The Boys of Summer

by C. J. Duggan

  The Boys of Summer

  C.J. Duggan

  Copyright © 2012 by C.J Duggan

  Smashwords Edition

  The Boys of Summer

  A Summer Series Novel, Book One

  Published by C.J Duggan

  Australia, NSW

  www.cjdugganbooks.com

  First Smashwords edition, published December 2012

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including recording, scanning, photocopying or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written consent of the author.

  Disclaimer: The persons, places, things, and otherwise animate or inanimate objects mentioned in this novel are figments of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to anything or anyone living (or dead) is unintentional.

  Edited by Sarah Billington|Billington Media

  Copyedited by Anita Saunders

  Proofreading by Sascha Craig & Heather Akins

  Cover Art by Keary Taylor Indie Designs

  This ebook formatted by CyberWitch Press, LLC

  Author Photograph © 2012 C.J Duggan

  The Boys of Summer is also available as a paperback at Amazon

  Contact the author at cand.duu@gmail.com

  The Boys of Summer

  It seemed only natural to nickname them the ‘Onslow Boys’. Every time they swaggered in the front door of the Onslow Hotel after a hard week’s work, their laughter was loud and genuine as they settled onto their bar stools. I peeked through the restaurant partition, a flimsy divider between my world and theirs. I couldn’t help but smile whenever I saw them, saw him … Toby Morrison.

  Quiet seventeen-year-old Tess doesn’t relish the thought of a summertime job. She wants nothing more than to forget the past haunts of high school and have fun with her best friends before the dreaded Year Twelve begins.

  To Tess, summer is when everything happens: riding bikes down to the lake, watching the fireworks at the Onslow Show and water bomb fights at the sweltering Sunday markets.

  How did she let her friends talk her into working?

  After first-shift disasters, rude, wealthy tourists and a taunting ex-boyfriend, Tess is convinced nothing good can come of working her summer away. However, Tess finds unlikely allies in a group of locals dubbed ‘The Onslow Boys’, who are old enough to drive cars, drink beer and not worry about curfews. Tess’s summer of working expands her world with a series of first times with new friends, forbidden love and heartbreaking chaos.

  All with the one boy she has never been able to forget.

  It will be a summer she will always remember.

  Warning: sexual references, and occasional coarse language.

  Dedication

  Dedicated to my best friend, Sascha.

  For the drama, humor, tears, support, loyalty and most of all love!

  Bringing sanity to me each and every day.

  I love you more than is measurable.

  “Love is not necessary to life, but it is what makes life worth living.”

  — Anon

  Chapter One

  I shouldn’t have opened it.

  But I did. I mean, it’s what you do when a wad of paper hits you in the back of the head, right? You unfold it in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, it might be a note confessing undying love from a green-eyed, dreamy, Italian exchange student. If there was such an exchange student at Onslow High. A girl could dream. There wasn’t a boy in sight that you could even hope to admire, and there certainly wasn’t anyone else you would even remotely want to attract.

  My best friend, Ellie, plucked the scrunched-up wad of paper from where it had settled in my hoodie, which, to the boys behind me, served as a makeshift basketball ring. She was fast, real fast –even more so with her lightning-speed dagger eyes that she cast to those snickering in the back row.

  “Just ignore them, Tess, they’re not worth it.”

  I barely heard Ellie’s words as I took in the crude drawing of me. I knew it was me, thanks mostly to the giant arrow that pointed to a box-shaped figure with the words ‘TESS’ highlighted. A stick figure would probably be flattering for most high school girls with image problems, but this wasn’t stick form; it wasn’t even a box. It was a drawing of an … ironing board? Was that what it was? A speech bubble protruded from the pencil-thin smile. To their credit, the smile was drawn in red pen. My guess, it was to offer the ironing board more feminine authenticity.

  “Hi, I’m Tic-Tac-Tess,” the speech bubble said. “I’m flatter than two Tic Tacs on an ironing bored.” Ironing board was spelled wrong, idiots!

  I stared at the image for the longest time, muffled laughter and the unmistakable sound of high-fives being slapped from behind me, but it was only the sound of an unexpected voice that finally broke my attention.

  “Do you care to share, Miss McGee?”

  Ellie’s elbow in my rib cage snapped me out of my trance to find Mr Burke overshadowing our desk. His thick, bushy eyebrows drew together into an impressive, yet frightening, frown.

  Frozen, I made no effort to hide the note that was all too quickly plucked from my hands. Mr Burke re-adjusted his glasses and cleared his throat as he slowly examined the crumpled paper that had held me so entranced.

  I could feel it; all eyes were on me, and I tried not to cringe as heat rushed to my cheeks. My heart slammed against my rib cage; a new tension filled the air as the class fell silent. We waited, bracing ourselves for the outburst that Mr Burke was so famous for.

  I flicked a miserable look to Ellie who offered her best ‘don’t worry’ smile.

  Along with the rest of the class, I held my breath and silently counted down. In 5, 4, 3, 2, 1… cue the screaming.

  “WHAT IS THIS?” Mr Burke bellowed. His red face surpassed my flushed cheeks, a vein pulsing in his neck. Before I could form a sentence, he did the worst thing possible, the very thing I feared the most: he read out the note.

  “TIC-TAC-TESS?” He held the drawing out to display to the class.

  Oh God!

  “Flatter than an ironing board, hmm?”

  Oh no-no-no-no-no.

  I slid down in my seat. This couldn’t be happening.

  I cursed the boys in the back row with their stupid red pencil, crappy illustration and subpar spelling. (It was Dusty Anderson. Had to be. Or Peter Bricknell – no one else in school spells as badly as him.) I fantasised about them being dragged out by their ears to the principal’s office, systematically getting booted in the behind like in a bad slapstick movie. There was also lots of crying and apologising in my fantasy. I quite enjoyed watching Peter cry. Instead I was to be punished, as was the rest of the class. Punished by a whole lot of shouting, I mean. Mr Burke’s irate, verbal onslaught ranted and raved about idiotic time wasting, short attention spans and even the evils of paper wastage. Never was bullying (or the fact they had spelled ironing board wrong) mentioned. I mean, seriously, how does anyone get to Year Ten and not know how to spell board?

  No, the bad guys wouldn’t be punished. Instead, what had begun as a private joke, generated from my evil ex-boyfriend and his lackeys, was now shared with the entire class. It would soon spread to the rest of Year Ten and then, inevitably, the entire school. Brilliant job, Mr Burke.

  That was how it began. Pretty much one year ago today, I had become stupid Tic-Tac-Tess. Even when the more supportive teachers overheard the taunts and duly gave stern looks and warnings, it did little to appease the situation. Even though the hype had moved on to some other unfortunate soul, the latest being Matthew Caine’s drunken, school social scandal that had him vomiting over Mr Hood’s Italian leather loafers. The effects of that infamous day i
n Mr Burke’s Biology class still haunted me.

  There was no rhyme or reason to high school. What made you team captain one day could make you a social outcast the next. I was neither popular nor a freak-a-zoid; I was no one, a real Jane Doe, and that’s the way I liked it. I avoided the spotlight, which ironically followed my best friend, Ellie, everywhere she went. Boys were like moths and Ellie was the flame, which in my eyes was not a great thing. I’m not a prude or anything, I’ve had boyfriends and done stuff with them, but she’s my best friend and I’m just worried about her. And I had reason to worry: I had overheard canteen-line mutterings of Ellie being a ‘slut’, but I would never tell her that.

  So I chose the comfort of remaining in my friend’s shadow; beautiful, bubbly Ellie with her perky, honey-blonde ponytail, a light dusting of freckles on her perfect ski-jump-curved nose. Ellie always looked like she had stepped out of a ‘Sportsgirl’ catalogue. And there was Adam, our other bestie, who’s full of charisma and charm, and he’s really funny, too. Everyone loved Adam, particularly the teachers. He was late for everything, but when he did arrive, it was always with lesson-disrupting flair. With his bed-tousled hair and his beaming smile, he could charm the knickers off a nun. His words – not mine. Ew!

  The three of us made unlikely allies, but we’d been friends all our lives. Sure, Adam would disappear at recess over the years for some male bonding, from the sandpit in primary school to the footy field at Onslow High. He would always return and plonk himself next to Ellie and me, leaning over to steal a chip from one of our packets, earning him a well-deserved punch in the arm that had him screaming in dramatic agony.

  He was such a drama queen. Ellie and I always predicted he’d be an actor one day. “Destined to be a thespian,” we told him.

  Adam would do a double take, his eyebrows rising.

  “A lesbian?”

  Ellie and I would groan in unison. “No idiot, a thespian!”

  “Oh, riiiiight.” He would nod, a wry smile fighting to break out. He’d known exactly what we’d said. Yeah, that was Adam.

  The two shining lights of my two best friends’ personalities seemed to be a good buffer for me. Ellie said I was really intelligent and had the biggest brain out of anyone at school, but I didn’t know about that. We all balanced each other out in some way and watched out for one another, and it was never more evident than in times of peril.

  As Ellie and I turned into our Year Eleven locker room to gather our books for English, our smiles faded and I froze. Dread seeped into me just like it had in Biology twelve months earlier. Except this time, it was a thousand times worse.

  I will not cry. I will not cry! I repeated to myself over and over again as my nails dug into my palms with such ferocity that they threatened to break the skin. Laughter, loud and low, surrounded me from all angles in the room. A mixture of faces represented shock, horror and disgust, but the general mood was hilarity. And relief that it was happening to someone else. My gaze shifted directly to where I assumed Scott would be, laughing the loudest, but he was noticeably absent. Only a few of his friends loitered, their beady eyes trying not to flick from me to each other. It wasn’t working. They were obviously waiting for a reaction, one I would never give them. I never did.

  I just stood silently looking at my locker. The door had been smeared with something brown and sticky. My breath hitched in a tight vice of absolute fear and loathing. I noticed what I suspected was a string of caramel drool that dribbled diagonally to a mashed, chewed, chocolatey nugget that appeared to have been regurgitated onto my lock. It was a bizarre moment of bittersweet relief. It was only chocolate … and spit. Yeah, my relief was short lived.

  “Looks like someone had a nasty reaction to a Twirly Whirl.”

  Dusty Anderson deliberately bumped my shoulder as he walked by me. Laughter following him out.

  “More like a Twirly Hurl,” added Peter Bricknell. More laughter erupted, but strangely no high fives. I would have thought this was definitely a high-five occasion.

  “Oh, fuck off!” Ellie yelled after them.

  I think her outburst shocked me more than my defecated locker did. If steam could physically pour from someone’s ears like in the cartoons, it would have been pouring out of Ellie right then. Instead, a death-like stare and flared nostrils had to do.

  “Ellie, don’t,” I implored. “It’ll just make it worse.”

  “Worse? Worse than this?” She pointed.

  The few loiterers that had remained in the locker room slowly exited as Ellie continued her tirade.

  “You know who’s behind this, don’t you? That low-life ex of yours, that’s who.”

  I didn’t need to agree; I knew it was Scott. It always was. Not to mention I was well aware of his particular fondness for Twirly Whirls. First there was the note in Biology that had sealed my fate as “that flat-chested girl” and the rumours he spread shortly after that claimed I was frigid.

  But this was by far the worst thing he had ever done. Before this, it was the odd, empty Tic Tac packet in front of my locker. That hadn’t happened in months, though. He had lulled me into a false sense of security. I was such an idiot.

  I sighed and straightened myself to fake indifference.

  “Well, I better get it off,” I said as I walked over to the wheelie bin, dragging it over from the corner of the room to my locker and assessing the damage.

  Ellie calmed down a bit as she came closer. I could feel her body tense, and she quickly looked away. “I’ll, um, go and find something to wipe it off with.” She started to back away.

  “OK, but don’t go and tell anyone – promise?”

  Ellie sighed and looked at me, sympathy pouring past the anger. “I won’t promise forever, Tess. If he pulls any more crap like this, not just this, but anything, I will not be silent.” She left, to hopefully find some hospital-grade disinfectant and a blowtorch to open up my combination lock.

  Ellie returned with some paper towels, and Spray and Wipe detergent she procured from the school cleaner under the strict promise it was not to be used as an ingredient for anything explosive and returned ASAP. I made some leeway by finding a stick and slowly peeled off the regurgitated, slimy mucus blob that sat directly on my combination lock. It was then I heard Ellie dry retching into her hand, turning away. Such help. I chucked the chocolatey stick in the bin and went to console Ellie, her colour drained from her face.

  “You alright?” I couldn’t help but laugh as I patted her on the back. She couldn’t form words as the chunks threatened to rise.

  Animated whistling closed in at a brisk pace (a sound I would recognise anywhere) and Adam waltzed in. His relaxed, calm demeanour didn’t say, “I’m hightailing it to class because I am fifteen minutes late”; instead, his surprise registered as he rounded the corner of the locker room to see me and Ellie kneeling on the linoleum by my locker, Ellie’s face hovering over the wheelie bin.

  His eyes narrowed from Ellie’s sweat-beaded face to mine. “What’s wrong?”

  Before I could answer, Adam’s gaze moved beyond us and paused on the splatterfest that was my locker. The steely look of fury that had surfaced in Ellie earlier now travelled through Adam. He looked back at me and with a deep, calm breath he came to stand beside us to survey the damage.

  “One guess,” he bit out.

  “Yep!” I turned to re-evaluate the situation. The sight hadn’t improved much, even with the gooey blob on the lock gone.

  Without another word, Adam dropped his backpack to the floor, wrenched the zip open and delved into the contents.

  “You don’t happen to have a pressure washer on you, by any chance?” I mused.

  He ignored me; Adam was on a mission. I could tell by the crinkle in his brow that all too quickly vanished as he found what he was looking for.

  He pulled out …

  “A banana? Seriously?” He was an odd boy.

  “Urgh. Adam, how can you eat at a time like this?” Ellie cringed.

  Adam
peeled back the yellow folds, biting a big chunk out, and chewed vigorously, raising his brows in a ‘hubba-hubba’ motion. He then walked over towards … oh no.

  “Adam?”

  He fell short just before Scott’s locker and offered us his best winning smile as he swallowed his mouthful. He held the banana in the air like it was some talisman, some holy grail.

  “Ladies, I give you the banana.” With that, Adam smashed it against Scott’s locker, smearing it in a vast sweeping motion. The mushy, granulated chunks were thoroughly mashed into the crevices of his combination lock. And Adam did this all while humming a joyous tune. He then hooked the banana peel through the lock loop; it dangled like a motley alien form.

  Ellie laughed, sat back on her heels away from the bin and clapped her hands, colour finally returning to her face just as it drained from mine.

  “Adam, what are you doing?” I was part horrified, and part in awe of his heroic gesture.

  Adam stood back, hand on chin in deep thought as he admired his handiwork. “It will have to do! I’m really regretting not grabbing that chocolate Yo-Go this morning. That would have gone on real nice.”

  “Please, no more chocolate,” Ellie begged.

  Adam dusted off his hands, “Well, best get crack-a-lackin. Wouldn’t want anyone to think this was some sort of act of revenge or anything.”

  “You know who they are going to blame, right?” I pointed to myself with double fingers. “Ah, hello.”

  “Don’t worry about Snotty,” Adam reassured.

  “Besides, we can be your bodyguards,” Ellie added.

  “Well, either I’m going to need to sleep with one eye open, or you two will have to take shifts in watching over me so that I’m not murdered in my bed.”

  “Not a problem. I already climb into your room every night and watch you sleep, anyway,” Adam winked.

  “Pfft, dream on!”

  Adam’s wicked smile broadened. “Oh, but I do.”