Authors: Holly Chamberlin

Last Summer (16 page)

BOOK: Last Summer

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“M
y mom knows you were over at my house,” Rosie said.

Meg winced. The girls were on the sidewalk out front of their homes. Rosie, who had wheeled her bike out of the Pattersons’ garage, now got on it. It was newer than Meg’s and in better condition. Mr. Patterson saw to that.

“How did she know?” Meg asked. “Did you tell her?”

Rosie grinned. “No. Not until after she asked. She’s like Miss Marple.”

“Who?”

“I forgot you don’t read mysteries. Miss Marple is a detective in novels by this English writer named Agatha Christie. Anyway, my mom saw the two glasses we used in the dishwasher and asked me about them.”

“Yikes. Was she mad?”

Rosie shrugged. “Not really. I mean, if she was mad she didn’t show it.”

“That’s good. I mean, about her not being mad.”

“I think,” Rosie said, “that maybe she’s scared. You know, that something will go wrong between us again.”

“Nothing will go wrong, Rosie,” Meg said seriously. “I swear.”

Rosie half smiled. “So,” she asked, “do you want to go to the park?”

Meg nodded and, taking their bikes into the street, they headed off in the direction of Yorktide Memorial Park. As they pedaled down Pond View Road Meg tried to ignore the fact that Rosie hadn’t said, “I know nothing will go wrong.”

But it was impossible to ignore. Meg felt of twinge of intense sadness. Rosie also hadn’t wished her a happy birthday. Meg had celebrated her fifteenth birthday the day before with just her tired, distracted mother and her little brother. Her mother had picked up a small ice cream cake at Hannaford. There were no candles as her mother had mistakenly thought there were some left over from Petey’s birthday in March. Petey had sung “Happy Birthday” in his high, piping voice, which had, for some reason, made Meg want to cry and go running to her room. She had fought back the tears and cut the cake to her mother’s distracted applause. After they had eaten, and the rest of the cake was stowed in the freezer, she had escaped to her room where indeed she did cry tears of self-pity and of something else. Loneliness?

She still felt a bit raw after that sad little birthday party, yet she was happy that Rosie wanted to spend time with her today. Rosie didn’t seem to want to punish her, either, which was something that Meg had worried about. Maybe she deserved more punishment for what she had done, but that didn’t mean she was eager to suffer it. She wasn’t a masochist.

They came to where the road narrowed for a stretch and, falling into an old habit, Rosie pulled ahead. Though her eyes were on the lookout for the occasional passing cars and rough road, Meg couldn’t avoid noticing the short little ponytail sticking out from under Rosie’s helmet. Meg still wondered about that. She had never entirely believed that Rosie had cut her own hair, but especially after all that had happened since then, she wasn’t going to bring up such a potentially painful subject. Rosie would tell her what and when she wanted to tell her.

Look at her,
Meg thought with a rush of affection.
With her slim neck and skinny arms and legs, she looks so vulnerable—so in need of my protection.
But that was nothing new. Meg had always considered herself the stronger of the two, ever since they were little kids. But, Meg told herself now, it would be a mistake to think of Rosie as inherently weak. Maybe she had acted fearfully over the past few months, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t become more courageous than she had been in the past.

Suddenly, as if the small rock under her tire had jolted the memory into consciousness, Meg remembered how she had come to feel that Rosie was being pathetic in her response to the bullying. She remembered how a sort of contempt had prompted her to tell Rosie’s secret to Mackenzie and her tribe. A feeling of shame threatened to engulf Meg as she pedaled along behind her friend. She wondered if the shame would ever entirely go away, or if every time she thought about what she had done she would feel bad and embarrassed. Life might be kind of awful if that were the case.

Anyway, those thoughts, about Rosie having been pathetic in how she handled the bullying, those were thoughts Meg could never admit to anyone ever, especially not to Rosie. She hadn’t even told Sister Pauline, though maybe she should have. According to some rule of the Catholic Church, a nun didn’t have the power to offer absolution like a priest could, which was too bad and didn’t make any sense, but Sister Pauline would probably know the right words to say to ease a sense of guilt. And she would probably have some good ideas about how to perform a penance that would really mean something. Meg had never understood how saying a bunch of prayers, like ten Hail Marys or fifteen Acts of Contrition, accomplished much of anything. But then again, there was a lot about the Catholic religion she didn’t understand. Maybe someday she would ask Sister Pauline to fill her in. Not that she was going to become a religious fanatic or anything, but she was kind of curious. Curiosity went along with being smart.

Twenty minutes later, riding side by side again, the girls cycled into Yorktide Memorial Park. They got off their bikes next to an old-fashioned wooden bench with elaborate black iron arms at either end. The park was pretty big for a fairly small town. Besides large sections of grass where people could picnic or sunbathe, there was a playground with a jungle gym, a slide, a sandbox, and swings. Right now the playground was crowded with mothers and small children. Meg couldn’t help but smile at the gleeful shrieks of the kids as they chased each other around the jungle gym or shot down the slide. A few of the kids were sitting more quietly in the sandbox, transferring sand from one plastic pail to another. Meg remembered how she used to love playing in the sand as a kid, especially on the beach. Maybe it was a universal thing, she thought now, kids and sand, like dogs and dirt and cats and mice. Or maybe, cats and string.

Beyond the playground there was a man-made pond in the center of which was a big fountain and in the middle of it, a little wooden structure, which, as far as Meg knew, had no particular use, unless maybe it housed the mechanics for the fountain. In spring and summer the pond was home to paddling ducks and bobbing seagulls. In winter, it often froze hard enough to allow people to ice-skate on it. Not Meg. She preferred Duckworth Pond out by Wilson Farm. That was where the boys on the high school hockey team hung out, and some of them were really cute. Once, when she had fallen, one of the guys had helped her up. That had been awesome. Not that he’d stuck around to talk or anything, but still.

At the far edge of the playground there were a few other kids around Meg and Rosie’s age. Some had their bikes with them and one boy had a skateboard, which made a loud smacking sound every time he let the front hit the concrete ground, which was, like, every other minute. Meg didn’t recognize any of them, which was good; they probably went to another school. Nobody was going to come over to ask Rosie any embarrassing questions about why she had missed those last weeks of school. Meg had no idea how Rosie would handle something like that, but Meg was pretty sure that she herself would freak out in some way. And if she did something stupid like burst out crying, then her embarrassment would be so huge she would be forced to run away. Far, far away, like to California, where her mother’s sister lived. She had never met her aunt Kathleen, but maybe they would like each other and Meg could live with her and ...

Whoa,
Meg told herself.
Don’t be a drama queen!
If her mother had been able to read the direction her thoughts had just taken, boy, would there be trouble!

Not far from the wooden bench on which the girls were sitting there were raised beds of flowers and ornamental grasses. They weren’t as elaborate as the ones in the Public Garden in Boston, but they were still beautiful. Meg remembered the Public Garden so clearly, though the last time she had been in Boston was when she was nine and she and her mother and Rosie and her mother had driven down for the day. Actually, she remembered the whole day clearly, not only the gardens. They had had a lot of fun, mostly at the aquarium and on the Swan Boats, especially when a seagull had landed on the boat right by Meg’s feet. Mrs. Patterson had shrieked, but Meg and Rosie and Mrs. Giroux had thought it was pretty funny. Meg’s mom had given the bird the rest of the soft pretzel she had been eating and the bird had flown off, satisfied. Mrs. Patterson had gone on a rant about rabies. Some man on the boat had laughed and then his wife had shushed him.

Anyway, here, in Yorktide Memorial Park, there were literally walls of rhododendron, with their dark, glossy green leaves and bright pink flowers. The super old lilac trees were no longer in bloom but the black-eyed Susans were, as well as a big mass of some tall purple flower Meg couldn’t identify. That wasn’t unusual. She didn’t exactly have a green thumb. In fact, she never could understand why people got so excited about growing their own flowers when you could buy them at the grocery store or, if you had the money, at a florist.

Meg became aware that she and Rosie were sitting close enough for their arms to touch if one of them moved even just a little bit. Just like old times, sort of. Meg had a feeling that if her arm accidentally touched Rosie’s arm, Rosie would yank hers away.

But maybe she wouldn’t yank her arm away. In some ways, Meg realized, they had become strangers to each other. They hadn’t really talked in months, not like they used to talk. She felt a bit nervous now, sitting there side by side. She wondered if the relationship would still be there, the real relationship, not just a chatty, polite thing conducted over the backyard fence. “Hi, how was your day?” “It was okay. How was yours?” “Okay. Gotta go!”

There’s only one way to find out,
Meg thought.
Start talking and see what happens.

“How were your allergies this year?” she asked, looking to the profusion of wildflowers for conversational inspiration.

“Not too bad,” Rosie replied. “I think it had something to do with the weather being so cold for so long. I guess. Or maybe I’m growing out of them. I read on the Internet that you can grow out of allergies.”

“That would be good. Remember that year when you could hardly go outside for, like, all of May?”

“Yeah. That was horrible. My nose was as red as Rudolph’s!”

Meg laughed. “Well, I wouldn’t say it was that bad!”

“Did Tiffany get into a college in Florida?” Rosie asked after a moment.

“Yeah. I mean, I haven’t seen her since school ended, but before that she told me that she was never coming back north.”

“Not even to see her family?” Rosie asked, surprise in her voice.

“I don’t know. That’s what she said.”

“I don’t think I’d ever want to live far away from home.”

“Really?” Meg asked, reminded of her earlier, panicked thoughts. “I think it might be kind of cool to move far away. Maybe California or maybe even someplace in Europe, like, I don’t know, Amsterdam. You could start your life over and be anyone you want to be.”

“Who do you want to be?”

“I don’t know. Just ...” Meg laughed. “Not this me.”

Rosie shrugged. “Well, when you get older you’ll be someone else. Not entirely, but you’ll definitely be different. We all will. That’s the one thing you can always count on. Change. For a while I forgot that, but it’s true. Nothing ever stays the same.”

Which meant, Meg thought, that bad things might get better. Or worse. “What happened with Carly?” she asked, eager to drop the subject of change. “I mean, do you know if she’s going off to college?”

“I don’t know anything about her. I don’t think we even talked after Thanksgiving last year.”

“Yeah. She wasn’t really into the big sister thing, was she?”

Rosie laughed. “Not really.”

A guy riding a red mountain bike caught the girls’ attention. Meg guessed he was about seventeen. He wasn’t wearing a helmet, so she could see his face, which she thought was pretty cute. And his legs were long and muscled. That was good, too.

“Do you still like Justin Bieber?” Rosie asked as the guy rode past.

Meg shuddered. “Ugh. I am so over him.”

“Me, too. Not that I was really into him in the first place. He kind of looks like a girl. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. And he’s kind of short. Shorter than me, anyway. I suppose that shouldn’t matter to me, but for some reason it does. I know the only thing that’s supposed to be important about a person is what’s on the inside, but ...”

“Yeah,” Meg agreed. “I’m not sure I’d want to go out with a guy a lot shorter than me. I mean, what if I wanted to wear heels? Anyway, now I like Robert Pattinson. His eyes are sooooo gorgeous and he’s sooooo moody. Maybe not in real life, though. Anyway, I’ve loved the Twilight movies for years, but I never really got how gorgeous Robert Pattinson is until now.”

“Yeah. He’s pretty cute. And I definitely like vampires more than werewolves. All that hair is gross!”

“Blah! And werewolves probably stink.”

“Oh, you know who else is cute?” Rosie said. “The guy on that show
Psych
.”

Meg frowned. “Which one? There are two guys.”

“The goofy one. The one who pretends to be a psychic. His name on the show is Shawn.”

BOOK: Last Summer

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