Last Summer

by Holly Chamberlin

  In reply, Frannie reached forward and hugged her old friend. Jane hugged her back just as tightly.

  “Come inside,” Frannie said then, her voice a bit strangled, and wiping a tear from her eye.

  Once inside the women hugged again, and now tears flowed copiously.

  “Come on,” Meg whispered to Rosie. She gestured toward the kitchen. “Let’s give them some privacy.” Rosie nodded and followed.

  After all the weeks of silence between them, Frannie half expected the words to flow fast and furious, accusations and apologies, regrets and revelations, but neither woman said a word. Right now, Frannie thought, what we most need is the powerful simplicity of touch.

  Some moments later, Frannie couldn’t have said exactly how long, the girls returned to the living room. Slowly, the women released each other.

  “You guys okay?” Meg asked, a slight smile playing on her lips.

  Jane just nodded. Frannie held out her arms for Rosie.

  “I’ve missed you,” she said as they embraced.

  Rosie smiled. “Thanks, Mrs. Giroux. I’ve missed you, too.”

  “We heard the news about that young boy just now,” Jane blurted, having found her voice. “One of Mike’s clients called him about something totally unrelated and mentioned the tragedy.”

  “Yes,” Frannie said. “Meg was watching the evening news earlier. That’s how we found out. Let’s sit down, all of us.”

  Jane and Frannie sat on the couch. Rosie sat in the plush corduroy chair and Meg perched on its arm.

  “It could have been anyone’s child,” Jane said, her voice raw. “It was almost mine. It just as easily could have been yours, too.”

  Frannie nodded. “Yes. But it wasn’t Rosie and it wasn’t Meg, so let’s at least be grateful for that.”

  “Why did we escape without further tragedy?” Jane went on, as if to herself. “I know there’s no real answer to that. I just keep thinking how unfair and random it all seems... .”

  Frannie saw Meg and Rosie share a look. “Life is unfair and random,” Meg repeated.

  Jane shook her head. “I’m so ashamed that it took this awful thing to happen before I could reach out to you again. Frannie, will you ever forgive me?”

  “Don’t be silly,” Frannie said, her voice a bit quivery. “There’s nothing to forgive. We’ve weathered a rough patch, that’s all.”

  Jane managed a wan smile. “You’re being too nice. I don’t deserve it. You should be angry with me.”

  “I was angry. But I’m over it.” Frannie shrugged. “Anger does nothing for the complexion.”

  Jane laughed. “And neither does holding a grudge, believe me.”

  Rosie cleared her throat meaningfully. “It’s great that you two are friends again. But right now, there’s something else we need to focus on—what happened to that family. We have to do something, Mom. I’m not just standing by. No freakin’ way.”

  “Excuse me?” Jane asked, eyebrows rising.

  “Whatever. Everyone says it. Anyway, what are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know. Not yet, anyway.” Jane turned to Frannie. “Have you heard anything new? Is the boy ... Is he still alive?”

  “Yes,” Frannie said. “He’s in critical condition but alive. I got a call earlier from a woman I know from church. Mrs. Kneeland is very close to the Ray family. She went over to the house as soon as she heard the news. She spent a few hours trying to comfort the parents. I doubt she had much success. Still, it was good of her to be there.”

  Jane shook her head. “The poor thing could have died. He could, I suppose, be paralyzed. It’s just so awful.”

  “Where did he get a gun?” Rosie asked.

  “His father is a hunter,” Frannie explained. “Mary Kneeland told me that every one of Jack Ray’s guns is registered and kept locked away. But a lock can always be picked.”

  “He must have felt so desperate to do something so brutal,” Rosie said quietly. “I wanted to die but I didn’t want to actually kill myself. I guess I don’t really know how bad he was feeling. It must have been so much worse than I ever felt.”

  “His parents must be devastated. They must feel so responsible.. . .” Jane couldn’t go on and pressed a tissue to her already tear-swollen eyes.

  “Maybe we can take up a collection for the Rays at church,” Meg said suddenly. “Do you think they’ll let us? Isn’t suicide a sin if you’re a Catholic?”

  Frannie frowned. “Yeah, like homosexuality is a sin. Please. But he didn’t actually kill himself, so ... I’m not sure how we can do it, but we’ll collect money somehow. Father William and Sister Pauline will help. No one in his or her right mind is going to condemn a child in trouble.”

  Jane nodded. “And who knows what kind of insurance the Rays have, if they have any at all. The hospital bills could ruin them.”

  “Maybe we could take Mr. and Mrs. Ray some food, like casseroles,” Rosie suggested. “Stuff they can just heat up.”

  “Good idea,” Jane said. “I’m sure the last thing they want to do is cook. I hope there’s someone close to them who can make sure they eat and get some sleep.”

  “Mary Kneeland said that she’ll take charge of that sort of thing,” Frannie said, glad to see Jane rallying to the cause and not entirely lost in memories of her own despair. “She lives just next door. And she called the Rays’ older son at college. He’s been doing a summer semester. He’s on his way home now.”

  “Good.” Jane sighed. “We have a lot of catching up to do,” she said to Frannie.

  “Yeah,” Frannie said, “we do. But not tonight. This whole thing ... I’m exhausted. It’s been a terrible few months, hasn’t it?”

  “Yes, it has,” Jane said, getting up from the couch and putting her hand out for Rosie’s. “Try to get some sleep. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  “That sounds good. Good night, Jane, Rosie.”

  Frannie closed the door behind the Pattersons and then leaned against it. She almost couldn’t believe that what had happened in the past half hour had really happened.

  She had almost come to accept as fact that she and Jane would never again be friends. It had been a bitter thing to accept, let alone to contemplate. But now ... more than anything, Frannie realized, she had just wanted things on Pond View Road back to normal.

  Meg broke into her thoughts as if she knew exactly what they consisted of. “So, Mom, how do you feel about Mrs. Patterson apologizing?” she asked. “Are you glad?”

  Frannie didn’t need to think about it. “Yeah,” she said, pushing off the door. “I am glad.”

  “Good. You know, there are going to be some bumps along the road... .”

  “Stop quoting me to me.”

  Meg grinned. “Just teasing. Really, Mom, your advice helped me be patient with Rosie.”

  “Thanks. I’m glad. It’s weird being a parent, Meg. You never know if what you’re telling your kid is going to help or harm in the end. You set out with the best of intentions, but ...” Frannie shrugged.

  “Well, you did good this time, Mom.”

  In response, Frannie yawned hugely. Meg laughed.

  “Yeah,” Frannie said. “We should get some sleep.”

  “Agreed. I suddenly feel completely exhausted.”

  Frannie put her arm around Meg’s shoulder and together they walked up the stairs to their bedrooms.

  48

  “Hi!” Stella called as she climbed out of her mother’s car. “Sorry I’m a bit late. Can you believe I almost overslept on the first day of school!”

  Meg laughed. “Getting detention would not be a cool way to start the school year.”

  “I’ve been awake since five this morning,” Rosie admitted. “I guess I was just too worked up to sleep. I hope I don’t have bags under my eyes.”

  “You look great,” Stella assured her.

  The three girls had planned to meet at the foot of the steps to Yorktide Memorial High. They wanted to start the new school year together. It h
ad been Rosie’s idea, seconded by Meg. Stella had enthusiastically agreed. In a way, Rosie thought, all three of us are recovering from an injury. Why not show each other support? And why not show anyone who cares to know that we survived?

  Stella’s hair had grown in a bit since Meg and Rosie had last seen her in Perkins Cove, but she said she was having it cut again soon. Rosie noticed a few kids in their grade kind of stare at Stella as they passed and went up the stairs. But that was probably because she looked so different than she had back in May. A long floaty top and a chunky beaded necklace were a far cry from a polo shirt and penny loafers. Meg wore a cool pair of jeans that Jane Patterson had hemmed for her and a purple zip-up hoodie over a pink T-shirt. Her mother had given her a cell phone—finally!—and Meg kept finding excuses to take it out of her bag and text and take pictures. Rosie had no idea who she was texting. She half suspected that Meg was pretending, but she wouldn’t call her on it. Meg had wanted that phone so badly and for so long.

  Rosie wore the heart-shaped rose quartz pendant Meg had given her for her last birthday. It was the first time she had worn it since about January, when things had gotten so really awful. She had gained back all of the weight she had lost last spring, largely thanks to her mother’s efforts in the kitchen, and wore a brand-new emerald green cotton sweater, a white blouse, and chinos.

  Mrs. Patterson had been fighting back tears since the night before and had tried to insist that she drive Rosie to school instead of letting her take the bus or walk like a normal person. Thankfully, Rosie’s father had stepped in and convinced his wife that Rosie would be perfectly fine getting to and from school the usual way. Really, Rosie thought, sometimes her mother treated her like she was a child. That was going to have to change. She was going to have to show her mother than she was perfectly capable of taking care of herself. Mostly.

  Rosie spotted Kristin Walsh and one of her fellow teammates starting up the stairs to the school. She waved and Kristin waved back with a smile.

  “You know Kristin Walsh?” Meg asked.

  “Not really. I met her for, like, two seconds one day this summer. Her mom’s one of my mom’s clients.”

  “She’s supposed to be pretty nice,” Stella said. “And she’s an awesome basketball player. I bet she’ll get a scholarship to college.”

  “Wow,” Rosie said. “Yeah, she seemed pretty nice when she was at my house.”

  Meg nodded toward the curb where a woman was getting out of a Jeep. “There goes Ms. Broccoli,” she said. “She’s going to be my advanced math teacher. I heard she’s really tough. And that she hates jokes about her name.”

  “You’ll ace the class,” Rosie said. “You always do.”

  But Meg actually looked worried. “I think I might actually have to try this year.”

  Rosie then spotted Charles Lin, the nice boy from her ninth-grade Spanish class, the one who had stopped to ask her if she was okay the time she had kind of frozen in the hall. He saw her, too, and waved. She smiled and waved back.

  “You’re waving at a guy?” Meg asked. “You, Rosie Patterson?”

  Rosie shrugged. “He waved first.”

  “My mom heard that Charles and his parents went to China this summer to visit family,” Stella told them. “I would love to go to China someday.”

  Meg nodded. “Me, too!”

  “I want to go to every country in Europe first,” Rosie said. “And that might take a long time!”

  “And a lot of money,” Meg pointed out. “You’d better write a lot of best sellers someday.”

  Rosie laughed. It was a beautiful morning, sunny and a little bit cool. Seeing Kristin and Charles this morning seemed like a good omen, a promise that this school year would be different, that she, herself, would be different. There really was a future ahead of her, though only months before she had seen her life as bleak and meaningless and yes, better off ended.

  How much had already changed in her life, and for the better!

  “We’d better go in,” Meg said, checking her phone for the time.

  Stella nodded. “And you’d better turn off your phone. The school’s cracking down on cell phone use in a big way. My mom told me. I’m pretty sure we’ll hear about it in today’s assembly.”

  “Yeah,” Rosie said, thinking of how she had suffered from cell phone abuse, “your mother would be really furious if you had your phone taken away, especially on the first day of school.”

  “Tell me about it!” Meg turned the phone off and tucked it deep into her backpack.

  “Okay, everybody,” Stella said. “Let’s do this!”

  And side by side the girls climbed the stairs to Yorktide Memorial High and began the journey that was tenth grade.

  49

  Journal Entry for August 28, 2012

  Today was the first day of sophomore year, tenth grade.

  My therapist has been telling me since the stuff that happened with Mackenzie and the others back in the fall and spring that I should try to write a diary again, only she called it a journal. From the beginning she’s said that writing out what’s going on in your life and how you’re feeling about it can really help you understand things. But I didn’t want to understand things. Maybe I couldn’t.

  That is, until now.

  This is the first entry in my brand-new journal. I decided to call it a journal and not a diary. It seems more mature. Anyway, this is the first entry about what’s going to be my brand-new life. And here’s the thing I learned about life this last summer. No matter how much good stuff there is, there’s always the possibility of bad stuff, too, just that you have to try not to let the bad stuff contaminate the good. That’s hard to do, but you kind of have no choice if you want to live, and I do want to live. Like I told Meg back when we were in Perkins Cove one day this summer, the day we ran into Stella, there’s a lot I want to do in my life, so I have to live to be old!

  BTW: In some cultures around the world, old people are really respected, but not here in the United States. People (not all people) just make fun of them or ignore them. I wonder why that is. It’s not fair at all. I was at the store the other day with Mom and I saw this little old man being shoved aside—literally!—by some middle-aged guy who wanted to get something on a shelf in the cookie aisle. It made me furious, but I was too scared to go up to the guy and say something. He was pretty big and mean looking. But I did go over to the little old man after the big guy had moved off and asked if I could reach something for him. He was nice and asked me if I could get him a box of Fig Newtons and then he thanked me. I wish I could have done more.

  Maybe elder care (I think that’s what it’s called) is a field I could work in when I’m an adult. I’m not sure what kind of degree that would require. Though I think I also want to be a writer. (Meg acts like it’s a done deal that I’m going to be a writer! She says I act like one. I’m not really sure what she means by that.) Maybe I could combine the two somehow... . We’ll see what happens!

  About my old diary. I’m kind of curious to read it again and see just how my mind was working and what I was feeling all last school year. But I’m also kind of scared to do it yet and Dr. Lowe agrees that it might not be time to “revisit”—that’s her word—those sad months yet. Maybe, someday, I’ll decide I’m ready. Until then, all of my old diaries will stay in that plastic box under my bed.

  Here’s something interesting: Today, when Meg and Stella and I were at my locker, Mackenzie and Courtney and Jill came around the corner and started to walk down the hall. I have to admit my stomach clenched a bit but I just went on talking to my friends, and Mackenzie and the others just walked by. No one said a word and no one even looked at us! When they were out of sight the three of us burst out laughing!

  Oh, and I ran into Kristin Walsh in the hall after lunch. She stopped and we chatted. She said I should come to some of her basketball games. I kind of laughed and told her that I didn’t really know anything about sports and she kind of laughed and said, “So come and lea
rn!” So maybe I will.

  So far things between Meg and me have been going well. We’ve had some arguments, but Dr. Lowe has been trying to help me understand that disagreements within a relationship are normal and that it’s smart to “embrace the differences.” That’s her term. Also, I’ve learned that although forgiveness can be really hard, it’s definitely worth it. At least, most times it is. With Meg, it was totally worth it.

  Oh, and get this—Mom is going to give Meg sewing lessons. Meg’s super excited because if she learns to sew she can make her own clothes, especially some of the stuff she couldn’t afford if she had to buy it in a store. As for me, I’m glad she won’t be complaining so much anymore! Don’t tell her I said that! Anyway, she told me she’s saving up to have that little ruby she bought the last time we were in Portland wrapped. That’s when thin silver or gold wire is laced around a stone, with a loop on top so you can wear it on a chain. (My rose quartz pendant isn’t wrapped. It’s actually a big bead.) Mom said she would contact that jewelry guy she likes, the one who comes to the Fourth of July fair, and ask him if he knows anyone local who could do that for Meg. Meg is determined to wear a “real piece of jewelry” as soon as she can. I guess her definition of “real” is different from mine!

  I don’t know what’s going to happen with Stella and me. Meg thinks she’s pretty nice and so do I, but I think it’s going to take time for us all to really trust each other. That’s okay. I have the time. Last week Stella loaned me a book of poems by Emily Dickinson, which I thought was really nice of her. She said she thought I would like them. They’re kind of hard to understand at first, and some of them are kind of bizarre, but I really do like them. Stella was right. The lines really stick in your head and the poems are even better when you read them out loud. I’m going to go online after dinner and look up information about Emily Dickinson’s life. I know a little but I’d like to know more. That famous portrait of her, the old black-and-white photograph, is so haunting. I wonder if anyone has ever felt her spirit in the house she lived in for so long. I wonder if you can visit that house. It’s in Massachusetts, so it’s not too far away. Maybe I’ll ask Mom and Dad if we can go there someday.