The Last Summer of Us (6 page)

Becca is shrieking…something at me. The problem is that she seems to have reached a pitch that only dogs can hear, so all I'm getting is a high whining sound. She's shrieking and she's about to throw herself at me, and I think I'm yelling back at her only I'm not sure I'm actually in control any longer and I haven't a clue what I'm saying – and then there's Jared between us and Steffan behind me with his hands on my shoulders, pulling me back. Simon's got his fingers so tightly wrapped around Becca's shoulders that his nails have turned white, and by the set of his jaw I can see I've not made myself popular, but there's nothing he can do.

The buzzing in my ears drowns everything else out. I'm sure Steffan's talking to me, but I can't quite pick out the words he's using as he tries to steer me away from the river and back towards the road. Jared's pointing at Becca; his mouth's moving, but it's all white noise to me…

Already, the side of Becca's nose and cheek are starting to swell.

My hand hurts, and yes – it was worth it.

“You're lucky you didn't get her nose – you'd have broken your hand.” Steffan's walking me away from the bridge – not to the car, but up towards the fields. “How's it feel?”

“Good. Really good.” My heart is pounding. I feel like I've just jumped off a high cliff and managed to land on my feet.

“Your hand, thicko. How's it feel?” He stops walking me along and takes my hand, stretching the fingers out and curling them back into a fist. It hurts, but not as much as it could. He frowns, then bends my hand around a few more times, making me wince (probably for his own amusement rather than anything else), before letting it drop.

“Tell me, doctor. Will I ever play the violin again?” I raise my other hand to my forehead melodramatically.

“Piss off, you.” He cuffs me around the back of the head as Jared catches up with us.

“I wouldn't do that,” says Jared, obviously trying not to laugh. “Haven't you seen the right hook she's got on her?”

They're mocking me. And yeah, I know, I deserve this one – and they're not going to let me forget it. Not for the next twenty or so years, anyway. After all, what are friends for?

“You want to talk about what just happened with Becca?”

“Do I ever want to talk about Becca?”

We're sitting up at the top of the hill by the old pillbox, looking down towards the river. The fort used to be part of a prisoner of war camp during the Second World War: they brought captured Italian soldiers to this area. Most of them worked on the farms, and the story goes that a lot of them stayed when they were released – married and settled down here. God knows why. All that's left of the camp now is the old church and a couple of beaten-up concrete bunkers and watchtowers like this one. I used to think they were the ruins of a fairy-tale castle and every time we drove past, I'd press my nose up against the car window and try to imagine knights riding up and down the valley in shining armour, or princesses sitting in tower windows and combing out their hair. The reality? Italian POWs, shovelling cow shit. Awesome.

The three of us are leaning against the largest remaining chunk of concrete. The sun's on my face and it's quiet and the air's full of the dusty scent of hot summer grass. You can see for miles over the trees, out across the fields. The cars on the bypass look like tiny glittering fish in a river from where we're sitting, catching the sunlight as they dart along the road. You can see them, but you can't hear them this far away. We're too high up. All you can hear are the birds and the occasional cow. It feels like we own the world. Of course, if we actually
did
own the world, I'd have had something a hell of a lot more unpleasant done to Becca. It would probably involve pliers. Rusty ones.

The pain in my hand's settled into a gentle throb. Who knew that walloping someone round the face hurts you as much as it does them? I suppose it's karma. Either that or the fact that if you smack two sets of bones together, both of them are probably going to smart a bit…

I hope Becca's face hurts as much as my hand does. In fact, I hope it hurts more. It bloody well should.

“So, you don't want to talk about it?”

“No. I don't want to talk about it. You want to talk about what's going on with you?”

Steffan jerks away from me, but Jared's on the other side of him, watching expectantly.

“Nothing's going on with me.” Steff stares at the ground, picking at a piece of grass.

Jared doesn't believe him any more than I do, and says as much. But with more swearing.

There's silence. Jared and me watching Steffan watching us. He's looking from one of us to the other, and I can tell from his eyes that he knows he's been busted. He's still trying not to spill, though. “Seriously. There's nothing going on.”

Jared shakes his head. “So all this stuff. The car. The cigars. That's nothing.”

“And you'd know a lot about it, would you?” Steff shoots back.

“I'm just saying…”

Cigars. So that's what's in the box. If Steffan's taken his father's precious cigars then, yes, there's a problem. Or there will be when his dad gets back from his golf trip. He paid an obscene amount of money for them, from what Steff's said.

Steffan picks at the grass some more, and pulls the head off a daisy. “It's not a good time.” A shadow flickers across us: a buzzard, wheeling overhead, riding the thermals.

“Is that right?” Jared leans his head back against the hot concrete and closes his eyes. He looks like he doesn't care, like it doesn't bother him whether Steff talks or not. He
looks
like it doesn't bother him either way. Doesn't mean it's true.

This is, as usual, where I come in. “It's never a good time. That's kind of the point, isn't it? I thought that's why we're here. Because it's not a good time for any of us right now. It's not a good time, and it should be – and it isn't fair.” There it is. My little voice drifting up to the heavens, saying those three words I've been trying so hard not to say.
It's not fair.

It's not fair. It's not fair.

It's not fair that I have to deal with Becca – and everyone like her, with their small-mind, small-town whispers and their sideways glances.

It's not fair that I've had to watch my family fall apart while I stand there and do nothing, because what else could I do?

It's not fair that the summer – the time when I'm supposed to be on the beach or in the park or just staying up all night for the hell of going to bed as the sun comes up, when I'm supposed to be thinking about the future,
my
future – has been turned into my own private hell where I leaf through coffin catalogues like I'm picking out curtains or colleges.

It's not fair that it couldn't be in six years. Six months.

It's not fair that it's now.

And it's not fair that this is how I think, that I resent something so sad, that on top of everything else I feel guilty – and it makes me feel even worse.

Somewhere, there's a little cloud of it's-not-fairs, just waiting to rain on me. Which isn't fair either. So it goes.

My it's-not-fair approach seems to have worked though, because finally,
finally,
Steffan's shoulders droop a little and he sags back against the wall. “We're moving. How's that for not fair?”

“
What?
” He gets it in stereo as we both say it at the same time.

“Dad's been headhunted. Something about an advisory role in a blah-blah-blah. I wasn't really listening.”

“You're
moving
? When?”

There's a studied silence. He won't look at either of us.

“When, Steffan?”

“Three weeks.”

“
Three weeks?
” I've gone shrill. I hate being shrill. Jared's doing that half-smile-that-isn't-really-a-smile thing, shaking his head. Now
he's
picking at the grass. Right now, though, it's Steffan I'm interested in. “And when were you going to bring this up?”

“Dunno.” He flicks a ladybird off his knee. “First there was
his
dad” – he jerks his head towards Jared – “and all his family shit, and then there was…”

“My family shit.”

“Well, yeah.” He shrugs. He's worried he's offended me with that, but I'm not offended. I'm shocked, if anything. Shocked that he's kept this to himself; that he didn't feel he could tell either of us. It's huge. The kind of thing you tell people. The kind of thing you tell your friends. Mind you…thinking back over the last couple of weeks it's all pretty huge, and none of it in a good way. I can't help but wonder whether we've upset some great cosmic balance – and that's even before I punched Becca.

“Three weeks. But you've not been packing or anything.”

Cardboard boxes in the garage…

“It's part of the deal; they send people to do it all for you.”

“Steff…” Jared looks thoughtful. “That's a relocation package. One of Mum's lot got offered that a few years ago, and that was the end of them.” He peers over his sunglasses. “Where
exactly
are you moving to?”

“Yeah. About that.”

“Where?”

“LA.”

There's always Steffan. Always has been, always will be.

Or maybe not.

I'd been expecting him to say Cardiff. Bristol. London. Somewhere that wasn't the other side of the world. I mean, even in London we could still see him sometimes; catch a train maybe. Get the coach. But America? That's crazy.

“But…what about school?” My voice is shaky.

“It's all taken care of. They've got me a school place…somewhere, and then Dad wants me to apply to music college. Thornton, or something.”

“Is that what
you
want, though?”

“Does it matter?” He scowls and bites his lip.

“Of course it matters! Why are you letting him do this? He can't!”

“He can, alright? It's complicated.”

“How complicated can it be? It's your life, isn't it? Don't you get a say?” I'm indignant for him, I think; he's so calm. Too calm…or maybe he's just pretending to be. Steffan, our protector, is protecting us again. He's already had this conversation, hasn't he? He's had it over and over again: just him and his dad, with no one there to speak up for him. No one to make his father see that this isn't what he wants, but he'll take what he's given because it's easier, and that's what you do when it's you against them and there's no one in your corner.

His mother would have been in his corner.

And that's why he wants to visit her grave. He wants to say goodbye…again.

Oh, Steffan.

She baked. It was what she did, Steffan's mum. She didn't like cake (or so she said) but she loved baking, and their house always smelled of whatever had just come out of the oven. There was a downside to this: she liked to
experiment
. She'd order flavours from all over the internet. I've still not forgotten her peppermint and rose sponge – it was…unique. Even Steffan turned his nose up at that one, which tells you just how bad it really was. But she was always smiling and laughing, and there was always music in their house and flowers in the garden, even when she was sick. And then she died.

You never see the really big things coming, do you?

Jared has gone very quiet. Which is going to make our little expedition fun, isn't it? He's giving Steffan the silent treatment. Steffan's…well, not
quite
all there. And I'm a shambles. Maybe we should just turn around and give up on the whole thing.

I don't even blame him – Jared, I mean. And I don't think his reaction is just because he's known Steffan even longer than I have. They started primary school together on the same day and they were in the same class for years, until Steffan went to the school where he'd meet me (and where Jared followed a bit later). They've been in and out of each other's houses since long before I came on the scene, so to Jared, losing Steffan must be like losing part of his past. But there's more to it than that, and I wonder if it has something to do with Jared's map.

The first time I went in Jared's room, I saw the map on his wall; big enough to take up all the space between his bed and his window, marked with pins and bits of string and pictures torn from magazines. I thought it was kind of weird, but it was Steffan who explained it, of course, as we wandered back down the street that evening in the early autumn sunshine. Apparently, Jared always said that as soon as he was old enough, he was going to leave. Just go. He'd get the cheapest flight he could to the East Coast and work his way across the States until he wound up in California.

“Then what?” I'd asked. Steffan just shrugged and kicked a stone down the pavement.

“I don't think he's thought that far ahead. It's just what he's always wanted to do.”

Of course he hadn't thought ahead. He hadn't thought about passports or visas or Green Cards or…anything. Because that's the one thing about Jared that people don't realize. He's smart and he's on the rugby team and he's good at maths – but he doesn't just
look
like one of those old movie stars. He
thinks
like one too. Even after all the things that have happened with his dad (or maybe
because
of them), he's kind of innocent. Sweet. He's…what do you call it? Naive? That. He's like the kid who grew up on a farm, wearing dungarees and slinging hay bales… And now he's got
me
talking like we're in an old movie and everyone's about to break into a song about how sunny it is and how there are flowers in the hedgerows or something. Anyway, you wouldn't believe all this if you saw him take down the St Matthew's team centre at the last match – but that's Jared for you. A mystery. A riddle. He's The Quiet One. He watches and he listens; less forgetful than I am, less self-absorbed than Steffan. It's like he's always waiting for something – a chance to make a run for it, maybe.