Cherry Red Summer (Emely and Elyas Book 1)

by Bartsch, Carina

  “If you’re up to complaining already, you’re clearly doing better than expected,” I said, raising an eyebrow.

  “Never mind that,” he said. “Ingo stopped by earlier and updated me on your mother’s injuries. You spent the whole night by her side, he said.”

  “She’s still weak and seems to be in more pain than she wants to let on. It’ll be a while before she’s healthy again. But at least she’s well enough to already be pestering me about getting married.”

  Dad smiled and shook his head. “Seriously?” he asked.

  I sighed. “Yup.”

  “I’d say her chances of recovery aren’t bad, then.”

  I could only nod. I took his hand and sat on the edge of the bed.

  “You look tired, Emely,” he said. “Maybe you should go home and get some sleep.”

  “Dad, there’s nothing more important than the two of you,” I replied. “I wouldn’t dream of going home.”

  “You are and always will be incorrigibly pigheaded,” he sighed. “Well, that’s your own bad genes, then.”

  “I guess so,” I said.

  “Do you know who stopped by earlier?”

  I shook my head.

  “Ingo’s son, Elyas.”

  “He visited you?”

  “Yes. I was surprised myself. I had to look twice. I haven’t seen him for, oh, four or five years now. He told me that you’d had quite a shock.”

  “Oh . . . He’s exaggerating,” I mumbled.

  “He didn’t give me that impression. Emely, I’m so sorry you had to go through all that.”

  “Me?” I asked. “You had the accident. It’s not about me.”

  “You know what I mean . . .”

  I hugged him again. Warmth filled me from head to foot, and I was overjoyed to have both my parents alive.

  CHAPTER 13

  NEUSTADT

  I lay on my bed gazing around me at my old bedroom. Nothing had changed. The same desk, the same two-door wardrobe, the same dark-red daybed. During half my childhood and all my teen years, I’d spent so much time within these four walls, which held both good and bad memories. It all felt so far away now, and my room strangely felt less a part of my present than a part of my past.

  I had been home for three weeks. Neustadt was a one-stoplight town—a village, really, even though Stadt means “city”—with five thousand inhabitants and one grocery store, which had items a year past their expiration dates.

  It was surprisingly difficult readjusting to this environment, and I didn’t know if I even wanted to. Before college, I often felt that people were really living everywhere else in the world—just not here. I always knew I wanted to move away—that was clear to me, even as a child—and at nineteen that’s exactly what I had done.

  The whole time I had been home, I’d missed my life in Berlin. But I was glad to be here to support my parents. I wasn’t a natural nurse—I was usually the one who needed medical care—but I did my best.

  My father had been discharged from the hospital five days after the accident. He would probably have gone to seed had I not been around to take care of him. My father wasn’t used to taking care of himself, and certainly not with his foot in a cast. He could be a trying patient, but he was also kind and charming, so I enjoyed looking after him.

  My mother hadn’t been discharged until a week ago. I visited her every day for two weeks. The visits were necessary, too, because three days after the accident, the staff started having trouble keeping her there. It took me hours to persuade her not to break out.

  When she was finally “sprung from jail,” as she put it, Ingo ordered her to take it easy. But my mother refused to understand the expression. (Unmarried and single were also foreign words to her.) Her first day home, she and I had a heated battle over the vacuum cleaner. I wouldn’t have thought it possible someone could cling to a metal tube so tightly using just her fingernails, but my mother quickly set me straight on that point.

  From that incident onward, I was busy from morning to night scrambling to finish all the household chores before she discovered something to do. No matter what anyone directed, she just couldn’t stay off her feet. At one point I asked Ingo if he had any of the straps used to tie down patients who pose a danger to themselves or others. He smiled as though I were joking—but I was completely serious!

  Despite all the hardships, I was still thankful to spend time with my parents. The accident had made it all too clear how little time we have.

  Whenever I wasn’t keeping my mother from doing housework, or convincing Dad he couldn’t get into a wobbly rowboat to go fishing with his foot in a cast, I tried to fit some studying in. College wasn’t taking a break while I was gone, and every day I fell further behind. Alex had gone to the administration building for me, to arrange a leave of absence, and was mailing me the necessary paperwork and classwork. Everything seemed to be working out. My parents were more important than school right now.

  In what few minutes I had free every day, I visited Alena and Ingo, who lived a couple of blocks away.

  And Alex and I talked on the phone at least twice a day, which made up for the lack of face-to-face contact. I was amazed how much news she had to report in each call, given how often we talked. Her primary topic was Sebastian, of course.

  The two of them had been hanging out regularly for three weeks now, but nothing remotely romantic had happened, apart from hugs hello and good-bye. In other words: Alex was having the worst crisis of her life. It was no walk in the park for me, either. In fact, it was bordering on torture.

  All the same, I couldn’t complain that Alex wasn’t paying any attention to me. But as for a certain brother of hers, he hadn’t been in touch at all.

  I should have considered myself lucky. Instead, I was worried. In retrospect, I thought it was strange how sweetly he had taken care of me. I guessed even someone like Elyas Schwarz could rise to the occasion and be decent at a time like that. But did that really say anything about him?

  My basic opinion of him hadn’t changed, but I did notice some behavior inconsistent with it. Elyas had not randomly run into me or been forced to help me—no. He came over willingly after he’d heard the message. He must have jumped right into his car to come over. Why didn’t he wait for Alex and leave the problem to her? The more time passed, the more questions I had. I had come up with three possible explanations for his behavior. The first: Elyas liked me. I approached it logically, keeping my heart out of it, but there were a couple of things that pointed in that direction.

  The second: It was a good opportunity for him to get back into my good graces—perhaps getting closer to his goal of landing me in bed one night.

  And the third and most likely explanation: He was simply a decent guy, and I was just overanalyzing everything, like a typical woman!

  I rolled my eyes at myself and sighed.

  Even if I set aside for a moment what he had done for me, there was still the issue of my behavior toward him, which had me just as confused. My outburst of emotion was extremely atypical. I didn’t like when people saw me upset. It’s something I’ve never been able to shake. Even more inexplicable was that I let him hold me.

  It was probably because of the shock. At least, I hoped so.

  And there was still the question of why he hadn’t been in touch. Hardly a day had passed over the previous couple of months when he hadn’t somehow turned up, unexpected and unwanted. And now—nothing.

  Not that I missed him.

  Ugh! It was stupid, but I did miss him. Now I was burning with curiosity about why he hadn’t been in touch. He probably thought it wasn’t worth it while I was out of town, since the distance between us was an obstacle to his actual goal.

  The only time we had communicated was four days after the accident, when I sent him a long-overdue text to thank him.

  Hi Elyas,
>
  I’ve spent a long time thinking how to express this to you:

  “Thank you” is the best I can come up with, although it’s not very original, and also not adequate.

  I hope you understand what I mean, though.

  Thank you, Elyas. Thank you very much.

  See you,

  Emely

  Ten minutes later I got my reply:

  No problem! I’ve been crossing my fingers your mother will get better soon. But, dearest, if you feel indebted to me, you can of course return the favor at any time. Let’s say . . . with a kiss? I think that’d be about right.

  Anyway, hope to see you back home soon (in Berlin). Alex has been chatting my ears off from dawn to dusk—Sebastian this, Sebastian that—and I can’t hold out for another day. (Yes, that was a plea for help!)

  I hope you’re doing OK.

  See you,

  E.

  I could picture the stupid grin on his face as he typed on his phone. Even though it was just a text message, it still annoyed me, and I called him a jerk under my breath.

  Since that interaction, I hadn’t heard from him. No matter which way you looked at it, it was mysterious.

  By contrast, a certain someone else had spent the past three weeks not getting enough of me, someone it made way more sense to focus on: Luca.

  As his name flashed through my head, I couldn’t help smiling. I threw off the covers, got out of bed, and ran over to my old desktop computer.

  I had told Luca all about the accident and was glad to have someone to talk to about it. Alex was so wrapped up in her Sebastian situation that there wasn’t much point talking about anything else with her. Plus, I found that expressing my emotions was considerably easier in e-mail. Not having to look the other person in the eye somehow made it easier for the words to flow, words that I normally would have kept to myself. Of course, on the phone there was no eye contact, but there was still the pressure of having the other person waiting for you to speak.

  It had been thirty minutes since I’d last checked my inbox. Expectations were high this time. What annoyed me most, though, was how long it took for the computer to connect to the Internet. All we had in Neustadt was dial-up service. I’m pretty sure people around there thought DSL was some kind of designer drug and that broadband was some weird fashion trend.

  My salvation finally came just as I was starting to wonder if I had time to clean all the windows before log-in was complete. Every second I’d had to wait paid off.

  Dear Emely,

  How are you? Are you still holding up in Neustadt?

  I can only say that Berlin has lost some of its luster since you’ve been gone. Well, the luster underneath the graffiti, of course.

  In your last e-mail, you wondered if I understood what you were talking about. And I do, much better than you might imagine. When you wrote that your perspective had changed, you didn’t need to say any more. You can lose someone in an instant, without warning, without the chance to do one last, important thing—boom, just gone. People never think about that until something happens to someone they love.

  That’s when we learn to appreciate the little things. That’s when we understand what’s important in life, especially who is important in life. A person might have some annoying characteristics, yet the moment that person isn’t there anymore, those are exactly the things we miss the most. All too often people get upset about trivial things and lose sight of what matters.

  Emely—you should cherish this perspective, especially since everything turned out OK. Most of the time people only experience this after it’s too late.

  Then there was your second question: You wanted to know why I’ve never asked to meet you in person. Well, I don’t know. Why haven’t you asked me to meet in person?

  Fine, I answered your question with a question.

  Let me put it this way: I’m scared I won’t live up to your expectations.

  I hope you have a good night, and I hope to hear from you again soon.

  Yours,

  Luca

  I was lost in his words. His e-mail was so lovely, the way all of his e-mails were, actually. But one sentence had caught my attention: “I’m scared I won’t live up to your expectations.”

  So I had been on the right track. But what could he be so afraid of? Were my suspicions correct? Was he a total computer nerd?

  Even so, I sighed, he’s the sweetest computer nerd there ever was. Didn’t he know I’d been sold on him for a long time now? After all, he was the only person besides Alex I’d kept talking to while I was home. That had to mean something.

  Maybe I should just tell Luca it didn’t matter who or what he was. He already had a special place in my heart.

  Yes. That’s exactly what I would do. I straightened up, ready to start typing, when my father’s voice echoed up the stairs. “Emely?”

  “Coming!” I yelled, hurrying before he got it in his head to start limping his way up here. The last thing I needed was his toppling down.

  “What do you need, Dad?” I asked on my way down.

  “Will you come into the living room for a sec? Carla and I want to discuss something with you.” His voice sounded pleasant, but I felt ill at ease.

  “OK,” I said, following him to the front of the house. My mother was already sitting on the old loveseat, which needed replacing ages ago, and my father sat down next to her. My parents eyed me intently. I put my hands into my pockets, feeling like I was about to get a dressing-down.

  “It wasn’t me,” I said with a grin.

  “Don’t worry, Emely. You’re not in trouble. Quite the contrary. Why don’t you sit down?”

  Still skeptical, I took a seat in the armchair opposite them.

  “So,” my mother began. “We’ve called you down here because we want to tell you how grateful we are. You have been taking care of us now for weeks.”

  “Oh, Mom,” I said in a moan. “You don’t have to thank me.”

  “Yes, we do. You dropped everything so you could be here for us. And we appreciate it so much.”

  “But,” my father said, “it’s time for you to head back to Berlin now.”

  So that was it.

  “Not this again,” I said. “We agreed I’d stay as long as you need me.”

  We’d had several versions of this discussion, even before my mother had been discharged. They had wanted me to go back to school so much they had considered hiring some help, although they didn’t have the money for that.

  “But that’s the point, Emely,” my mother said. “We can make do now without your help. We don’t want you to fall behind at college because of us. You’ve already missed three weeks, and it’s going to be hard enough to make that up.”

  “You don’t need to worry—I can handle it. College isn’t the most important issue right now. You are.” I stayed firm, but my parents were more stubborn than usual.

  “Emely,” my father said quietly. “You’ve been a tremendous help, and we could never have done it without you. But now we can handle most things ourselves.” I tried to shake my head, but my father looked at me seriously. “We wouldn’t be saying so if it weren’t true.”

  I sighed. I wasn’t convinced. I was worried they weren’t ready to stand on their own two feet yet—literally.

  My father continued. “I’m finally getting my cast off tomorrow, and I’ll be pretty much back to normal. In addition, we talked to Alena this morning. She assured us we could count on her if we needed help with anything. Believe me, you can go back to Berlin without feeling guilty.”

  It was quite reassuring that the Schwarzes had offered to help. My parents would be in good hands and not completely on their own.

  I looked at the ceiling, trying to imagine whether my parents were really up to it. My father would be more agile with his cast off, that was true,
but he would still need physical therapy. Could he run a whole household? I had my doubts. What concerned me most was that my mother would end up taking on way more than she was ready for.

  “Are you two sure?” I asked.

  They nodded, so I relented and agreed to head back to Berlin.

  “But the second anything comes up,” I said, imposing my one condition, “even if it’s something small, you need to get in touch with me right away! I’ll catch the next train back. All right?”

  “That won’t be necessary,” my mother said, smiling. “But, yes, we promise.”

  “I’m counting on it,” I said, standing back up. “I’ll make one more dinner for you. No more meals on wheels after tomorrow! And remember it’s your own fault!” I made my way into the kitchen to set the table.

  After dinner, I went to my room to buy my train ticket online. The only train was in the afternoon the next day, so I would have plenty of time to say good-bye to Alena and Ingo.

  I thought about calling Alex and telling her I was coming back—she complained every day how much she missed me—but I was worried the phone call might drag on, so I decided to pack first. I found myself thinking about Elyas as I laid my things out and started putting them into my bag. I had him to thank that I even brought clothes.

  Ingo was right: there were moments when Mr. Jerk was only a little bit of a jerk.

  I set my bag next to the door and went downstairs to ask my folks if they needed anything. Then I came back upstairs and lay down on the bed with my phone. I held it away from my ear just in case. I expected Alex’s regular high spirits, but instead I heard a sad, thin-sounding “Yes?”

  “Is that you, Alex?” I asked.

  “Yeah, it’s me.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Oh, Emely,” she said. “He still hasn’t kissed me.”

  I sighed.

  “Why won’t he kiss me?” she asked.

  I had wondered that myself. Based on Sebastian’s words and body language, as reported by Alex, everything suggested he liked her. My own observations bore that out as well.