About Last Summer

by Patricia B Tighe

  I probably shouldn’t have felt that way—the brownies were for me after all—but the flirting had gotten so heavy that it was like someone had dropped a sack over my head and closed it tight. And Haley was no help. She just sat there on the bar stool grinning and throwing out random comments.

  If things got any worse, I’d have to tell Amanda to back off. But how? She was my best friend’s sister. I couldn’t do anything that would make it awkward when I went over to their house. No. I just needed to continue the clueless act. There were only a few days until I wouldn’t have to be around her for twelve hours at a time.

  That thought turned my attention to where Gabby sat with Molly in the grass. Molly was sketching as usual, but Gabby had her eyes shut and her face turned up to the sun. I so wanted to just hang there beside her, but Geoff had saved me from Amanda, so I’d play basketball even if I didn’t feel like it.

  Geoff dribbled past me and went in for a layup that missed. “Crap,” he said, and then tossed the ball to me. “You should loosen up. Kenzie and Dylan get really competitive.”

  “With us or each other?”

  “Both. It’s hard to know how to arrange the teams, but I’ve decided to put you with Kenzie since she’s the best and you’re the weakest link.”

  “Thanks for the burn, man.”

  Geoff laughed. “Not your skills. Just if the altitude gets to you.”

  I acknowledged the point with a nod. “Okay.” I tossed the ball back to Geoff. “I’d better drink more water before we start.”

  “Good idea.”

  I took a swig from my water bottle and looked over at Gabby and Molly. Gabby openly stared at me. I almost wished she would go back in the house. Then I could play without wondering what she was doing or thinking. Don’t lie. You want her near all the time.

  Without thinking, I waved her over with two fingers from the hand that held my drink. What was I doing? We were about to start playing. Dylan had arrived and was talking with Geoff.

  Gabby slowly got up. She strolled toward me, her gaze on mine the whole way. I clenched the cold metal of my bottle so I wouldn’t drop it.

  She stopped two feet away. “What do I want to get you this time?” she asked in a low Gabriela voice.

  I squashed the desire to move closer. “Nothing,” I said, equally as quiet. “Just wanted you to know there are drinks in here if you need something.” I pointed to the red and white cooler on top of the sports equipment bin.

  She raised her eyebrows just a fraction, but then smiled. “Thanks.”

  My heart broke loose from my chest and went zinging around my body. Okay, maybe it wasn’t my heart. But something was bouncing around inside of me. “No problem,” I said, amazed that I could get the words out. She didn’t even have to try with me. All she had to do was smile.

  “I’m good for now,” she said and walked back toward Molly.

  “Okay, suckahs!” Kenzie’s voice boomed from the back steps. “Let’s do this!”

  I mentally shook myself and faced the blacktop. Right. Basketball.

  Gabby

  The grunts and sharp squeaks of sneakers on the blacktop meant the basketball game had gotten intense. I never understood why Kenzie liked working her body so hard. Guess it was the competition thing.

  Just then, Kenzie body-checked Dylan so hard he actually fell back a step. Good thing he’d put in contacts because his glasses might have flown off his head.

  “Foul!” Geoff yelled.

  Kenzie laughed and dribbled around them. Easy to do because they were both standing still, scowling at her. Noah waited a little apart with his hands on his hips and breathing hard. He wiped his forehead on his T-shirt sleeve. I fought the urge to rush over and give him water or a sports drink or something.

  But it was too late. Kenzie shoved the ball in Geoff’s gut and waved him to the backcourt. “Chill, Kenzie,” he said but dribbled the ball all the same. Then he tossed it to Dylan, who must’ve been slower than usual because Kenzie stole the ball and raced forward. Which spurred him on. Right before she was going to take off for a shot, Dylan wrapped his arms around her from behind and lifted her off her feet.

  “Whoa, foul!” Noah yelled.

  Kenzie squealed. Geoff and Dylan laughed.

  “This doesn’t look good,” I said.

  “Hmm,” Molly said, still sketching the players.

  When Dylan released Kenzie, she spun around and punched him once in the chest. “If you’re going to play like that, I’m quitting.”

  Dylan took her by the shoulders and said something I couldn’t hear. Wow. He wasn’t intimidated by her at all. Which was great. They seemed like a good team. I held back a smile. Kenzie would’ve been even angrier to see me grinning like a fool.

  Dylan let go of Kenzie, and then said, “Water break!”

  “Thank God,” Noah said, grabbing his silver bottle.

  Geoff pulled Kenzie to one side and spoke quietly, while Dylan went to a duffle bag near the back steps and pulled off his T-shirt.

  “Finally,” Molly breathed. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

  She frowned as she studied Dylan’s torso and I couldn’t help but laugh. “Geez. And here I thought you were just enjoying the view. But you want to sketch him, don’t you?”

  Molly gave me a weird look. “Of course.” Then, much quieter, “Mostly.”

  “Ha! I knew it.”

  Dylan walked toward us, slipping on a new T-shirt as he approached. Oh, well. “Can I get y’all something to drink?”

  “I’m good,” Molly said, not looking up from the pad in her lap.

  “No, thank you,” I said and smiled.

  He winked, then went to the cooler, picked it up, and brought it to where the others were standing in a small circle. Yeah, Kenzie could do a lot worse.

  “He knows,” Molly said.

  “What?”

  “I guess I should say, he suspects.”

  “Suspects what?”

  “That you’re not from Spain.”

  My stomach dropped. “How do you know?”

  “From the way he looks at you. Which he’s been doing because you’re usually right next to Kenzie. He stares like he’s analyzing you.”

  “Fantastic,” I said, and then lay back on the soft grass. “At this rate, more people probably know than don’t.”

  “Have you counted?”

  Practical, yet artsy. That’s Molly. I sighed. “No.”

  “Well?”

  “There’s Kenzie, you, Noah …”

  “And you.”

  I rolled onto my side and propped my head up. “Ha, yeah, me.”

  “So four.” Molly clamped her pencil between her teeth while she erased something on the page.

  “No, wait, five. Gamma knows.”

  “She does?”

  “Well, maybe not. She knows there’s something going on between Noah and me.”

  Molly pulled the pencil from her mouth and pointed it at me. “And what would that be?”

  I tensed. Why had I said that? I wasn’t even exactly sure what was going on with Noah. Other than being angry, of course. But Molly’s ability to see through lies made it seem useless to hide anymore. I sat up and hugged my knees to my chest. “We have a past.”

  Molly went still as though concentrating really hard. “You’re the girl from last summer.” She said it like “you’re the girl I want to murder.”

  I tried to clear my throat and ended up making a weird raspy noise. “Yeah.”

  “Do you have any idea how much you hurt him?”

  “I’m starting to figure that out. But—” I dug my fingers into the grass—“he wasn’t the only one hurt.”

  Molly frowned. “Whatever you do, be straight with him. It’s not fair otherwise.”

  I flopped onto my back, staring at the puffy clouds and wishing I were far away. Our vacation felt like a journey into Emo Land—not my choice for a relaxing time. Molly might have been right, but I didn’t like being told what to d
o. Or feeling like everything was my fault. Even if it was.

  For several minutes we watched the others as they put their drinks away. Then Molly turned back to me. “Have you thought about giving up this Spanish girl thing?” she asked in a soft voice.

  Like every day since I’d arrived. “Yes, but I plan to keep going.”

  “Even when five or six of us know? That’s almost half the people here. Is it still worth it?”

  Was it? Of course it was. No matter how stupid it seemed. I wasn’t quitting. “Well, Kenzie and I don’t really count because we came up with the idea.”

  Molly drew a circle on a blank page of her sketch pad and started adding tiny triangles within it. “Maybe the bigger challenge would be to make sure all of us who know keep pretending that we don’t.”

  It took me a couple of seconds to figure that sentence it out. Was she threatening to tell everybody? No, Molly wouldn’t hint around a subject. She’d just say it straight out. But the thought that we had a group of people who all knew the same secret, but who didn’t admit to knowing was pretty funny. “That would be a neat trick, wouldn’t it?”

  Noah

  We’d just finished the third game of Uno that evening when Amanda stretched and sighed. “Ugh. This is boring. We should play something outside for a change.”

  I leaned away so I wouldn’t get hit in the head when she dropped her arms.

  “That’s not a bad idea,” Mr. Bryson said. “You kids need some exercise.”

  “Ha!” Geoff said, but that was all. No standing up for the fact that we had played basketball earlier, which was weird for Geoff. But if he wasn’t saying anything, I wouldn’t either.

  “What do you want to do?” Haley asked.

  “I don’t know,” Amanda said. “Hide and Seek, or …”

  “Ghost in the Graveyard,” Geoff said.

  “Maybe. Or what about Sardines?” she asked, her voice overly enthusiastic.

  A knot of tension formed in my stomach. Sardines. Was she thinking of squishing herself up against me?

  “You can’t play that outside,” Geoff said.

  “Why not?” his mom asked.

  “’Cause there aren’t enough places where we can all hide together, except maybe in the forest. And we all know how you feel about the forest at night.” He arched a brow at his parents.

  “You could say people can’t go more than five feet in,” Mr. Bryson said.

  Mrs. Bryson looked skeptical. “I just don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

  “And I doubt anyone wants to hide under the back stairs,” Geoff said, treating us all to a fake shudder.

  “Why do you always have to be so negative?” Amanda asked.

  “I’m not being—”

  Molly touched his arm, and he stopped talking. It was amazing how attuned he was to her. “Maybe we could play Sardines in the house and then something outside after that,” she said.

  Geoff leaned over and kissed her cheek. “You’re a genius.”

  “Not really.”

  “That works,” Amanda said.

  “Well.” Mr. Bryson stood and stretched with his palms against his lower back. “If y’all want to do that, you’d better do it quick. Gamma will be heading for bed in about twenty minutes, and I don’t want her disturbed.”

  I looked around, but that was one of the few times the old lady hadn’t snuck into the room when we weren’t paying attention.

  Geoff clapped his hands twice. “Okay, everybody. We’ll turn off most of the lights, stay away from Gamma’s room—”

  “And ours,” his mom said, heading for the door.

  “—and the parents’. Who wants to be it?”

  “How about Noah?” Amanda asked. “You want to hide first, don’t you?”

  And you obviously want to find me first. I couldn’t look at her. Instead, I stared across the circle and met Gabby’s gaze. Her eyes dared me. What was that about? I made myself look at no one in particular when I answered. “Sure, I can do it.”

  Geoff jumped up from his chair. “Great.”

  “What if we don’t want to play?” Kenzie asked, rubbing her forehead with two fingers.

  “You have to,” Haley said out of the blue. Everybody stared, and she blushed bright pink. “I mean, we need you.”

  “Yeah, Mackenzie, we need you,” Dylan said in the same tone of voice as Haley.

  Geoff laughed, but I didn’t join him. Dylan had it bad for Kenzie. I get it, bro. I feel your pain.

  Kenzie made a face at Dylan, then said, “Whatever. Let’s get this over with.”

  “Okay, she’s stoked,” Geoff said. “Turn the lights off.”

  After everybody had rushed around switching off lights, the house took on an eerie appearance. A greenish glimmering came from the kitchen where the digital clocks on the various appliances glowed.

  “Can’t we have at least one or two lamps on?” Haley asked.

  “Y’all wanted to play outside in the dark,” Geoff said. “What’s the difference?”

  “None,” Amanda said. “Just stick with me, Haley.”

  “Okay,” she whispered.

  “All right,” Geoff said. “We’ll go outside so you can hide, Noah. You’ve got to the count of fifty to find a place.”

  “Right,” I said.

  Once they’d all filed onto the front porch, I stood absolutely still in the shadows. If I waited until they started counting it would hide any noise I might make. I didn’t need to hurry, anyway. I knew exactly where I was going—the closet in Geoff’s room with his dirty clothes on the floor. Surely Amanda would avoid a place that held a stench. A guy could hope.

  Gabby

  I followed everybody to the front porch where I sank into one of the rocking chairs. Amanda put her face up against the front window of the living room.

  “Stop,” Molly said. “No cheating.”

  “Oh, all right.” The younger girl looked out over the front driveway like everyone else and Geoff started the count.

  I couldn’t decide if I wanted to find Noah first or not at all. I’d had to shove away the disappointment that rose up when he volunteered to hide. It would’ve been fun to search together in the dark for someone else. Stop it, Gabby. I shouldn’t have been imagining us together or wishing for things that couldn’t be. It was just that for some unknown reason, he’d started being nice to me. Something I never thought would happen after our fight the night before. So, my feelings were a jumbled mixture of hope, confusion, and want.

  Stupid boy. It would serve him right if Amanda found him first.

  “Fifty!” Geoff said. “Let’s go.”

  Once inside, I started toward the back of the house where a strip of light was shining—probably from under the door of Gamma’s room. I’d only taken three steps when someone grabbed my elbow. “Eeep!” I squeaked.

  “Shh,” Kenzie whispered. “This way.”

  We backtracked and took the carpeted stairs to the second floor. Someone else’s muffled footsteps sounded behind us. I looked back at the large shadowy figure headed our way. Dylan. I opened my mouth to whisper to him, but Kenzie pulled me on toward our bedroom. Dylan didn’t follow.

  It was a good thing that Kenzie was so sure of her steps, because even though my eyes were used to the dark, I still felt like I was going to run into a wall any second. Kenzie let go of me as soon as we entered the room.

  “Check the bathroom,” Kenzie whispered. “I’ll look in the closet.”

  “Okay,” I whispered, even though I wanted to stick with Kenzie. I walked slowly toward the bathroom, bumped into the edge of one of the beds, and corrected my course. Maybe I should open the blinds. It was probably brighter outside with the light of the quarter moon than it was in there.

  When my feet moved from the carpet to the cool tile floor, I paused. Wasn’t this where the dumb girl bought it in every slasher movie? Nope. Better not think about that. I stretched my hand forward, groping for the shower curtain and coming away with air. Yeah, Gab
by, the shower isn’t by the bathroom door. You have to walk in at least three steps. Maybe I should just turn on the light, but then I’d be night-blind when I turned it off again.

  Okay, time for my three steps. I walked forward and felt the cloth of the shower curtain under my fingers. I clenched it in my hand.

  “Well?” Kenzie whispered behind me.

  I whirled, clutching my chest. “Don’t do that,” I said in a harsh whisper, adrenaline pumping.

  Kenzie let out a wheezy laugh like some old cartoon dog. “You’re taking too long. I’ve already checked under the beds.” She reached past me and flung the shower curtain open. Nothing. “Come on. Geoff’s room.”

  I took in a shuddering breath and followed Kenzie from the room. This game might just kill me. It’s not that I was afraid of the dark. Well, not much. It was just that I hated being startled.

  No one was in the upstairs hallway. We tiptoed down it, even though we probably didn’t need to. Kenzie pushed Geoff’s bedroom door open, and it creaked. She froze. I could sense her straining to listen. When nothing happened, we walked in.

  Geoff’s window blinds were open, making the room a lot brighter. But it was also a lot messier. Kenzie kicked a pile of clothes to one side, then squatted down to look under the bed. I turned toward the closet. Um, no. I was not opening anything else. I’d wait for Kenzie to do that.

  I glanced over my shoulder to see how my friend was doing, and two things happened at once. A rumbling noise sounded, and heavy hands grabbed me. I gasped. If the person hadn’t been holding me, I might’ve vaulted through the ceiling. I looked up at the hulking figure of Dylan.

  “In here,” he whispered, and guided me over a pile of sneakers. I stumbled toward one end of the closet.

  “You made it,” Noah whispered.

  My heart, which had launched itself into my throat moments before, fell back and pounded wildly. Noah was right before me, against the closet wall. But it was so dark, he might’ve been only a disembodied voice if it weren’t for the clean scent of whatever soap he used.