Beach Blondes: June Dreams, July's Promise, August Magic (Summer) (48 page)

Summer woke very suddenly.

She opened her eyes. She was in the stilt house, in her own bed. Her head hurt. Her eyes hurt. Her mouth was dry and gluey. Everything around her was buzzing. Her stomach…

She jumped up, cried out in pain, and raced for the bathroom. She spent several minutes on her knees in overly close contact with her toilet.

When she got up at last, she was trembling, her knees were shaky, and she was feeling rotten and filthy and disgusting. The face in the mirror made her groan.

“How did I get here?” she wondered.

She remembered the lamppost. She remembered telling Sean Valletti something…she couldn’t recall the exact word, but he hadn’t liked it, she was sure of that.

Then she remembered Seth. The way he had seen her kissing Sean. The look in his eyes.

She threw up some more. Afterward she took a shower and brushed her teeth twice, gulping water as if she’d been in the desert for a week.

“Why do people drink?” she muttered. “This isn’t fun. This isn’t even anything like fun. This is the worst feeling in the world.” What a total idiot she was for gulping down two glasses of that disgusting pink punch without even thinking about what was in it.

Her first thought was that she had to find Seth. And then the other memories began to trickle back into her mind. A dark jerky vision of herself staggering up a walkway, banging at a door, and collapsing.

Seth’s house.

“Oh, no,” she moaned.

He had brought her here. She vaguely recalled being in his truck. In the back. He had dumped her in the back of his truck. Like garbage or something.

He had carried her down here.

And someone…
someone
had gotten her out of the clothes she’d been wearing and into the boxers and baby-tee she wore to bed.

“Please, just let me die,” she said. It would be a relief from the endless explosions going off inside her head.

There was an obscenely loud banging noise at her door.

She grabbed her head and went over to open the door. Sunlight hit her with physical force that sent her reeling back, shielding her eyes and crying aloud.

“That’s the same reaction I had to your outfit, Marquez,” Diana said.

“It was you she saw first,” Marquez said. The two of them came in and, much to Summer’s relief, closed the door behind them.

“Not hung over, are you?” Marquez asked Summer.

“Shut up,” Summer growled.

“I think Summer may have been drinking,” Marquez said, laughing.

“No kidding. I was the one who had to change her clothes last night,” Diana said.

“You? Oh, man, thank you,” Summer said.

“Me and Seth and Diver and these three guys we met,” Diana said. Then, seeing Summer’s look of horror, she relented. “Just me, it was just me. Your chastity and purity are intact. Seth came and got me to help.”

“Seth brought me here? After…after what happened last night?”

Diana’s eyes darkened. “Yes, because Seth is a truly decent guy. You stab him through the heart, and he picks you up off the floor.”

“He’s upset?”

“No, why would he be?” Diana said sarcastically. “Just because he sees you swallowing half of that guy’s face?”

Summer felt the urge to throw up again. She struggled to get it under control. “I was upset,” she said.

“Did you trade Seth for that muscle-boy dweeb from Birdbrainburg?” Marquez said, making a disgusted face. “I guess you decided you really liked the hairy chest, huh?”

“You don’t understand,” Summer said. “I love Seth.”

“Oh,
now
I understand,” Marquez said. “That clears it up for me.”

“You’re the one who told me, Marquez—the end of summer. What about the end of summer? What am I supposed to do, just get closer and closer to Seth? Fall more and more in love, and then
wham
…Ohhh.” She grabbed her head in pain. “Look, I don’t live here. This isn’t my real life. You two aren’t even real. Reality is Bloomington. That’s where I live. That’s my life. And I don’t want to be there and go to bed every night crying because…” A sob escaped from her, but she was too dehydrated for tears. She took several deep breaths.

“Summer, all that stuff I said about the end of August—why would you listen to me? You know I’m full of it,” Marquez said.

“No, you’re not,” Summer said. “You were right. I’m sorry if I hurt Seth—”

“Just ripped his heart out, that’s all,” Diana said in a low voice.

“But it was never going to be for real. It was just a summer thing. And I’m not a person who can be in love for three months and then forget it and move on.”

“Summer,” Marquez protested, “you don’t know for sure what’s going to happen when the summer ends.”

“I know you guys are trying to be nice,” Summer said, “but I have to throw up.”

“Okay. We’ll, uh, get together later,” Marquez said, sounding relieved to have an excuse to leave.

When she was done in the bathroom, Summer drank a lot more water. And thanks to the water, when she began to cry, she was able to shed tears.

She slept most of the day, her hangover gradually easing into a more general depression. She got up only once, to eat a dry sandwich, call in sick at work, and stare blankly at Letterman for a while, surprised that he was on so early, and then slowly realizing that it was almost midnight.

She turned off the TV and lay there in the dark, listening to the sound of the water lapping against the pilings, barely noticing the creaking boards and soft shushing of waves against the shore.

This was as bad as she had ever felt. She still felt sick. Worse by far, she felt heartsick. The thought of Seth hurting, in pain, feeling betrayed and abandoned by her…She couldn’t stand the images that came into her mind, and yet she couldn’t keep them from coming.

It doesn’t matter,
she told herself.
Now or later, it would have happened just the same. And later it would have hurt even more. Better that Seth just thinks I’m a worthless slut who would go with Sean Valletti. Better to make it quick and final, right now, than to let it drag out, let the dread build up day by day between now and three weeks from now.

She’d been stupid to let it get started. She had wanted to fall in love this summer, thinking that love was just another form of entertaining fun, like scuba diving or sunbathing. Another cool thing to do at the beach. But it wasn’t. It was dangerous. Without love you couldn’t have pain. Without love you couldn’t have loss. Grief. Emptiness. Love made it all possible.

If she had never loved Seth, she would be happy right now. Love. It was just like alcohol. A little fun followed by a long, painful hangover.

“Love is like alcohol,” she said, liking the sound of it, as sleep crept over her again. It sounded very deep. It sounded wise. She would get it printed on a T-shirt. No one would understand what it meant.

She dreamed. She was on the plane again, just arriving on Crab Claw Key. The tarot lady was beside her, just the way it had really happened. Only now the lady had turned over a card with a picture of a cup full of punch.

“That’s the love card, isn’t it?” Summer asked the lady.

“Huh?” the lady said.

“You told me there would be three guys,” Summer said. And then she was no longer on the plane, but back in the underwater cave, trapped in the dark with Seth. Seth was sleeping, and then the little boy appeared, dressed all in white. He was holding the red rubber ball.

“You again,” Summer said.

“Still here,” the little boy said.

“No. You’re not,” Summer said, feeling a terrible sadness. “You died. You’re gone.”

The little boy looked at her, his eyes uncertain.

“I’m sorry,” Summer said. “You’re just a dream.”

“Oh,
that
,” the boy said dismissively. “Everything is just a dream. So what?”

She closed her eyes, wishing him away, but when she opened them again, they were standing in the grassy field.

“Jonathan, just leave me alone, okay?” Summer pleaded. “I don’t like it here.”

“I can’t. I keep dreaming you,” he said.

“No, I’m dreaming
you,
” Summer insisted.

“I don’t think so. You’re sunny. You keep showing up here.”

“I’m not sunny, I’m alcohol. No, no, I mean, I’m Summer,” she said.

“Don’t say that,” the little boy said, suddenly frightened. “You’re disturbing my
wa.”

There were bright blue numbers. A five. A three. A two. Her clock.

She rubbed her eyes. It was 5:32. In the morning, she was pretty sure. Yes, it had to be morning. As for which day, who knew?

But she was awake. Awake and no longer sick. Groggy but alive. She would go watch the sunrise with Jonathan. No, with Diver. Go watch the sun come up with…

Every hair on Summer’s neck stood on end. She stopped breathing. Her skin was tingling, electric. Oh, my God.

In a flash she was outside, out in the clinging pre-dawn damp.

She looked up at him.

He was staring down at her with wide, awestruck eyes.

In his hand he held something. Without a word, he handed it to her.

Summer cradled it in her two hands. It looked as if it had been chewed by a dog. The rubber was dried and crumbly with age. In the faint, gray light it was impossible to tell its color, and yet Summer knew it had once been red.

“It’s the only thing I’ve kept all these years,” he said.

“I…I dreamed,” Summer said.

“Yes,” he said. “Sunny. I didn’t know who you were. There are so many things I don’t remember. Memories lost except in my dreams…”

“Yes. Me too,” Summer said, her voice choked.

He bent over and helped draw her up onto the deck.

“Jonathan?” she asked in a whisper.

Diver smiled. “I guess so. I’d forgotten. They gave me another name, but I knew all the time it wasn’t right.”

“Jonathan,” Summer said, definite now. “You’re not dead.”

“No,” Diver agreed. He looked puzzled. “And what was that about you being alcohol? You said it in your sleep.”

Summer laughed. She took his hand and held it tight. “That was some dumb idea I had. Back before I realized that there really can be miracles.”

“Here she comes,” Diver said as the fiery rim of the sun appeared on the horizon.

Summer watched with him for a while as the sun rose and the stars disappeared and the water turned from black to blue.

“I guess it’s a good thing we never went out or anything, huh?” she said.

“Speaking of a very disturbed
wa,
” he agreed. Then his expression grew troubled. “This means Diana’s my cousin.”

Summer shook her head. “Diana’s mom is my dad’s…
our
dad’s sister.” Every nerve in her body seemed to tingle at that thought. “But she was adopted. There’s no actual blood relationship.”

“Good thing,” Diver said, smiling with relief. “That would have been sad.”

Summer smiled. She laughed. “No way. Miracles are never sad.”

It was late morning when Summer at last parted from Diver. He would probably always be Diver to her, she decided.

A Federal Express package had arrived from the hospital in Minnesota. In it were the impossibly tiny footprints of Jonathan Alan Smith, born eighteen years earlier. But it no longer mattered to Summer. She knew the truth now. It was a true miracle, or else fate, or perhaps just a coincidence. That didn’t matter either.

Four years earlier, at the age of fourteen, he had run away from the people who had taken him from his home, left behind the name they had given him, tried to leave behind the pain that had been inflicted on him. He had followed the coast, always heading south, begging, stealing, doing odd jobs, learning his way around boats and the water so well that he’d earned the nickname Diver.

From New Brunswick, Canada, where he had started, down to Weymouth, Maine, to Cape Cod, to Ocean City, finally to Crab Claw Key. As if he’d been drawn there, making a four-year trip to a rendezvous.

Or else, Summer thought, it was all just coincidence.

She borrowed Diana’s car and drove to Seth’s house. She was bursting with excitement. Later she would tell Diana and Marquez, and, soon, her parents. But first she had to go to Seth. She had to tell him: Miracles
do
happen. Maybe she was allowed more than one.

She knocked at the door and experienced a momentary flashback to the night before. No, it was the night before that. She’d staggered here to this door, and Seth had brought her inside, where she had…

…had thrown up on the kitchen floor.

“Oh, man, I could have lived without remembering
that,
” she muttered. She knocked again, steeling herself for his accusing, angry look.

The door opened.

“Oh, hi,” she said, taken aback. It was Seth’s grandfather. “I, um, I don’t know if you remember me,” she said. “I’m Summer. I’m a good friend of Seth’s.”

He looked her up and down, a disparaging look. “Some good friend you are.”

“Is Seth home?”

“Not yet,” Mr. Warner said. “He’ll be home in about ten hours. Home in Eau Claire. Poor kid.”

“What do you mean, Eau Claire?”

Mr. Warner shrugged. “He left. All of a sudden. He wouldn’t even tell me why, but I haven’t lived sixty years not to know that there was a female behind it.”

Summer was staggered. No, this wasn’t what was supposed to happen now. It couldn’t be. She couldn’t find Jonathan and then lose Seth. Not now. Not now.

“He can’t have gone,” Summer said in a whisper.

Mr. Warner looked at his watch. “Eleven-oh-five flight. He’s gone, all right. And who’s gonna help me with my business the rest of the season? That’s what I want to know.”

Summer looked at her watch. “It’s only ten fifty-nine. Your watch is fast.” She calculated quickly. Six minutes. No way. She’d get killed trying to make it to the airport in six minutes.

“Bye!” she yelled.

She raced for the car.

It was four minutes after eleven by the time she slammed to a screeching, rubber-burning halt in front of the tiny airport. She leaped out, leaving the door wide open. She had just reached the glass doors of the terminal when she heard the crash.

She spun and saw Diana’s Jetta, half turned. The door was off, lying in the road in front of a taxicab whose driver was shouting at the top of his lungs.

Summer ran inside. The gates, which way? Left! She ran.

The sign—Miami. That had to be it, there was always a plane change in Miami.

“I have to get on that plane!” she yelled to the frightened desk clerk.

“It’s leaving,” the desk clerk said.

“It can’t,” Summer cried. “I have to get on. It’s a matter of…of…of true love!”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, please!”

“Well, you can buy a ticket if you’re quick. How would you like to pay?”

Summer froze. “Excuse me?”

“The ticket. How would you like to pay? Cash? Credit card?”

“Credit card! My dad gave me a Visa card for emergencies. Good old Dad.” She fumbled in her purse and produced the card. Good old Dad was going to kill her. Maybe she could just explain to him that it was a case of true love. Or maybe Diana would kill her first for having wrecked her car.

The metal detector! No, she couldn’t just blow it off, they’d shoot her or something.

With excruciating slowness she was forced to walk through the metal detector. Her purse took an eternity to pass through the X-ray machine.

She looked at her watch. Too late! No, no, it was too late. Still she ran. Out the door. Across the burning tarmac. They were beginning to roll back the steps.

“Wait!” She ran up the steps. The mechanics rolled it back into place and she hurtled through the door and stumbled against the flight attendant.

“Welcome aboard,” the flight attendant said.

She caught a glimpse of Seth. The seat next to him was empty.

“Hi,” she said, panting and gasping and grinning.

His look of amazement was almost worth the cost of the ticket. She hoped her father would agree.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded angrily. His eyes were red and swollen.

“What am
I
doing here? What are
you
doing here?”

“Going home,” he said sullenly.

“Don’t, okay?” she pleaded. “Don’t go home. Not yet. It’s still summer. It’s not the end of August yet.”

“That doesn’t matter,” he said grimly. “It’s too late. You told me yourself. What’s the point? It’ll only come to an end, and then we’ll both feel worse for having dragged it out.”

“When did I say that?”

“The other night. Right before you blew chunks all over my kitchen floor.”

Summer sighed. “Look, I know all that. I mean, it’s still true. You can’t have real pain without real love. You can’t feel grief and loss and hurt without love. Love is the only way you can ever be really hurt, deep down. It’s all still true.”

“So?” he asked.

“So…it’s also true that you can’t ever really be happy without love, and you can’t ever feel like…like I feel when I’m with you. I like that feeling.” She took his hand and held it between both of hers. He did not pull it away. “It’s basically just a messed-up situation.”

He nodded reluctantly. “Yeah. Love sucks.”

“It kind of does,” Summer agreed.

“Pretty cool, though, too,” he said in a low voice.

“I love you, Seth,” she said.

“I love you,” he said.

“Can we go now?”

“Um, Summer? We’re in the air already,” he said.

“Oh. Will you…will you kiss me when we get to Miami?” Summer asked.

“No,” he said. “I’ll kiss you right now.”

He did. And she did. And when she opened her eyes she saw a woman sitting across the aisle. A very familiar woman.

The tarot lady winked at her and shuffled her deck of cards.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Summer said. “Don’t even think about it.”