The Twice-Lived Summer of Bluebell Jones (10 page)

Mags is chopping up cake and handing it round.

I squint into the darkest depths of the cave, where the ceiling slopes down and the floor slopes up, but it's smelly and colder back there, so I drift nearer to the light and the fire, and find what I hadn't even realized I was looking for: a familiar black shape sitting cross-legged near the cave entrance, framed by the flames.

Merlin, and his top hat.

I slot into place beside him, catching sight of Red hovering just outside, beyond the campfire. I give her a tiny wave, and she smiles tightly, leaning against the rock with her arms wrapped round herself.

She's being kind again, I know, just like Mulvey Island. Letting me feel as if I'm doing this for the first time. Not giving away my birthday surprise.

Maybe I won't need to have that talk to myself, about being nicer.

“Evening,” says Merlin, cards in his hands, shuffling them together with a whirr. “What's all this about, then?”

He taps the tasselled scarf with the deck.

“Just thought I might be cold,” I say, feeling my face grow pink as I tug the scarf off and tuck it out of sight behind me.

Merlin gives me a narrow knowing smile from under his hat.

“Oh, all right, my sister made me wear it,” I mutter, not even sure why I'm confessing it. I settle back against the wall – then tip forward again with a yelp, as the wet slimy rock seeps through my shirt.

“Yeah, you probably don't want to do that,” says Merlin, pointing a long pale finger up at the cave walls. They're black, slippery with green algae. Even my painted birthday message has green flecks in it. I look round, and realize everyone else is sitting a careful distance from the walls of the cave.

“Right,” I sigh, peering over my shoulder at the mulchy green blobs on white. Hopefully Tiger will be too dreamy-eyed over Catrin to notice I've ruined her shirt. “So – this whole cave is underwater sometimes?”

Merlin nods. “You see the Bee, out there? That's how you can tell what the tide's doing. So long as you can see all three stripes, you can get in and out of the cave easy. Two stripes, you'd better be a good swimmer. One stripe, kaput. Note how I am sitting conveniently near the exit, with a clear view of said helpful rock.”

He smiles, awkwardly this time, as if he's letting me into a private secret. I'm glad I told him about the scarf, now.

He shuffles the deck again. The campfire spits and pops as someone throws on more wood, and I feel the extra heat, warming me on one side only. Varushka/Danushka plays that song “Wonderwall”, and everyone sings along.

I should probably say something, but Merlin's strange. I don't know what it is; it's like I want to be next to him, but when I am, I'm not sure which me to be.

I pull Diana out of my denim bag.

“Don't,” he says, hands stilling.

“I wasn't going to take one of you,” I say pertly, focusing on the singers at the back of the cave.

“No, that's not—” he says, and I feel his fingertips brush my wrist, as if he wants to grab my arm to stop me.

I lower the camera, my wrist tingling.

“Sorry,” he says quickly, pulling his hand back, flicking at the edge of the cards with his thumbnail. “I just hate that. It's all anyone does round here, walk through the day going click click click, as if life means nothing unless you can show someone else later. It's not real memory. What do they remember, all those tourists?
Here's where I took a photograph; here's where I took a photograph; here's where I took a photograph.
”

His voice is hard and bitter, and I clutch Diana tightly in my hands.

“I do know what you mean,” I say, hesitating. I want to agree with him, to make him feel better. “But photographs can be more than memories. They can be art; something beautiful. They can show you the things you didn't see.”

I hesitate again, picturing the prints pinned above my bunk bed: the silhouette girl, the empty space where Red should be. Fozzie's blank look at my unfocused snap of a cloudy square of sky and a patch of grass. The mobile phone in silhouette-girl's pocket, waiting to ring.

“And what's in a picture, it's not only one thing. It depends who's looking.”

Merlin's hazel eyes, hiding behind their smudgy rings of liner, slide away from the shuffling cards up to mine. He sucks on his bottom lip, visibly thinking. One eyebrow quirks, as if he can see a different me now too.

“Get us, deep philosophers,” he says eventually, smiling, embarrassed.

“Oh yeah,” I say, nodding. “Intellectual birthday parties: it's the next big thing.”

“Right, right. Happy birthday.” He laughs. “So, did your
spirit guide
get an invite?”

“Yeah, she's just over there,” I say, giving Red at the mouth of the cave another little wave.

“Eating a slice of cake, right?”

“Spirit guides can't eat cake. Their hands go right through it, like smoke. It's a bit gutting for them, actually.”

Merlin looks at me and sighs: fond, like a teacher with a silly pupil. He sits up straighter, presses the cards into my hands, and makes me fan them out, the backs facing me. He sucks on his lip again, skims finger and thumb across the tops, and plucks out one card, pressing it to his chest.

“Come on then, let's have it. Now you say,
I shall guess the card you have chosen
,” he prompts.

His eyes glitter in the firelight, full of challenge.

I nod seriously, then let my eyes drift as if I'm tuning in to some other frequency, directly to where Red is leaning against the rock, the flicker of the campfire between us. All she needs to do is come a little closer, lean over his shoulder, and whisper the answer to me.

But Red's not catching my eye. She's looking at Merlin through the smoke, eyes wide and warm; lips, just parted, curving into a giveaway smile. A Tigerlily smile.

Red likes Merlin.

Red
likes
Merlin. The way Tiger
likes
Catrin.

I look at him again. His eyes glow orange from the campfire. His face is all angles, cheekbones and nose: dark shadows, pale curves. I want to touch his cheek. Stroke it. Run my thumb along his jaw, touch his full lips. . .

An “Oh,” spills out of my mouth.

“Can't you read my mind?” says Merlin, feigning lightness, his eyes still intense.

“Um. Apparently not today,” I say breathlessly, and hope to god he can't read mine.

I like Merlin too.

I've never felt it before, so it might just be smoke inhalation or all those Weetabix, but there's definitely something funny going on in my chest.

Is this why they put love hearts on Valentine's Day things? That's where I can feel it: inside my ribs, a fluttering, like a bird in a cage that's trying to get out.

I want to kiss him. My lips feel tight and tingly. Is that what that is?

I look across the fire to find Red's eyes: for confirmation, that I'm reading this right.

Her eyes are already on me, her face schooled, blank. The moment our eyes meet, she ducks out of sight, away from the cave.

I shiver, and Merlin's face falls.

“You all right?” he says, dropping his card as I shiver again.

He strips off his tailcoat to drape it round my shoulders, his hand brushing my bare neck and sending a quiver down my spine.

He likes me back
, the quiver says.

The coat is warm from his body, warm and too big. It smells like spearmint gum and woodsmoke.

“Seven of clubs,” I murmur as I stumble to my feet. “Sorry, I have to – I'll be right back, I promise.”

“What – oh,” he laughs, picking the card off the ground where it's fallen, face up. “That's cheating!” he calls after me.

I throw up my hands in apology as I whirl through the smoke, past the crackly fire and up out of the dip on to the beach. It's dusky outside, and I peer into the gloom, gazing down the beach for Red.

She's sitting on a rock at the base of the cliff, not so far away. It's as if she's waiting for me, though she still looks surprised to see me bundled up in Merlin's coat, tails flapping in the wind.

I stride across the pebbles, not even glancing back to see who might be listening.

“You like Merlin,” I say: statement, question, whichever.

“I like Merlin,” she says.

“So. Right. So – does that mean he's going to be. Um. My boyfriend?”

Red looks at her hands, tucks her flapping hair behind her ear, and swallows.

“I don't know,” she says. “When this was my Penkerry summer, we never even met.”

 

 

10.
A Two-Flavours Problem

 

I don't understand. Perhaps some rocks have fallen on my head. Perhaps the campfire has made me sleepy and this is some kind of barmy dream – because Red is still talking in a low, colourless voice, and none of it makes sense.

“Fozzie was never my best friend,” Red says, looking at her bare knees. “I never hung around with the fairground gang, not when I was here. Believe me, I wanted to. I was lonely, bored. But I saw that girl nearly fall from the Red Dragon, just like you did: didn't dare even set foot in the fairground for that first week. Even once I had, all I did was watch them. I used to go to The Shed nearly every day; listen to them mucking about, wishing I knew how to start up a conversation. Watching Merlin. Fozzie was always friendly enough, but I was never anything more than a customer. That funny girl who sits in the corner, not talking.”

I can't imagine Red being that girl.

But I can imagine Blue doing it. I'd be doing it too, if it wasn't for her.

“Not exactly the best summer ever,” Red says. She tries to crack a smile, but her eyes are stuck on sad.

“But you said. . .” I start, but I barely know where to begin. “You said that's why you wished yourself back: because being in Penkerry was so brilliant.”

“I lied.”

The sea crashes behind me. Seagulls whirl overhead. I can still hear the strumming of Verushka/Danushka's guitar, as if life is going on quite normally, quite naturally, not crumbling at all.

“Don't look so appalled, Blue. People lie to themselves all the time.”

“That's not the same.”

“I know,” she says, looking at her knees again. “I know. I am sorry. But why would I tell you? I got a second chance, one I didn't expect. No sense wasting it. Besides,” she says, ruffling her hair back over one eye, “you're a bright girl. To be honest, I didn't think it'd take you this long to figure it out.”

“So this is
my
fault?”

“No! But you do get the better end of this deal. You're doing way better than me at living the perfect teenage summer. You've made a bunch of friends, you went out to Mulvey Island, you're hanging out with a bunch of random scene kids at some beach campfire. And don't go imagining I haven't noticed whose coat you're wearing. Me, I just stared at him from afar like a weirdo. You, you're practically flirting.”

She smiles, like her old self, all flashy eyes and cheek.

“And you didn't do any of those things,” I say, bleakly.

“Rub it in, why don't you? No, I didn't. But you have! So, you know, woohoo. Go Team Blue.”

She waves one fist feebly in the air.

“You don't get it, do you?” I say. And she thinks I'm the slow one.

“I've been doing what you tell me to do, all this time,” I say, trying to control the wobble in my voice, “because there was a road. Bluebell Road, all planned out.”

“There is!” she says. “I didn't lie about that. I told you: some things are fixed, some things neither of us can change—”

“But you're not one of them, are you?”

She looks at her boots.

“I thought at the end of the road was my fourteenth birthday, when I was going to wake and be you. For definite. No mistakes, no chance of messing up. Cast-iron guarantee: no matter how much of a hopeless idiot I am right now, no matter how many detours or side roads I go down, I'm doing what you did. So one day, in the not-too-distant future, I will be you.”

“I didn't mean for you to think that,” she murmurs.

“And instead? I've been doing the exact opposite of what you did.”

“And having fun doing it,” she protests.

I shake my head. “But still doing it differently. So I won't be you. Ever. Will I?”

Her face pales, and I can see the flicker: the moment where she wonders if she can lie about this too; the twist of her mouth when she accepts she can't.

“No,” she says. “No, you'll never be me.”

I nod, my eyes filling up with tears till I can't even see her, and I wonder how your own self can hurt you that much.

She sits on her rock, saying nothing. There's nothing to say.

“Hey, there you are!”

It's Dan's voice, yelling from the mouth of the cave, half hidden by pebbles. He's wearing Tiger's tasselled scarf as a turban, and shouting something about dancing, but then he cuts himself off and disappears. A moment later, Fozzie comes scrambling up out of the dip, looking anxious.

I glare at Red as I swipe the tears away, fumbling in my pocket for a tissue to blow my nose.

“All right? Hey, what's up, what's happened?”

I sniff, chin up, straightening my shoulders out. “It's that other friend of mine,” I say, looking straight at Red. “She's let me down. Again.”

“And on your fake extra birthday and all? You poor thing,” says Fozzie, rubbing my arm. “I did ask around, try and invite her, but your mum didn't know who it was – and you've never told me her name. Sod her anyway. Come back inside and hang with us, yeah? I saved you a bit of cake. And Merlin's all worried, bless him.”

Merlin. Beautiful Merlin, who was never on Bluebell Road at all.

“I would.” I squeeze Fozzie's hand, trying to smile. “I'd love to. But. . .”

Red's head lifts, and she might not be able to see into my future after all, but she knows I'm saying this to her.

“I need to be on my own.”

And I head off back along the skiddy pebbles, past the turn-off to the short-cut path, to walk the long way home.

“Since when is Ben and Jerry's on the official recommended healthy eating list?” Dad complains, dumping the shopping on the kitchenette table. “That doctor's going to string me up tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” I say, lifting my head off Peanut's bump.

“Just a check-up at the hospital, baby, nothing to worry about,” Mum says, smoothing my hair off my forehead with a smile. “And the ice cream isn't for me – though I will have some. Just to keep Blue company.”

“Ohhh,” says Dad, looking at us curled on the sofa with every pillow and duvet in the van, and Milly tucked under my arm. “Medical emergency. Three spoons coming up.”

We perch the carton of Cookie Dough on my knee and dig in. I'm a giant human cliché, but it does make me feel better, just like Mum said it would. We all go for the same big extra-chocolate-chippy nugget at the same time, spoon-fighting. I end up laughing, and I'm so surprised I start crying again instead.

Mum and Dad very politely go on eating ice cream, and don't say a word about my sniffing.

“So,” Dad says eventually. “Nice coat.”

I shrink into the collar. “I didn't mean to borrow it. I'll give it back tomorrow.”

“Sure. So, you'll be giving it back to a boy . . . friend?”

“I haven't got a boyfriend. He's a boy, who's a friend. I think.”

I want more than that. My nose is full of woodsmoke and spearmint gum, and the feel of his fingers on my wrist, his hand on my neck. I shut my eyes and see his: hazel, ringed with daring black. My birdlike heart flaps in my chest.

He likes me back. Does he? He does. Does he? He does.

“Right. So the lack of boyfriend, is that why. . .?” says Mum, wagging a melty spoonful of ice cream.

I shake my head, the birdlike feeling fading away. “Argument with a friend-friend. Well . . . a sort-of friend.”

“Oh, one of
those
,” says Mum.

“Thank god I bought a tub of Chocolate Fudge Brownie while I was at it,” says Dad, nodding seriously. “A sort-of friend: that's a two-flavours kind of problem.”

“What did the sort-of friend do?” asks Mum.

“Um.” I suck on my cold spoon.

It hurts to think about it.

She took away my future.

She dangled the idea of growing up to be exactly who I wanted, right under my nose. Then she snatched it away again.

“One of those ‘too complicated for the parentals to follow' type of things?” says Mum, gently nudging me with her elbow so I'll know she's joking at herself, not at me.

Does he like
me
? Or the girl I thought I'd become?

“Complicated doesn't begin to cover it.”

“Well, we're here to listen if you want,” says Dad, “or we can just be annoyingly cheerful at you. Speak of the devil. . .” he adds, as Tiger comes home.

Tiger springs through the door, flinging a half-empty canvas bag on to the kitchenette table.

“Hello!” she says, loud and bright. “Ooh, ice-cream party, brilliant!”

She grabs a spoon from the drawer and plonks herself down next to Dad.

“And how was your evening?” asks Mum, as if the answer isn't obvious.

“Perfect,” she says, sighing. “We put down a blanket and ate sandwiches with the crusts cut off, in triangles, and strawberries. She gave me an Indian head massage. Then we lay on our backs to look at the clouds, and talked about French films and postmodernism.”

“Yeah? That's what we do every Wednesday, isn't it, love?” says Mum, slapping Dad's thigh and almost hiding her smirk.

Maybe that's what I'll start doing, now. Merlin and I could lie side by side in the cave, and talk about photography not being evil. He could properly teach me how to flip his hat. I could feed him strawberries.

My brain is so embarrassing. I don't even know if Merlin likes strawberries. Or me. I don't know anything about him, really. I wonder if I'll ever find out. Red didn't.

“Nice coat,” Tiger says, poking at my collar.

“Bluebell borrowed it from a boy, who is a friend,” says Dad. “Which isn't at all the same as a boyfriend.”

“Really?” says Tiger, flaring her blue eyes. Then she frowns. “Where's my scarf?”

“Um,” I say. The last time I saw it, Dan had it wrapped round his head. It could be anywhere by now. I probably shouldn't mention that to Tiger – along with the big green algae stain on the back of her white shirt.

“That's my favourite scarf,” says Tiger, her picnicky glee dimming. “If anything's happened to my favourite scarf. . .”

I scoop up a big mouthful of vanilla. I can't deal with a Tiger drama right now.

“You'll get it back, I promise,” I mumble, mouth full. “Tomorrow.”

She narrows her eyes, then nods, once, and skips off to our bedroom.

“Grabbing a shower,” she calls over her shoulder.

We polish off the rest of the Cookie Dough, listening to the speckle of water and Tiger's off-key happy singing:
be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby, be-bop-a-lula, I don't mean maybe.

My eyes prickle with tears again, and Mum tugs me into a hug.

“Don't stress, baby. If it's worth fixing, you'll find a way.”

Dad finds an old Cluedo board in the cupboard under the sofa, and sets it up on the kitchenette table.

Tiger, dripping in a towel, demands to be Professor Plum. A few minutes later, she reappears from behind the orange paisley curtain, damp hair knotted, dressed in fresh clothes.

Comfy jog bottoms.

Flip-flops.

And a purple T-shirt, with a yellow smiley face on the front.

“Yeah, it's new,” she says, seeing my expression, and holding out the hem of the T-shirt. “Present from Catrin. You like?”

“Mm.” I nod.

I do. I
will
, because it's Red's T-shirt: the one she's been wearing every single day.

Only that doesn't mean I
will
like it, not any more. Not now Red isn't the girl I'm guaranteed to be.

That's when it hits me.

If I'm not going to become Red – what happens to her?