day of the sixth grade I spent the afternoon with a group of girls, among us some very popular members of our class. We decided to ditch out on the myriad pool parties held in celebration of our newfangled freedom and to indulge in the expensive ($5!) summer treat of moviegoing. We saw “Can’t Hardly Wait,” which held a certain poignancy for our pre-teen selves. It may have been the perfect embrace of the change of seasons, an insouciant rejection of conviviality in favor of the solitude, not loneliness, of summer. The memory reminds me of the sweet smell of cedar heated by the sun, or maybe the other way around.