“He didn’t?”
“No, Matthew had it with him in the infirmary.”
He did? That’s weird. Daniel had it in the woods with him only a couple of hours ago. How would Matthew have gotten ahold of it? And why?
“Oh,” I say. “Sorry about that. Thanks for getting it back.”
Deb nods and settles into her chair to resume the Great Watch. My mom’s due to arrive in about three hours.
I’m itching to open Gatsby, but I force myself to wait a suitable amount of time so Deb doesn’t get suspicious. It seems she didn’t open the book on her way back to the dorm—she doesn’t know all the secrets it contains. After about twenty minutes or so, I casually open the book as if I’m planning on reading for a while. But I discreetly flip through the pages, searching for a hint as to why Matthew would have had the book.
And there it is, on page 169, in the chapter-ending blank space just after Gatsby is shot.
Hey, Lex—
Matthew has scrawled.
Daniel told me what happened. For what it’s worth, he feels really bad about ratting you guys out. And even though he used the map to find you, he never let the book out of his hands. So no one else has seen what’s in it. Maybe that’s a sign that he’s on his way to changing his mind about all this crap. Or maybe not. I don’t know. Anyway, I guess I’m not gonna get a chance to say good-bye, so I just wanted to tell you what a great friend you’ve been to me this summer and that you better keep in touch or else!
I’m so happy for you and Carolyn—you guys are perfect together. When you get married, I want to be your maid of honor.
Talk to you soon, Lexi. Love ya! And remember, don’t let the man get you down.
Xoxoxoxo Matthew
[email protected]
I smile, tuck the book safely away in my suitcase, and curl up on the bed, taking in the pink dorm room for the last time.
***
I’m jolted awake by Mr. Martin’s voice. “Lexi.”
I rub my eyes and sit up. “Yes?”
“Your mother is downstairs.” He spins on his heels and walks away.
This is it.
Time to face my mom.
Chapter 38
She’s in the lobby, sitting in one of the sleek leather armchairs. I see her before she sees me, and a knot forms in my throat when I get a good look at her—she looks great. Her old color is back in her face, her cheeks are fuller, her eyes are bright in a way that feels much more permanent than it did before. She’s the mom I knew years ago.
“Hey, Mom,” I say.
She stands up when she sees me, and her face bursts into a huge smile.
All the emotions that have been brewing inside me finally come to a boil. I drop my suitcase handle and run into her arms. She holds me and rocks me and I cry into her shoulder. “I missed you,” I mumble.
“I missed you too, Lexi.” She strokes my hair like she used to do when I was a little kid and home sick from school.
Mr. Martin clears his throat. “Follow me, please,” he says and leads us into his office like he did that first day. “Mrs. Hamilton, I’m sure you’re wondering what Lexi has done to force us to ask her to leave our camp,” he says.
My mother nods.
“She was caught sneaking off with another female camper,” he says. He pauses, waiting for my mother’s reaction. But her face is unreadable. “She and this other young woman have had a blatant disregard for the rules and teachings of New Horizons,” he continues, “and I’m afraid we have no choice but to expel them both.”
My mom sits there for a minute, absorbing the information, and then says, “Thank you for letting me know.”
Mr. Martin looks surprised that that’s her only response. And honestly, so am I. What is she thinking?
Mom signs my release papers and shakes Mr. Martin’s hand, and before I know it, I’m walking out of the main cabin and driving back down the gravel mountain road.
We don’t speak until we’re on the highway.
“Your cell phone is in the glove compartment,” Mom says. “It’s fully charged. I thought you might want to call your friends to tell them you’re coming home.”
I have nine new voicemails and 138 emails. I’ll look at them later.
“Mom…” I begin. But I don’t know what to say. I search her face, looking for some kind of answer.
The corners of her mouth turn down. “I’m not going to tell you this is all okay.” She keeps her eyes on the road.
“I know,” I say quietly. That would have been too much to hope for.
“I worry about you. So, so much. This life isn’t what I would have chosen for you.”
No kidding.
“And I really wish we were going back home on different terms. But that’s only because I want what’s best for you.”
“But this is—”
“Let me finish,” she says, finally darting a glance over to me. “I really missed you, Lexi. More and more as the summer went on. And as much as I wanted you to get help, I was also incredibly mad at myself. You’re my daughter, and I sent you away.” She takes a deep breath. “I’m not so sure I should have done that.”
I stay silent. I never thought I’d hear my mother say any of this.
“I spoke with Pastor Joe quite a bit. We talked a lot about family and priorities and letting our faith guide us instead of our fear. He asked me if I love you, and I said of course. Then he asked me if I love you unconditionally, even if this part of you never changed.”
I hold my breath.
“And I admit I didn’t answer that question as quickly. I really thought about it, because I did know it was a very real possibility, not just a hypothetical. And I realized there was only one truthful answer—of course I love you unconditionally.”
I let the breath out and realize I was digging my fingernails into the flesh of my thigh. I move my hands away and stare at the ten tiny commas etched into my skin.
“So,” Mom says, her hands tightly gripping the steering wheel, “I may not agree with it, and I’ll never approve of it or stop praying for you, but I’m really going to try to learn to live with it. Because we need to be in each other’s lives. If there’s anything this summer apart from each other has proven, I think it’s that.”
I take a breath to try to steady my voice. “Okay,” I manage.
“Can I ask a favor though?” Mom asks, her voice a little bit lighter now.
“Sure…”
“I don’t want you to lie to me anymore. Please don’t do that, but…maybe just bring up things on a need-to-know basis? At first, anyway. While I get used to the idea.”
I smile. “Okay, Mom. I won’t make you march in the parade until next year. But I think we should stop on the way home and pick up a rainbow flag for the front porch.”
She shoots me a look. “That’s not funny, Lexi.” But she’s smiling. Sort of.
We drive past a farm—black and white cows dot the green hills like sprinkles on an ice cream cone. I can’t wait to get back to the beach.
“You know,” Mom says after a minute, “your father always suspected.”
My heart stops. “Suspected?”
She nods. “That you were…this way. We talked about it. Well, fought about it.”
My head is spinning. “What…what did he say?”
“He thought we should tell you it was okay, that we’d support you no matter what. I couldn’t do it though. I didn’t want to believe it was true.” She looks at me out of the corner of her eye. “I made him promise he wouldn’t say anything to you.”
I knew he didn’t know what he was talking about. That’s what Mom said on the phone when I told her I thought the de-gayifying was working. She’d been talking about Dad.
Dad knew. He knew the whole time. And he loved me anyway.
; Sneaky, unstoppable tears rush to my eyes.
We drive on in silence for a while.
After a couple of hours have gone by and I’m sure Carolyn’s left New Horizons, I clear my throat and say, “Mom, I have to make a call.”
“Go ahead.”
“It’s about something pretty serious. I think you should pull over.”
She looks at me questioningly but pulls off at the next exit and parks the car at a gas station.
I dial.
“911, what’s your emergency?” says the voice on the other end of the line.
“It’s not exactly an emergency, but I need to report several counts of child abuse and sexual harassment,” I say. Mom gasps, and I give her a little headshake to let her know that I’m okay, that I’m not the one who was victimized.
The dispatcher puts me in touch with the local law enforcement and I tell the police officer everything I know. It’s a long, difficult conversation, but by the end, I’m pretty confident that Mr. Martin is going to get everything he deserves.
***
We’re almost home when my phone rings. The number flashing on the display is unfamiliar. My heartbeat speeds up.
“Hello?”
“Lexi?” It’s Carolyn. She found my note.
I glance at Mom. She’s diligently watching the road, but we’re about two feet apart from each other, and the radio’s off—of course she’s going to hear every word I say. I wish I didn’t have to have this conversation, my first one with Carolyn away from the confines of New Horizons, in front of her. But I also promised Carolyn I wasn’t going to hide from my mother anymore. So here goes. “Hey,” I say softly.
“Hey. I miss you already.” There’s a muffled sound in the background, and then she says, “My parents say hi.”
I laugh. “Hi back.”
There’s so much to talk about. What my mom said. How things went with Carolyn’s parents and Mr. Martin. What she’s told her parents about me. My call to the police. Matthew’s note in Gatsby. The good-byes we never got to say in person. What the hell I’m going to tell everyone at school. How she and I are going to make this long-distance thing work.
But there will be time for that later. Right now, all I want is to sit here on the phone, knowing that even though Carolyn and I are driving further and further apart at this moment, we’re closer than we’ve ever been. Right now I want to just be.
“So,” I say.
“So,” she says back, and there’s a smile in her voice that makes my heart explode with heat and fire.
It actually feels a lot like lightning…only way better.
Acknowledgments
It might sound crazy, considering I don’t actually know her, but I must start this long list of thank-yous by sending an enormous shout out to Lady Gaga, whose song “Hair” is the reason this book exists. Thank you, Gaga, for inspiring me in such a profound way, and for giving a voice to all the teens in the world who just want to be loved for who they are.
Thank you to Leah Hultenschmidt, my wonderful editor, for being so smart, insightful, patient, enthusiastic, and all around cool. Major props and thanks to my publicist Derry Wilkens for working tirelessly to bring The Summer I Wasn’t Me and My Life After Now to the world. And thank you to Aubrey Poole, Jillian Bergsma, Cat Clyne, Abbie Digel, the Sourcebooks cover design team, the sales and marketing team, the copyeditors and proofreaders, and every single person at Sourcebooks who worked on this book.
In case you didn’t know, Kate McKean is the best agent ever, and I am so lucky to have her on my side, from Lucy to Lexi and beyond.
This book was my creative thesis for my MFA, and I absolutely won the thesis advisor lottery with Sarah Ketchersid. Thank you, Sarah, for your unparalleled wisdom, and for making me rewrite the first fifty pages more times than I can count. You were always right.
Thank you to David Levithan for not only being an incredible professor and inspiration, but for doing all you do to help little guys like me find a real place in the NYC YA author scene.
The Lucky 13s—including Alison Cherry, Mindy Raf, and Lindsay Ribar—is just the coolest group of kid lit authors ever, and I’m proud to be one of you.
To my creative writing instructor Sarah Weeks and my New School peeps Amber, Jane, Kevin, and Molly, thank you so much for your encouragement as I was drafting the early chapters of this book.
To my beta readers, critique group, and kickass thesis group—Caela Carter, Sona Charaipotra, Dhonielle Clayton, Alyson Gerber, Corey Ann Haydu, Riddhi Parekh, and Mary G. Thompson—you’re all a bunch of geniuses. You were more integral to the creation of Lexi’s world than you probably realize, and I love you for it.
Thanks to the fam—Susan and John Miller, Jim Verdi, and Robert and Alyssa Verdi—for being so excited about my books. Thank you to my sister-in-law Emily Chiles for writing me a letter of recommendation for my grad school application! Thank you to the Petrie family at large—and Cynthia Farina and Rachel Leigh Smith in particular—for being so supportive and so cool with the topics I choose to write about. I would have written the books anyway, but, you know, it’s really nice to know you’ve got my back.
Paul Bausch, thank you for being such an awesome guy and for putting up with me all those times I couldn’t go out on the weekends because I had to work. Love you, homie.
Amy Ewing, this book was dedicated to you basically before it was even written. Thank you for reading and re-reading, for talking it all through, for squealing with me in South Africa when I got the happy news email from my agent, for loving this quirky little band of four like they’re real people, and for reassuring me that Carolyn is, in fact, super hot. You are my champion!
About the Author
Jessica Verdi lives in Brooklyn, NY, and received her MFA in Creative Writing from The New School. She loves seltzer, Tabasco, TV, vegetarian soup, flip-flops, and her dog. She will choose Spike over Angel and Jess over Dean every single time, and has tattoos of a book and an elephant—two of her favorite things—on her arms. Jessica is also the author of My Life After Now. Visit her at www.jessicaverdi.com and follow her on Twitter @jessverdi.
If you liked The Summer I Wasn’t Me, check out these other great titles from Sourcebooks Fire.
MY LIFE AFTER NOW
Jessica Verdi
What now?
Lucy just had the worst week ever. And suddenly, it’s all too much—she wants out. Out of her house, out of her head, out of her life. She wants to be a whole new Lucy. So she does something the old Lucy would never dream of.
And now her life will never be the same. Now, how will she be able to have a boyfriend? What will she tell her friends? How will she face her family? Now, every moment is a precious gift. She never thought being positive could be so negative. But now, everything’s different…because now she’s living with HIV.
PRAISE FOR MY LIFE AFTER NOW:
“Debut author Verdi paints Lucy’s devastation and her tangled emotions with honesty and compassion…telling Lucy’s story with realism and hope.” —Publishers Weekly
“Verdi forces her readers to face Lucy’s dilemma with unflinching honesty and unfaltering compassion. A gem of a novel.” —RT Book Reviews, 4½ Stars, Top Pick of the Month
IF HE HAD BEEN WITH ME
Laura Nowlin
“If he had been with me, everything would have been different.”
Finn and Autumn used to be inseparable, but middle school puts them on separate paths going into high school. Yet no matter how distant they become or who they’re dating, Autumn continues to be haunted by the past and what might have been. While their paths continue to cross and opportunities continue to be missed, little do they know that the future might separate them forever.
PRAISE FOR IF HE HAD BEEN WITH ME:
“Friendship, love, secrets, hope and regret…this book has it all! If He H
ad Been With Me is a page-turner that you won’t be able to put down.” —Girls’ Life
“This sweet, authentic love story masks complex characters dealing with complex issues…First-time author Nowlin keeps the story real and fast paced.” —Booklist
16 THINGS I THOUGHT WERE TRUE
Janet Gurtler
Heart attacks happen to other people #thingsithoughtweretrue
When Morgan’s mom gets sick, it’s hard not to panic. Without her mother, she would have no one—until she finds out the dad who walked out on her as a baby isn’t as far away as she thought…
5000 Twitter followers are all the friends I need #thingsithoughtweretrue
With Adam in the back seat, a hyper chatterbox named Amy behind the wheel, and plenty of Cheetos to fuel their road trip, Morgan feels ready for anything. She’s not expecting a flat tire, a missed ferry, a fake girlfriend…and that these two people she barely knew before the summer started will become the people she can’t imagine living without.
PRAISE FOR JANET GURTLER:
“Just right for fans of Sarah Dessen and Jodi Picoult.” —Booklist on I’m Not Her
“The characters breathe with life.” —Kirkus on Who I Kissed
The Summer I Wasn't Me Page 25
