Lovestruck Summer
Page 14
259 Epilogue I ’ve had three weeks with Russ by my side. As I wake up next to him in his double bed, where I’ve been sleeping pretty regularly, I realize that this is the second half of the last weekend of the last week of our summer. I fly home tomorrow. I’ll see Raina and my parents, and I’ll make trips to Target to buy things like a laundry basket and storage bins and folding bookshelves for my college dorm room. I leave in just two more weeks for Vermont. I look at Russ, sleeping, and my heart starts to sink a little. But then he opens his eyes. “Good morning, sunshine,”he says, wrap- ping me up in his arms for five more minutes in bed. I look up at the ceiling, where a poster of some
260 famous UT quarterback is taped above the bed. The walls are covered in party photos—mostly from frat keggers—and there are wooden Alpha- Alpha letters hanging on back of the door. If I’d had a crystal ball three months ago, just before I came to Austin, and I’d been able to see where I’d end up hanging out—in this room, with this guy—I would have been morti- fi ed. Because back then, I had all these ideas about who I was, and who my friends were sup- posed to be, and who I didn’t want to know. I lean over and kiss Russ on the cheek. With the help of Penny and Chrissy—and Jade, too—I have so much more now. The Amalgam festival went amazingly well—after Rick dried off he was able to laugh at the getting-thrown-in-pool incident. He even gave both me and Jade small stipends for our summer work, which will help with college stuff next year. He also gave Jade something more impor- tant—the full-on “I’m a dick”apology. It even sounded sincere. Jade’s response was awesome. “That was so three weeks ago,”she said. “I’m over it.”I half expected Sebastian to call me or stop
261 by Amalgam after the San Josépool incident, but he stayed away that whole next week. I was busy with Russ, mostly, but I felt like I had to say something to him, so I stopped by Dirty’s the next Friday night when he was deejaying. I walked in and saw that he was taking a break, in a booth, with his arm around some other girl, who looked way more indie than I do. Black hair, cat’s eye glasses, patchwork dress. She was straight outta Hipster-land. My jeal- ous instinct didn’t kick in even a little bit, and I went over and talked to him like nothing had happened. He acted the same way. And when I left, I smiled and waved one last time, happy that he found someone he wanted, too. Or at least the possibility of someone. I muss Russ’s hair and climb out of bed. I go downstairs and walk out the back door, head- ing to Penny’s kitchen to grab an apple. She’s sitting at the island bar with Miss Tiara in her robe. That is, both of them are in robes. “Morning,”I say. “Hola, Juliet,”she says. “Last night with Romeo tonight?”
262 “Yeah,”I say, not wanting to think of it that way. “What are you guys doing?”she asks. And it seems like maybe she’s wondering if we’re going to hole up in Russ’s room and not hang out. Which is so not our style. “Something with you,”I say. That night, Miss Tiara, Penny, Chrissy, Jade, Russ, and I stake out a spot on the lawn of the Four Seasons Hotel around six P.M. We spread a big blanket over the grass and order frothy root beers, looking toward the sky and hoping we’ll see something special. Namely, bats. “I’m telling you, they’re fl ying tonight,”says Russ. “I can feel it.”“I read on some website that they fl y on warm, calm evenings—sometimes even before sunset,”says Jade. The six of us talk about plans for next year. Penny, Chrissy, and Russ will all be UT seniors; Jade is starting college in Dallas. And I’ll be in Vermont, which I’m sure will feel
263 worlds away from here. I look down at the blanket for a minute, get- ting sad. Russ picks up my chin. “Take a quick walk with me?”he asks, grabbing the backpack he brought and reaching out for my hand. “Sure,”I say. “We’ll be right back, guys.”“Take your tiiiime,”says Chrissy while Penny makes a kissy face. Sorority girls, man. We walk down to the edge of the river, head- ing away from the bridge a little bit so we’re out of the Tri-Pi-Jade sight range. Russ unzips his bag and hands me a bou- quet of tiny, blue, star-shaped fl owers. “They’re forget-me-nots,”he says. And I can see him blushing. “Subtle, Russ.”I laugh and he reaches down to pick me up and spin me around, which is my new favorite move ever. I don’t think anyone else will ever do it as well as he does. “So are we gonna have the breakup talk now?”I ask. “Because I don’t really want to voice it, you know? Can’t we just say good-bye and not know what it means?”
264 “I’m not giving up,”says Russ. “I’ve got too much to lose.”I smile at him indulgently. I know college will be a whole new world, just like this summer. I can’t promise him anything. “Priscilla,”he starts, using his Elvis voice so things don’t get too mushy. “I’m a practical guy. And I have a practical plan.”“Oh, really?”I ask. “What’s that?”He reaches back into his bag and hands me a card. On the front are two crudely drawn shapes—one in blue that is small and long, one in orange that’s rounder and much bigger. There’s a green X in between them. “Hieroglyphics?”I ask. “States!”he says, pointing at the smaller, longer one. “That’s North Carolina.”“Um . . . okay,”I say. “And this one is . . .”“Texas!”“Aha,”I say. “So this is you and me . . .”“Right,”he says. “South by Southwest.”I open the card and read the inside: Meet me in Austin, by the Walters stage. Love, Russ
Lovestruck Summer
265 “I don’t get it,”I say, wishing I did. “The music festival next spring!”he shouts. “I know what South by Southwest is!”I say, getting annoyed. He can still frustrate me faster than any guy I’ve ever met. But I’m smiling too. “What does it mean?”I ask. “No obligations,”he says. “But if you can’t get me out of your mind, and if I can’t get you out of mine, here’s where and when our next date will happen.”I look down at the card again, and it starts to make sense. In a completely impractical way, but also in a romantic one. “I’ll be there,”I say, not knowing whether I’ll be able to keep my word, but knowing that I mean it in this moment, and that’s all that matters. And then, we hear a collective “Ooooohhh”rising from the lawn. I look up and see a stream of black bats flowing out from under the Congress Avenue Bridge. Their fast-beating wings make a sound like a rhythm section, and they’re so close together that it looks like the golden-pink horizon is being covered in black velvet. Russ grabs my hand and we run back to join Penny,
266 Jade, and Chrissy. The fi ve of us stand together, Penny holding Miss Tiara, as the bats blanket the sky, covering Austin with the magic of an unexpected journey.
Thanks to my grandparents, Don and Priscilla “Tay”Day, who taught me to love “old”music and danced like a dream. And to my blog readers on www.melissacwalker.com, who thought of the Best. Band. Names. Ever. You guys rock. Acknowledgments
Credits Typography by Andrea Vandergrift Cover art ©2009 by Sasha Illingworth Cover design by Andrea Vandergrift
Copyright LOVESTRUCK SUMMER. Copyright ©2009 by Melissa Walker. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader April 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-185886-4 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Table of Contents
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6