The Other Side of Summer (15 page)

‘Exactly. No sounds. No birds.’ I couldn’t even hear the steady rush of the water. ‘We can’t sail your boats. See? The river is dead still.’ I looked at my watch; the hands weren’t moving. ‘Gabe. Time has stopped.’

I don’t think either of us knew what to do, so I was relieved when Gabe broke the silence.

‘My mum used to believe in spiritism. She would have said that’s what this is. Except one of us would need to be the spirit.’

‘Bags not me.’ I smiled.

‘Bags not me either. See this mark through my eye? When I was little and people teased me about it, Mum would tell me I was kissed by a spirit. Believing in spirits was in her bones.’

‘“Was”? Does that mean …?’

‘No,’ he snapped.

‘Sorry, Gabe.’ I’d touched a nerve and changed the
mood. I wanted it back again. ‘I like your eye. I think it looks cool. Did you believe in the spirit?’

‘For as long as I could, because it helped when I got called “mutant” all the time. But then I read up on the science of it and I found out that we’re all mutants in some way, and that helped too. Even you, with your blue eyes.’

‘I am?’

‘Sure. Blue eyes are a ten-thousand-year-old mutation. Before that, everyone had brown eyes. So I reckon someone will be able to explain what’s happening to us one day, the way we can explain genetics now and couldn’t hundreds of years ago.’

‘Maybe. But don’t you want to know more than how? Don’t you want to know why?’

When I thought about telling him that the why might be so he could help me, I realised how that would sound. And surely there had to be more to it than that. What was in it for him?

‘Gabe, I know you said this wasn’t like any dream you’d had before, but what if that’s exactly what it is? You could be asleep right now, and dreaming, except that what you’re dreaming is also real.’ I remembered the fragments of my own dream last night: what was happening to Gabe could also be happening to me. ‘You’re dreaming outside of your mind instead of inside.’

‘I am? That sounds … Wait, I need to get my head around what that means. What I don’t get is, why you?’

‘Why me what?’

‘I didn’t mean it to sound like that. I meant, why
us
? It’s good that it’s you. Whoever you are.’ He smiled.

I had to tell him as much as I could about my dream. ‘I think I went to your house, Gabe.’

‘That’s impossible … Why didn’t you tell me? When?’

‘In a dream, I mean.’

He looked worried. ‘What did you see?’

‘Not much. I was making tea. Is your sugar kept in a blue bowl? One of the mugs had a tiger on it.’ The more I told him, the more of my dream I could see.

‘That’s my mug. My footy team. But …’

‘The other said “Best Mum in the World”. In pink.’

He swallowed. ‘Yes, that’s hers. Did you see her? Did she speak?’

‘She called out for someone. Mick?’

He nodded, and looked as spooked as I felt.

‘Who’s Mick?’ I said.

‘Uncle. Mum’s big brother. Miguel. He brought her over when she was little and pretty much raised her himself. He’s dead now. Mum’s got … Mum’s got dementia so she forgets things like that. Sometimes she’s all right but mostly she’s not really here. I left school to look after her when Dad left.’

‘Oh, Gabe.’

‘Don’t pity me!’ He was angry but only for a split second. ‘Sorry. She just has all these holes in her memory. They get bigger every day. So when I couldn’t remember coming to the river before, and when it’s obvious that I don’t remember what we talk about once I’m at home with her, or even that this magic thing happens, I worry that …’

He didn’t have to finish. He was worried that the gaps in his memory were because he had the same illness as his mum. Gabe was brave but it was dressed differently from the courage I’d loved in my brother. It was soft and quiet and didn’t need or want anyone to know.

‘I don’t think that’s why you’ve forgotten things. If we’re really dreaming our way into each other’s lives … Well, it’s normal to forget bits of your dream. That’ll be why. Trust me.’

From the look on his face, I saw that I hadn’t convinced him.

‘Are you angry with me?’ I said.

‘For what? What could I be angry with you for?’

‘For being in your house.’

‘No. I trust you. Anyway, I’ve been in yours.’

But it wasn’t quite the same thing because I’d
been
Gabe in the dream, looking down at his – at
my
– feet,
seeing his reflection –
my
reflection – in the glass. I’d been in his skin.

‘Summer,’ he said, ‘I think you should come to my house for real next time.’

After we made a plan, I watched the image of Gabe come apart like dandelion seeds scattered after one blow. The river sounds rolled around in my ears. Our bubble had burst. The minutes were on the move again and so was the river and the breeze.

Bee and I went back along the river path the way we’d come, with the weight of the guitar case between us, but at the main road she suddenly stopped.

I took the guitar case off her back and bent down to stroke her chest. ‘What is it?’

She licked the end of my nose and while I was laughing and wiping it clean she sped off. I understood: Bee was taking herself home – she knew the way by now – and I was to go on to school.

I walked to school slowly, as if that would help me hold on to the feeling I had after being around Gabe. It would be strange to be among all the other kids and their normal everyday routines when no one had a clue what was happening to me. To Gabe and me.

But once I got there I realised I was seeing them all as if for the first time. I wondered what was going on in all of
their
lives. What secrets did they have? What kept them awake at night? I’d been looking out of such a tiny window for so long. Now I could see a wider view.

That’s more like it, Sum.

It doesn’t mean I don’t still miss you, Floyd.

I know. But I don’t want to be the reason you’re never happy again.

If I was going to try – really try – I couldn’t talk to Floyd in my head all the time. It was like listening to one song coming from my left earphone and a completely different one in my right. I had to choose one song – the here and now song – and it took everything I had to do that.

But I managed all through first period, and second.

When recess came around, as usual Becky said, ‘Do you want to hang out with us today?’

‘Sure,’ I said.

I swear she almost did a double-take.

As I followed her out to the oval, she kept looking at me. I realised it wasn’t fair, how hard she’d had to try just to get one ‘yes’.

I lurked on the edge of her group of friends. I didn’t talk but I don’t think Becky minded. The other girls probably wondered what I was suddenly doing there. I was in their life like Gabe was in mine, slipping in like a ghost.

Recess wasn’t so bad. I could do that again, I thought.

I ate dinner with Dad and Wren. It was a perfectly normal scene, like turning on the telly and finding a series you used to be hooked on but haven’t seen for a while. They talked; I ate and nodded in the right places. It wasn’t natural, exactly, but it was easier than I’d been imagining all the times I’d made excuses not to be in the same room as them. I even wondered if the truth about Gabe would spill out of me, so I kept my lips shut tight. If the magic came out, I’d never get it back. Everyone would take a bit of it.

There was only one person who’d understand, but it had been so long and the kind of sorry I’d have to say was too horrible to face. I tried to find that tiny pip of resentment I’d felt in London, when I’d wondered
why I had to be at Mal’s the night before we lost Floyd forever, but it wasn’t there.

I started an email to her. ‘Dear Mal, I’m so sorry for not writing to you.’ ‘Dear Mal, you won’t believe what’s happening.’ ‘Dear Mal, there’s this boy …’ No. Delete, delete, delete. An hour later I still had nothing.

I went to sleep with whirring thoughts of Gabe and Mal and Becky and Floyd, all of them separate in real life but hanging out together in my head. My dream was a strong current that swept me all the way back home.

I’m in a tube station. It’s teeming with people, like it’s a giant anthill. Everyone’s on a mission but I’m moving to a different time. My seconds tick slower than theirs.

You’re dreaming.
Am I? This looks too normal for a dream.

I get onto a tube but something gets trapped in the closing doors and I look back to find I’m carrying a skateboard. I wrench it out and check for damage. I notice a helmet in the crook of my arm. I look at my hands.
Are these really your hands?
I use one of them to put my hair behind my ears but it pops straight out again.

The rhythm of the train is like a dance track chorus – get there, get there, get there, get there – but these faces
look too miserable for dancing. The journey ends and the ants pile out.

It’s a relief to be above ground. I look up at the sun and feel as if I haven’t seen it for a long time.

I arrive at my final destination without remembering the journey from the station. It seems like I only blink and then I’m inside an indoor skatepark. I’ve read about this space. It used to be huge underground tunnels but someone converted it. In the same breath I think:
You’ve wanted to go here for ages
and then,
Can you even skate?

I’m at a counter opposite a man with giant plugs in both earlobes. I’m thinking about getting one of those.
You are?

‘You a friend of theirs?’ he says.

Another skip in time: I’m up on a concrete ramp. There are four boys over the other side, looking at me. Maybe they’re looking because this is their place and I don’t belong, maybe it’s my face, or maybe it’s neither of those things.

I know how good I am and I’m not going to let them put me off when I’ve come all this way. I drop into the ramp.

After the first rush of adrenalin, the other kids become shadows on the walls except for this one guy who’s just as good as I am. Then it’s just me, him, and
the boards: drop in, pump, backside 50-50. Drop in, pump, ollie to fakie. I get flashes of surprise at how good I am, and in the next moment I feel like I’m about to lose control and break my neck.

Suddenly there’s no board under me and I’m flying. My hip and shoulder slam against hard ground.

‘You okay, man?’ A voice shouts into the bowl and it bounces off every surface. Then his face is right in front of mine. It’s the boy who was skating with me. He has freckles like pinpricks and red patches on his cheeks from skating. There’s a smear of dirt down one of them and his hair is stuck up with sweat.

He holds out his hand and I don’t know what to do so I shake it, and he laughs and pulls me to my feet.

‘We’d better get out of the way,’ he says, as a shadow-kid zooms past us. ‘I’m Floyd.’

‘Gabe,’ I say. ‘My friends call me G.’

I feel suddenly claustrophobic. I wipe my arm across my burning-hot forehead.

‘Here.’ Floyd walks over to the place where he and his friends have stashed their bags. He hands me an open can of ice-cold soda and I gulp it till the bubbles are like iron filings in my throat.

I can see his mates giving me odd looks but Floyd’s face is as friendly and trusting as any face I’ve ever seen.

‘Is that yours?’ I ask, pointing at a guitar propped against the wall. It’s beautiful, a blood moon in the middle of a dark sky.

‘Yeah. You play?’

I shake my head. Suddenly there’s nothing I want more than to play that guitar.

‘Come on, I’ll teach you if you show me your ollie to fakie,’ he says. ‘Which is awesome, by the way.’

‘Cheers, brother,’ I say. Brother. My brother. I put the can down and pick up my board, but when I next look up, every figure is a shadow. They dart around like insects and no matter how hard I try I can’t find Floyd.

When my eyes slowly came unstuck from sleep, I found myself curled up on the end of Wren’s bed. Her feet shifted just above my head. I could hear Bee panting somewhere in the darkness. I rolled off silently and tried to slink away, so drowsy that if I moved slowly maybe I could return to the dream.

‘Summer? Is that you?’ Wren whispered.

‘Sh.’ I slipped away.