The Big Summer

by Jamie B Laurie

When Mr. Sabatini finally decided to close the porn he often played (just a little too loudly) on his computer toward the end of the day, he pulled himself out of his office and told us we could go. He started reaching out to shake my hand … but I flew out of there faster than an Olympic sprinter.

  Hannah and I began the miserable daily ritual of walking home together, because we had to go the same way at the same time anyways. We walked stiffly, standing a football field apart.

  I chanced a look over at her. “It’s … it’s my seventeenth birthday tomorrow.”

  She nodded. “Great.”

  And we continued in utter silence until Hannah turned off onto her street, and I turned off onto mine, wondering where things had gone so hopelessly wrong. I surprised myself by longing for the old days and my old friends, because at least that was a constant. This torment I was going through was much worse, because it had been so good … and I had lost it all.

  . . .

  The only thing I can think of that’s sadder than spending your seventeenth birthday by yourself is having your aunt bring out your birthday cake, and it turns out to in fact be a cupcake because there’s nobody to eat it but you.

  Aunt Nellie, bless her, did try to make something out of the day. She made me chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast, with a bowl of my favorite tooth-corroding cereal.

  Once I had finished and was left running my tongue over the cavities that were forming between my teeth, it was present time. Aunt Nellie gave me The Fuzzy Sweaters’ new CD (which I thanked her profusely for, because my morals as the biggest Sweaterite in the world stated that I actually had to get the CDs and not just illegally download their music as I did with every other artist). She also gave me a painting she had done of the boardwalk. I thanked her, but inside it only made me think of Seaside City, which made me think of the friends I had made, which made me think of the friends I had lost, which made me think of the fact that Aunt Nellie was giving me a painting on a birthday that I was spending without any friends.

  “Is there anything special you want to do, today?” Aunt Nellie asked. I could see that she felt bad for me. Heck, I felt bad for me. Hell, impoverished street urchins from third-world countries probably felt bad for me (to clarify, that is an exaggeration, and I do not mean to sound insensitive … I’m sorry, third-world street urchins).

  “Not particularly.” I sighed.

  She informed me, as if I didn’t already know, “But it’s your birthday … your seventeenth birthday.”

  “I …” I coughed, cleared my throat, and closed the floodgates on my tear ducts. “It’s upsetting, Aunt Nellie. I kinda just want to mope in my room, if that’s all right with you.”

  “Kiddo,” she said sadly, reaching out to stroke my hair. Aunt Nellie looked sad. Great. I had brought her down with me. Another example of what an A+ person I am.

  “I’m really sorry,” I mumbled. “I’m just not feeling the birthday thing today. Maybe next year. I don’t know.”

  She pulled me to her and wrapped me up in a tight hug. My mind wandered, and I began to speculate about how much force would be required for a hug to crush your lungs. I know, very morose. “Will … I don’t like seeing you like this.”

  “Believe me, Aunt Nellie, I don’t like seeing me like this either,” I said. “But there’s nothing I can do. They’ve made the decision not to have anything to do with me, and now I have to live with that.”

  “No,” she told me, “you don’t. Don’t let your life be defined by what others do or say to you. Make your own happiness.”

  Red warning lights were flashing at the William O’Connor Friendship Memorial Tear Duct Dam. “It’s hard, Aunt Nellie. It’s really hard.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m a teenager,” I told her exasperatedly. “I’m not designed to be mature about this. My friends abandoned me, and the guy I was in love with rejected me. That sounds pretty Ben & Jerry’s worthy to me.”

  “Okay,” she told me in defeat. “I just … don’t like seeing you sad, Will. Do you know how hard it is to see your kid hurting? That’s what you are to me, Will. You’re my kid.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I’m sorry.”

  She shrugged. “Don’t be sorry. Just don’t let this ruin your life, okay? Promise me that.”

  “I promise,” I said, and I leaned in to kiss her cheek.

  Then I tramped my way up the stairs, flung myself dramatically onto the unmade bed, and choked out a huge sob.

  . . .

  I wish I could say that I spent the day like this:

  After moping in my room for a bit, I decided to take advantage of the day and heed Aunt Nellie’s advice. We took a leisurely stroll on the boardwalk, stopped for some yummy treats, and walked down onto the mercifully empty beach to play in the sand like little kids.

  A private chef then arrived to make us delicious pizza pockets on a small fire, with some yummy fries on the side and crisp salad.

  For dessert, an enormous cake was wheeled out onto the beach. It was tiered, with alternating layers of chocolate and red velvet cake, and the whole thing dripped fudgy icing. As I blew out the candles, the cake opened up, and a trio of Chippendale dancers popped out to put on a show. I was slightly embarrassed, and I blushed while laughing with Aunt Nellie (who got a much-deserved lap dance).

  As the sun set, The Fuzzy Sweaters came to give us a private concert, dedicating “What Could Be” (if you’ll remember, it’s my favorite song) to me. Then they showered me with band merch, including—of course—a limited edition of The Fuzzy Sweaters sweater.

  As the day came to a close, I reflected on the fact that I can control my own life and happiness—although it doesn’t hurt to have a private chef, a trio of Chippendale dancers, and The Fuzzy Sweaters. Because those things do help, I suppose.

  That’s how I wish I spent my day. In reality, I stayed in my pajamas and watched movies on my laptop while binging on comfort food. However, just as I was about to go refill my bowls of Doritos and gummy worms, there was a knock at my door.

  “Will?” Aunt Nellie called. “Are you, uh, decent?”

  As I started to open the door, I sarcastically replied, “You mean do I currently have my hand down my pants and an open jar of Vaseline on my—”

  Aunt Nellie wasn’t alone. Hannah stood just behind her. Hannah. As in Hannah Clark, my ex-best friend who had disowned me.

  “Hey, Will,” she said, looking down at the ground.

  “I wasn’t just masturbating, I promise,” was the only clever thing I could think of to say.

  Aunt Nellie looked like she wanted to say something (although that look might also have meant that she was angry with Hannah and wanted to throw her down the stairs). But ever the saintly guardian, she allowed me my space and made her way down to the first floor. To this day, I’m still not completely convinced that she didn’t call Hannah a bitch under her breath as she walked away.

  “Do you, uh, want to come in?” I asked, but it came out sounding more like “Duh yuh, eruhg, wehnt tur cahhm ehn?” because my mouth had suddenly decided to become gummy, dry, and awkward.

  “Yeah,” she said, clutching a paper bag to her chest secretively.

  “Uh, it’s messy …” I trailed off because my room was more than messy. It was like a depressed bear’s hibernation cave.

  My bed hadn’t been made in ages, and I’d spent so much time in it that the blankets had taken on the shape of my body and formed a sort of nest. The blinds were tightly closed, with the drapes drawn. Half-eaten tubes of Pringles and drained soda bottles littered the floor. A jumbo-sized jar of M&Ms sat on my bedside table, and I was ashamed of how little candy was left inside.

  “I’ll just open these up,” Hannah suggested timidly, reaching for the blinds. “Maybe you could get some, uh, air freshener or something?”

  “Okay,” I agreed. I then realized that I wa
s wearing the same pajamas I’d been using for a week and a half, and my hair was a greasy mess because I was cursed with hyperactive sebaceous glands that left me looking like a matted dog every morning. “Uh, would you excuse me for like ten—” I snuck a quick sniff at my armpit—“twenty minutes?”

  “Sure,” Hannah told me with a thin smile.

  Great.

  Rather than actually enjoying my shower, I had to spend the whole time contemplating what exactly that smile meant. Thanks, Hannah. I calculated the approximate angles of tilt to her lips, whether it had reached her eyes or not, what her body language had been like. Why was she in my bedroom? I thought she hated me … didn’t she? But she smiled … but it was a small smile.

  While I was mulling over all these new developments in The Tragedy of William O’Connor, I massaged my scalp with a palm full of shampoo (and it felt so good that my thoughts went off on a separate tangent as I wondered if Seaside City had any good head masseuses … or better yet masseurs.)

  I extracted myself carefully from the shower because I’d forgotten to lay out the bathmat on the slippery tiles, and I didn’t particularly want to spend the remainder of my (already miserable) birthday with my skull smashed to pieces and gray matter oozing from my ears. Not trusting my feet, I stepped out onto the pile of clothes I’d left on the floor.

  Knotting a fluffy white towel about my hips, I ran a hand through my hair and shook out the water. I squirted out some toothpaste onto the frayed bristles of my toothbrush and jammed it into my mouth, scanning the counter for my deodorant. Unfortunately for Aunt Nellie, my personal hygiene had been relegated to the backburner on account of my broken heart.

  It was only when I had a Q-tip stuck in all the way to my eardrum that I realized Hannah was in my bedroom, and I didn’t have fresh clothes to put on. The nearly two-week-old pajamas (now practically brittle from constant use) didn’t look especially inviting.

  “Shit,” I muttered under my breath.

  Returning my toothbrush to its cup, I flattened myself against the wall, secret-agent style. I briefly contemplated jamming my fist into the wall and yanking out the electrical wiring for the overhead light in my room so I’d at the very least have the cover of darkness. But I wasn’t sure what clause that fell under on the rental agreement.

  So I gathered up my courage, swallowing up the part of myself that still dreaded exposing too much skin. I opened the door a bit and edged my way out. “Uh, could you turn around for a minute?”

  Surprised at hearing me come in, Hannah turned around and looked at me. “Oh,” she said, a hand fluttering up to cover her eyes. “Sure.”

  I padded over to my dresser, extracted a pair of boxers, and slid them on. “Okay,” I told her. “I’ve got the bare necessities covered.”

  She chuckled softly and dropped her hand. I was stuffing my legs into a pair of shorts.

  “You look good,” she told me. “Gotta work on packing some meat onto those bones, but you do look good.”

  “Thanks,” I mumbled, pulling on a T-shirt.

  “Okay, now sit,” she told me, patting the bed next to her. And because I was an adorable little puppy at heart, I walked over obediently and sat down. She gave another command. “Close your eyes.”

  I did. And then my palms started sweating because I’d read at least nine smutty fanfictions online over the course of my bout of depression where the closing of one’s eyes lead directly (and with no shortage of typos) to a passionate love-making session, with far too many uses of the words “thrust” and “explode.”

  Though, rather than being properly deflowered by a gorgeous lover wracked with sexual frustration, I felt a Styrofoam box being placed in my hands.

  “Open,” she told me.

  Indeed, there was a Styrofoam box in my hands. I slid the tab out of the little slot and popped open the top. Inside was an enormous cupcake topped with a mountain of heavy frosting.

  “So happy—”

  “Hannah,” I said, closing the top of the box. I didn’t care about my birthday or about cupcakes … I wanted to know what was going on. With her, with me, with us.

  “William O’Connor,” her voice was stern. “That cupcake is from the best bakery in the state. It cost me eight dollars … for a cupcake. So eat the goddamn cupcake.”

  I took one look at the fiery resolution in her eyes, and I knew we would get nowhere if I didn’t oblige. She handed me a plastic fork and took one for herself, and together we devoured the gargantuan dessert.

  “Happy birthday,” she said, one hand on her stomach.

  “Why are you here?”

  Hannah blinked. “Uh, what?”

  “You know what I mean. Just yesterday you didn’t even acknowledge my existence, all because … what? Because your brother told you not to.”

  “Will, it’s … it’s not Daniel’s fault—”

  “Oh!” I exclaimed, standing up. “Really? Really, it’s not Daniel’s fault? Well, what a relief to know that. Here I was thinking that your brother had everyone shun me because I did something horribly wrong, and that it was his fault. I’m so glad to know that he’s still the angel he always was.”

  “Will …”

  I held up a hand. “What would really make me feel better, Hannah, is if you would just tell me that it’s not your fault. Or Emma’s. Or Blake’s or Michael’s. Honestly, if you could just tell me that it’s all on me … seriously, I’d be able to sleep at night.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said weakly, the weakest I’d ever seen her.

  “Yeah,” I snapped. “I’m sorry too. I came here to find people to like me … to genuinely care about me. And I found that. Do you know how nice it was to—for once in my life—feel like I belonged, like I had people I could rely on and be myself around? I never had that before. And you knew about me, that I was gay! So what, I kissed your brother? God forbid I started having feelings for him. Are you seriously going to tell me that’s grounds for you to wipe your hands of me, Hannah?”

  She was quiet, sitting there with her hands clasped tightly in her lap. She looked sad, guilty, and ashamed. Good.

  “How could you do that to me, Hannah?” I demanded. “How could you just leave me like that?” My voice faltered, and I choked on my tears (super, I was crying again). “How could he do that to me? God, I was so stupid. He wouldn’t like me back. It was my fault.”

  “Will,” Hannah said delicately. She got to her feet and reached for my hand. I pulled back, but she was insistent. “I love my brother more than anyone else in the world … to a fault. He saved my life, he was always there to protect me … I feel like I owe him, you know? Like I have to protect him now.”

  “He’s a strong guy,” I huffed out. “I’m sure he can take care of himself.”

  “I know, Will!” she yelled at me, surprising me. “Don’t you think I know that? I’m just stupid, that’s all. I’m stupid.”

  “You’re not,” I muttered, shaking my head and rolling my eyes. “You may be acting like a total bitch, but you’re not stupid. You always say that. You always put yourself down.”

  She ignored me. “Daniel pushed you so far away, wanted to alienate you from all of us … because he was scared.”

  “Scared of me? How could he be scared of me?”

  “He was scared of loving you.”

  I let that hang in the air for a moment, confused. “What?”

  “Daniel had a lot of shit happen to him when he was younger,” Hannah answered severely. “He had a crush … an innocent, childhood crush on this boy at school. So one day he gave the boy a kiss on the cheek. And then, because the world is full of ignorance and hate … he was bullied and beaten up. Every single day. It got so bad for him that we had to move here.”

  I frowned, noting her downcast expression. And I thought I was starting to clue in to how she worked. The pieces of the Hannah Clark puzz
le were coming together. “That must have been terrible.”

  “Yeah,” she said quickly. “Daniel had it so rough, it was awful. I don’t know how he handled it.”

  “No, not for him … I meant for you.”

  She looked at me like I’d just slapped her. And then she started to cry so violently and suddenly that I was worried for her health. I reached for her, and her lower lip trembling, she allowed herself to be tucked under my arm. I squeezed her around the shoulders.

  “It’s okay,” I whispered. “It’s okay.”

  When she was all cried out, she was finally able to talk. “It’s … so hard, Will.”

  “I know,” I murmured close to her ear. “Hannah, talk to me. Tell me.”

  Hannah broke down her walls and let me inside to her closely guarded secrets. She was at war with herself and had been for so long. She felt overwhelming love for her brother and an enormous debt to him for saving her life. The opposing army was one of guilt; she resented him for everything he had that she didn’t.

  “He got all the attention, Will,” she told me, her voice choked. “For so long. My parents thought I was always just fine, that it was Daniel who needed the help. So we picked up our lives for him. My whole world was uprooted for him. And when I got sick, he was the big hero who saved his twin. Then he got into that fancy school, and I wasn’t smart enough. He got to go out and do something with his life, and I’m …”

  “It’s okay,” I repeated to her.

  “I’m such a shitty person for feeling this way. I should love him unconditionally. I shouldn’t be jealous,” she said. “I hate myself for envying him.”

  “Hannah,” I began, “you can’t help what you feel, but you can work on it. And you need to know that you are special. You need to stop putting yourself down all the time. You’re smart and funny, and you have lots of people who care about you.”

  “Thanks … thank you, Will,” Hannah said, wiping at her eyes. “For listening. Emma … she’s my friend, but she doesn’t always listen. I … really need you in my life, Will.”

  “I take it we can be friends again?” I asked.