The Other Side of Summer (14 page)

When I woke up, I was crouched in the corner of my room: the dream I’d been having had made me sleepwalk for the first time in ages.

A storm like I’d never heard before was raging outside. I clambered back into bed and wrapped myself tightly in the covers. The sound was everywhere; wrecking balls against all sides of our house. I’d never heard thunder like that.

I watched through the window, feeling a sort of wonder at the noise. I kept drifting into a daze about the dream I’d had. It was dancing in my mind’s eye like a leaf on a breeze. The harder I tried to concentrate on it, the further the breeze blew it out of reach. Now all I
remembered was being in a house and making tea. And something about feet. Nothing would stay still long enough for me to grab onto.

The branches outside fizzed and hissed in the storm. They’d bend hard in one direction and then get thrown to the other side, completely helpless. The rain came down in sheets that made the night blur. I tried so hard to stay awake, to get the rest of the dream back.

But I couldn’t hold on; sleep was coming for me again.

It was eerily quiet when I woke. The thunder and high winds were over and one clear thought came to me, the last cold raindrop of the storm landing on the top of my head. The drain at the creek would be gushing with water. The song I’d left inside would be swept into the cold brown river. Every chord would dissolve and the paper would turn to mush. That would be the third song I’d lost. How could I have been so careless?

But you remember the notes, Summer.

I think I do, Floyd. But still. It was a piece of you.

I dressed for school like I’d promised I would the night before, and wrote a careful note to say I’d set off early to catch up on the work I’d missed. Really all I wanted was to see Gabe again. Why had he suddenly
felt so tired in the storm drain? Was it the magic? Was it a hint that it was dangerous to keep bringing him here?

I needed to bring the guitar in its case this time, because I’d be going to school straight afterwards. I laid it inside very carefully, flicked down the catches and went out the front door. The air was cold and damp, and I was carrying too much weight. The way to the creek stretched out further. I noticed that Sophie’s bike wasn’t in the front garden anymore. Not that I could have used it anyway, because there was no way to balance the case, but I wondered, had I done that? It felt strange being the first person Sophie didn’t trust. Maybe I also felt a little sorrier for scaring her.

I walked as fast as I could in the direction of the river. I had to stop every few strides because the case was so heavy. How was I going to make it there and back before school started? It was a quarter past eight and school started at nine, so I didn’t have all the time in the world.

At the end of Lime Street, I heard a noise behind me.

‘Bee!’ She ran to me and sat obediently, her face almost level with mine, whipping her tail left and right across the paving stones. She nuzzled the guitar case, stood with a straight, firm back and looked at me.

‘Are you saying “Let me help you”? Oh, Bee, you’re amazing.’ I held one end of the case and rested the other on Bee’s back. We walked along like that, carefully,
at first, but then faster and faster. With Bee helping, the guitar was hardly any weight at all.

We passed the ‘Wominjeka’ sign. I glanced at the rock and kept walking because I had to get to the storm drain. I wanted to be sure that the drain really was gushing water and that the song was truly lost. The water was tumbling forward today but the sun was shining a bright hole through the clouds and every spider’s web twinkled with raindrops.

I breathed in the earthy smell and felt something I hadn’t felt in a long time: happy to be in this day. I felt lucky, too, so when we arrived at the storm drain and I saw the song was gone, the loss of it hurt but didn’t stop me.

We came to a bridge that you could reach by a steep flight of stairs, only the stairs were blocked. The bridge was in two halves, with a big gap in its middle where the two ends didn’t meet anymore. The drop-offs and the staircase entrance were bound in bright orange plastic fencing to stop anyone getting hurt. There was nowhere to go but back where I’d come from – or I could get underneath the bridge and tuck myself under the staircase.

‘Come on, Bee, down here.’ Carefully we walked down the bank to a steep dark slope and a space big enough for two people and a big dog.

I sat quite close to the water, but still hidden from the path, on top of the empty guitar case because the ground was damp. The new song was ‘Wish You Were Here’. So far this was the only one I didn’t know, and it made my playing awkward because I couldn’t hear how it was supposed to sound in my head. I played it all the way through, badly. And then again.

‘Where is he, Bee?’

She looked intently at the guitar as if she knew what I was trying to do. I concentrated hard and played the song again.

‘Behind you.’

I gasped and looked around. Gabe was tucked right up the slope. ‘I’ve always liked this spot.’

‘You have? I thought you’d never been to the river.’

He frowned. ‘I did say that, didn’t I?’ He clambered down towards me. Once he’d reached the water’s edge, he bent down and pointed upstream, in the direction where the path ended. ‘Look above the treetops, over there. See that tower block in the distance? I live on the top floor.’

‘Wow, just there. But wait, hang on – why did you tell me before that you’d never been to the river?’

‘Don’t make it a big deal. I forgot.’

‘Fine,’ I said, frostily.

‘I wasn’t lying.’

‘It’s okay. Forget it.’ The old me would have trusted him. ‘Do you come here a lot, then?’

‘Used to. Don’t have time these days, to be honest.’

‘What, school and things?’

‘Not school. Things.’

A phrase popped into my head:
her medicine
. Where had that come from? An image swam in front of my eyes: a red kettle boiling on the stovetop. Wasn’t that from my dream? I pushed it aside.

‘Hey, it’s my friend Bee,’ said Gabe. He lifted his hand to say hello and Bee got down on her front legs and stretched her back with her bottom in the air, which was a ‘hello’ she usually only did for me or Dad.

‘That means she trusts you.’

‘We had a dog when I was little. A pug. But that was before … Nothing. Anyway, I’ve just thought of something Dad and I used to do here years ago. I’ll show you.’

I wanted to ask what he’d been about to say but the moment had gone. Now I was curious about what he would show me. He went to a tree that was sticking out at an angle over the water, right next to the bridge. It looked like he was trying to tear off a piece of bark. The piece he was grabbing at hadn’t moved and I watched his confusion. He still thought he was here the same way I was.

‘I can’t get it,’ he said.

‘Here, let me pass it to you.’ I tore off the piece and he held out his hand. I hesitated; we were standing so close now. I dropped the bark towards his hand but in the blink of an eye it was on the ground.

‘But I felt it,’ he said.

‘Maybe it’s just because you know what it
should
feel like.’

‘Maybe.’ He looked disappointed.

‘You can talk me through it instead.’

‘That’ll have to do.’

‘Do you think we’ll have time? Before your alarm goes off or your mum wakes you up and you fade away?’

‘My mum wouldn’t …’ He cut the sentence dead.

Gabe didn’t completely trust me.

‘Do you still not remember anything about this when you’re awake?’ I asked.

‘I don’t think about it at all. It’s like I forget.’

‘Oh. Well. That’s fine.’ It was definitely not fine. I thought about nothing else.

Just when I was building up my defences, another odd phrase popped into my head:
two sugars
. I’d been making tea in the dream. The sugar was in the blue bowl.

‘It doesn’t mean I don’t want to be here, Summer. I’m not even scared anymore, for some reason. It feels
like I should be here. Does that make sense to you? Cos it sure as hell doesn’t to me.’

‘Come on.’ I tried to be in the moment and picked the piece of bark up from the ground. ‘Tell me what I’m supposed to do with this.’

I got more bark, twigs and a collection of differently shaped leaves. We sat on the slope and Gabe showed me how to make little boats. It reminded me of Floyd teaching me the guitar, which hadn’t been like when Mum taught me long division and kept shifting in her seat when I took too long, or when Dad let me help make a birthday cake and took over when I couldn’t hold the mixing bowl still. Gabe spoke to me like he believed without a single doubt that I could do it. For the first time in ages, I didn’t feel small.

As I worked away, we talked. I told Gabe about Wren and Milo. How they’d become close and what a strange thing it was because of the way Wren used to be. He laughed at my impression of her and seemed to understand why the new, nice version made me grind my teeth.

I told him about Sophie, though I found that when I came to the part about yelling at her, I felt awful and changed my story.

Gabe was a good listener and when he spoke he chose his words carefully. I felt as if mine were pouring
out too fast, like a kid with a giant cereal box, making a mess everywhere.

He talked about his friends – Ajay, Coop and Blake – in a way that reminded me of Floyd and his gang. Floyd’s friends were like his brothers.

Gabe told me funny stories from when he was little, like the time he got completely stuck in a chair and it had to be sawn apart to free him. And the time he broke his leg jumping off a bridge as high as the one we were sitting under.

He said he used to spend lots of time much further up the river, when he was younger and his dad was still around. They’d look for Christmas beetles and blue-tongue lizards, and I laughed because those sounded too good not to be made up. He told me there were snakes by the river, too, and I couldn’t help checking around me.

‘Don’t worry, too cold for them now. Seasonal, like my dad.’

‘Where does he go?’

‘No idea. He never says. Can’t hack family life. It’s been a year since the last time he left.’

‘Don’t you hate him for that?’

‘No. Tried that. Waste of time.’ He shrugged. ‘What’s the point?’

‘I don’t know what the point is. But I just can’t help it with my mum.’

‘What did she do?’

‘She left us. Well, she made us leave her but it’s the same thing. We were all supposed to come to Australia together but suddenly me, Dad and Wren were on the plane without her, with no explanation. She wanted to get rid of us all along. After Floyd died she didn’t want to love us anymore. It was too hard for her.’

Gabe nodded calmly. After the anger had risen as I told him things I’d never said out loud before, it lay back down again. I felt like I’d taken a giant breath. So I thought, what if Gabe’s here to help me? What if that’s the point of this? The universe was always matching people up with a perfect friend – like me and Mal – or making them come across a piece of knowledge that completely changed their life. Maybe it was just trying out something new on me.

In a shimmer of light like the sun catching a mirror, I finally saw a proper picture of what I’d dreamed last night. Making tea. Two sugars. His mum calling out a different name: ‘Mick’. She had to take her medicine. It was Gabe’s house I’d imagined.

I was scared to say this to him, as if I’d been trespassing in his life and finding out things he didn’t want me to know.

‘Hey, shouldn’t you be at school by now?’ Gabe pointed at my blazer.

‘Oh my God, school! How long have we been here?’ My feet had gone dead underneath me, like thick cushions. Bee stood with her head bent low so I could lean on her to get up. I grabbed my guitar and stumbled a little way down the slope. Gabe reached for my arm to stop me falling and we both flinched as usual.

‘Sorry!’ we said.

‘What will I do here without you?’ he said. ‘I thought we were going to have a boat race.’

I put the guitar in its case. ‘If I don’t go to school, Dad and Wren will get suspicious. I’m really sorry.’

‘I’m just messing. I guess I’ll disappear soon, anyway,’ he said. ‘Back to bed where I belong.’

I didn’t believe that he spent all day in bed. He was hiding something. And I didn’t want to leave him. I liked the way he always put his hair behind his ears, even though it would never stay. I liked that I’d never seen anyone who looked quite like him. I liked how being here made me feel.

The more I thought about how I didn’t want to leave him, the more I realised that I actually
couldn’t
. That it was a real force, as real as not being able to lift both feet off the ground at once.

A terrifying thought was brewing. What if I was stuck here? What if it was like what Gran used to say
when we pulled funny faces? ‘If the wind changes, you’ll stay like that.’

‘I can’t go, Gabe.’

‘I told you, I’ll be fine. You shouldn’t miss school.’

‘You don’t understand. It’s like I’m trapped. And, listen.’

‘To what?’