The Other Side of Summer (2 page)

The low sun was behind us as we walked home from school. For weeks London had been in its winter uniform of bare trees and drizzle, but today the sky had taken my breath away with its ultra-blue. I could almost taste the colour in the icy air on my tongue. Now and then I looked around to catch the last of the daylight waving its arms through the tight gaps between houses. Our shadows spilled out of our feet on the uneven pavement, trying to get home before us. Unlike my shadow, I was in no hurry.

Mal’s shadow was so tall next to mine that we looked more like a mum and a little girl than two best friends. But that’s what we were.

‘Watch out for the dog poo!’ said Mal, pointing to a spot on my side of the pavement just ahead.

Like I said, best friends.

The definition of a good day had changed since Floyd had gone, but I’d had one today. This afternoon had been so busy that I’d only thought about him a few times and I’d even smiled when I walked past the special framed photo of him in the corridor outside the principal’s office. Only Mal had noticed, and because she was my best friend she’d smiled too, and not said anything. That was a big thing for Mal because she could talk for England.

Right now she was raving about a new manga she was reading. It was set in the future and sounded complicated. When I used to read, I’d choose stories set in the past. They seemed safer to me. Mal was the adventurous one.

Even though I’d completely lost the thread of what she was saying, half-listening to Mal was like an icepack on a throbbing bruise. But nothing much got past her.

‘Hey, what are you thinking about?’

I watched her shadow-elbow come towards my shadow-arm but it was still a surprise to feel her touch. I smiled at her. ‘Sorry, I’m in a daze as usual.’ I didn’t mean to shut her out.

‘You know you can tell me anything,’ she said.

‘I know. I do tell you things.’ Which was true. I just didn’t tell her everything anymore. ‘I was thinking that I wish my house would jump up and put itself in a faraway spot so we could keep walking home forever.’

‘Let’s walk the long way then.’

So we did, but even the long way ran out too soon. At my front gate, we both looked at the door and then at each other.

‘I could come in,’ said Mal.

I looked up and saw the curtains drawn over Mum’s bedroom window. ‘Another time, okay?’

It was awkward, then, because I could tell that Mal wanted to give me a hug. I hadn’t felt like hugging anyone for a long time. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings but this was one of the ways I stayed strong, by keeping people away. I was on a different island now. Most girls at school pretended not to see me, anyway. Losing a brother is ugly. As ugly to them as losing an eye.

But it must have been hard for Mal to understand. She had never looked away from me. That smile and the gap between her two front teeth – which she said she’d never get braces for because then she’d just look like everyone else – was my daily reminder of what happiness was. Just one hug couldn’t hurt, could it?

Suddenly the front door opened and Dad appeared. ‘There you are!’ he said. Dad hated for me to be late home.

I’ll admit I was relieved that he’d interrupted the moment.

‘How was your day?’ Dad seemed to be overacting, as if he was still in work mode. He had a goofy smile and was still dressed in his dark blue suit with the plastic badge that said ‘Doug Jackman, Property Agent’.

‘Good,’ I said. The word was as small and hard as a peanut.

‘Hi, Mr Jackman,’ said Mal. She waved with her fingers while her thumbs were looped under the straps of her backpack, which looked funny – a bit like she was a tall bird with tiny hatchling wings.

‘Hi there, Malinda. I’d invite you in but I’ve got something important to tell Summer.’

‘You have?’ My heart started drumming the way it always did, now, when anyone said they had something to tell me. ‘I’d better go in. Bye, Mal.’

‘See you tomorrow.’ Mal walked backwards for a little way, as if she was as worried as I was about what Dad’s ‘something important’ could be. Then she smiled, and winked, and turned around to walk the short distance home.

‘Take your coat off. Put your bag down,’ said Dad,
while I was in the middle of doing exactly both of those things. He seemed nervous, but the excited kind.

‘Is this something bad?’ I said.

‘Not at all! Something good, I hope.’

He scraped his hair back with his hand, and his hairline, which already had two deep inlets either side, seemed to recede even further. His suit was getting tighter. Mum was the opposite; she was shrinking.

I followed Dad into the front room. Everything looked normal, except for Dad, who had started bouncing on his toes.

‘Summer. I’ve come up with a plan.’

I couldn’t wait to hear about the plan because our family desperately needed one. Things were bad. We were a wreckage. I thought Dad meant something like therapy, or even just a nice day out.

He said it to me like a magic word, an abracadabra painted with his right hand in the space above my head. ‘Austraaaaliaaa!’

For a second the ground dropped from my feet as if the bit of floor I was standing on was a portal and I was going to fall straight through to that faraway place. But I found something to cling onto. ‘Oh, you mean for a holiday.’

Dad had shifty eyes. ‘Not exactly.’ And a sheepish grin.
‘Well, not at all. Think about it, Summer. Australia!’ He looked at the word still dangling over my head like a colourful piñata in our house of gloom.

I shook my head. I tried to say the word back, to return it to Dad like an unwanted gift.

‘Australia?’ The syllables were fat and awkward in my mouth. ‘No way, Dad. We can’t.’

But he looked so sure, and so happy about it.

‘When?’ I added.

‘Two weeks!’ Dad whacked his dumb piñata and watched the idea rain down hard onto my head, causing tiny hairline fractures in my skull. Two weeks? This couldn’t be real.

I thought of Floyd, then. The memory of him always showed up unexpectedly when I was halfway through a conversation, or during loud applause at a school assembly, or when I was waiting quietly for the kettle to boil. And my heart would go
boom
,
boom
,
boom
trying to expand into the space he’d left. It would swell and stutter out of my control.

I knew this feeling would pass. It did every time, which was a relief that also made me feel rotten and guilty.
My
heart was still beating.

Questions about Dad’s plan started to roll out of me. ‘But how? Why? What about our life here? What about my friends? What about Gran? And for how long?
And …’ I came full circle back to ‘
How?
’, as in, ‘How can you think this will help us, Dad?’

He counted his answers on his fingers. ‘How? On a plane, of course, sweetheart. Why? Because we need to get away from London, and Australia used to be my home, chicken. What about our life here? I think you know the answer to that. You’ll make
new
friends. You were only saying the other day that Malinda is the only one you really like.’ His eyes crinkled in sympathy.

My jaw clenched, telling me I should have kept my mouth shut.

‘And Gran will visit, my little dot.’

Sweetheart, chicken and little dot: they weren’t exactly superhero names, so how was I going to prevent this disaster on my own?

There was one question he hadn’t answered and all I had to do was cross my arms and stare at him.

‘How long?’ he said. He bent down so our faces were level and threw the word towards me gently, the way you throw a ball to a little kid who can’t catch. ‘Forever.’

He meant it.

The room became an airless pocket. I
hated
him for doing this to me, and reached for the nearest thing that could hurt him:

‘What does
Mum
think?’

There was a telltale pause and he straightened up. ‘She’s excited.’ He swallowed. Dad was a terrible liar. I knew for certain that Mum would not be excited about this plan. Excitement was one lost thing in our house, and Mum was another.

‘What about Wren? She won’t go without a fight.’ My sister could breathe fire about Dad’s choice of breakfast cereal, let alone something like this.

‘You make it sound as if I’m hauling you off to prison.’

‘That’s what it used to be!’

‘Now you’re just being silly,’ he snapped. For the first time since I’d walked through the door, I felt wary of him. Perhaps he saw the look on my face because he touched my chin and smiled. ‘You don’t know anything about the place.’

And I didn’t want to. It was hard enough getting through the days here. How would we cope in a strange country?

Now Dad was giving me a look that said it was him and me against the world – or at least against Mum and Wren, the lost causes …

No, no, no. I would never join him on this. ‘It can’t happen, Dad.’

‘
Australia
, Summer.’ As if I had forgotten what we were talking about! ‘It’s an amazing place, just you wait and see.’

‘You’re mad.’

‘No, I’m right about this.’

‘We can’t.’

‘Of course we can.’

‘But I love it here.’

‘You’ll love it
there
.’

‘It doesn’t make any sense.
DAD, IT DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENSE!
’ It was like shouting through thick glass.

‘You have to trust me. Don’t cry, sweetheart.’

‘I can’t help it.’ Feelings I couldn’t even name had taken me over like ants on a crumb. ‘I can’t believe …’ My voice thinned out and I ran out of words. I was half-blind with tears. Dad reached out to touch my arm and I pulled away as hard as I could.

Somehow I’d failed a test that I hadn’t been expecting. And now I just wanted this moment to be over. To reverse out of this room, back to the front gate with Mal ten minutes ago. I’d hug her and never let go.

Every tick of the mantelpiece clock sounded like scorn. Until suddenly Dad’s arms were around me and I was sobbing loudly into his jacket. A new moment had already gobbled up the last one. Half of me wanted to be near him and the other half felt trapped. I hated him. Even as he squashed me like a bear in the way I
used to like. Even when he whispered into the top of my head that I was his precious girl.

Hated him. Hated Mum. Hated Wren. Hated Floyd for dying. Hated me. Felt sick for hating. My heart was worn out.

Finally I stopped crying, and when I did I told myself Dad’s plan would go away like an imaginary friend if I just let him believe it was real, for now.

‘Well?’ he said.

‘Well …’ My nose was stuffed; my eyes felt like I’d been punched. ‘It would be cool to see a kangaroo.’

Pretend words. We weren’t going anywhere. Mum would stop it. Wren would. Gran would.
Someone
would. Kangaroos, sunshine, the other side of the planet: that wasn’t for us.

Dad stroked my hair and told me about flights and rental houses and schools like it was a bedtime story, but his words were skimming stones. I didn’t believe in his stories the way I used to. What I believed in now was a giant, bird-shaped shadow that soared over people and swooped down at random to pick them off. I believed that the pain of missing someone could twist you, shrink you, cut you to pieces, take all your colour away.

I needed to be with the one person who’d seen all that change in me and was still hanging around.
Someone who could tell me that this plan wouldn’t happen.

‘I’m going to Mal’s house.’

‘Of course,’ said Dad. ‘Whatever you need to do.’ I let him wipe a leftover tear from my cheek with his thumb.

Dad walked me to Mal’s even though I’d been walking there on my own since I was nine because Mum had always wanted us to be free-range kids. It was only around the corner but I felt as weak and sore as if I’d been in an accident, so it didn’t hurt to let him.

Mal answered the door and looked surprised and happy to see me, until she saw the look on my face. Dad said he’d come back for me in a couple of hours.

‘What’s happened?’ she said as soon as she closed the door.

‘Where’s your mum?’

‘On the computer.’

‘Where’s your dad?’

‘On the other computer. What’s going on, Summer? You’re freaking me out.’

‘I’ll tell you everything. Just give me a second. I think I’m in shock.’

In Mal’s tiny hallway I breathed in and out deeply and tried to imagine how I would tell her. Two pairs of giant shoes (Mal’s and her dad’s) were lined up next to one pair of tiny ones (Mal’s mum’s). I slipped mine off and put them alongside. It was a shoes-off house, but as Mal’s mum, Deeta, had explained to me a long time ago, this wasn’t because she was worried about her carpet getting dirty, it was because she wanted her guests’ feet to sink into it and feel at home. I’d always felt that way here.

‘Let’s go to my room,’ said Mal. ‘Via the kitchen.’ She knew me so well. Before, Mum had been in charge of what we ate at home and there was always something delicious. Now it was Dad’s job and his basic rule was no junk food or anything nice, ever. I knew why, it was obvious: he wanted to keep us safe from every danger he could predict because he hadn’t been able to save Floyd from an unpredictable one. So I didn’t argue. Mostly he cooked unpronounceable things that tasted like the ground. How he was actually getting fatter on this stuff was an unexplained mystery.

So these days I got my fix of junk at Mal’s. She led the way upstairs with a tray of Dunkin’ Donuts.

Mal’s bedroom was how I imagined the inside of a gypsy caravan would look. Candles burning, draped sequinned material, dreamcatchers, crystal figurines, silk cushions with frayed edges from Camden Market. The colours were like a box of crayons: burnt orange, brick red, electric lime and Pacific blue.

But as soon as we walked in I felt a wave of nausea. Something in there had poked a sleeping ghoul in my belly … Incense. It was my memory of that particular smell. Mal had collected so many flavours that almost every time I went into her room it smelled different, but this was sandalwood and it took me straight back to that day …

We’d had a sleepover. It was nearly lunchtime but we were still in our pyjamas. Deeta had come into the room without knocking, fighting her breathlessness and trying to say calmly that I was needed home straight away.

I was seeing it all now, close-up and distorted through a fish-eye lens. Deeta’s eyes wide and scared. Deeta’s hand reaching out to take mine. Deeta’s echoing voice saying, ‘I have to take you home. I can’t tell you why, Summer, your mum and dad will,’ and Mal and I both begging her to. ‘Just tell us!’ Mal was shouting.
‘Can’t you see how upset she is?’ The tumble of our footsteps down the staircase …

There the scene zoomed in so tight that the only picture I had was of my feet in flip-flops taking me home. Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot, neon yellow toenails we’d painted the night before, walking towards something so horrible that already those feet didn’t seem like they could be mine.

‘Summer, what’s wrong?’ said Mal, here and now, in her bedroom.

I looked at my friend and I knew she didn’t deserve any of the awful things I’d been thinking since that day. (Why did you make me come for a sleepover the night before my brother died, so I missed his last moments? Why do you have to burn that stupid incense? Why are you looking at me so kindly when I’m like this? Don’t you know that I never took that neon yellow nail polish off, and that even now there are traces of it?) I knew all of it was unfair, but that didn’t make it go away.

‘I’m fine. Sorry. You honestly won’t believe my dad.’

We sat opposite each other on a sheepskin rug. The Dunkin’ Donuts box was between us like a ouija board.

‘Ready? Okay. Dad wants us to go and live in Australia.’

She stared at me as if I hadn’t spoken. I counted the seconds until the exact moment the words hit her. One, two, three, f–

‘He what? That’s not even funny, Summer.’

There was fire in her expression, so I fanned the flames. ‘No joke. In two weeks. He’s booked the flights. He’s even found us a school.’

‘Wait, wait, hang on a second. Australia? To live? But … Australia?’

‘Exactly.’

‘This
cannot
happen. We can’t let it, Summer!’

‘I know.’ I took a donut. ‘We totally can’t.’

Now that I’d said it out loud I felt myself relax a bit. It was nice to agree with Mal. It made it feel almost as if the plan had nothing to do with me. Let her take over. Let me live on bright and brilliant Planet Mal.

‘This is definitely, definitely,
definitely
not happening, Summer. Definitely.’ Every scrap of horror and disbelief that I’d been feeling appeared like magic in my best friend’s face. ‘I’m outraged,’ she said, undoing the difficult job of crossing her legs so she could stand again. ‘I need to pace.’

Mal listed all the reasons Dad’s plan was horrible. Some of them were excellently argued, such as, ‘Changing high school midyear could have a negative effect on your grades, Summer Jackman.’ She was full-naming me now and her voice sounded exactly like her mum’s. Deeta spoke perfect English with an Indian accent that made all the words sound more
dramatic – she rolled her ‘r’s and cushioned her ‘t’s – and I loved to listen to her almost as much as I loved to listen to Mal. Deeta was bossy and confident and kind, too, just like Mal. Stu, Mal’s dad, was six foot five, Scottish, quiet and freckly, and you didn’t hear from him very much. He wrote poetry.

‘Summer Jackman, listen to me,’ said Mal. ‘We have to stop this. You cannot live in that hot place. Look at you, you’re like a beautiful … snowflake.’

I nodded and chewed.

‘All we need is a plan of our own, Summer. Just let me figure it out. Plan A, coming up.’ She lit more candles, changed the incense to jasmine, and put on a new album she’d downloaded called
Positive Energy
.

I took yet another donut. In that moment I felt like if I stayed put on the soft rug eating junk and listening to Mal, my head spinning in a sugar rush, Australia would stay far away from my reality. She could fix this.

Mal had been my best friend since we were four. It was easy to explain why I loved her: she was open to everything, no matter how impossible it seemed. Some people at school thought that made her gullible, or even crazy – not that they’d ever dare say that to her face because, without being the most popular girl, Mal was the kind of confident that made people suspicious, as if she had a secret they didn’t know about. Her kind
of open was strong, and she was fearless about it. If Mal had to paint a picture it would be enormous and bright. If she had to sing a song it would be loud and joyful. It would also be completely out of tune, but that didn’t matter to Mal.

Then there was what she believed in. She’d almost made up her own religion. My best friend believed in everything. Really! Everything. She salvaged bits from here and there like a magpie. In her bedroom she had buddhas, a poster of three Hindu goddesses and a sculpture of the Greek goddess Athena that she’d made in Art class. She even believed that aliens and UFOs and ghostly spirits could be out there. Sometimes the details of what she was saying got tangled, but when I was with her she made sense to me. And that was why I’d been trying so hard to ignore the gap that had opened up between us since Floyd had died. I wanted to close it up again, not make it bigger.

Right now I needed to believe in life working out for the best, the way Mal did. She had her hopes pinned on anything and everything. If something seemed impossible, unlikely or just too good to be true, you could bet Mal would pin a hope on it.

But what I’d realised (but would never ever tell her) was this: she wasn’t picky enough. She was pinning tiny hopes in so many places that no big miracles could
happen; maybe miracle power was leaking out slowly from all the holes her pins had made.

I only had a single hope, one single pin: to stay here, where we belonged. All our memories of Floyd lived here. And the only thing worse than painful memories would be none at all.

By the time Dad came to collect me, there wasn’t just a Plan A: Mal’s plans went right up to E. I felt a tiny bit dubious about all of them for different reasons but I didn’t say anything. Anyway, if I knew Mal, she’d have a brilliant Plan F that she hadn’t told me about tucked up her sleeve.

I walked out of the Gupta-McIntosh house where the air was seventy-eight per cent nitrogen, twenty-one per cent oxygen, one per cent argon and, more importantly, millions of pretty molecules of optimism floating about in between.

Mal jumped down from the doorstep and before I knew what was happening she was hugging me. ‘I’ll message you,’ she whispered.

Dad and I were only halfway down the street when it arrived.

Spoiler: everything is going to turn out OK. Love, M