The Last Summer of Us (14 page)

“Steff…”

“Oh, come on. Stop being such a baby. You'll have to learn sometime, won't you?”

I shoot a quick glance at Jared in the vague hope he might come to my rescue. The look on his face tells me in no uncertain terms that gallantry is dead and I Am On My Own with this one.

“
Fine
.” I manage to tangle myself up in all the crap around me and mostly fall out of the back seat. Steffan holds the driver's door open. No escape.

“Your chariot, my lady.”

“Piss off. And don't think I'll forget this in a hurry.”

“Your memory is indeed long, my lady.”

“Five minutes.”

Jared has unfolded himself from the passenger seat and is leaning against a post outside, giving his space up to Steffan. If his grin was any wider, the bottom half of his jaw would drop off. I peer out of the car at him. “And you. Don't think I haven't noticed you. You're enjoying this far too much.”

“You bet I am.” He folds his arms and winks at me, and my hands tighten around the steering wheel of their own accord.

I can feel the car vibrating under my feet. Well. I say “vibrating”. It's more like rattling. It wasn't exactly in the best shape when Steffan bought it, and having had to put up with his abuse, it's just about on its last legs. Or wheels. As if to prove its point, the engine coughs, stutters and makes a peculiar chugging sound. Outside the car, one of Jared's eyebrows shoots up.

“You might want to get that looked at,” he says.

Steffan makes a snorting noise and waves a hand at him. “What for? You think I can take it with me?”

Of course. Tick-tock tick-tock, time's a-wastin'.

He's saying things about pedals and camber and the gear stick and
something
, and frankly I haven't a clue. There's something about one of the stalks sticking out of the steering console. I'm supposed to push it up. I do. The windscreen wipers swish back and forth across the glass.

“Not
that
one.”

“Sorry.” I try to push it back down again. A jet of water shoots out of the bottom of the windscreen, arching up and sideways and spraying Jared (who by now is leaning on the roof of the car, peering in through the still-open passenger door – if I didn't know better, I'd think Steffan had left it open in case he needed to bail out in a hurry…). Jared splutters and then dissolves into howls of laughter.

“Piss
off
. I mean it.”

He's too busy laughing to answer.

Steffan's still wittering on about something to do with gears and pound coins and setting a clutch… All I'm getting is:
You're in charge of a ton of metal with about a million moving parts and your best mate is in the seat next to you and you're probably going to kill everyone, but hey, everybody dies anyway, right?

I doubt that's what he's actually saying.

Eventually, he sighs. “Give me your hand, would you?”

“Uh-uh. Not that kind of girl.”

“Dream on.” He leans over, grabbing my hand and planting it firmly on the top of the gear stick. The list of things I have to do all at the same time is right up there with tap-dancing while patting my head and rubbing my stomach and counting backwards from 397 (in German) – but suddenly, and without me quite understanding how or why, we're creeping forward…

And then, with an almighty great lurch, we're not.

“Stalled it,” mutters Steffan.

“Yay?”

“No. Not yay.”

The laughter outside the car has progressed to full-blown hysterics. There are actual tears running down Jared's face, and he's no longer leaning against that post: he's clinging on to it so he doesn't fall over.

It's nice to have friends, isn't it?

After what feels like an eternity of more backwards-counting Germanic tap-dancing, the engine splutters into life and the Rust Bucket inches forward. I'm driving. I am the captain of the good ship We're Going To Die Horribly In This Metal Box And Oh God What Do I Do Now?

“See? Not so bad, is it?”

“Can't talk. Trying not to kill us.” My fingers are wrapped so tightly around the steering wheel that my fingernails are turning white. If I loosen my grip even slightly, that's it. Game over. Steff slouches back into his seat. Well, I'm glad one of us is relaxed. You know, while I'm busy sweating into the wheel.

“Uh, Steff?”

“Mmm?” The bastard's actually wedged his knees against the glovebox and has closed his eyes.

“There's, like, a thing.”

“A thing?”

“A thing. You know. A…
thing
.” My brain can only handle so much at a time. The car stuff is taking up so much processing power that I have apparently lost the power of normal speech.

“Go round it, then.”

“How?” I grip the wheel even tighter.

It's a gatepost. A metal gatepost.

Wait. There are two of them.

(How is this a surprise? Of
course
there are two of them. They're
either side of a gate
.)

Ahead, the almost-road begins to narrow. The low wire-and-post fencing running either side of it angles in, ending at a wide galvanized metal gate. Which is open. Beyond it, the road disappears altogether and turns into a large, lumpy field.

I make an unhappy squeaking sound. Reluctantly, Steffan opens an eye. “Just keep going straight on and through the gate.”

“But…”

“It's fine. You could fit at least two of this car through there, okay?”

“It's just…”

“Why are you going right?” Both of his eyes are open.

“I'm not.”

“You are!” He sits up.

“You said go straight on…”

“Stop looking at me and
look where you're going
!”

We have swung wildly to the right and I'm now steering us straight at the right gatepost and the edge of the metal gate. I do what I do best when I'm panicked. I freeze.

We're still inching forward. The needle on the speedometer is barely off the pin…and yet the gatepost looms ahead of us; suddenly it's as large and unavoidable as a cliff face. And there is nothing I can do…

“Seriously, Lim. Brake?”

“Can't.”

“The pedal, Lim. Brake.”

“Oh.” I glance down at my feet. He sees one of my knees twitch.

“Not that one – the other one.”

“Which one?”

“The
other
one!”

The gatepost is still there. Still getting bigger.

I stamp both my feet on the floor of the car, pressing down all three pedals at once. There's an awful sound from the engine, and Steffan's resorted to shouting at me in Welsh – much bloody good might it do him – and he's yanking the wheel to the left and hauling up the handbrake and with a final howl and a cough from the engine, we've stopped.

My heart is pounding in my throat and my hands are slick with sweat. Suddenly, there's a voice in my right ear. “The only thing you could crash into for a mile, and you head right for it…”

I scream, the rush of adrenaline breaking my trance as Jared jumps away from the window, still laughing. I disentangle myself from the seat belt and from the pedals and (after an awkward moment where I forget how to open a car door) get out of the car as fast as I can.

I'm shaking.

So's Jared – but in his case it's with laughter. There are creases around his eyes that I don't think I've ever seen before. They make him look both younger and older at the same time, and in amongst the panic and the embarrassment and the everything else, I wonder what he was like as a kid. Before.

“Thank you for your concern, Jared.” I don't sound quite as offended as I'd like to – and his laughter's infectious, even if it's entirely at my own expense.

Steffan slams the car door. “Well.
My
life just flashed before my eyes.”

“I told you it was a bad idea.”

“Promise me something, would you?”

“What?” I fold forwards, resting my hands on my knees.

“That you'll wait till I'm in another country before you try driving again?”

His scowl breaks into a smile. Jared's still giggling and I can't help myself any longer – and then all three of us are there, standing around a little lane in the middle of the countryside, laughing because suddenly there's no reason not to.

“I'm telling you – it's him.”

“It's never. Seriously. No way.”

We are in the supermarket. The glamour. But having survived a night in the wild and my traumatic first driving lesson earlier, I have demanded my reward.

No, obviously it's not a trip to the local supermarket.

I want a picnic on the beach, seeing as that's where we're meant to be going. You have to have a picnic on the beach on a summer road trip, don't you? It's the
law
. And, with only a few days to fit in “all the usual places”, it has to happen today. Because I say so. An actual picnic, involving something a little more exciting than the two or three packets of crisps which have survived Steffan and Jared's locust-attacks and the half bottle of flat lemonade that's been rolling around inside the spare wheel in the boot and the two bottles of warm beer which have kept wedging themselves under my lower back. Not to mention those bloody cigars Steffan's nicked from his dad, which I'm sure will make an appearance at some point. I'm kind of hoping he's forgotten about them; what with Jared's sly little cigarette habit, if Steff starts puffing away on a bunch of cigars, I'm going to have to do something really outrageous just to keep up. No idea what, of course, but I'm sure I could come up with something if I really put my mind to it.

Jared has gone to raid the deli counter for cooked chicken, leaving Steffan and me to hunter-gather everything else. And that's when we spot the most loathed of all our teachers picking over the fruit and veg. Being the mature types we are, we both immediately turn tail and hide behind the milk fridge, peering round to spy on him. It's obvious he hears something, as he glances up from the aubergine he's busy feeling up, but we're saved by the racks of semi-skimmed.

When you're a kid, you kind of believe that your teachers live in school; that somewhere in the staffroom there's a little row of beds and, come seven thirty in the evening, they all tuck themselves up with their hot-water bottles and a cup of tea and go to sleep. Of course, you soon realize that teachers have lives outside of school (and that some of them – shocker – even have
families
) but there's still something so weird about seeing them outside school boundaries. Wearing…shorts. Buying
vegetables
.

Mr Lewis is the teacher I would have least expected to see out in the wild. In fact, up until this very moment, I was still absolutely convinced someone just folded him up and put him in a desk drawer at the end of the day, and then shook him out and dusted him down again the next morning. He's tried to fail me at physics twice in the past year. I'm starting to take it personally.

I don't even know why we're hiding.

It just seemed like the thing to do.

I mean, it's not like he can give us detention for having a basket that's filled mainly with sausage rolls, is it? What's he going to do – call our mothers?

Yeah. Good luck with that.

“What are you
doing
?”

Jared has appeared behind us, clutching not one, not two…but
three
bags of cooked chicken. There are shiny grease spots soaking through the waxy paper in several places. It makes me feel vaguely sick.

“It's Loopy Lewis,” says Steffan, jerking his head towards the vegetable stands.

“And you're hiding…why?” He drops the chicken into the shopping basket and shakes his head.

“Oh, like you'd understand,” Steffan scoffs. “Mr Top-of-the-Class. Mr Suck-up. Mr—”

“Alright, point taken.” Jared peers around the milk fridge. “What's he doing?”

“I don't know. Performing an experimental jazz piece?” Steff pulls a face.

“You should go into comedy, mate. You're clearly better at it than you are at physics.” Jared shakes his head and wanders back up the aisle. Steffan scoops up the basket and follows him, muttering something about spicy salsa. He's not much better at physics than I am.

I peer back around the fridge. “Loopy” Lewis, as he's known, is still there, but the longer I look at him, the less I see the stroppy old teacher who's made my Thursday afternoons a misery for the last two years and the more I see…something else.

Beyond the school walls, he has none of his usual power. He's not on the platform at the front of the classroom here, or prowling up and down the spaces between the desks ready to snatch your work out from under your hand to “examine your workings” (and, in my case, usually to criticize my handwriting). He's a lonely old man, shopping for food for one. He looks sad.

I step out from behind the fridge – and, despite everything I just thought, I find myself straightening my T-shirt as I cross the aisle to the vegetable stand.

“Mr Lewis…” I tail off. I'm not quite sure what to say next. I just feel like I have to say
something
. At the top of the aisle, Steffan's head pops around the shelves. He's mouthing something at me. I blow him a kiss, and snap my hand back down just as Mr Lewis turns to look at me.

“Miss Jenkins.” He's peering over the top of his glasses at me. Maybe that whole thing about him having no power over me outside school…maybe that was a mistake. He looks me up and down. “I didn't think you lived…”

“I don't. I'm just passing through. With friends.”

“Friends. I see.” He makes the word sound unfamiliar. Maybe it is. “I see,” he says again. His eyes flicker across the surrounding shelves.