Authors: Holly Chamberlin

Last Summer (26 page)

BOOK: Last Summer

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The guitarist finished his set (Jane had to admit that he was pretty talented, though she wished he was wearing shoes rather than sandals) and Meg was finally persuaded to finish her lunch. Afterward, Jane suggested they go across the street to a store called Asia West. The girls made a dash for the jewelry cases and Jane wandered among the furniture until the sight of two women, clearly good friends, chatting about something that was making them both smile sent her across the store. At Rosie’s urging, Jane bought herself a woven tote bag the color of gingko leaves for ten dollars and the girls each got a beaded bracelet from Indonesia for six dollars. Rosie’s was mostly blue. Meg’s was mostly orange.

“I really feel like I’m on vacation!” Rosie said when they emerged into the bright sun, shopping bags in tow.

“I know,” Meg said, “isn’t it great! I wish we could come to Portland all the time.”

“At least once a month. Could we, Mom?”

Jane mentally estimated the cost of lunch out and shopping and museum admission, not to mention gas and parking, and blanched. A monthly expedition was out of the question. “We’ll come more often than we have in the past,” she said. “How about that?”

They strolled farther down Commercial Street, stopping in the gift shops geared for summer visitors, until finally, exhaustion seemed to embrace all three at once. They turned around and began what now seemed like an overly long and hot walk back to where Jane had parked the car up on Free Street. The girls walked ahead, talking nonstop. Jane walked behind, lost in her own thoughts, thankful for the peace. She was a little bit tired of listening to countless exclamations of “Awesome!” and “Oh, my God!” and “I so have to have this!” That last was exclusively Meg’s. It seemed that every time an interesting item caught her eye she would “literally die” if it couldn’t be hers. Jane had never met anyone so covetous, but she thought it indicated Meg’s desire to live with items of beauty rather than an unhealthy desire to own things for the sake of owning things. At least, she hoped that was the case.

She smiled now, watching Rosie grab Meg’s arm as Meg started to cross against a light. They would have their old argument there on the curb. “But there are no cars coming!” Meg would point out. And Rosie would retort, “But you never know what could happen.” In so many ways they were Jane and Frannie in miniature....

The light turned green and the girls moved on, Jane following. She had enjoyed herself in Portland, and it was obvious that the girls had, too, but she had missed Frannie. A lot. If she could only get over her own inflated sense of pride ...

But was it really pride that stood in the way of reconciliation with Frannie? If so, that was pretty pathetic. Pride, it was said, went before a fall. You didn’t have to grow up a Catholic to have learned that lesson.

Well, maybe pride (which might simply be another term for stubbornness) was a factor, Jane thought, but maybe once again she was allowing fear to dictate her behavior. Fear of a repeat of the emotional loss she had already sustained. What if Frannie changed her mind and didn’t want Jane back in her life after all? She didn’t know if she could stand to lose Frannie twice. That was a new and sobering realization.

They reached Free Street, found the car, and climbed inside. The forty-five-minute drive home was uneventful. The nail polish debate seemed to have been decided on the way north. Peridot had won as the coolest new color. When Jane pulled up to the Pattersons’ garage Meg thanked her again and hurried into her house, eager, she said, to present her mother with the scarf she had bought her. She said nothing about the little ruby and Jane thought that Meg was likely to keep that purchase to herself for a while, a secret treasure. Jane and Rosie walked around to their own front door.

“Thanks, Mom,” Rosie said as Jane put her key in the lock. “This day was just—”

“Let me guess,” Jane interrupted. “It was awesome!”

Rosie rolled her eyes, but she was smiling.
And it would have been even more awesome,
Jane thought, stepping inside,
if Frannie had been with us.

Dear Diary

My Final Entry

I’ve said before that a particular day was the worst day of my life, especially since last fall. I’ve said that a lot.

It turns out that I was lying. Today was the worst day of my life. Beyond a shadow of a shadow of a doubt.

I can’t even put down on paper what happened. What the person I thought was my best friend did to me. How she betrayed me. I’ll never get over it. Ever. Everything is gone now. Nothing matters anymore.

So if nothing matters then I’m going to go ahead and say it.

Meg broke a solemn oath she made to me years ago. She told my big secret. She told Mackenzie Egan that I used to wet the bed at night. And Mackenzie told everybody in the entire school.

I can’t face anyone ever again. I feel like dying.

I want to die.

Rosemary Alice Patterson, age 14

M
eg was sitting cross-legged on the living room couch watching the local evening news. It was boring. Nothing really exciting ever seemed to happen in Yorktide and its neighboring towns. Big deal, a guy was caught driving drunk. Like that was news? It happened every day! Some idiot was smoking in bed and the bed caught fire. Nobody was hurt, which was good, but come on, Meg thought. Why can’t something really interesting ever happen here, like some sort of spying scandal, something big? That was another reason for moving far away when she got older, to begin a new life in a place where interesting things took place and—

Meg abruptly uncrossed her legs, reached for the remote, and pressed the volume button. The announcer, a woman with curly red hair, was hinting at the next story, or whatever you called it. Teasing it. And it was a bad story. Not exciting or interesting. Just bad.

The show went to a commercial. Meg shot to her feet and called out, “Mom! Get in here, fast!”

Frannie appeared a half a moment later, holding a damp dish towel. “What is it?”

Meg pointed to the television. “Listen. The news is back.”

They did listen. After a moment, Frannie dropped the towel to the floor and put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, my God in heaven,” she said. “I know that family from church.”

“Me, too.”

Together they watched and listened to the brief report. A boy named Kenny Ray, aged twelve, from a neighboring town, had shot himself in the head in a failed suicide attempt. A note found near his bleeding and unconscious body explained that he was no longer able to stand being a target of bullying by some of the boys at his school. They hated him, the note said, because he was gay.

School officials were being questioned, as were fellow students and neighbors of the family. The parents claimed they had known nothing about the bullying. Their son had never complained to them.

“He’s such a good boy,” his mother said, tears streaming down her face, her hands clutched to her chest. “Why would anyone want to hurt him?”

His father, a tall, spare man in a work shirt and jeans, was clearly unable to speak. He stood behind his wife, his head bowed, his mouth tight.

When the report was over and the announcer moved on to a lighter news item, Meg turned off the television.

“This is a disaster,” Meg said forcefully. “This is wrong, wrong, wrong.”

“Isn’t there an older boy in the Ray family, too?” her mother asked, still staring at the television though it was no longer on.

Meg nodded. “Yeah. I think he’s in college now. He was a big athlete in high school. I remember seeing his picture in the paper, like, every week.”

Frannie now sank onto the couch. “I feel sick to my stomach,” she said. “Literally.”

“Violence is sickening,” Meg agreed. “Physical or verbal or psychological. I hope the police find the creeps who taunted that boy. And then I hope they—”

“Remember what you just said about violence, Meg.”

“Yeah. I know. But there can be justice without violence.”

Frannie opened her mouth to speak, but the sound of Petey tramping down the stairs from the second floor made her close it again. Petey came into the living room and looked closely from his sister to his mother and back again. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

Meg didn’t know what to say. She looked to her mother for guidance.

“Nothing’s wrong,” Frannie said, feigning a smile.

“Oh,” Petey said. “Is Daddy coming over?”

Meg was convinced by his expression that he hadn’t really believed it when his mother said that nothing was wrong. Petey was not dumb. And children had an instinct for trouble.

“No,” Frannie answered. “I don’t think so. Why?”

Petey shrugged. “No reason. I just miss him, that’s all.”

Meg glanced down at her mother. She looked awful, her face ashen, her eyes strained. Meg thought that maybe her mother could use some time alone to process the awful news they had just heard. “Hey,” she said, as brightly as she could manage. “I have an idea. Why don’t I take Petey to the park for a while? There’s some time before dinner, right, Mom?”

Frannie looked up at her daughter. Her eyes were suddenly bright with tears. “Right,” she said. “Just be careful.”

“Don’t worry, Mom,” Meg said, reaching for her little brother’s hand. “You can count on me.”

A moment later they were out the door and headed toward Yorktide Memorial Park. Petey was quiet, as if affected by the suddenly strange mood that had come over the Giroux house after the evening news. And lies didn’t sit well with children. Meg knew that for a fact.

She held back a sigh. The world was such a scary place. She supposed it always had been, and maybe in a lot of ways more dangerous than it was now, at least, more dangerous than the world was for a twenty-first-century teenaged girl living in one of the most privileged countries in the world. She didn’t have to worry about tsunamis or famine or volcanoes. She didn’t have to worry about civil war. At least, she hoped that she didn’t. The first civil war sounded horrid enough. Those pictures of wounded soldiers and the prisoners of war were pretty unbearable to look at. But she could still be worried about crime and financial ruin and one person bullying another person until that person finally snapped and tried to harm herself—or kill himself.

Meg felt Petey squeeze her hand.

“Hey.” She smiled down at him.

“Mom looked sad,” he said.

“Oh,” Meg said, keeping her tone light, “I think she’s just tired. You know she works really hard.”

“Maybe Daddy could help her with some stuff.”

“Mmm. Maybe.” How did you tell a six-year-old child that his father was a lazy bum? You didn’t tell him.

“I’m going to go on the slide,” Petey announced. “Gregory at camp says he goes down the slide headfirst.”

“He does, does he? Well, you’re not doing that!”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s way too dangerous,” Meg said, pushing aside memories of her own headfirst slides. Just because she had been a daredevil didn’t mean that Petey should be one, too. Do as I say, not as I do. That was another one of her mom’s favorite expressions. Meg thought it might become one of hers, too, at least where Petey was concerned.

Petey shrugged. “Okay. Hey, maybe I could help Mom with some stuff. I’m getting pretty strong. Maybe I could help her mow the lawn!”

Meg bit back a smile at the thought of her little brother struggling with the heavy, old mower her mother had bought ages and ages ago. “That’s really nice of you,” she said, “to want to help Mom. Though maybe instead of mowing the lawn you could help her load the dishwasher. I know she hates doing it.”

Petey smiled and nodded.

Brother and sister walked on. Meg thought she could feel a tiny hint of fall very vaguely in the air. If it was her imagination, so be it. She was tired now of summer (it had been a difficult one, albeit productive) and ready to move on. Fall brought a fresh start, with a new school year and—

Meg was caught short by an image of Mr. and Mrs. Ray. She saw all too clearly Mrs. Ray’s tear-streaked face and Mr. Ray’s grimly set mouth. Fall would not bring a fresh start for them. It would bring only more grief. She wondered if they could ever move on and recover from this awful thing that had happened to them. By all accounts they were a loving family, but they had somehow failed to protect one of their own, maybe not through any fault or negligence. Maybe it had just happened. Like Rosie had said that afternoon in her bedroom when Meg had been moaning about not looking like Kate Middleton. Life could be random and unfair.

Right there on the sidewalk, Meg felt overcome with a fierce love. She loved her family beyond words. And she would do anything and everything in her power to protect her brother, and her mother. She didn’t mind taking on more responsibility. Like her mother had always told her, she was tough. Megan Christine Giroux was strong. She really believed that now.

“I see the park!” Petey cried.

“Wanna skip?” Meg asked.

“Sure! I’m a way better skipper than you!”

“Are not!”

And together, still hand in hand, they skipped on toward the park.

BOOK: Last Summer

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