The Last Summer of Us (10 page)

It's funny how things like this remind you how little you really know about your friends. I mean, you spend all this time together at school, at weekends – even doing stuff like this – but how much do you ever know somebody? How much do they keep locked away in a little box, just beneath the surface of their skin? All the walls, all the masks, all those lines of defence, they get in the way.

“Any other secrets you'd like to share, Jared?” Steffan asks.

Jared shakes his head. “Wouldn't be secrets then, would they?”

“Gambling problem? Drug habit…?” Steffan's eyes flick to his drink as he skips over the obvious one for my sake. Of course he does.

“How'd you find out? I play online poker to finance my crack habit. That's when I'm not busy dismembering hitch-hikers and selling their body parts on the black market.”

“Thought you ate them?”

“Cannibalism's so over, don't you think?”

By this point, even I can't keep a straight face any longer. We're still all laughing when my phone chirps with a voicemail – probably from my aunt. I promised I'd call (there's another one who's smoking on the quiet – what is it with everyone?) and, as usual, I've forgotten. The fact she's actually left a voicemail means she wants to talk. Now.

Even I'll admit that I'm bad at checking my voicemails. It's a habit I got into because of my mother. She used to call my phone, and it would be at the bottom of my bag so I didn't hear it or get to it in time, and she'd always leave a voicemail. And it was always exactly the same: “Hello. It's your mother. Please call me back.” If I didn't call her back within the next five minutes then there'd be another beep and another message left with the same weary tone. “It's your mother again. You haven't called me back.” And so it would go on – never mind the fact that if I actually tried to call her back, her line would be busy because she was leaving me yet another bloody voicemail.

Come to think of it, why did she always start off with “It's your mother”? Like I wouldn't recognize her voice?

Trying to ignore the other two (who are now busily discussing which bits of a person would be best to barbecue – I'm not sure I'll ever be able to face barbecued ribs again) I dial Amy. There's no answer. I think about leaving a message, but don't. Instead I hang up, dial my voicemail and listen to hers.

It's not what she says that bothers me; that's all just the usual how-are-you-where-are-you-what-are-you-doing? kind of thing, asking me to check in. It's the way her voice sounds: thin and pulled too tight. She's worried about something – and it's not me. She'd come out and tell me if it was me. So it's something else. There are strange sounds in the background – too muffled for me to hear them properly. It sounds like shouting. Like something heavy being thrown.

I listen to the message twice more – and by now the others are watching me. Waiting.

Three listens in, I still can't tell for sure who's shouting or why. But I can make a pretty good guess.

It's my dad, isn't it?

No wonder she was keen for me to get away from the house.

Poor Amy.

I'm about to hang up from my voicemail when a little robotic voice chimes in. “Next message,” it says. And just like that, I freeze.

Whatever I'm feeling, it must show on my face, because Steffan is on his feet and across the space between us before I can process the first words that come out of my phone's little speaker.

“Hello. It's your—” And then my phone is ripped from my hand. Steffan's darting away from me, clutching it, pressing the keys, and without knowing what I'm doing or why, I'm going after him. At least, I'm trying to – but Jared's arms are around my waist, holding me back.

I can hear myself shouting. I can't make it stop. I can't make any of it stop. I can't make Jared let go and I can't stop screaming and I can't stop Steffan from deleting my mother's voice for ever.

Jared's grip is strong, and it's only when he releases me that I can move. Steffan is already holding my phone out to me apologetically. I ignore it, and slap him across the cheek as hard as I can. It hurts my palm; but it's a different kind of pain to when I hit Becca (who am I? I never used to be this, to do this; to lash out like a feral cat). The slap hurts Steffan's cheek more than it hurts me though; already I can see a shocking imprint of my fingers spreading across one side of his face, as though I'd dipped my hand into red ink and painted the image onto him. He drops my phone and I snatch it up before he can reach for it, clutching it to me like a newborn kitten. I try my voicemail and my hands are shaking so hard that I can barely hit the right key.

“You have no messages.”

How I hate Voicemail Robot Lady, and how I hate Steffan. The force of it surprises me as it washes over me, rushes through me.

“You had no right,” is all I can say.

He hasn't moved.

“No right.” I sound like an echo of myself.

“I know.”

He isn't even trying to apologize. He knows he can't, that there's nothing he can say that will make what he just did right. But I know there's more coming. He opens another beer and he sits. And he talks.

“When Mum died, I saved the last couple of messages she'd left on my voicemail. It's not like they were special or anything; one of them was her having a right go at me for being out late one night, and the other was her going mental because I'd not done…
something
. I listened to them every fricking night for three months, Lim, just to hear her voice. And you know what? The more I listened to them, the worse it got. Maybe because I
knew
that those were the last things I'd hear her say – ever – and maybe because in both of those stupid messages, she was disappointed. She'd left them because of what I'd done or not done or whatever. I'd let her down. Every time I listened to them, that's all they reminded me of. Letting her down.” He sets the bottle down between his feet and lowers his head into his hands. I can see his fingers working themselves through his hair until he looks up again and he looks me straight in the eye. “You don't want a disappointed voicemail to be the thing you remember.”

“How do you know? How do you know it would be disappointed?” My voice is thick. It doesn't sound like mine.

“You tell me, Lim. Honestly. Did she ever leave you any other kind?”

He picks up his beer again. Jared is frozen between us, and the only sound is the fire crackling.

I can't look at either of them any more. Not Steffan, for what he's done, and not Jared, for not letting me stop him.

“I'm going to bed.”

My bag's already in my tent. I zip the entrance closed behind me and lie down on the thin foam mattress and I close my eyes, because no one can really cry with their eyes screwed shut and if I don't cry then it doesn't hurt. It can't.

There's an owl out there somewhere, and I can hear it hooting nearby. Calling to its own kind. It's peaceful. Soothing. At least, it's soothing if you're not a mouse or a shrew or any of the other small furry things that are about to become its dinner…

I can hear the others moving about outside the tent, probably getting ready to turn in for the night themselves. I feel momentarily guilty: I guess I put a bit of a damper on the evening. Well done me. There's a hissing sound as one of them throws water on the fire, and Steffan coughs.

They're very quiet by their standards, quieter than they should be, and it's not because they think I'm going to sleep or anything. If they wanted to make a racket, they'd make one regardless of who I was or what I was doing. I catch the odd word of Welsh – mostly Steffan, but sometimes Jared. They're talking about something, talking quietly like it's a thing that shouldn't be discussed in the open. Like it's a secret. Even though I can't understand what they're actually saying, I understand the tones of their voices well enough, and Jared's not happy. Neither of them are, not really. However cheery they seemed in the day, the night has brought something else out of them.

I'm still listening to the murmur of their voices and wondering what it is they don't want me to know as I drift off into sleep.

limpet's iPhone / music / playlists / road trip

Taylor Swift -
I Knew You Were Trouble

The Killers -
Mr. Brightside

Mallory Knox -
Death Rattle

The Heavy -
How You Like Me Now?

Catatonia -
International Velvet

Stereophonics -
Local Boy in the Photograph

Foo Fighters -
Learn to Fly

will.i.am feat. Skylar Grey -
Love Bullets

Ella Henderson -
Glow

5 Seconds of Summer -
Amnesia

The Vamps -
Wild Heart

Avicii -
Wake Me Up

limpet's iPhone / notes & reminders

Charge phone in car.

Beach!

Kick S till he bleeds, because bastard…

Never sleep in tent again. Ever.

J's dad?

Call Amy!!!

I sleep better than I have done for weeks, even though I'm in a tent in a scrappy little bit of woodland in the middle of nowhere and my neck aches and I've obviously been lying on an entire fallen tree the whole time. Still the best sleep I've had in a while. When I woke in the night once or twice, all I could hear was the river, and someone snoring. My money's on Steffan.

But the sound that wakes me in the morning? That's not snoring. That's…

My ears are telling me I know that sound. I know what it is, and it shouldn't be here. I shouldn't be hearing
that
out
here
. No way. Scrabbling for the zip to the tent, I shake the last of the sleep from my head and – ever graceful – half climb, half fall out into the daylight. Jared and Steffan have obviously done the same thing, and as I dust myself off and straighten up, we stare at each other.

“You heard that too, right?”

“Well, yeah.”

“So I'm not losing my mind? Good.”

“
Losing?
Ha!”

“Funny.”

And then everything stops, because there's the sound again – and it is very, very definitely being made by an elephant.

We stare at each other some more.

“That's insane,” says Steffan.

“That can't be real,” says Jared.

“Where do you think it's coming from?” I ask – and the two of them are frowning at me. “What?”

Maybe they're waiting to see whether I'm still angry with Steffan. I am, I suppose, but he's my friend. You get angry with friends, don't you? That's kind of the whole point: that you get angry, and they understand why and you move on – and they try not to be such a dickhead in future. Or something. And they don't ever, ever touch your phone again; not if they want that hand to be able to touch anything else afterwards.

What's the point in dwelling on it, anyway? He deleted a voicemail. He was trying (in his tactless, hopeless, usual bloody way) to help – and for that alone I guess I have to forgive him. After all, if anyone understands the way I feel now, it's him – although sometimes, I
do
wonder…

But you push on, don't you? It's not worth losing a friend over. Nothing is. Not a friend like this; a friend like him.

They're still frowning.

“You want to go find the elephant.” He thinks he's humouring me. I'll show him.

“Listen to what you just said, Jared. It's an elephant. An
elephant
. Here. We're not exactly tripping over exotic animals roaming the woods of west Wales, are we?”

Steffan mutters something about “
town on a Saturday night
”.

We both ignore him.

“It's not real,” says Jared, bluntly.

“Okay, so why, for the love of god, would someone pretend to be an elephant all the way out here where there's no one to even hear them?”

“Well, there's us.” Steffan shrugs. “We heard it.”

“Exactly. Wait. No. What was I saying? No. Never mind. Come
on
. Aren't you even curious? At all?”

They answer almost simultaneously: “Not really,” says one. “Nah,” says the other.

“You're crap. The pair of you. Where are your balls?”

“Look who's talking,” Steffan says with a barely disguised snigger.

I thump his arm. “Oi! What's that supposed to mean?”

Somewhere in the back of his head, a little alarm bell apparently starts ringing. I can see him very carefully considering what to say next – just in case he triggers what he only semi-affectionately refers to as “the femrage”. This is the charming nickname he's come up with to describe the look on my face when I've caught him being…well, a bloke. It's a fairly loose category which includes (but is not limited to) making smutty comments and whispering to Jared in Welsh whenever one of the Year Thirteen girls walks past the common room. Like I don't know him well enough to know
exactly
what he's saying. And don't even get me started on the wallpaper on his computer. Seriously.

Finally, Steffan decides he's figured out a way through the minefield. “Didn't you need Jared to go hold your hand in the changing room because of the scary, scary druggies who left a load of crap around?”

I'm going to let it go – purely because he was as worried about it as I was. He's teasing me. It's his way of checking whether normal service has been resumed, or whether I'm going to try and punch him in the kidney the second he turns his back. Tempting as that may be, it's not really in line with my whole “friends” policy. More fool me.

“Whatever.
Elephant
.”