Lying About Last Summer Read online

  I open it and look through some of the photos – we particularly liked to save the stupid ones there. The last one posted is of Luisa wearing a king-size duvet cover. More precisely, she has a duvet cover over her. The floral pattern of it is faintly visible even though it’s inside out. I rested her sunglasses over the top and she has her arms outstretched. A ghost in shades. I posted it straight to MessageHound. About an hour and a half later she was dead.

  After two deep breaths, I type.

  SKYE: I miss you Luisa.

  If that Coping with Difficult Feelings Guy knew I’d done that, he’d say it was because of his talk. Maybe he’d be right, but the truth is I’ve been gearing up to do it for months. To leave Luisa a final message. MessageHound is the best place I know for feeling that she’s near me. The app’s passcode-protected, better than a notebook. And I’ve cheered up the cartoon dog. He’s standing up again, looking hopeful.

  “Skye, which top d’you think I should wear for the karaoke?” asks Fay. She has an array of them laid out on her bed.

  I close the app and roll over. “Are you and Joe in a thing?” I ask.

  Fay picks up a white shirt, embroidered with clumsy flowers. The sort of garment that she probably thinks is cute but so isn’t. “Why d’you think that?”

  “I saw you two holding hands.”

  Danielle stops whatever she’s doing on her phone. “Ooooh, Fay! Tell us more.”

  That was stupid of me, to mention it in front of Danielle.

  Fay’s face turns red and she holds the shirt up against her. “It was nothing,” she says.

  “We need some gossip. This place is so dull,” says Danielle.

  Fay stiffens. She crumples the top into her lap. “I think he likes me but I’m not sure. Don’t say anything, will you? Promise?”

  “Calm down,” says Danielle. “Don’t flatter yourself. It’s not that interesting anyway.”

  “Not that embroidered top,” I say. “Show me some other options.”

  *

  For the karaoke, the tables in the yellow dining room have been stacked to one side and the chairs have been arranged in groups. There’s a big screen on the wall that currently shines blue and the main lights have been switched off. The place smells of the chicken and rice dish we ate earlier, mixed in with floor cleaner.

  Fay chats with Pippa at the front while the room fills up. Danielle sits next to me, and when Joe comes in, he takes the chair on the other side.

  “Don’t you want to sit next to Fay?” asks Danielle in her less-than-subtle way.

  Joe looks surprised. “Are you trying to get rid of me?” He smells of aftershave and clean clothes. He waves over the other two boys from his room, Henry and Rohan, to come and sit with us. When Brandon arrives, there are no more free seats near me. Before I can catch his eye and mime to him that he should pull up a chair, he goes to the front. Fay finishes her conversation with Pippa and is clearly upset to see that not only have I failed to save her a seat, I’m also sitting next to Joe. I pull a face to say I’m sorry.

  Pippa and the high-ropes instructor start the karaoke by belting out some horrendous country and western song that I recognize from one of Dad’s playlists. Danielle films it on her phone, until Pippa notices and makes a motion with her hand to stop. Everyone applauds loudly – Joe throws in a few whoops – then when Pippa asks who’d like to sing next, there’s total silence.

  Fay stands up. She finally chose a short floppy beige dress. Unfortunately there’s every possibility that she’ll blend into the mushroom-coloured walls.

  “Brilliant. Thank you, Fay,” says Pippa. She ushers her to the microphone, and they whisper song choices for a few minutes, before the screen flashes up a title: “Dream a Little Dream of Me”.

  Danielle groans. “God. That’s typical of Fay.”

  At first Fay’s voice is how I expected it to be – babyish and quiet – but after a few bars, it becomes stronger and more surprising. The notes are spot-on and pure. She nails it. When she finishes to enthusiastic clapping, she reverts to her diminished self, drooping one shoulder and screwing up her face in a mixture of pleasure and embarrassment.

  Joe and Henry go up next, and sing so out of time and tune that people laugh. They overact and howl the high notes.

  Pippa says she wants everyone to be brave and have a go. She suggests a girls’ group followed by a boys’ group.

  Singing in a group doesn’t feel brave, until I’m at the front with the four other girls and I recognize the prickling sensation in my armpits. I concentrate on reading the repetitive lyrics, and can’t believe how long it takes for the song to be over. When I sneak a glance at Brandon, he’s looking at me. I wish I was doing something other than mumbling tunelessly.

  The boys shout their way through a rap, and then Danielle decides she’s going to sing on her own. Rohan leans across to ask me if I know anything about the jump from the high tower at the end of the holiday, and he tells me about a sky-dive his sister did. It takes me a few seconds to notice what Danielle’s singing.

  It’s the soundtrack to last summer. The song that Luisa played on repeat in Mum’s car. The one that she couldn’t stop humming round the house.

  I finish the conversation and close my eyes. I can see Luisa singing in the car with the windows open. Her hair is flapping about because she’s forgotten a hair elastic, and she doesn’t want to close the window.

  A wave of missing her crashes over me.

  I feel a hand on my back. “Skye?” I open my eyes, and through the tears I see Joe. He offers me a tissue.

  His hand returns to my back. It makes a circular movement, then goes up to my shoulder. He gives me a sort of shoulder massage. At first it’s comforting, but then it makes me feel awkward. Uncomfortable. I pull away, but his hand goes to my waist on the opposite side, touching me under my T-shirt. I move suddenly, across to Danielle’s empty chair, without looking at him. I pretend it’s because I can see Danielle singing better from that chair. When Danielle comes back to her seat, I have to return to my own.

  Joe doesn’t say anything and neither do I.

  eleven

  It’s hard to drift off to sleep. I lie in bed and think about Joe being touchy-weird with me. He could see I was upset and was being kind. Almost certainly. Was it so bad, his probing hand on my skin? Have I become afraid of intimacy or something?

  I wish I could talk to Fay about it, and ask how Joe is with her. How he makes her feel. She’s fast asleep with her bedraggled toy rabbit on the pillow next to her, but I couldn’t see that conversation taking place even if she was awake.

  It’s only semi-dark in the room because light from the corridor seeps under the door, and outside it’s not fully dark. In the bed beside me, Danielle is doing something on her phone.

  I pick up my own phone from the chest of drawers beside my bed. I’d like to message Annika, see if she still remembers who I am after I moved school last October and dropped out of her life completely, but I don’t know what to say.

  My phone vibrates as a text comes through. Night Skye xxx. Mum again. She never tires of her weak joke about the night sky.

  I force myself to message back three matching kisses. Those three Xs will help her sleep.

  “Skye?” says Danielle. She’s rolled over to bed to face me. “Want to come outside for a fag with me?”

  I’m wide awake, and I need distraction from the tightness in my chest. “All right.”

  Danielle finds a zip-up hoody to wear over her pyjama top, and I pull on a thin cardigan. We slip our feet into flip-flops in silence, not wanting to wake Fay. Danielle’s all set to go, but I find a biro on top of Fay’s chest of drawers and an old receipt from my purse. I lean on the countertop and scrawl GONE FOR WALK. DON’T WORRY, S + D.

  “She’s not going to wake up,” says Danielle by the door. I pin down the message on Fay’s chest of drawers with her phone. A text message flashes up without making a noise. It’s from Joe: Dream of angels Fay x.

&n
bsp; Yuck.

  “For God’s sake, Skye. Get a wriggle on.”

  Outside the air is fresh and cool. I let Danielle lead the way. She takes us to a bench by the mini go-kart track. It’s relatively secluded here, on the edge of the wooded area and not overlooked by any windows. She places two cigarettes in her mouth and lights them both. Her face, lit up by the flame, is make-up free, younger looking.

  She hands me a cigarette.

  “Thanks.” I don’t really want it, but I want to be here. “It’s really peaceful,” I say, and I lean back against the bench.

  “It’s like the cemetery where my mum is,” says Danielle. “Sometimes I go there at night. Climb over the fence and sit near her.” She takes a deep draw of the cigarette. “You’d think it’d be creepy but it’s not.”

  I nod and gaze at the trees, at the silently moving leaves. Only thirty or forty minutes away from here is Pitford. At night, the distance seems closer.

  “But those wind chimes relatives leave on the graves…” Danielle says. “What’s that all about? They do my head in. After a bit, though, you don’t notice them, do you?”

  I hold my cigarette and watch the ash forming at the end. Luisa was turned into ashes. Mum and Dad can’t decide where to scatter them.

  “I sometimes talk to my mum in the cemetery,” says Danielle. “Stupid, isn’t it?”

  I shake my head. “Not any more stupid than writing a letter to her, like that man suggested.”

  Danielle taps her ash on to the earth. “Mum wrote me letters before she died.” She takes a drag and sighs out the smoke. “They’re cards, really. She wasn’t much of a writer. She wrote ten of them. I was supposed to open them on my birthdays and at Christmas. I found where my dad had hidden them and opened them in one go. Got it out of the way. They all said the same thing: she hopes I’m happy.” She rolls her eyes. “Not very imaginative, was it?”

  We watch a bird land on the track. It stares at us.

  “My sister and I had MessageHound,” I say. Danielle doesn’t look as if she knows it. “A closed group, just the two of us,” I continue. I try breathing smoke out of my nose. “Anyway, I messaged her today. Like a final thing.”

  “What did you say? Having a blast at Bereavement Camp. Wish you were here?”

  “Not quite.”

  We sit in silence for a bit, until Danielle says, “Poor Joe, huh?” She thinks I haven’t caught up with her line of thought, so she adds, “Girlfriend committing suicide. That’s got to be tough. D’you think he feels guilty? Like he could have talked her out of it?”

  “Dunno.” I grind the rest of my cigarette under my flip-flop and chuck the remains of it into the nearest bush. “He fancies himself as a smooth talker, so maybe.”

  Danielle snorts, then says, “What about Brandon? You look pretty tight with him.”

  Brandon’s easy to be with. Friendly. I don’t want him examined under Danielle’s scorching spotlight, so I nod and say “Yeah” in a vague way.

  I pull my cardigan more tightly round me and bring my legs up on to the bench, huddling into a ball. It’s cold. “You ready to go back?” I ask.

  “In a moment.” She finishes her cigarette and leaves the fag end on the ground. I wait for her to chuck it somewhere more discreet and when she doesn’t, I do it myself.

  “You worry too much,” says Danielle. “Chill.” She’s fiddling with a small hinged tin. “Want one of these?” She holds up the open tin. It’s packed with round white flat chalky tablets, and smaller cylindrical ones with a smooth pale blue coating.

  “What are they?”

  “Take a blue one.”

  I look at her, confused.

  She laughs. “They help me sleep.” She takes a blue pill, pops it into her mouth, and swallows.

  In my entire life, I’ve only ever had medicines meant for children, in liquid form and flavoured strawberry or banana. “OK,” I say, because I want to sink my head into my pillow and sleep solidly without nightmares. I crave one normal wake-up-feeling-refreshed night. “Thanks.”

  It tastes of nothing on my tongue, but I can feel it there, the smoothness dissolving as we walk back to the accommodation block. Danielle is talking about tomorrow and I can’t concentrate on what she’s saying because I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to swallow the rest of this drug, whatever it is. It might not even be a sleeping pill. As we walk past the flower bed, I spit it out, watching it fall between stems and out of sight.

  “What did you do that for?” says Danielle. “D’you know how much those cost? The hassle of getting them?”

  “Sorry,” I say, but I’m glad that half the capsule is dissolving in the earth and not me.

  Danielle walks on ahead of me, as if I’m not there.

  twelve

  My thoughts are darting in every direction as I lie on my bed. They skitter and scatter like insects. Joe’s hands on my skin. Wind chimes in a cemetery. Luisa in a duvet cover and sunglasses. Metallic pink envelopes. Red water. Mum screaming at me, “Why didn’t you do something?”

  I turn over my pillow, plump it up and slam my forehead into it. The insects slow down. All my limbs are heavy, and a sleepy fog descends.

  When I wake, I’m thirsty. I stumble into the bathroom to scoop water from the tap into my mouth and flop back on the bed. I have the sensation of being cut off from reality, my worries floating out of reach. It’s not morning but I have no clue if I’ve slept for five minutes or five hours. I switch on my phone. 4.37 a.m. In the right-hand corner of the screen a cartoon dog is wagging his tail.

  I have a MessageHound message. Is this a dream where I feel awake? I’m too muddled to think properly.

  My finger moves independently to my brain, tapping in four digits.

  LUISA: Hello Skye. I miss you too.

  A message from my dead sister. My head is fuzzy but immediately I know this is a strange and wondrous thing to happen. I realize a message from Luisa is what I’ve been waiting for all these long months.

  I type back, my fingers stabbing at the keys.

  SKYE: Is it really you?

  My eyes are too heavy to keep open, and my thoughts drift.

  Fay’s twinkly music alarm wakes us. Danielle swears and rolls over, and Fay goes to the bathroom. Soon the only sound in the room is the muffled noise through the wall of water drumming on to the shower tray.

  “That … pill you gave me…” I say in a croaky voice to Danielle’s back. “I feel really rough. Like I’ve had the craziest night.”

  She doesn’t answer.

  There’s a ping from my phone. I press the home button and there, like a resurfaced memory, is the MessageHound dog wagging his tail. Is my phone having a meltdown, re-receiving messages that were sent ages ago? I touch the icon and tap in my passcode. Words spring up in the heart-jerkingly familiar font.

  LUISA: Yes it’s me. Don’t freak out.

  Everything slows. My blood. My breathing. My brain.

  I scroll back and the memory returns to me with a jolt: during the night Luisa messaged me and I messaged back. This is a closed, passcode-protected chat. Only two people have ever had access to it. Me and Luisa. There’s a big padlock symbol in the corner of each text box.

  What does this mean? Has Luisa, my clever, clever sister, found a way to communicate with me? From wherever she is – or the part of her that’s still her? I touch the words on the screen, inadvertently causing them to expand into huge letters. I wish each letter were a real, solid thing that I could pick up and hold. She reached me. She somehow made these precious words appear in my phone. I’m almost weightless with elation.

  It’s hard to believe this has happened. I’ve heard about signs from the other side, white feathers floating out of nowhere, a sudden change in temperature, flickering lights. But this? A proper message via the internet – I’ve never heard of this.

  Do I believe in life after death? I want to. I really want to.

  But I’m not sure what I believe.

  The elation
transitions into uncertainty. Perhaps this isn’t a good thing. Fear clutches me as I sit up. What if it’s a bad thing? I don’t know what to do. If only I could think more clearly. I breathe in through my nose for a count of five, let my breath out in a rush and type.

  SKYE: How do I know it’s you?

  Fay comes out of the bathroom, locates her hairdryer and turns it on to full power, and Danielle rearranges her pillow so it’s over her head. I wait hunched up over the phone, but the screen stays the same until it goes black from inactivity.

  thirteen

  Yew Tree House, last summer

  Luisa’s boyfriend, Nico, is driving her home for the summer. They’ve been going out for a while but we haven’t met him yet. She messages me to say they’re near Pitford and I wait on the landing for the car to turn into the drive. It’s silver, and very flash for a student. Before I hurtle downstairs, I watch Nico step out on to the gravel. He has shiny leather shoes with little tassels on them.

  I’ve seen photos of him on MessageHound so I already know he’s fit, with a sharper haircut than anyone round here. As he re-tucks his dark purple shirt into his smart jeans, he looks up at the house and sees me at the window. Stares at me unsmiling. I shrink away and move slowly downstairs, my desire to rush all gone, while Mum shouts, “They’re here!”

  Luisa looks different. Less studenty, more serious. When I fling my arms round her, I can tell she’s lost weight.

  “Nico, this is Skye,” says Luisa.

  “Nice to meet you,” he says, looking past me to Mum and Dad. He shakes their hands and says hello to Oscar, who’s gone all shy. Nico curves one hand round Luisa’s backside and smiles with cold eyes.

  Later, after lunch, with Mum doing most of the talking, Nico and Luisa go out in the car, and I feel lonelier than I did before she came home.

  The next day, Luisa says, “You mustn’t say anything to Mum and Dad, but I’m not going back to uni.”

  We’re floating on two lilos in the pool. It’s the first time we’ve been totally on our own since she’s been home. Everyone else is out and Nico has driven on to his parents’ house.