The Last Summer of Us (21 page)

There is my mother's coffin, red roses stark against the lid in the middle of a grey church.

There is my mother, dancing to opera in her bare feet as she cooks. The kitchen window is open. She conducts her imagined orchestra with a spoon.

There is my mother sitting at the kitchen table, a bottle and a glass in front of her.

There is a pile of spoiled sheets; ruined clothing wrapped in plastic.

There is the card the police officer handed me, clutched in my fingers until the edges turned soft.

There is a line of people dressed in black. They open their mouths and their single, shared voice says, “Lovely funeral, lovely funeral,” like a parrot.

There is a hole in the earth. A well. A grave. A darkness so complete that there is no way through it, no way back, and I am staring down into it…

And there, across the dark as it gapes at me, as it yawns and threatens to swallow me and everything that I am or ever could be, there is a light. A tiny, single light.

And there is Steffan, picking me up and throwing me into the sea.

There is Steffan, picking me up on the first day we met and setting me back on my feet.

There is Steffan, waiting by the river with beer.

There are my shoes floating away downstream.

There is the water sparkling in the sunshine – and there is Jared, a line of freckles beneath his collarbone as the late summer sun dusts him with gold.

There is Jared, waiting for me outside a changing-block door.

There is Jared.

And there am I: from quite outside myself I see me, climbing up through the sunroof of Steffan's car. I throw my arms out and tip my head back and the sun is on my face…and behind me, the ground gives way and the earth collapses in on itself like a black hole sucking me in – and I wake with the same lie on my lips that I've been telling everyone, telling myself, over and over again. I'm fine.

I am not fine.

I'm not.

But I will be, and that's what matters. Not today, not tomorrow. But sometime. I
will
be fine.

What happens to me doesn't define me.

I am not my mother's drinking, not my mother's death – no more than Steffan is his mother's death or Jared is his father's crimes.

We are not our histories, however deep they cut or however much they scar us.

Whatever guilt we feel, rightly or wrongly, whatever baggage we carry, it is not all that we are.

I did not bury my
self
with my mother.

I am more.

I am me.

Outside the window, the waves wash in and out. Up and down the beach. The sound they make is slow, steady. I force my breaths to match. In and out. In and out. In and out.

I rummage in my bag, pull out jeans and a top; find the flip-flops that are buried at the bottom beneath what looks like a carrier bag full of scrunched-up crisp packets. (I'll be asking Steffan how that got there.)

Locking the door behind me, I make my way along the corridor – feeling along the walls as my eyes adjust to the gloom. I could switch on the hallway lights, I suppose – there are timer switches all along the walls – but I don't feel like it. The dark suits me for now. The last door before the stairwell is the twin room Steffan and Jared were assigned. I stop in front of it, my fingertips resting lightly on the door. I can feel the grain of the wood, even under the thick paint. Two individual snores seep through from the other side – rising and falling, in and out. Like the sea. I could knock on the door and wake them, but what for?

Instead, I flip-flop my way down the stairs and into the lobby – wedging the entrance door open with a rolled-up magazine. There's a stern sign by the doorway warning that the door is locked at midnight, and you'll need a key card (available at the reception desk for a five pound deposit, refundable on return less a two pound handling charge…) which, needless to say, I don't have. So a rolled-up magazine it is.

Outside, the air is cool; cooler than it's been for weeks. The unexpected chill makes my skin tingle. Everything smells of the sea. Clean and fresh and cool – not muddy like the river, and not baked under the hot sun. The tide is its own thing, moving in and out and wiping away all traces of what was there before it came. There are real waves now, proper waves: no trace of that mirror-stillness remains from the evening. The surfers will be happy. There's a breeze and the faintest suggestion of rain in the air. I can smell it, even though it's still a long way off. Maybe it's a storm coming. Maybe the weather is about to break. Somewhere in the quiet, a church clock chimes three.

I sit in the middle of the slipway, drawing my knees up to my chin and looking out into the black where the sea meets the sky. It's lighter than I thought; there's no moon, but the sky is clear – and over the sea, with no cities and not even a big town nearby, that means there are stars. Thousands of them. Millions. They're scattered across the sky like pebbles on the beach, and the more I look at them the more I see. Stars fill the sky, and suddenly it's not black but a blue velvet cloth spread over the world and covered with diamonds.

“Mum used to look at the stars,” says someone behind me. “When she was sick, she used to point up at the sky and say that we didn't matter to the stars, so isn't it funny how much they matter to us.” Steffan's voice is still thick with sleep, and I can tell that he's already thinking about his mother's grave, about tomorrow. Today. Later. Whatever. He eases himself down onto the concrete of the slipway. His hair is sticking up in a dozen different directions and he has creases down one side of his face from his pillow. I rest my head on his shoulder and he continues. “Maybe it's not the stars we're looking up at. Not really. Maybe we're looking up, and we're hoping that someone's up there and looking back at us. And not thinking that we're cocking it up.”

“Nice. Really philosophical, with the ‘cocking it up'.”

“I thought so.”

We both look out to sea, up at the stars. Up and out and away from everything else and listening to the waves coming and going.

“Steff?”

“Yeah?”

“You did wedge the door open again when you came out, didn't you?”

“Ahhh, crap.”

“Thought not.”

I don't ask whether Jared is with him. I don't need to; I know he's there without asking. Hanging back and watching, listening. Leaning away from Steffan, I look round – back up the slipway towards the wall. There he is, leaning against the stone as though he was carved from it. The only part of him that moves is his hair, ruffled by the invisible hands of the wind. What would it be like to run my fingers through his hair; to twine them through and wind it between my fingertips, to curl it around and around and to draw him to me? To lean into
him
? What would the stars look like reflected in his eyes – and what does he see when he looks up at them?

“What time do they unlock the front door?” Steffan asks sheepishly.

“I have
no
idea,” I say – and even as I say it, I can feel the laugh bubbling up inside me. I can't stop it – couldn't even if I wanted to. It rolls up and out and away like the waves,
in
waves. Because despite it all, despite
everything
, I think I'm happy. Right here, right now, I am content. I feel like I'm on the edge of something; like we
all
are. Like the road, the world, the sky…it's all opening up in front of us, and whether we choose to take it together or we take it alone, it's
ours
.

I wish I could bottle this moment. I wish there was a way that I could consider it for long enough to etch it into my mind for ever – not just as a memory, but as an instant caught in glass. Something tangible that I could hold in my palm, frozen. I could collect them: snow globes full of days, of minutes. Captured and kept to look back at on some far-distant afternoon; something I could pick up and turn over in my hands and smile at as I saw it again, as fresh and as clear and as vivid as it is now. This moment. For no other reason than my being happy.

And the tide moves in and moves out and wipes away all traces of what was there before it came.

limpet's iPhone / music / playlists / road trip

Panic! At the Disco -
The Ballad of Mona Lisa

Beyoncé feat. Jay Z -
Crazy in Love

Paramore -
Still Into You

Vienna Teng -
Level Up

Daft Punk -
Instant Crush

The Infinite Wilds -
Vow

Tiger Please -
Without Country

Frank Turner -
Oh Brother

Don Henley -
Boys of Summer

The Script -
If You Could See Me Now

Fall Out Boy -
Young Volcanoes

limpet iPhone / notes & reminders

Pay back S dinner: cashpoint

Chapel. Flowers for S Mum?

Learn to surf… (kidding)

Earplugs

Wristbands!

Buy S map of USA. He'll need it…

“I am
so
tired.”

“Yeah, well, at least you're not driving later.”

“Serves you right. You're the one who forgot to wedge the bloody door open after you.”

“And you're the one who goes prancing off down to the beach in the middle of the night, aren't you?”

“At least I made sure I could
get back in
…”

Steffan thinks better of responding to that. Instead, he goes back to chewing. I suspect this is one hostel which is going to regret offering an all-you-can-eat breakfast. There was a massive pile of croissants on the table at the far end of the room until Jared and Steffan got going – and between the two of them, they've just about emptied one tea urn.

They're special, these two.

The plan goes like this: demolish all food stocks in the immediate area, leaving the breakfast buffet a desolate and barren wasteland (in their case, anyway – I'm happy with an orange juice and a bowl of cornflakes, thanks for asking) and then move on. The first place we have to go, of course, is Steffan's mother's grave. It isn't far from here, but he'll want to stay a while – especially if this is his last time. And, after that, it's on to Gethin's band's festival. To my deep and undying joy, there's apparently a camping ground there. Yay.

And this is it. Today. This is really it. Steffan mumbles something about home, and it hits me that this one time – of all times – he meant what he said (however vague it sounded at the time). A couple of days, a few nights. The three of us, one last time. Maybe I thought he'd change his mind; that he'd turn around in the driver's seat and grin and ask what would happen if we just kept driving. But no. Instead, we'll camp at the festival site tonight and then, tomorrow, it's done. Not
us
, but only just.

I think back over last night, how they almost lost each other and how close we came to all splitting apart. Has Steffan had that resentment eating away at his insides all this time? Has it coloured everything, tainted it? I can't believe that, somehow. It's not Steffan, not at all. He wouldn't let something Jared couldn't help ruin their friendship – not now, not ever…but I guess it was just too much. Two days in a little metal box and all this stuff in the air. His mother, my mother. Jared's father. Having to move, having to leave, having to do all these things we can't talk about to one another for fear of hurting the people we love… Well. It would be too much, wouldn't it?

How did he keep going? How did he keep it all inside for so long? How
does
he do it? Because now, it's almost like nothing happened. Almost.

Where does Steffan get his strength from? Did he find it somewhere, or has he had it all along and I've just taken it for granted? Have I got so used to leaning on him that I only see his strength when it snaps for a second?

Where does Jared get
his
from? To walk along carrying all that guilt – guilt that isn't even his – and to still hold his head up high. To look the world in the eye and ask it to take its best shot, because he won't go down without a fight.

How do they do it…and when did the two boys I've grown up with turn into this? Into…
men
, I guess. Ugh.

I don't know, I don't know any of it, but I'm glad it's gone the way it has – because we're still here. Still
us
. And soon we go home. Steffan back to his house to pack, and to say goodbye. Jared back to – presumably – his grandparents. For however long he stays – because that map will never stop calling him.

And me? What do I go back to?

Amy, for now. And after? My father, I guess. And trying to put back together something so broken that I don't even know what it's meant to look like – like trying to glue a broken vase back together in the dark. Where do I even start? But that's a question I'd rather not think about. Not yet, anyway. After all, tomorrow's another day and this one is still fresh and new and – apparently – full of Danish pastries.

Well. It
was
, anyway.

Maybe
that's
how they do it. With the help of baked goods.
Lots
of baked goods.

Behind the buffet table there are big picture windows which look out onto the sea. Already I can see a handful of surfers out on the water, bobbing up and down on their boards.

Jared follows my gaze and cranes his neck around to see what I'm looking at. His nose wrinkles. He's still not keen on surfers – hasn't been since one nearly crashed into him in the sea a few years ago. “What d'you call a group of surfers?” he asks.

Steffan doesn't mind them anywhere near as much as Jared does – after all, he was the one hanging out with them last night. But loyalty is loyalty, so he shrugs. “A toss. A toss of surfers.”