Someone Else's Summer

by Rachel Bateman

  My fingers grasp at his pants, fumbling to get his belt unbuckled, desperate to remove the layers between us. He gasps a sharp breath and moves to help me. His hands wrap around mine, big and warm, and—

  The door swings open next to us, bouncing off Jo’s shoulder, and Cameron steps into the room. “Hey, Anna. You in—oh!” He spots us and forces his gaze to the floor, his face growing bright red.

  My hands jerk back from Jovani’s pants straight to my hair, trying to smooth it back down. I twist it into a quick braid and let it hang over one shoulder. Jo keeps angled toward me, refusing to turn and look at Cameron. We all stand there, three awkward statues, everyone afraid to make the first move. Finally, Cameron clears his throat. “Uh, sorry. I didn’t…”

  And still he’s standing there. I can feel my eyes growing bigger, bugging out of my head. He shuffles his feet a bit, pushes a toe against the melted piece of carpet Piper burned with her curling iron two years ago. Back and forth, back and forth. This day can’t get any longer, but somehow it is anyway.

  “Well,” he says quietly, “I guess I’ll just…”

  “Go!” I scream, my anger so sudden it scares even me. “Just go, Cam. Get out!”

  I catch one last glimpse of his face before he leaves, the shock clear for only a moment before his eyes go hard and flinty. He backs into the hallway, pulling the door behind him so softly it barely clicks as it latches. All my breath rushes out of me in a huff, leaving a void in my lungs. Deep in my soul. It’s the emptiness more than anything that I can’t stand. I’m not ready. Will never be ready.

  I turn and kiss Jovani again, fiercely, trying to bring us back to where we were before Cam’s interruption. My hands find his still at the front of his pants, and I grab to find his belt again. But then, instead of undoing his belt, he grips my wrists, pulling my hands up between our chests, pushing me back. “Hold on,” he gasps.

  I lean in to kiss him again, but he pushes me back farther.

  “I can’t.”

  “What?” It’s not like we’ve not been here before. Quickly, I push back to him. “Sure feels like you can,” I say.

  Jovani drops my hands and crosses the room to sit on my bed, just as calm as he always is. “You don’t want this, Anna.”

  “You don’t know what I want,” I snap.

  “Do you?” His dark eyes pierce mine. “You know I love you, Anna. Always. But really, think about this, okay?”

  The anger rising in me falls back down almost immediately. I drop onto the bed next to him, lying on my back with my legs hanging over the edge. “What if I don’t want to think about it? What if I just want to feel… something?”

  The bed bounces as Jovani drops next to me. “Come here,” he whispers, pulling me into him, giving me his bicep as a pillow. “If you want to feel something, you have to let yourself feel it. I’m here for you as long as you want me to be. But I can’t let you use me to try to ignore your pain. Just feel it.”

  Tears come again now, quietly this time, as I allow myself to miss Storm, really miss her for the first time since the accident. I cry in Jovani’s arms until my head hurts and my eyes are so puffy I can barely open them. After my sobs subside, I yawn, and he hugs me tight.

  “Go ahead and sleep. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Thank you,” I say. “For not, you know…”

  “No problem,” he says.

  “Really?”

  He laughs, a deep rumble in his chest. “Well, no, I think I deserve a medal for that, actually.”

  “I’ll make sure to get you one in the morning,” I say, just before drifting to sleep.

  Chapter 5

  My tank top is wrinkled, but I don’t care. I pull it over my suit and step into a pair of soft shorts. I work my hair into a braid without brushing it. It’s a mess, but hopefully the good kind of mess, not the I-couldn’t-care-less-about-life kind of mess. Even if I couldn’t care less about life right now.

  It’s been three weeks. Three weeks since graduation, since that night, since that tree, since my whole world fell out from under me.

  Three weeks since she left me.

  I gave myself a week. I could have taken more time. Gillian would have given me as much time off as I needed, but I couldn’t be in the house with Mom and Dad’s grief anymore. Pastor Willitz came by every afternoon to counsel them. The day after the funeral, after he witnessed Jovani leaving my room, he invited me to join them, no doubt trying to save my soul, but I declined. That’s their thing, not mine. They seem to be doing better, but not at the same time. They are responsive now; the haze they broke through at the funeral hasn’t come back, thankfully. But I’ve never felt so distant from them, so separate. It’s like I wasn’t even there all those days, but just a ghost making my way through the house that’s way too big for only the three of us. Funny, me being the ghost when she’s the one who’s gone.

  On day eight, I pulled my swimsuit on followed by a pair of soft shorts and my official lifeguard tank top, and I rode my bike to the city pool. Gillian was shocked to see me and tried to send me back home, but I insisted I was ready to work. She must’ve sensed my desperation to be doing something normal, because she worked me into the rotation, even though the pool was fully staffed that day.

  That was two weeks ago. I’ve been going through the motions ever since. Maybe if I do the things I’ve always done, I’ll eventually make my way back to feeling like myself again. I get up, ride my bike to work, and watch the kids of Muscatine practice their cannonballs and their flirting. I take breaks when scheduled, and I make sure nobody drowns. After work, Piper waits for me. We throw my bike into the back of her stepdad’s truck and go to a party. Every night, a different party at a different house, but they are all the same to me. Sometimes, I’m still stung by that bitter anger that grabbed me at the funeral. I remember their mocking attitudes, their seeming hatred for anything other—for Storm—and it makes me want to hate them, too. But, I remind myself time and time again, they are my friends. They aren’t perfect, but they are here for me, to support me.

  So I let Piper whisk me away to the parties. I smile, because people don’t know how to handle sad at a party. And I drink what Piper gives me, because that’s what I’ve always done. My skin gets darker, my hair gets lighter, and it’s just like any other summer. Except, this summer, she isn’t here.

  Today is supposed to be the hottest day of the year so far, so we are gearing up for the pool to hit capacity. Hot days are always the most dangerous—more people come to swim, making it harder to see what’s going on in the water. Gillian posts extra lifeguards on duty just in case.

  “Anna,” she says, “are you good to share point with Kurt?” Kurt is a middle-aged high school math teacher and the closest thing to a beach bum you can find in Iowa.

  “Of course,” I say. Point is technically the hardest job of the day, but I love it. The position in the tower gives a better view of the pool, so it’s up to me to see past the chaos if anything happens, but it also means if I see something that’s not life-threatening, I can dispatch one of the other guards to take care of it rather than dealing with the swimmers myself. I can’t think of a better way to spend the day.

  After all the lifeguards know where to spend our first rotation, we make our way to the back room for a quick snack and break before the gates open.

  I’m not on the tower long when they come in. The pool is already crowded, but somehow, I notice the second they walk out of the locker room and onto the lawn. They are talking to each other, animated, hands flying with their words. Their smiles are genuine, and they seem so carefree, like they didn’t just lose their friend a month ago. How can her friends come here like nothing happened, move on, and not notice the huge Storm-shaped hole following them around?

  The girls find a spot on the grass to lay out their towels then they set to work applying sunscreen. I’m still watching them, and I have to force myself to look away and watch the pool instead. Kurt stares at me from the other to
wer, wondering what has my attention so shattered.

  I have no idea how long he has been sitting there when I notice him, but when I climb down from the tower to take my break halfway through my shift, my eyes make my way back toward the pack of girls on the grass, and there he is.

  Cameron looks uncomfortable sitting there as they talk and laugh and snack on cheese fries from the concession stand. My eye catches his for a moment, and he offers me a small grimace and a quick wave. We’ve not talked since that day at my house, when I screamed at him.

  I’ve seen him since, of course. It’s hard not to—he’s my next-door neighbor. Cam works for his uncle every summer, doing cleanup on construction sites. I notice him in the mornings when he leaves for work and, if I’m home, again in the evenings when he comes back, dusty and sweaty and worn-out looking.

  The first day I saw him, two mornings after the funeral, I didn’t know what to do. We hadn’t been close since freshman year, but all that disappeared as soon as I grabbed his hand and pulled him to sit with the family at the service. Removed from the immediacy and panic of that day, I didn’t know how to handle being around him. So I avoided him—have been avoiding him for weeks, slipping back into my house whenever he happens to be outside his.

  I should go talk to him. I almost do, almost go sit on his towel with him, spend my entire thirty-minute lunch break there, but then it hits me: maybe it’s not just me. We didn’t exactly part on the best terms last time. He was hurting, too, probably the only person other than my parents who was feeling the pain as intensely as I was. And I yelled at him. Kicked him out so I could throw myself at my ex-boyfriend. It’s been easy to avoid him these past weeks, almost too easy, like maybe he’s avoiding me, too?

  I change course, tearing my gaze from his, and rush to the break room. Gillian always gets pizza delivered on busy days—partly to be nice, partly so nobody has to leave the pool for lunch. I grab a couple slices and fall onto the couch.

  When I come back out to finish my shift half an hour later, Cameron is nowhere to be seen.

  Chapter 6

  I should have called Piper. The realization smacks me in the face the second I walk out of the pool office. She’s in the parking lot, as always, sitting on the tailgate of her stepdad’s rusty old truck. My bike is already in the truck bed, ready to be hauled home.

  “About time, chickadee!” Piper jumps down from the truck and dance-walks over to me, her flip-flops slapping the asphalt.

  “Hey,” I say in a lackluster voice. I’ve been in a funk ever since my nonencounter with Cameron, and I just want to go home and crawl into bed.

  “Guess what?” she says as she turns to walk back to the truck, her arm linking into mine.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Spoilsport.” She skips alongside me. “Whatever. Taylor called me, and she got us invited to the most awesome party tonight!” My body tenses at the mention of Taylor, but she doesn’t seem to notice.

  Suddenly, I’m exhausted. Just the idea of going out makes me want to take a nap. “I don’t know, Pip. That shift sucked—”

  “All the more reason to get our party on!” She shakes her hips, bumping mine.

  “—and I kinda just want to go home.”

  We are at the truck now, but she hasn’t let go of me. “Anna, please come. Jo finally got the night off, so he’ll be there. Who knows, maybe tonight will be the night you two get back together. Again.” She laughs—not her real laugh, the one where she really loses control and snorts, but the little bell-tinkle laugh she uses when she wants to draw attention.

  I never told Piper what happened between me and Jovani after the funeral, and I know he won’t say anything, either. But she isn’t stupid. She knows the two of us disappeared for the rest of the day, and, considering our history together, she assumed what she wanted. I never bothered correcting her. Ever since, Piper has been set on the idea of me and Jo getting back together, and if he is going to be at this party tonight, it’ll be easier to just go than to try to talk her into taking me home instead.

  “Okay,” I say, “but I have to shower first. I’m disgusting.”

  “No prob, Bob!” She lets go of me and dances around the front of the truck to the driver’s side door. “Just shower at my house. You can borrow some of my clothes.”

  “Whatever,” I mutter as I climb into the truck, but she either doesn’t hear or decides to ignore me.

  Piper’s room looks like a magazine puked all over it. Not in the pristine, this-belongs-in-Better-Homes-and-Gardens way, either, but in a this-magazine-got-sick-and-now-its-pages-are-stuck-to-the-walls way. Her walls are plastered with pictures she’s found throughout the years, first in Seventeen and YM, more recently in Cosmopolitan and Glamour. She swears there is a method to the display, but in all our time being best friends, I’ve never been able to figure it out. An ad for the new (three albums ago) We the Me CD is next to a full-page spread of the couple from her favorite soap opera is next to a flier advertising a display board for quarters depicting each of the states. The whole room is wallpapered like this—glossy magazine page after glossy magazine page. If you look closely, you can see other things pinned up, too: concert tickets and stubs from the dollar theater downtown. A receipt from when she bought her first snowboard. Anything that has ever meant something to Piper—or that happened to catch her eye at the right time—is on her walls.

  Piper shuts herself in the bathroom to take a shower. I lie down on her bed and am immediately swallowed by her eight pillows and enormous down comforter. She keeps the air-conditioning unit in her window cranked to subarctic year round, just so she never has to take this fluffy beast off her bed. Above my head, a We the Me concert ticket is tacked to the wall with two sparkly, star-shaped thumbtacks. Predictably, this is nowhere near the CD ad page—or any of the three other pictures of the band I can see from here. Instead, the ticket is attached to the bottom of a poster for an old Sega Genesis game, Earthworm Jim. I asked Piper about the poster once, and she just shrugged and said, “I don’t know, but isn’t it funny?”

  My phone buzzes with a new text.

  AUNT MORGAN: Hey, banana, wanna do lunch sometime this week?

  ME: Dude. I thought I told you to stop calling me that when I was twelve.

  AUNT MORGAN: Huh, I guess I must’ve missed that conversation, ANNA BANANA FACE.

  ME: You’re lucky I love you.

  AUNT MORGAN: It’s true.

  AUNT MORGAN: So, lunch? It’s my off week.

  ME: Sure. I can’t remember my schedule. I’ll let you know when I’m off.

  AUNT MORGAN: Awesome possum.

  ME: I can’t believe I used to think you were the coolest person ever.

  AUNT MORGAN: Whatever. You still think that. Don’t lie.

  ME: If you say so.

  The shower shuts off, and Piper starts belting out some country song. She never sings in the shower, but as soon as the water stops, all bets are off. My phone buzzes again.

  AUNT MORGAN: You okay, banana?

  ME: Yeah. Just at Piper’s getting ready for some party.

  AUNT MORGAN: Okay. But for serious now, are you OKAY?

  ME: Yes, I promise.

  It’s the first time I’ve ever lied to Aunt Morgan.

  Piper bursts into the room, wearing a tiny bathrobe and a towel perched on her head with tendrils of hair falling out of it. When her hair’s wet, the color is so dark, it almost looks like blood trailing across her collar bones. “Holy crap! How did it get so late?”

  I roll my eyes. “Maybe it got so late because you are the slowest showerer known to mankind.”

  “Whatever. Go hop in. Now!” She’s tearing through her closet, throwing clothes and hangers onto the chair in front of her vanity. “Leave the door unlocked, ’kay? I need to dry my hair.”

  The shower actually improves my mood somewhat. I’m still not excited about the party, but my muscles have loosened up, and I’m feeling considerably better. I flip through the clothes left han
ging in Piper’s closet, looking for something light enough not to make me roast tonight. Hot as it was today, it won’t cool down much after the sun sets.

  With Piper occupied once again in the bathroom, I find a short gauzy dress and pull it over my head. Piper is curvier than I am, but she also likes to wear her clothes tighter than I do, so the dress fits well enough. The straps slip across my shoulders. I do a quick jump test, making sure everything will stay in if I dance. Satisfied, I slip into a pair of rope wedge sandals. Piper will complain that they make me too tall—I’m over six feet in these shoes—but they are my favorites of hers, so I don’t care. I shake my hair out over my shoulders and drop back onto the bed.

  Piper rushes back out of the bathroom, still in her bathrobe, but now in full hair and makeup. Her hair is curled and pulled up into a bun at the top of her head that is meant to look messy, but that I know took hours of practice to perfect. She’s left her bangs down tonight, blunt and straight across her forehead. Her eyes are lined with thick cat eyeliner, and a dusting of shimmer highlights her cheekbones. She holds up two lipsticks. “Red or peach?”

  “Peach, for sure.”

  “Sweet, thanks.” She looks at me then, appraising my outfit no doubt. Her gaze falls to my shoes, and I brace myself for the argument for taking them off. Instead, she says, “I hate you, you know that? I wish I could just air-dry my hair and go without makeup.”

  “You could, you know. There’s no rule saying you have to spend an hour in the bathroom before each party.”

  She drops her robe and stands, completely naked, in front of the pile of clothes she threw onto the chair. Piper has no shame. “Shut up. I know I could, but it’s not the same. On you, it looks breezy and beachy. On me, it looks homeless. What should I wear?”

  “Your ripped light capris and that flowy purple tank top you love so much,” I say without looking up.