Last Summer

by Holly Chamberlin

  The thought of Mr. Patterson, upright and kind, so vastly different from her own father, filled Meg with sadness. For as long as she lived she would remember the day her mother had made her apologize to Rosie; it was just after Rosie had left school a few weeks before the end of the term. And Meg had so wanted to apologize, so very much, but those moments when she stood in the Pattersons’ living room in front of Mr. and Mrs. Patterson and the girl who had always been her best friend, her cheeks red and burning with shame, well, those moments had been the most awful moments in her entire life. She barely remembered what she had said exactly, and she thought that when she had stopped talking Rosie had mumbled something like “Okay,” but she couldn’t be sure. What she did remember very clearly was coming home and sobbing for hours alone in her room, a chair propped up under the doorknob so her mother couldn’t come in. Not that she had tried.

  Anyway, even if Rosie had accepted her apology, Meg didn’t think Rosie really believed that she was sorry. Ever since then Rosie had been avoiding her, once even running back into her house when Meg came out of her own. Mrs. Patterson had frowned and glared the whole time Meg and her mother had been in that living room, and Meg was 100 percent certain Mrs. Patterson hated her now. Which was also awful because Meg had loved spending time at her house. She was a really good cook and was always so calm and happy, or at least she acted that way, and she let Meg try on some of her jewelry and the awesome clothes she had made for herself. And last year, for Meg’s fourteenth birthday, Mrs. Patterson had made something special for her, too, a really cool top with a faux necklace sewn on the front. Rosie had thought it was too flashy, but that was because her idea of fashion was a comfy flannel shirt and also because she didn’t read Teen Vogue and InStyle like Meg did. Not that she had a subscription to either magazine, but an older girl down the street did and was cool about giving each issue to Meg when she had finished reading it. Sometimes a page or two had been torn out but, as Meg had heard her mother mutter on occasion, “beggars can’t be choosers.”

  Well, she certainly didn’t consider herself a beggar, but she understood what her mother meant. “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth” was another way you could put it. Her mother was full of sayings like that. She said she had gotten them all from her parents. Meg had never really known her maternal grandparents. They both had died before she was two. She had seen pictures, of course, but looking at the pictures didn’t tell her much about Harold and Eileen Donaldson, other than that they seemed pretty stern. But maybe they just hadn’t liked having their picture taken. Her mother didn’t like having her picture taken, but her father was always mugging for the camera. Like anyone would want a picture of him, with his missing front teeth and scraggly little beard and sagging stomach. Ugh.

  A little yellow butterfly was fluttering around the kind of sad-looking roses her mother was trying to grow by the fence that separated their yard from the Pattersons’. Meg thought it would be nice to be an insentient thing like an insect, even if only for a day. All that mattered to an insect was that very moment, and the insect didn’t even know that the moment mattered, just that the moment was ... there. If she were a butterfly or even a mosquito she wouldn’t be thinking ahead to the long summer months and wondering how the heck she was going to survive them. Because there wasn’t much to look forward to this summer, not without Rosie’s companionship. Not even the prospect of her fifteenth birthday in August excited her. There definitely would be no gift from Rosie or Mrs. Patterson, and certainly no handmade birthday card. And no birthday sleepover, either, where she and Rosie would try to stay awake all night but fall asleep by one or two o’clock. Gloomily, Meg wondered if anyone at all would send her a card. Her father usually forgot, though in past years Meg had overheard her mother on the phone reminding him that her birthday was coming up. So maybe it wasn’t that he forgot to send her a card. Maybe it was that he just didn’t want to. Petey would give her a card, something he had made with construction paper and glitter. Petey loved glitter.

  The thought of her little brother brought a smile to Meg’s face. Lately, the thought of Petey was the only thing that could. But the smile disappeared as rapidly as it had come. Since she had told Rosie’s secret to Mackenzie and the others, which Mackenzie had then texted to almost everyone at school, Mrs. Patterson had refused to have anything to do not only with Meg and Mrs. Giroux, but also with Petey. Meg felt horrible guilt about that, but at the same time she felt angry that Mrs. Patterson could take out her anger on a totally innocent little boy. Maybe Meg deserved to be punished, but Petey certainly didn’t. She was the one who had messed up.

  How, how, how could she have been so awful? She had never planned to reveal Rosie’s secret to anyone, ever. Her mother had taught her how important it was to keep your word as well as how important it was to keep a friend’s secret. Unless, of course, it was a secret that could really get someone hurt, like a crime or something. And Rosie’s secret certainly hadn’t been dangerous. Well, only if it had remained a secret.

  Meg would never forget that fateful day. She was in downtown Yorktide, window-shopping and trying to outrun a bad mood, when she spotted Mackenzie and Courtney and Jill standing outside the pharmacy. She had stopped in her tracks, her mind suddenly racing. Her feelings were a jumble of fear, frustration, and anger.

  She was just so fed up with the whole situation. Rosie just never fought back when Mackenzie and the others bullied her. She never stood up for herself. Meg was so tired of trying to help and of being rebuffed. So many times she had been on the verge of taking matters into her own hands and telling her mother what was going on with Rosie and Mackenzie. It would solve everything, she thought. Her mother would tell Mrs. Patterson and then Mr. Patterson would step in and everything would come out into the light and ...

  And Rosie might never talk to her again. And Meg would have been branded a tattletale. And she might be dragged into whatever the Pattersons decided to do, like confronting Mackenzie and her father, Mr. Egan... . No, Meg had decided time and again, telling her mother would solve nothing. It would only complicate things. She had grown so angry with Rosie for putting her in this frustrating position. She felt like an accomplice to something wrong, but to what, exactly? To Rosie’s self-destruction? That was sick. Rosie had pulled Meg into her nightmare.

  And so, that day in downtown Yorktide, Meg had found herself walking toward the girls who had been making Rosie’s life, and Meg’s life, miserable for months. It was like some other Meg had taken over her mind and was operating her feet as she approached Mackenzie and her crew. She felt helpless to stop. She felt as if she were watching herself from a great distance, crying out, “No! Don’t!” It was a terrible few moments.

  And then she was standing in front of Mackenzie, Courtney, and Jill. She remembered Mackenzie sneering. “What do you want?” she had demanded, the emphasis on “you.” Meg Giroux, loser friend of loser Rosie Patterson.

  And then the words were coming out, almost but not entirely against her will. “Rosie Patterson used to wet her bed. Until, like, fifth grade.”

  The moment, no, the split second after she had spoken, Meg felt as if she were going to throw up.

  “So?” Mackenzie had answered, looking to her cohorts and then back to Meg. “Why would we care?”

  There was nothing Meg could say to that.

  With a laugh to show just how pathetic they found her, the girls had walked away, leaving Meg standing rooted to the spot and still fighting nausea. How she made it home after that without getting hit by a car she couldn’t recall. She did remember praying that nothing would happen as a result of her misconduct, that Mackenzie would just forget what she had told her and leave Rosie in peace. Once she was safely in her bedroom she actually got down on her knees like in church and begged God to hear her prayers.

  But if God had indeed heard her prayers, He had chosen not to answer. The very next afternoon it seemed as if the entire school—at least, the entire ninth and tenth grades—kne
w that Rosie Patterson had wet her bed. And the only way that information could have gotten out was through Meg. There was absolutely no use in trying to deny her guilt. She had tried to apologize right then and there, at Rosie’s locker, with kids swarming past, some of them laughing and pointing, but Rosie wouldn’t even look at her. Even at the time Meg felt that it was more like Rosie couldn’t look at her, that her shame and sadness were too great. Not anger. Meg would have preferred that Rosie punch her in the nose rather than look so ... defeated. She had looked, Meg thought now, remembering, as if she had deserved the betrayal.

  And that had been the last day of Rosie’s normal ninth-grade life. She had completed her classes from home and missed out on all the end-of-the-year social events. Meg had participated in those events—a trip to Portland, Judy Smith’s party, and the festivities at school—but without enthusiasm or interest. All she felt was shame. Her father had said nothing at all to her about the incident, even though Meg knew her mother had told him what had happened. Her mother had been seriously disappointed in her, though at least she had acknowledged that Meg’s admitting her bad behavior right away was a good thing. Meg had accepted responsibility for her misdeed and her mother had forgiven her. But still, she felt lousy. It was good to feel genuine remorse, but it was not good to have done the thing for which you felt the remorse in the first place.

  Meg looked at her hands on the chains of the swing and realized they were stained with rust. Somehow, to have dirty hands seemed appropriate, a symbol of her sin. She couldn’t deny that she had betrayed her best friend to a bunch of thugs and yet, at the same time, she couldn’t really believe that she had done it. Why had she been so stupid? What had she hoped to accomplish? The counselor her mother had made her see for a few weeks, someone from their church, Sister Pauline, a nun who wore jeans and T-shirts and earrings just like a normal person, had asked her that question more than once and other than the incredibly lame answer of “I don’t know,” all she could come up with was the almost as lame answer, “I wanted them to like me.” It was all pretty pathetic, mostly the part she hadn’t had the courage to tell Sister Pauline. That she had been mad at Rosie for not fighting back; that she had in some small way wanted to punish her friend for being ... For being what? For being frightened. Yes, it was all pretty pathetic.

  Well, whatever she had hoped to achieve, what she got in the end was no best friend and no nice and generous best friend’s mother, and even Mr. Patterson didn’t stop by anymore with his toolbox to see if anything needed fixing. Which meant that when something had gone wrong with the kitchen sink the week before, Meg’s mother had had to call a plumber and spend who knew how much money she claimed not to have on a quick fix Mike Patterson could have done in five minutes and for free. Certainly Mrs. Giroux hadn’t had the option of calling her ex-husband. Meg had known for years and years that her father was, in her mother’s words, “pretty much useless around the house.” Meg’s opinion was that he was pretty much useless everywhere.

  Abruptly, Meg got up from the swing and pushed it hard, jumping away as she did so. It flew wildly, the metal chains clanging against the structure’s supports. Meg winced. She shouldn’t be wasting time on a stupid swing set anyway. She would be fifteen in August, but sometimes she felt that she was still too much of a child. Judy Smith had a boyfriend. So did a few of the other girls who would be tenth graders in September. That was one of the things that had begun to frustrate Meg about Rosie back before all the bad stuff had started. Meg had wanted to talk about boys and maybe start dating, though she was pretty sure her mother wouldn’t let her, not the way she ranted on about most men being bums. But Rosie hadn’t been much interested in talking about guys or dating. She said that her parents wouldn’t let her date until she was sixteen, maybe even seventeen, so there was no point in wasting a lot of time debating about who was the cutest guy in their grade or who was the hottest senior. They’d had a stupid fight, nothing major, but Rosie’s lack of interest in guys and dating had pointed out to Meg that maybe their friendship wasn’t as perfect as it had been when they were younger. Maybe they were growing apart a bit. The notion had not sat well with Meg. Although she had been annoyed with Rosie, the thought of life without her was too weird to contemplate. It was like trying to imagine your life without your right hand or something.

  The swing had come to a stop and Meg headed back inside the house. She really had better get started on the housework. A lot of times her mother was in a bad mood when she got home from work. Finding the house a mess definitely wouldn’t help. Not that she was afraid of her mother. Frannie Giroux’s bark was way worse than her bite. It was just that Meg didn’t like to be around anyone when they were in a bad mood. She had enough of her own bad moods to deal with, thank you very much.

  Right before stepping inside the side door, Meg looked over her shoulder at Rosie’s house. No one was in sight. Meg closed the door behind her. So what if Rosie wasn’t really into boys or dating yet. So what if she preferred to watch an old black-and-white movie when Meg suggested they go shopping for makeup. Those things didn’t really matter. What did matter was getting Rosie back into her life.

  5

  It had been one of those days. And in Frannie’s opinion, there had been too many of “those days” lately. A traffic jam had come up out of nowhere, half of the office staff had mysteriously called in sick, and her intestines had been playing a game of Hacky Sack since noon. She had forgotten to bring in milk, and then had forgotten to ask Meg to pick up a carton, so at dinner Petey had had to drink orange juice. For some reason, this had struck him as a fate worse than death, which was odd, because Petey was the easy child. It was very unlike him to make a fuss about anything, but make a fuss he had. She would keep a close eye on him for the next day or two. Maybe he wasn’t feeling well. Maybe some bigger kid at day camp was picking on him. The bullying epidemic loomed large in Frannie’s mind these days.

  Already in her worn and fraying flannel nightgown, Frannie left her room for the house’s one bathroom. In a perfect world she would at least have a powder room on the first floor, but it was not a perfect world. Unflinchingly, she looked at her face in the mirror over the sink. Her eyes, once what her first boyfriend way back in high school had called chocolate brown, now looked downright muddy. Dark circles surrounded them and a spray of fine lines (Be real, she told herself, they’re wrinkles) shot from the outer corners of both. Her complexion had muddied, too, in spite of using lots of moisturizer (generic brand, of course) each morning and night. She supposed she should have been using some product that claimed to lighten and brighten the skin, too, but it was too late now. Besides, what did it matter? She was pretty sure nobody really looked at her anymore, other than to see the cookie-cutter outline of Employee or Mother. And the last thing she wanted to do was date. No. Way. So what did it matter if Frances Giroux the person became invisible by the time she was forty? That was most women’s fate, anyway, to fade away quietly. Frannie didn’t have the energy to be one of those women who refused to go gently into social oblivion. Helen Mirren she was not.

  Frannie sighed and turned to the process of brushing her teeth. She was only thirty-eight years old, but most times felt as if she were at least sixty. An old sixty, not a Helen Mirren kind of sixty-something. But unless a fairy godmother was going to magically offer her a free lifelong membership at a gym and an endless number of complimentary massages and facials, she was going to continue slogging along toward middle age with her wrinkles and sags and bulges. Amen. There were certainly more important matters with which to concern herself, like what had been going on with Meg. And like her own sense of responsibility and guilt.

  Frannie turned out the light in the bathroom and walked back down the hall to her bedroom. As she passed Meg’s room she noted that her light was still on. She hoped her daughter was reading something a little more substantial than a fashion magazine, like one of the books she was supposed to read for her new English teacher. Petey’s light was o
ut. He had fallen asleep right after dinner, another indication that something might be bothering him. Or maybe, Frannie thought, I’m becoming a professionally nervous parent.

  She quietly closed the bedroom door behind her. Well, maybe she was right to be nervous. Their family situation often meant that Frannie didn’t have the time to pay enough attention to her children, especially to her daughter, who was at that tender and often powder-keg age when the simplest incidents or the most innocent words could seem dire and dramatic and miscommunication between the old and young was the unfortunate norm.

  Frannie pretty much collapsed into the bed she and Peter had bought when they were first married. Though she was bone tired, she knew within a minute of settling the light covers over her body that she would not be able to sleep for some time. Usually, she was snoring not long after her head hit the pillow (Meg had complained about the snores keeping her awake), but in the last weeks she had endured more and more near-sleepless nights. And a sleepless night did not make for a particularly easy day, especially not with Frannie’s job. For the past ten years she had been employed as the office manager for a midsized lumber supplier and home improvement company called Le Roi Lumber and Homes. Appropriately enough, it was owned and operated by a family named King. The pay was decent and the job afforded her health insurance, which sometimes seemed more essential than the salary, like when you looked at what it cost to pay for a policy entirely on your own. But the hours were long and a few members of the office staff were incredibly incapable, kept on only because they were somehow related to the president of the company, Trip King, who wasn’t exactly a rocket scientist himself. Still, she was thankful to have a job in the first place, especially with two children to support and little if any help from her ex-husband. Peter never had two nickels to rub together, and his asking for a loan and her refusing to give it was pretty much a monthly ritual. And on top of his fiscal irresponsibility, there was his general inability to be there for his children. His inability or his simple lack of interest or maybe even both.