The Last Summer of Us (8 page)

I'm bored. And I tell them so.

“How can you be bored?” Jared peers at me over the top of the instruction sheet. “Here, surrounded by the glory of nature…” He waves his arms around as if to make a point.

From my tree stump, I peer past him at the clearing in the middle of a crappy little collection of trees that is our campsite for the night.

“The glory of nature? Since when has the glory of nature included an empty wine bottle, three rusty lager cans and…” I squint, just to make sure. “An upside-down shopping trolley sitting in the river? And how the hell did that get all the way out here, anyway? Who'd be so determined to dump a trolley in this
particular
spot that they'd haul it through a load of woods?”

“Who knows why anyone does anything round here?” Taking advantage of the fact that Jared's distracted, Steffan snatches the instruction sheet out of his hand and scowls at it. “You dipstick. You're telling me I've got the bloody pole upside down – you've got the whole sheet upside down, haven't you?” He waves it in front of Jared's face.

“Was it?”

“Yes. Did those funny shapes that looked a bit like upside-down capital letters not give it away?”

“Is that what those are? Huh.” Jared doesn't look impressed. He looks even less impressed by my attempt to hide my laugh as Steffan continues to call him a long list of exciting names.

“You realize it'll be dark soon, right?” I'm exaggerating slightly. It's not going to be dark for a while yet – not even at the rate they're going – but if I say I'm bored again, I'll sound like a four year old. Instead, I stand up and dust my jeans down. “I'm going to go over to St Jude's to take a look at the changing rooms.”

“Let us know if the water's on, yeah?” Steffan barely looks up from the tent. He's now picked up a handful of the fabric and is stabbing at it with one of the tent poles. Either he's finally worked out how it's supposed to fit together or he's attempting to sabotage Jared's chances of staying dry if it rains. It could go either way.

I leave them to it and start picking my way through the trees and back towards the St Jude's playing field.

There's a hole in the front of the door where the lock used to be, and it takes little more than a nudge to open it. So that's all fine – but it's pretty dark inside. Changing rooms being what they are, you don't exactly get big picture windows down the side of them, do you? There is, however, a light switch just inside the door, which I find by fumbling around like an idiot.

Naturally, it doesn't do anything. I flip it up and down several times, because
obviously
faith healing is going to work on a broken light switch.

Still nothing happens. I have failed in my attempt to miraculously fix the lights. I'm going to have to look for some kind of fuse box, aren't I?

Armed with my one “practical science” lesson from Year Eight (when Mrs Dalston handed everyone in the room a plug and a screwdriver and a handful of clipped wires and told us to put them together, before sitting back down at her desk to glare at us) I'm going to try and turn on the electrics in the St Jude's changing rooms. This can only end well, right?

Right.

The changing room block sits right on the edge of the school's fixtures field. They've got another field too, next to school, that they use for their PE lessons. But this is the posh one – the one for playing other schools. Which is nuts because it means that everyone hates St Jude's matches. Even the St Jude's teams.
Especially
the St Jude's teams. Think about it: it's the middle of January, you've missed your whole lunchtime to run around a freezing cold pitch for an hour, getting the full benefit of the horizontal rain…and when you're done, you get changed and cleaned up in what's basically a concrete shed. After all that, you have to trudge back out into the cold and the mud and the sideways rain and get soaked again on the ten-minute walk back to school…where you spend the rest of the day dripping gently into your shoes. As an exercise in building team spirit, it's really something. Shame St Jude's still suck at rugby anyway – and the less said about their hockey squad the better. Even
we
usually beat them at hockey.

The grass is longer around the side of the block; left uncut since the start of the summer, it reaches to my knees and the seeds stick to my jeans as I walk through it looking for a fuse box. I don't know why I've assumed that whatever it is that controls the electricity is outside, other than because if it is inside, in the dark, I don't stand a chance of finding it anyway. And I want my shower; I can feel the dust sticking to the sweat on my face, just sitting there, and now there's going to be a lovely thick layer of pollen or whatever it is that's kicking up out of the grass too. So yes. Shower.

My foot hits something solid hidden in the grass – something solid which clinks. An empty bottle. A collection of them, actually: vodka bottles. The cheap type that the local offies always have sitting beside the till with
Special Offer!!!
written on neon cardboard stars stuck to the front. There's also a couple of crumpled-up cigarette packets and a pile of dog-ends. So not only are they a classy bunch here at St Jude's, they're a cliché with it.

Something glitters in the grass next to the bottles – and I take a step back. That's not glass. It's metal. It's a needle. It's sticking straight up, invisible until the light hits it – and I almost trod right on it.

The sunshine doesn't feel as warm any more, and with a shiver I realize that I'm out here in the middle of a field, alone. My phone is in my bag – which, naturally, is still in the pile next to Jared and Steffan.

It's fine. I'm fine. There was no one around me a minute ago, and there's no one here now. Nothing's changed. It's just…that's a needle. A needle, you know? Outside a school changing room. Would it have been sharp enough to go through the thin sole of my flip-flop if I'd taken that one extra step? And if it had…what then?

It dawns on me that – lights or not – there's no way I'm going into that changing block on my own.

The walk back across the field feels very long and, although I should know better, the
what if
s start piling up. Even though I know there's no one there, I keep turning around to look behind me as though I'm expecting to see someone standing by the changing block, watching me walk away.

They're still bickering. Of course they are. But now, at least, one of the tents is up. It's a little wonky, and it creeps a couple of metres backwards when the breeze picks up. (Because who bothers with something as boring as pegging a tent down? I mean,
really
? Not Steffan, that's for sure.) But it's up. Well, up-
ish
. Only two more to go.

“So? What's it like? As shitty as usual?” Steffan barely looks up from the rod he's trying to unfold.

“Yeah. No. I didn't go in. The lights wouldn't work.”

“You scared of the dark all of a sudden?” He means it as a joke, but between his lips and my ears the words somehow twist and become something else.

I've never been afraid of the dark. Not even when I was little. The dark was comfortable and it was quiet, and I always understood that there are no monsters just waiting for someone to throw a switch and set them free. The world doesn't change around us simply because the lights go out.
We
change.

I never was afraid of the dark…but lately it's got noisy. The darkness is no longer quiet and it's no longer empty. It's loud and it's full. Full of doubt. Could I have changed anything? Was there anything I could have done that would have made a difference? Is there any way I could have ended up not watching them carrying my mother's coffin into that church?
What if, what if, what if?
I don't know. In the light, I tell myself there's nothing that I could have done; that it wasn't my fault. People make their own choices and live their own lives and then they die. That's how the world works.

In the light, that's what I tell myself.

But in the dark…

Jared glances up from unfolding the fabric of the next tent, and there must be something about my expression which catches his eye, because he stops unfolding and he straightens up and the grin fades from his face.

“Shut up, Steff.” He takes a swipe at Steffan's arm, making him look up, then turns back to me. “What's the matter?”

“It's nothing. I just…” I run my hand through my hair, brushing it away from my face. This isn't a thing. It's not. It's just me getting freaked out because I almost stood on some junkie's needle. It's fine.

I'm easily freaked out these days. I keep feeling like I'm resting on a knife-edge: one nudge and I'll tip completely over into…something else, some
one
else. I've been told it's shock, it's normal, it'll pass. But when? When do I get to go back to being me? The old me, the me who started the school holidays? Her life might not have been perfect, but I'm not asking for
perfect
. I'm asking for me. That's all. When do I get to be her again? When will
this –
this other person who has taken my place – when will she pass? She and I, we're not the same person. We're not the same and I'd like her to leave now.

I try again. “It's nothing. It's stupid, honestly. There was just this pile of rubbish round the back and there was a needle in it and I almost stepped on it. It was kind of…you know?” I tail off. Saying it out loud doesn't exactly make it sound any
less
stupid.

“A needle?” Jared's eyebrows go up. “What's that doing there?”

“Oh, come on,” Steffan laughs. “It's St Jude's. Wouldn't you be more surprised if there wasn't one?” But then he looks at me and turns serious. “You're sure you didn't
actually
tread on anything though, right?”

“Now
you're concerned?”

“Piss off, then.” He grins and shakes his head and goes back to the tent – and I'm half-grinning too. Freak-out officially over.

Jared lets the tent fabric drop to the ground and rubs his hands together. “Bet you a tenner they've turned off the electrics for the summer.”

“Well, yeah. Even I'd got that far…”

“And you'd know how to turn them back on, would you?”

“Can't be that hard, can it?” I sound more sure about this than I feel.

“How about I come with you this time, and I'll turn them back on.”

“And I can't manage because I'm a girl. Is that it?”

Steffan snorts. “Don't be thick. It's because you can barely even work a toaster. Christ knows what you'd do to yourself turning on a circuit.”

Jared, however, just smiles and shrugs. “Offer's there.”

How can I refuse?

Principles are all well and good…but I really,
really
want a shower.

Trailing over the field behind Jared, I find myself wondering whether things would be going this way if the trip had happened a week ago. I correct myself as a small but insistent chime goes off in the back of my head. Three weeks ago, then; would this have happened three weeks ago? Three months? A year? Have things between the two of us changed because my mother died; because his mother suddenly sees his dad's release as her own – a release from being a parent?

I am a cracked glass. Set me down too hard and I will shatter into a thousand jagged pieces. Knock me and I will cut. “Crazed” – that's the word, isn't it? Is that what I am now? Am I crazed?

My mother always used to put broken glasses in the bin, wrapped up in sheets of newspaper so that no one would get hurt. Am I like those glasses – fractured, useless – or can I be mended? Is it too late? After all, people have already been hurt. But that wasn't my fault. That was hers. She drank and she died and I'm just the damage that's left behind. The chipped glass left when all of the bottles have been cleared away. Empty.

Ahead of me, Jared's feet crunch in the dry grass. It crinkles under the soles of his trainers. He's looking off somewhere towards the end of the field – at the changing rooms, probably. The sun's lower in the sky now and somehow it makes the little block look menacing, standing there all alone. Like something from a horror movie. Two of us go in…but I'm the protagonist, right? I mean, this is all about me, so surely I'm safe? The odds aren't exactly in Jared's favour though, are they?

“Do you think he's alright?” Jared's voice snaps me out of my thoughts. I have no idea whether he said anything before that, but there's only one person he can be talking about and that's Steffan.

“I guess.” That and a non-committal shrug are the best I can do. Steffan's Steffan, and even if something feels off now, I've never known him not be alright. Well. Alright in the end, anyway.

“The shit with his dad's car…”

“To be fair, he's always done that kind of thing, hasn't he? You know what he's like.” And it's true. He has. Like I said, Steffan's Steffan. Somehow, he always manages to be the centre of attention – even when he's not actually there. “What about you?” I ask. Although it's not so much asking as panting, since I'm having to take half-skipping steps to try and keep up with Jared. I never noticed how fast he walks.

“Me? What about me?”

“With your dad and…stuff.”

“It's not a thing.” He's shutting me down, isn't he? Or at least he's trying to. I recognize it because it's my new way of life: fake normal and hope it sticks. Pretend you're okay and people treat you like you are. It's only if they suspect you're not that the sympathy voices come out. If you move fast enough, nobody ever sees the bruises.