The Last Summer of Us
Read The Last Summer of Us Online
Authors: Maggie Harcourt
The air smells of hot, dry grass trampled underfoot. It smells of diesel, of cider and cigarettes and burgers and ice cream and the ends of things. The end of the summer. The end of us: of Steffan and Jared and me.
This is the story of a road trip. The story of three best friends crammed into a clapped-out car full of regrets and secrets, on a journey that will change their lives for ever. A story of love, lies, grief, friendship and growing up. A story you'll never forget.
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The Last Summer of Us
“A perfect summer read: romance, beaches and a music festival but it's emotional too, tackling grief, lies and the uncertainty of what lies ahead.”
The Bookseller
“Perfectly captures that moment in teenage friendships when life pulls you apart from each other.”
Holly Bourne, author of
The Manifesto on How to be Interesting
“
The Last Summer of Us
is a beautiful story of grief, friendship and hope, and one that has left me in complete awe.”
Once Upon a Bookcase
“A sparkling debut with one of the best slow-burning romances on the YA scene.”
The Mile Long Bookshelf
“A perfect road trip story which is full of heart.”
The Overflowing Library
“A story of loss, regret and friendship cleverly disguised as a summer road trip filled with humour and future anecdotes.”
Sarah Churchill, vlogger
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“Limpet?”
Steffan has always called me Limpet, ever since the first time we met. Why should the day of my mother's funeral be any different?
“How're you doing?” he asks.
“You're seriously going to ask me that? Today?”
“You'll feel better when it's over.”
“Did you?”
He shrugs.
Everything's off, everything's uncomfortable. Even the way he's looking at me: like he's still him, and I'm still me, but there's glass in between us, like we're somehow distanced from each other; different. In his case, it's the outfit. I would barely recognize him if I passed him in the street dressed like that: black suit and tie, and looking as smart as I've ever seen him â right down to the polished shoes. I've never really seen him wearing actual
shoes
outside of school before. Trainers, yes. Those ridiculous hiking boots he wore with shorts for the entire summer a couple of years ago? Sadly, yes. They were unforgettable â and not in a good way. But actual black-shiny-leather-shoes-with-laces? I can only think of one other time. I want to be normal, to make a joke, to smooth down his dark hair â which is still sticking up in spikes like a hedgehog with a headache, however tidy the rest of him might be â but his dad's waiting for him with a hard look on his face and I guess I'm not supposed to make jokes today.
Today I have to beâ¦someone else.
It's been twelve days since my mother died; twelve days since the noises in the night. The sound of footsteps and the front doorbell seeping into my dreams. Twelve days since the voice in the small, dark hours of the morning, saying: “I think your mother's dead.”
Steffan's barely gone inside before someone else says my name, and Jared's standing behind me. More at ease in his funeral get-up than Steffan â or me, because however hard I try to ignore them, my shoes
really
hurt â he looks like one of those Hollywood stars you see in old films. He does that. Look good, I mean. He has that Steve McQueen, young Paul Newman thing going on. Tall and blond and cool and broad-shouldered, with his hair swept back, looking like he doesn't even have to try. He probably doesn't. Take today, for example. Jared looks like he's about to walk the red carpet. It's effortless for him. Meanwhile, Steffan looks like a backing singer for a wedding band. And meâ¦?
Well, I look like crap. Moving on.
Jared, Steffan and me.
I guess the usual thing would be to say we're some kind of triangle, or a tripod, or something else that makes you think of the number three. Inseparable. Something which goes wibbly at the corners and collapses if all its sides aren't there. But us, not so much.
We're more like that poster you see on the wall in mechanics' workshops; you know the one? A triangle with the words
QUICK, GOOD, CHEAP
written along the sides (feel free to insert your own joke here, by the way â you know you were thinking it). The point is, the diagram's telling you that getting the combination to work is rarer than hens' teeth. The three sides of the triangle, however you look at it, always break down into “two-plus-one”. You'll get a repair done quickly and it'll be goodâ¦but it won't be cheap. Or you could get a cheap, quick repair which won't be goodâ¦and so on. Same with us â in any number of ways, we're always two-and-one. Never quite three. But somehow, we kind of fit. You might not think it, but we do â that's why I like it; like us. We'reâ¦unexpected.
Jared, Steffan and me. Less the Three Musketeers, more the Mechanic's Paradox. Glamorous, right?
And by the way, if we
were
the Three Musketeers, I'd totally be Athos. Except for the shoes. I bet you anything Athos never had to put up with shoes like these.
Like everything else I'm wearing, they're new. New shoes, new dress, new bag. Normally, I'd be feeling pretty good about that â but the magic of it's lost on me right now. In the shop, I handed over the cash as the assistant folded the dress into tissue paper, tucking everything into a thick paper bag with woven ribbon handles. She passed it across the counter to me and smiled and said, “Treating yourself to a new outfit? Lovely.” She meant it, too. I guess maybe to her it didn't seem weird for a sixteen year old to be buying a bunch of black stuff that makes her look like she's thirty-five or something. Maybe it's not â not in that kind of shop, anyway.
As if the shoes weren't enough of a pain, there's the thing with the flowers. Which isâ¦awkward. The florists have forgotten to attach the cards to the wreaths, and apparently as I'm the one who organized them all, it's up to me to fix this. Me, and the funeral director â who I find kneeling by a pillar in the church, poking at the flowers and getting his black morning suit all dusty. A few paces behind him, a little knot of family are talking quietly.
The funeral director sees me coming and stands up, brushing his knees.
“I wondered whether you might be able to⦔ He nods at the flowers. “I wouldn't want to get it wrong.” Why he couldn't ask my dad, I don't know â and then, with a sinking feeling, I realize that he probably did. Like he'd be any use.
“Men and flowers, right? Clueless.”
He blinks at me, and â exactly three seconds too late â I remember the
Be Somebody Else Today
rule. Keep your chin up and your mouth shut. Suck it up and choke it down. All that. So I try to look solemn and start matching cards to flowers as everyone takes their seats in the narrow pews, and I'm barely done before the coffin's at the door.
“Do you want to see her? Do you?” Twice, my dad asked me that, and each time I answered it got harder to stop my voice from cracking.
“No. I don't want to.” Three thirty in the morning, and we were waiting for the coroner's officer. I made tea. It's what you do, isn't it? Don't ask me why, but when everything goes wrong, you make tea. So that's what I did. Constantly. The two police officers who'd come with the ambulance waited with us. At first I thought they were just being, you knowâ¦nice. But then a little voice in the back of my head piped up and asked whether it wasn't more likely that they were, essentially, guarding the body. Guarding my mother â or at least, what used to be her. The shell of her.
I ignored the little voice and made them tea. Lots of tea. And to their credit, they drank every single cup.
Or poured it on the houseplants when I wasn't lookingâ¦
“Lovely service.”
“Beautiful service.”
“Your eulogy was perfect. You had her exactly right.”
“Just what she would have wanted.”
“Such a beautiful funeral.”
The handshakes and platitudes go on for ever, and I feel like my skin is inside out: every part of me is just one big exposed nerve. I smile and nod and dig my fingernails into my left palm and remind myself that I'm someone else today and she will be keeping her cakehole firmly shut. Because no funeral is lovely. No funeral is beautiful â mostly because it's a fucking funeral and you only have them when somebody's dead. And my mother would, I'm sure, really rather not be dead. What she'd
want
right now is to be on a cruise around the Caribbean. Or lying on a sunbed by a pool with a stack of books. Not shut in a box that's about to be dropped down a big hole.
But today's not the day for telling the truth. Today's a day for lying, and pretending you don't know that everyone else is lying too. I'm not sure who I hate more: all of them for lying to me â lying
with
me â or me for almost believing them because it's what I thought I needed.
It's done. Over. Dead and buried, and people are starting to move away from the graveside and towards the cars. Some are looking at the flowers. A great-aunt I think I've met twice in my life is crouching next to one of the wreaths, switching the cards round.
“Are you kidding me?” I say it a little louder than I probably should, but
seriously
? She stops and makes a loud tutting noise before scuttling off, clutching her handbag. She passes Steffan on her way to the cars, giving him a dirty look. He sticks his tongue out at her. Seventeen years old, and he still sticks his tongue out at people. He winks at me across the graveyard and I wonder whether it was more for my benefit than his.
Most of the funeral party have drifted off â after all, there's tea to be drunk and sandwiches to be eaten and the carcass of a life to be picked over. My dad's hanging back by the grave and I know I should go to him â but I justâ¦can't. The hole's too deep and too cold and so very, very lonely. So I wait, leaning against a tree midway between grave and gate, getting hotter and hotter in this ridiculous dress in the summer sun, and when Jared slips out from behind the tree he scares the life out of me and I barely hold back a scream. I had no idea he was there; I hadn't expected him to wait. He gives me one of his Hollywood smiles.
“You going to move over?”