Lying About Last Summer Read online

  “That was amazing.” Brandon takes his helmet off and rubs the top of his head to rebounce his hair. “Did you see me at the top of the wall?” He’s slightly sweaty. On a high.

  I hesitate, surprised he’s already been up and down the wall.

  “I don’t believe it! You were too busy on your phone to see my moment of glory,” says Brandon. He eyes me more closely. “What’s up?”

  “It’s nothing,” I say.

  “Are you being bullied? You can tell me. Seriously.” He steps closer, so no one else can hear. “Joe told me his girlfriend committed suicide because of cyberbullying. That no one realized how bad it was until it was too late. He showed me a photo of the two of them the day before she died. They spent the whole day together and she never said anything about it.”

  Joe is such an attention junkie.

  “Brandon, I’m not being cyberbullied, OK?” More like stalked.

  “Are you sure? Because if you were, I’d…”

  Intrigued, I wait for him to finish his sentence, but he trails off, frowning. “What would you do?” I ask.

  “I’d do whatever it took to help you.”

  “Like tell the police? Write a blog post?” He sounds so earnest, I couldn’t resist that.

  “OK. I don’t know what I’d do. But yeah. A blog post. Why not?” He smiles. It dissolves some of the awkwardness that’s been there between us this morning.

  “I’m touched.”

  An instructor beckons me over. I stand up and shove my phone into the back pocket of my shorts and fasten the button up to secure it.

  “Good luck,” says Brandon. “Wave at me from the top. If you get there, that is.”

  I’ve done some climbing before, at parties a few years ago, when Annika and the rest of my group were into activities, the more adrenaline-pumping the better. The climbing walls I’ve been to were easier than this one, though, and not as high. And it was back when I was lighter and fitter.

  After I’ve been attached to the rope, the instructor suggests the first hand-and footholds, and then I’m on my own. It can’t be too hard, I tell myself, if the others reached the top. I decide to climb as fast as I can, reaching for each chunk of coloured plastic while scouting ahead for the next one.

  There are photos at home of me up trees, on massive climbing frames at adventure playgrounds, at the top of a rope at gym. Once upon a time I was fearless. I didn’t think about anything other than getting to the top, or being the quickest. Perhaps I wasn’t really that fearless. Perhaps it only felt that way because I had a sister who wasn’t into that sort of thing and a little brother who couldn’t run or climb or do much because of his heart condition.

  “You’re doing great!” calls the instructor. “Nearly there.”

  I visualize touching the ceiling. There’s a grimy mark where other people have got there before me on this particular route. For some reason, the image of the flowers drops down at the forefront of my mind, like a top layer over everything else. My arms are burning and my hands are damp with sweat, requiring me to clasp the holds even tighter to stop them slipping. Pain shoots through my stiff, locked fingers. I keep reaching and pulling myself up, super-slowly, like a reptile who hasn’t had enough sun.

  There’s something about the photo that’s niggling at me.

  “Caught you up,” says somebody to my right. Danielle. She is fumbling for the holds but she’s going faster than me.

  “If you’re climbing, you can’t be filming me,” I say. “That’s a bonus.”

  “The filming’s nothing personal,” says Danielle. “I like recording the absurd stuff. People always want the sanitized version of an event.”

  “They don’t like being made to look stupid.” Three, possibly four more moulded pieces of plastic and I’ll be there at the ceiling.

  “They want boring.” Danielle stops to contemplate the next hold. “They want safe, boring lives.”

  One … two … three … I’m there. A fraction of a second before Danielle.

  I breathe out, and allow myself a glimpse down. Brandon is criss-crossing his arms, waving. I wave back, releasing some tension in my hand, and in my shoulder. His enthusiasm is infectious, and I grin. I even manage a “Woooo!”

  “Ready to lower?” shouts the instructor at me.

  I nod.

  “Lean back into your harness as if you’re about to sit down and gently push off the wall with your feet,” she calls.

  For a split second I feel pure terror as I lean back. The instructor takes my weight on the rope, and the terror is replaced by exhilaration. In the pocket on the back of my shorts I feel my phone shifting and I’m aware that the button must have come off because the phone feels more out than in. I reach for it. Can’t grasp it. I’m too late by the tiniest fraction of time.

  “Nooo! Watch out!” I scream.

  The height of the drop and the weight and speed of the phone equals some terrible velocity. It narrowly misses the instructor’s head and cracks down on the floor.

  Oh my God.

  The instructor swears and the whole place goes silent as I’m lowered to the ground unceremoniously fast. She’s shocked. Speechless until her white face turns red. “That was incredibly stupid. You could have seriously injured me.”

  “I’m so sorry.” I feel sick. “Really sorry.”

  The instructor’s eyes are bulging. “Don’t you remember me telling you to empty your pockets?”

  I lower my eyes. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  “Pick your phone up and sit out the rest of this session on the bench.”

  Brandon has already picked up my phone. “The screen’s cracked,” he says as he hands it to me.

  I plonk myself down on the bench. Shaking. “I could have given her a head injury,” I say.

  Brandon shrugs. “But you didn’t. Sometimes the worst doesn’t happen.” He gestures towards my phone. “Is it working?”

  I switch it on and peer at the cracked screen. Nothing’s happening. Crap. It’s totalled. I feel cut off already.

  “You can use mine,” says Brandon. “It’s back in my room, but I’ll get it later.”

  “Thanks.” I guess I should text Mum as soon as I can to say I’ve damaged my phone. It might pre-empt her from harassing Pippa or the local police force when I fail to clock in.

  Not having access to MessageHound might be a relief. Given his odd behaviour over Kyra’s birthday and at the paintballing, Joe is the most likely person to be sending the messages. If it is him, then he knows my phone is out of action, and the madness might stop.

  I think about the flower photo, and the troubling thought that there’s a meaning or a visual clue which I’ve missed. Have I seen those flowers in a vase somewhere at Morley Hill?

  “I’ve had enough of climbing,” says Brandon. He drops down on to the same bench as me, and removes his climbing shoes and a pair of black trainer socks, and I like that he’s so close to me that our shoulders are almost touching. As he sits there, wriggling his toes, picking out a piece of fluff that’s caught between two of them, I realize this is an act of solidarity. He specializes in them.

  We watch the others do their second climbs. “I’ve lost loads of unbacked-up photos of my sister,” I say, my voice flat with this sudden awful knowledge. I hold my hands up. “Don’t tell me I should have copied them. I meant to.”

  “There’s a little shop, near where I live, that’s got a rep for repairing phones and getting data off them,” Brandon says. “It’s like a junk shop with loads of spare parts for things everywhere. I could take your phone in there, if you like. See what they say.”

  I know there’s not much hope, but it’s something. “Thanks. I’ll give it to you tomorrow before we leave.” I clutch it in my hands. He has no idea how hard it will be for me to hand it over to him, even though I know he can’t access any information on it.

  “My mate dropped his phone from the top of a roller coaster – they couldn’t help him. But the roller coaster was much hig
her than that wall and there wasn’t a mat at the bottom.”

  “My dad’s phone went through the washing machine,” I say. “That didn’t recover either.”

  We trade phone-disaster stories. Brandon tells me about a friend of his mum’s who left her phone on top of her car for some unknown reason. She drove off and the car behind ran it over. It’s a terrible story but I can’t help laughing. For a few moments, before I remember my own phone again, the weirdness of MessageHound, and last summer, I feel almost happy.

  “I don’t know why you were laughing after what you did,” says Joe when the session is over and he walks past us. “You think there’s one rule for you and another for everyone else, don’t you? You’ve got a lot to learn.”

  I can’t find enough breath to speak for a moment. Joe frightens me with his arrogant and untrustworthy eyes. “It was… I didn’t…” I stumble over the words.

  “Leave it,” says Brandon. “He’s not worth it.”

  twenty-four

  The tower is a short minibus ride away. The whole of Yellow Group comes, even if they’re not keen on doing the jump, because of the photo and video opportunities at the top. We see the grey metal cylinder of the tower long before we turn into the abandoned army training ground. It’s old and industrial, and scary.

  We step down from the minibus and stare up at it.

  “It’s like something in a nightmare,” says Fay.

  “It looks like the film set for a dystopian thriller,” says Brandon. “The final fight scene would obviously be at the top of the tower.”

  Pippa gathers us round her. “As someone who’s done this jump several times, I’m here to tell you that it’s a phenomenal experience. There’s a fast descent from the top, and then a gentle landing.” She holds her hand up and pushes at the air as she says, “But there is no pressure on anyone to jump. You can get kitted up, take the lift to the top and change your mind. Enjoy the view and come back down with me in the lift.”

  I cram into the lift with the first half of the group, after making sure I’m in a different half to Joe. I don’t want to have to hear him dish out jumping advice, or be accidentally wedged up against him. All chat stops as the doors close.

  “It’s OK,” says the jump instructor who’s with us, “nobody’s died doing this. Yet.” I guess no one’s told him that that we’re on a bereaved kids’ holiday.

  We step out of the lift on to a metal mesh floor, creaky and insubstantial. There’s more of a breeze up here and I swear the air is thinner – I need to take deeper breaths.

  When everybody’s at the top, we’re offered the choice of organizing ourselves into the order in which we’d like to jump, or picking numbers from a hat. Henry is desperate to go first; the rest of us shuffle into an approximation of a queue. I’m eighth, behind Brandon and in front of Danielle. Joe stands back, saying he’ll take whichever position is left. Fay hovers near him. She becomes eleventh, and Joe is twelfth.

  “You can opt out at any point, right up until you step off the platform,” says the main instructor. “Nobody gets pushed.”

  There’s nervous laughter. Some people are wavering. I understand it, but I’m not one of them. My stomach is doing figures of eight and my windpipe has narrowed, but I’m going to jump. I want to know what it feels like to free-fall. To feel brave.

  There are metal benches to sit on. Everything here is metal and ugly. There’s the safety talk. The please-behave-responsibly-once-you’re-on-the-ground talk. And then Henry and Rohan are taken away, down the short ladder on to the platform. We crowd round the railings and see Henry have his harness fastened to a rope. He turns to give us a thumbs up and then he steps into the air, and screams.

  Brandon turns away, and goes to sit on a bench. I follow him.

  “I feel sick,” he says.

  “Nerves,” I say.

  He takes a deep breath and sighs it out. “What if I throw up?”

  “Depends which way the wind’s blowing. Could be messy.”

  Pippa is pointing out local landmarks to Danielle, who’s filming, though probably not the sights that Pippa thinks she is. I hear something about an ancient burial ground. A geological explanation for the tallest hill. And rumbling below Pippa’s voice is Joe’s. He’s with Fay, further round the tower than Pippa, but they’re not admiring the view.

  “Everything begins with a single step,” he says. Fay nods as Joe drivels on with his motivational speech. The next thing I can make out is, “This is a test, Fay. D’you understand?”

  “What’s he going on about?” I ask Brandon.

  “Who?” Brandon has no idea what I’m talking about. He follows my gaze. “Joe? I didn’t hear what he said.”

  “Something about the jump being a test.”

  “A test of courage?” Brandon places his hand on his chest. “I get that. My heart’s racing already.”

  Fay has turned away from Joe, and I see that she’s on the brink of tears. Her legs are shaking and she’s curled over, as if she’s expecting to be hit. Like a skin-and-bone dog on an advert for the RSPCA.

  “He’s putting pressure on her,” I say to Brandon.

  “You think so?” says Brandon. “Don’t worry. Pippa’s here. She’ll make sure Fay doesn’t jump unless she wants to.” He looks towards the platform. “Shit. Person number six is about to jump… That means I’m next.”

  Joe is still speaking to Fay, his voice too low to hear. Fay wipes an eye with the back of her hand. The metal flooring makes so much noise, they look round at me as I walk towards them.

  “Fay, if you don’t want to jump, don’t.”

  Joe adjusts the waistband of his shorts, flashing a section of his six-pack or eight-pack or whatever he’s got going on there. “Er, this has got nothing to do with you, Skye.”

  “Fay’s upset, so yes it has.” I look into her tear-swollen eyes. “You don’t want to do this jump, do you?”

  For a moment it seems she hasn’t understood what I’ve said. Like something catastrophic has happened to her IQ. And then she shakes her head.

  “See,” I say. I regret the triumph in my voice as soon as I’ve said it, but I knew I was right.

  Joe shrugs; his face shows no emotion. “It’s completely Fay’s decision,” he says. He puts his arm round her shoulder, draws her to him. She snuggles against him, as if she’s getting herself warm. I stare at her, amazed that one person can be both so clever and so stupid.

  “Skye!” calls Brandon. He’s standing by the ladder to the platform. “We’re next. Come on.”

  As we step on to the metal decking of the platform, one of the instructors says, “It’s like being on the top of a diving board, isn’t it?” He doesn’t wait for an answer. Claps his hands, and asks, “OK, folks, so who’s first?”

  Brandon holds his hand up. “Me. But if Skye wants to go first, I’m OK with that.” He has his back to the ledge, a couple of metres away from us, where you step forward into nothingness.

  “I don’t care. I just want to get on with it,” I say. A discussion is the last thing I need right now.

  “I’ll go next,” says Brandon. “Before I change my mind.” I like that he doesn’t try to fake the fear in his voice. He steps on to the ledge. “Here goes.”

  Once he’s ready to jump, Brandon looks at me. Everything is in that look. Strength and weakness. The whole of him. And he disappears with more of shout than a scream, and I yell, “Whoooooooo!” All at once, my voice feels as if it’s the strongest part of my body.

  “Is he down? Is he all right?” I ask the instructor, who’s leaning over the ledge to check the rope.

  “Yeah, peachy,” he says. He calls across to his colleague, “What number are we on now, dude?”

  “I’m number eight,” I say, in case his colleague has lost count. “Skye Colton.” Perhaps he’ll take more care of me if he knows me by name rather than by number.

  After the instructor tells me I’m good to go, I stand on the ledge.

  You can do this
.

  I step. The breath is snatched from my mouth and then I scream. I experience the pure rush of being alive. The blur of colour.

  As I free-fall, I have a moment of clarity. I need to go back to Yew Tree House. If there’s an opportunity to be free from the crippling hold it has over me, I have to take it.

  twenty-five

  Brandon is right in front of me. De-helmeted. De-harnessed. “Isn’t it the coolest thing?” He grabs me for a hug, and he laughs as he untangles his shirt from my harness when we pull apart. “Didn’t you feel ridiculously brave?” He’s so happy. Eyes shining. Talking. Talking.

  We sit on a patch of grass with the others. In a circle. Sharing stories, watching the next person jump. Cheering. I remove my helmet, harness, trainers and my socks. The grass is soft and mossy. It feels pleasant against my toes with their silly copycat nails.

  I’ll go to Pitford this afternoon. The schedule is flexible. Swimming. Some workshop or other. Rounders, perhaps. It’ll be my last chance before I leave Morley Hill tomorrow.

  The next person jumps, their body minuscule against the tower. When they reach the bottom safely, I lie back on the grass and place my hand on my stomach. My breathing is deep, even, almost perfect. Everyone’s voices are reduced to a murmur. After a bit, I’m aware of a shadow over my face, and move my head to see who it is. Brandon places a hand on my leg, his dark skin against mine like a statement. “You’re quiet.”

  I smile up at him, my leg hot beneath his touch. “Thinking.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “That I want to go and see my old house this afternoon.”

  “Want me to come with you?” He’s distracted by something someone shouts at him and he calls back, “Wait a moment.”

  “Don’t worry,” I say when I have his attention again. “It’ll be boring for you.”

  “All right. I’ll practise bombing into the pool instead. They don’t let you do that in many places. Need to make the most of it.”

  I sit up and brush stray grass from the backs of my legs. Feel the criss-cross patterns the indentations have made. If he’d sounded more like he wanted to come, I’d have said yes.