Lying About Last Summer Read online

  Nobody appoints Joe as team leader but he assumes the position, telling us we need to go in speed order, the quickest first. Naturally he selects himself to go first. I get the second-to-last slot, behind Kerry, who’s wearing flip-flops. Perhaps it’s because he’s seen me trip over by the pool and fall out of a kayak on a calm lake.

  Fay is last. “Do I have to be last?” she asks Joe.

  “Trust me, Fay,” he says. “I know what I’m doing.”

  “Everybody ready?” asks Pippa. “Line up in order. Two minutes until I blow my whistle to start.”

  “Remember, do your best, support your teammates and enjoy yourselves,” says the instructor. “And don’t lean too heavily on the buzzers.”

  The whistle goes, and Joe jumps from tyre to tyre, far faster than Nate on the other team. He leaps on to the wooden ramp with ease, scales it, jumps from the top and disappears. Everyone carries on cheering even though we can’t see him any more.

  “Next people get ready,” shouts Pippa. “You have less than one minute before the whistle.”

  “I hate going last,” says Fay.

  “Swap with me,” I say. “Doesn’t matter to me.”

  Fay frowns. “What will Joe say?”

  “Who said he’s in charge? If you want to swap, do it.”

  “If you’re sure … and you don’t think Joe will be cross?”

  I take hold of her bony arms at the top and propel her past me so that I’m now behind her. “There. Happier?”

  She nods. “Thanks.”

  I turn my attention back to the course in time to see Brandon climbing up the ramp for the other team. There’s a mesmerizing quality to the steady way he moves. He’s comfortable in his body. Out of everyone in this place, Brandon’s probably the one person I’d tell about the messages. If I was telling anyone. Which I’m not, because then I’d have to explain more about what happened last summer.

  Soon Fay and I are the only ones on our team left to go. When the whistle blows, Fay shoots off, but although her body is light, it’s stiff and awkward and she can’t find a rhythm for leaping from tyre to tyre. On the other team, Danielle moves casually. Anyone would think she was checking out a good place to have a fag, but she glides ahead of Fay, who makes several attempts to pull herself up on to the first footholds of the ramp.

  “Woooo, Fay!” I scream when she finally has both feet off the ground. As she swivels herself over the top of the ramp on to the climbing wall, I give her a goofy thumbs up.

  The last person on the other team is Henry, who’s doing warm-up exercises. Trying to put me off.

  “Last pair get ready!” shouts Pippa.

  I’m ready.

  The whistle goes, and I run to the tyres, leaping between them with enough spring to propel me forward each time. I take the ramp at speed and my hands find their holds first, swiftly followed by my feet. At the top, I clamber down the wall for a bit, then jump, bending my knees on impact. The tunnel smells unpleasant, like the inside of a plastic lunch box. I can feel the hard, knobbly ground as I crawl through it. As I stand up to begin the hurdles, I see Fay through the rope netting. She’s standing on the metal step of the monkey bars, one arm holding the side of the frame, the other one reaching towards the first rung of the bars. Joe is talking to her from the sidelines. He’s not supposed to be there. He should be with the others at the end of the course. I can’t hear what he’s saying to her because other people are making noise, but I hear him shout to me, “Why the hell did you swap places?”

  “Why are you standing there, putting us off?” I shout back, and leap across the hurdles. Scaling the netting is harder. The monkey bars are now in front of me, and so is Fay, still unable to bring herself to swing across the four bars. The shouting and cheering from everyone who’s already completed the course intensifies.

  Joe steps forward, over the line he’s not supposed to cross. “You two should have listened to me,” he says. His voice is quietly furious. “I knew what I was doing.”

  “It’s OK,” I say. “I don’t mind being last.”

  “I can’t do it,” says Fay.

  “Listen to me,” says Joe. “Trust me. Focus on what I’m saying: grab that rung with one hand and you’ll be able to reach it with the other one.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Look at me.” Joe’s voice is softer now. “Look me in the eye.”

  Fay turns her head. Fixes her eyes on him.

  “Do it for me,” he says.

  With a grunting noise, Fay stretches and leans forward at the same time. She plummets to the ground.

  Joe shakes his head. “You didn’t trust me enough, did you?”

  Henry is doing the hurdles on the other course. He moves on to the monkey bars, barely glancing sideways at us. He reaches for the rope attached to the ramp, and as he gets to the top the waiting crowd go wild. Seconds later, there’s a prolonged buzzing sound amid the whoops and cheers.

  “Oh, Fay!” Pippa runs up. “Did you fall? Poor you.”

  I bet she didn’t notice that Joe was there before Fay fell. In fact she flashes him a grateful smile for being Mr Kind and Caring.

  Fay is on her feet now. “I’m fine. I’ll keep going.” She walks to the ramp and heaves herself up it. There are more cheers for her, and I get the sympathy clap for coming in last. As Fay presses the buzzer, I yell, “Go us!” I hope next time Joe tries to bludgeon her self-confidence she tells him to piss off.

  Joe is there now, and he gives a wolf whistle as I leap on to the platform and hammer down on the buzzer. “Good effort, team,” he says. He turns to hug Kerry, rocking her from side to side.

  As I jump down from the platform for Pippa’s obligatory group photo, I land badly, twisting my ankle slightly.

  “Whoa,” says Brandon, there beside me. He puts an arm round my shoulder to support me. The touch of his arm against me is worth the fizzing sting of my ankle. It’s different to Joe’s touch last night in about a million different ways. I think this means that Joe’s a creep and I like Brandon a whole lot more.

  The instructor says the course is now open for people to either do at a slower pace or to time themselves.

  What I’d like more than anything is to go back to the room and check my phone, but the session isn’t over yet. “I’m going to have to sit out for a bit,” I say, inspecting my ankle.

  “Let’s sit on that bench over there,” says Brandon.

  I wish I knew whether he suggested it because he can’t be bothered to do the course again or because he wants to hang out with me. We watch Fay cheer on Joe as he attempts to break the course record for the quickest completion.

  A creeping anxiety works its way through my body so that every part of me is on edge. I watch people high-five and slap Joe on the back and I listen to Brandon drum a rhythm on his thigh with his hands, but as soon as Pippa says we’re free to go, I’m on my feet and making my way back to the room to see if there are any more messages.

  sixteen

  Blank. The only new thing showing on my screen is a text from Mum, which I don’t even bother to read after skimming the first four words: I hope you’re having…

  I open up MessageHound and reread the four messages I’ve received even though I can remember word for word what they say. Perhaps there won’t be any more until I reply to the last one. How’s life?

  I scoot up against the wall at the end of the bed, aware I haven’t got long before Fay and Danielle come back and I have to engage with them about the obstacle course or who’s doing what activities this afternoon. I open a text box and start typing as fast as my fingers can find the letters.

  SKYE: I couldn’t sleep for a long time after you died. I gave up swimming because I couldn’t get into a pool without having a panic attack. I still have nightmares. We moved and we live in a flat on the edge of London. Dad’s business went under and he’s looking for work. I changed school mid-year to a different exam syllabus. Everyone thinks I’m a major geek and social reject because I do
n’t talk much and I keep my head down.

  My eyes flicker over the chunk of text, and immediately I see how foolish and exposing my words are. Of course I’ve always known deep down that these messages can’t be coming from Luisa. There are unexplained things in life, but messages via the internet are generated by people or computers, and I’m pretty certain that a computer isn’t composing these messages. I admit it: I wanted to believe in a miracle.

  A real-life person is writing messages to me, pretending to be my dead sister. Clumsy on the keyboard now, I scramble for the backspace key and hold it down, watching as it vacuums up my sentences until the text box is empty again. I have the same reeling sensation that I had when Oscar once kicked a football at my head. The same slowness to realize what’s going on, but this time accompanied by thudding fear. Someone has hacked into Luisa’s account and is deliberately messing with my brain.

  What do they want? Twisted fun – or something more sinister?

  How’s life? What does that mean?

  There hasn’t been a day when I haven’t thought of the sickening thud and the pool of red water, and heard Mum’s screaming in my head. Remembered the smell of chlorine as I bunched myself up as tightly as I could. The dull pain in my forehead as I pressed it down on to my kneecap.

  SKYE: Go away.

  I send it before I’m tempted to type something far blunter, which might provoke the creep at the other end.

  Danielle comes bursting through the door, and I close the app. “You missed two Blues having a fight by the volleyball pitch. Pippa was blowing her whistle at them. Hilarious.” She sees that I don’t find it as amusing as she does. “What’s the matter? Still tired from those dreams you couldn’t handle?”

  Fay comes in. “That obstacle course was horrible.” She sits on the end of my bed and goes into a long explanation of why she hasn’t got the strength in her arms to do the monkey bars. I let her talk while my finger hovers over the Delete App? button. If I press, will there be a ghostly echo somewhere of all the messages Luisa and I ever sent to each other? I wonder if they’d be recoverable from my phone’s internal memory. Like when the police raid houses for dodgy computers and teams of experts can see exactly what someone’s been up to, even though that person got a tip-off and deleted all the files before the police rammed the door down.

  I can’t do it. I can’t bear to lose the messages from my once-real sister.

  Danielle changes in front of us, out of her T-shirt and leggings into shorts and a sleeveless top. “I’m going for lunch. See you,” she says, and bangs the door shut behind her.

  Fay’s monologue grinds to a halt and she goes into the bathroom. As I chuck my phone down beside me, it pings.

  LUISA: You have it easy compared to me.

  I flinch from the accusing words. Easy? I’m not dead, that’s true, but I have to live with what happened every single day, and witness the effects of it on others. If I could relive that day last summer, I would. I’d relive it over and over until I could make things right. But there are no second chances. This is how it will always be.

  However upsetting these messages are, I can’t delete them. They’re evidence. I have to find out who this person pretending to be Luisa is.

  Fay comes out of the bathroom. “If we don’t go for lunch now we’ll be late.”

  The afternoon activities are lawn games and a fifty-minute slot with one of two specialist grief counsellors. Lawn games according to Fay are croquet, badminton and use of the giant outdoor chess set. According to Danielle they’re a euphemism for sunbathing, though that’s unlikely to happen given the grey clouds visible from the yellow dining room. Pippa says the counselling is optional but she floats around during dessert with her clipboard trying to entice everyone to sign up. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to specialize in grief.

  My phone is still and silent in the pocket of my shorts. I want to send a message without being watched, so I tell Fay I need to return to our room, muttering that I need to sort out my trainers before the afternoon session.

  Brandon’s further down the table. As I rush past him, I catch his eye and he mouths, You OK? Is it my imagination or does he spend quite a chunk of his time watching me?

  I nod, and run through the drizzle back to the accommodation block. As soon as I’m in the room, I reach for my phone. No new messages. I’d have heard the alert if there’d been one. I hardly said a word at lunch I was concentrating so hard on listening out for it.

  After crash-diving on to the bed, I type my message:

  SKYE: Tell me who you really are and what you want.

  I press send with a firm, decisive tap, then reach for my earphones and listen to my playlist on shuffle, each ping of the music making me think I have a reply.

  “Skye!” Fay’s voice cuts through the music.

  I take out an earphone.

  “What are you doing? You’ve been gone ages,” she says. I see she’s holding a partially closed umbrella that’s dripping water on to the floor. “Pippa asked me to fetch you. We had to abandon the lawn games because of the rain. We’re in the common room instead.”

  “How exciting,” I say.

  “Playing board games.”

  I face-plant into my pillow.

  In the end I only agree to go to the common room because Fay is practically hysterical at the thought of telling Pippa that she failed in her task of retrieving me. We bunch together under the umbrella and scuttle along the rain-darkened paths.

  The common room smells of damp socks and old cardboard. It looks like the old people’s social clubs you see on television, with lots of bleak-looking tables and stackable chairs. There’s a massive cork noticeboard, covered sparsely with curling, faded photos, a floral thank-you card and a pizza takeaway menu. The other wall decorations are a flat-screen TV and laminated rules. Please pack away all board games after use! No takeaways to be consumed on the premises! If you need change for the vending machine, please ask the reception staff (nicely!).

  I look around but there isn’t a vending machine. There’s a large built-in cupboard with open doors, rammed with games. An instructor is sorting through it. Most of the Yellows, including Brandon and Joe, are crowded round a table playing or watching a card game. Judging by the arguing and squeals, it’s a tense one. Danielle is videoing it, winding Henry up because she’s filming everyone’s cards from behind. On a separate table, Kerry and Alice are inserting plastic discs at random into a Connect Four frame.

  “Thanks, Fay!” Pippa comes at us with her clipboard. She takes the umbrella from Fay, who drifts off towards the cupboard.

  “Skye, you’re not on my list for the counselling,” says Pippa. “Would you like me to try and squeeze you in?”

  “No, thanks,” I say.

  Pippa nods and tells me I need to find myself a team for the quiz night later on. “It’s a joint activity – I’m hoping for a yellow team in the top three! Right, I’m off to report a leaking shower to the maintenance department.”

  Fay waves a chess set at me. “We can do the mini version until the weather clears up!”

  I shake my head.

  “Scrabble? Please?”

  I console myself that Fay has her counselling appointment in twenty minutes, but the time drags as she ponders each move, and my thoughts return to the last two messages I sent. Have they been read yet? What could I have written that would have made me sound more in control?

  As soon as Fay leaves, I tip the Scrabble letters into a pile, and make a sentence on the board: YOU DO NOT SCARE ME. I take a photo on my phone, bringing it down quickly into my lap when I see Joe in my peripheral vision. With a manic circular movement, I break up the sentence and begin to scoop up the letters to pack them away.

  “Scrabble for one?” says Joe. “Come and join the card game.”

  “Hey, Joe!” calls Henry from the card table. “Let’s go bomb into the pool in the rain.”

  The instructor at the cupboard looks round. “Er, guys, you’d nee
d a lifeguard and a—”

  Henry stands up. “Who’s in?”

  “Everyone except Skye,” calls Danielle. “She won’t go in the pool when it’s sunny so you won’t get her in now.”

  I fold the Scrabble board in half and pull the box towards me.

  “Give her a break,” calls Brandon. Loudly. “Her sister drowned in a pool last summer, OK?”

  The air in front of me wobbles, but I keep packing everything away.

  Joe’s still next to me. “I don’t think she wants her story broadcast, mate,” he says.

  My head drops so no one can see my burning face. Confiding in Joe about Luisa less than twelve hours after arriving here and then telling Brandon too were the dumbest moves of the holiday. There’s stillness in the room, followed by murmuring. A headache develops above my right eye as I fiddle around with the Scrabble letters.

  The instructor asks for everyone to listen to him a moment, and announces that since the rain’s stopped, croquet is back on, and would we all like to go outside, taking care not to slip on the wet grass. There’s lots of moaning until Rohan says something about croquet wars which makes people head noisily outside.

  I stay and pack up the Scrabble. Very slowly. When I’ve placed the lid on the box, I turn the whole thing over and read the game description on the back.

  “Skye?”

  I flicker my eyes up and see Brandon, and look back down again. Talk about awkward.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to blurt that out.”

  We’re the only ones here now, and his voice seems extra-loud in the silence. I give a brief nod to indicate Apology accepted. I’m not going as far as saying, “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Can I sit down?”

  “I’m a bit busy.”

  “I want to ask you something. It won’t take long.”

  “Go on, then,” I say, and finally look at him as he sits. I wait for the question, ready to shoot it down.