Текст книги "Four Summers"

Автор книги: Nyrae Dawn

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

I miss the night. Miss the stars. Miss talking to Nathaniel.

For the past couple weeks I’ve done a good job ignoring him. I help Dad as much as I can, even when he doesn’t ask me to. Alec is off with Brandon when Sadie isn’t and he doesn’t try to get me to come. I’m surprised he hasn’t pushed me, asked what’s going on, but he’s too busy playing ball and trying to impress the summer boys to care about much else.

It hurts more than I’m willing to admit.

Nathaniel’s tries to talk to me a few times and I always reply. I’m nice and professional just like Dad expects us to be to our guests, but that’s as far as it goes. I wonder if he misses me the way I miss him, but then I try to push those thoughts away. They won’t do me any good.

A week left. That’s all I have until they’re gone and I can work on forgetting I ever knew them. Sadie will forget Brandon and date someone from our school and Alec will be my best friend again and things will be as though the Chase boys never happened.

I’m sitting on one of the docks with my feet in the water. It’s dusk. I love this time of day because it’s the bridge from day to night. Day where I work at The Village and know that’s all my life will ever be and night where I think I can be anywhere else in the world.

Footsteps sound from behind me and I flinch, wondering who it’s going to be.

“Night games tonight.” Alec sits next to me, a huge smile on his face. “Last man standing. Everyone’s coming down. It’s going to be awesome.”

We’ve always played a lot of night games in the summer, but haven’t done it much this year. It’s normally one of my favorite things. We have the area marked off from part of an empty field, not too far from The Village and going into a certain area in the woods. There are forts out there from when we were younger, along with an old house with tons of places to get lost in.

I love Last Man Standing.

Alec and I always own it. There are two main groups, but we usually break up in two man teams on each group. We’re always on the same team and we almost always win. We play with paint ball guns, in full gear.

The moon is pretty bright out here, but each group is still allowed a flashlight. Dad has portable lights they we set up in a few spots, too. It doesn’t give us too much light, but enough. It’s a cutthroat game. Someone almost always gets hurt.

For the first time since the drive-in, excitement burns through me. I want to play. I want to win.

“Sadie and a few of the other girls aren’t playing. They’re setting up the flag. You got your paint gear? Some of the others are lending theirs to Brandon and Nathaniel.”

All the happiness deflates from my muscles. How could I have forgotten Nathaniel would be here? Of course he would want to play. “I don’t feel like playing.”

“What? You never skip out on Last Man Standing, Gates. What’s up with that?”

“Umm… You never call me ‘Gates.’ What’s up with that?”

Alec grabs my hand when I try to stand up, but I pull it away. He gets up right behind me. “I’ve been a jerk, Charlie. I’m sorry. It’s just…he’s cool. You know he’ll probably play college ball?”

“So?” I shout. “You could play, too. I know it. Don’t stick around here and you’ll be out there doing the same thing!”

Alec moves in front of me, blocking my way. “It’s not that easy and you know it. Our lives are here. Plus, I don’t want to leave. I wasn’t saying that. It’s just…”

He doesn’t continue so I ask, “What?”

“Never mind. You wouldn’t get it. Just play with us, Charlie. It won’t be the same without you out there. You know it. Hell, I don’t think I’ve ever played it without you.”

Alec gives me the sweet smile that’s impossible to say no to. He has this innocent, little boy look to him that the girls love. But the thing about Alec is, most of the time, he’s not working it. He doesn’t do it on purpose. He’s just sweet and it’s part of who he is.

No matter what, I love him and I do want to play this game of Last Man Standing with my best friend. I can do this. I’m not a runner, I remind myself. I can deal with a night around Nathaniel. Looking at Alec, I say, “Okay. I’m in.”

He pulls me into a hug and we set off to get ready for the game.

Once we get everyone all set up, the big group of about twenty meet in the middle of the field. We’re all decked out in camo clothes and paint gun gear. It’s not completely dark yet and the lights definitely help.

Nathaniel hasn’t tried to talk to me the whole time and I haven’t tried either. It makes me sad, but it’s for the best. I know it. I just have to keep reminding myself of it.

Everyone’s arguing about team captains, but I don’t pay much attention. It’s not until I hear them announce that the two captains are Alec and Nathaniel that I perk up. I’m suddenly disappointed I won’t get to be on Nathaniel’s team.

Alec wins the coin flip, meaning he gets to choose first. The rest of us stand in a group with him and Nathaniel in front of us. I try not to look at him, but my eyes keep darting his way.

“Come on, Andrews! Choose!” someone yells at Alec.

I’m about to step forward to walk to his side when I hear Alec say, “Brandon.”

My heart stops. Everyone suddenly gets quiet like they can’t believe what happened. Alec has never, ever not picked me first for something. My cheeks get hot, but I try to stamp down the embarrassment.

Brandon walks over to Alec and they do this stupid boy, shake-hand, high-five thing and I’m about to leave. Screw Last Man Standing. Screw Alec and Brandon and even Nathaniel, too. Alec knew I didn't want to come here tonight; the least he could do is not throw me for a loop by embarrassing me.

“Charlotte.”

My eyes shoot over to Nathaniel and he’s staring at me, hard. My heart is running a race in my chest and I hear Alec in the background saying, “What? Charlie’s always on my team!”

“Then you should have picked her,” Nathaniel tosses back, still looking at me.

“Everyone knew I would!”

But he didn’t. He always does, but this time Alec didn’t pick me.

“Then I guess you should have picked her first.” Nathaniel nods his head, like he’s calling me over, and I walk right over and stand next to him. My feelings are hurt that Alec didn’t pick me first and my heart is soaring that Nathaniel did, but I’m also trying to ground the freaking flight because I am not supposed to be feeling this way about him.

“Charlie?” Alec says and there’s a little bit of shock and regret in his voice, but I feel the same thing. It’s just a game and he didn’t pick me.

“It’s cool. We got this,” Brandon tells him. I glance at Alec and he looks at me, something strange in his eyes that I don’t understand. There's never been a time I couldn't understand Alec, but right now I don’t.

And then, we break eye contact. He looks at the group of people and picks someone else. Nathaniel asks me who he should pick and I tell him who the best is. Back and forth we trade picks until everyone is in a group, and we have our two man teams decided. The goal is for one team to work together to try and take out the other, then it goes all Lord of the Flies and we go after each other.

Once there are only two, two-man teams left, we go for the conch with the flag. Whichever group gets it, wins.

Nathaniel looks at me, competitiveness that matches my own glimmering in his eyes. We’re going to win. There’s no question about it.

All hell has broken loose. This is unlike any game of Last Man Standing we’ve ever played. People are brutal and it’s getting darker and darker but we still don’t have a winner. There’s one group left on the other team, Alec and Brandon, and then me and Nathaniel on ours.

The flag is in the middle of the field, waiting for us, as Nathaniel and I hide behind one of the forts on one side of the field. We have no idea where Brandon and Alec are.

“How good a shot is your brother?” I ask. Everything else is put behind us out here. It’s like life or death and even though I can tell he wants to ask me why I’ve been ignoring him and I have the urge to either run and hide or just grab him and steal my very first kiss, he doesn’t ask and I try to ignore my instincts.

Out here, the only instinct I can let grab me is the one telling me to win.

“He’s all right. Not horrible but not great.”

“You better than him?”

“Absolutely. What about Alec?”

I shake my head. “Not better or worse, either. We’re pretty evenly matched, but he’s good. Really good.”

“So that’s your way of saying you’re good?” Nathaniel smiles.

I shrug. “I guess.” We pause for a few minutes and then I ask, “What’s the plan?”

Just then, Nathaniel grabs my arm. My first thought is they snuck up on us, but he points to the sky and I see the tail end of a shooting star. I love shooting stars.

I can’t help but smile. He saw one and knew I would like it.

“I think that’s our sign. I say we go for it. They’re probably sitting somewhere waiting to snipe us, but let’s let them be the passive ones who sit back and wait. We’ll run out there, get it, and win.”

“It’s a risk.”

“Not if you run fast,” he laughs.

He’s right. We can sit here forever waiting for them to find us or we can go out there and take our win. I’m determined to grab it with both hands and own it. But we can’t let them shoot us either. If we do, it doesn’t matter if we get the flag or not.

“Let’s do it.”

Nathaniel grabs my hand. “Run like hell. Don’t look back. Leave your gun—”

“What? I can’t leave my gun. How will I shoot them?”

“You won’t need to. I’ll have your back. I’ll be right there and I’ll take out anyone who gets you in their sights. You get the flag and we got this, Charlotte.”

This is not usually how Alec and I do it, but I will be able to run faster without my gun. And…maybe it’s not something I should be thinking, but it feels good to think of him having my back.

“Let’s do it.”

He squeezes my hand tighter. I forgot he even had it. “If we win, you have to meet me tonight.”

My brain tells me to say no, but my heart is beating to say yes. The word is pumping through every part of me. There’s no other option. “Okay.”

Nathaniel smiles and I think it might be the best smile in the whole wide world. I bet his girlfriend loves that smile, too.

“Ready?” he asks. “On the count of three.”

I set my paintball gun down.

“One,” he says. Pauses. “You can do this. Run fast. I’ll be right behind you.”

I nod again. Who knows if he can see me but once we step into that field, everyone will be able to. The lights are that bright.

“Two.”

Another pause.

“Three.”

As soon as the word leaves his mouth, I run. Run with everything I have. My chest hurts. My legs hurt. Nathaniel is right behind me.

“Keep going. Shooting on your right,” he yells. I hear the pop, pop, pop of his paintball gun. I keep running. Brandon curses. Alec and Nathaniel are shooting at each other. I don’t pay attention. Just keep moving. As soon as I get there, I grab the flag and Nathaniel grabs me and jerks me into his arms. He lifts me up and we laugh, not a drop of paint on either of us.

I sit in the dark, waiting for it to be time to meet Nathaniel. It’s like there’s electricity inside me. A live wire that’s flipping all around because I’m anxious to have another of our nights together and because it seemed so important to him that I meet him. I know it makes me sound bratty, but when he didn’t push for it sooner, it made me feel like it didn’t matter. I think maybe I wanted him to…maybe not fight for me to meet, but to pull for it. To show me he wanted it and he did and that means more to me than the knowledge that this will make it hurt more when he leaves. He’s here now and I don’t have anything else I look forward to.

I’m taking this.

Quietly, I push my widow open and crawl out. The “pillow me” is under the blankets. Not like anyone will check on me, anyway. As soon as my feet hit the ground, I hear Mom’s voice surfing on the wind as it drifts from her and Dad’s partially open window.

“I’m so tired of this place! I tried to make it work, but I don’t want this life, Richard!”

“We’ve been okay,” Dad replies. “Things have been better. We’ll close for a week or so and take a trip this fall. Get out of here for a while. This is our life, Tabitha.”

“A life only you want! You and Charlie Rae love it here. This place fits you. I just…I want to take Sadie and go. You can go, too. We can sell and—”

“No! I’m not selling. This is our past and our future. How can you just want to throw it away? And what about Charlie? You’re going to leave her?”

“She can go if she wants.”

I grab my chest. Fight to breathe. Tears fill my eyes and I turn to run. I stumble and fall, but get right back up again. They’re leaving? She wants to take Sadie and leave? Leave me? I stop when hope fizzles in my veins. I could get out of here. How could I want to leave Dad? I don’t. I love him. And it’s not that she really cares if I go or not.

Her words hit me again and I dry heave. I fall to the ground again and cry. They’re going to leave and I’ll be stuck here. Then the guilt mixes in, making me nauseous. Is here really that bad? I don’t like it, but I would never just bail.

“Charlotte?” Nathaniel’s voice comes from behind me. “What’s wrong?”

I scramble to my feet, embarrassed that I’m on the ground crying. All I can think about is the fact that they’ll get out of The Village to find a new life, and then I hate myself for wishing for the same thing.

Nathaniel steps toward me. I try to turn my head away, but he ducks and follows, tilting my chin toward him. “What’s wrong, Star Girl?”

I watch him in the moonlight. His eyes look like they belong in the sky and I want to talk to him. I want to tell him things because I need to get the words out. Nathaniel has the key that can set them free before they eat me alive.

I can’t talk to Dad, Mom, Sadie, or even Alec. Not about this, but more than anything I want to tell him. “I hate my life.” If there was a way to snatch back those words, I would. They sound so end of the world and I’m not like that. I’m a realist. I know how things work and I usually don’t run so high on emotions, but…I think he might get what I mean. I hope he will.

“Wow…that’s pretty brutal.” There’s a laugh in his voice and it’s just what I need. It makes me smile when two seconds ago it felt like I’d never smile again. In this second, I’ll do anything to forget what I just heard. The thoughts are still there. They can’t disappear that easily, but they aren’t what I want to focus on right now.

“I want to show you something,” I tell him.

Nathaniel nods and I head down path that will lead us where I want to go. When I get there, I disappear into the trees. Nathaniel steps up beside me and grabs my hand. It’s not the way Alec and I have held hands before. Our fingers are weaved together and I like how his hand is a little bit bigger than mine.

We don’t talk as we follow the trail into the night, each of us carrying a flashlight in our free hand. It doesn’t take long to get to the fort my dad made us when we were kids. It’s a decent size. Alec and I used to have secret meetings out here with our friends so it’s big enough for a small group of kids to stand inside.

The little plastic table we used to keep out here is long gone, and the place is empty, but I like to come out here now and again. Alec and I used to play in the creek running behind the fort.

“What is this place?” Nathaniel asks.

“It used to be my hideout.” I shine the light inside. There’s no door or anything like that. “It’s not much, but when I was younger I used to think it was the most amazing thing in the whole world. I helped my dad build it.” That was back when I thought The Village would always be the place for me.

“That’s cool. None of my friends back home have stuff like this. And my dad was always too busy to help us make one.”

I nod at him. “Let’s go out back.”

If I’m being honest, I’ll admit it’s a little scary out here at night, but I grew up stomping through this place. Kids party on the mountains in Lakeland Village. It’s just a part of our lives.

When we get behind the fort, Nathaniel asks, “Why were you crying?”

I sit down and he follows right behind me. “I thought you were so different that first day. I thought you would be scared to get dirty or something.”

Nathaniel laughs. “Wow. Thanks. And you’re stalling.”

I pull my knees to my chest and wrap my arms around them. I let my light dance around the trees and look up to see the stars. “Why do I feel like I can talk to you?”

“Because you don’t know me.”

Maybe that’s true, but I also want to tell him I do. I do know him. Maybe not everything that matters, but I know him.

“When I was little, I thought The Village was magical. We were so lucky, right? People paid us to stay here. We cleaned boats and took people on tours and I could swim all I wanted or explore out here. Dad and I would make things and Sadie and Mom would mostly stay inside, but they’d tease us and we laughed and everything felt okay. I never thought I wanted to leave.

“And then as I got older, I realized that Mom hated it more and more every year and Sadie never really liked it and I started to watch the stars. It feels like nothing matters when I look up there, ya know? I used to dream about getting to study them one day, but I never really got the fact that I would have to leave to do it. When that occurred to me, I thought I would just be happy watching them. It was then that the stars became my magic instead of The Village.”

For a second, I think maybe I should be embarrassed saying all of these things to him, but I’m not.

“You don’t want to leave one day?” he asks.

“No. I do. That’s the problem. It’s like, I’m suffocating here now. I love it, but I don’t.”

“You only have a few more years till you’re off to college.”

I shake my head. “Who would help Dad if I left?”

“Can you just come home for the summer to help him?”

“We’re open all year. It’s not nearly as busy, but there’s ice-skating on the pond in the winter. There’s an apple orchard close that people like to visit in the fall. Wagon rides take them back and forth from here to the orchard. We don’t get people who stay months at a time, except in the summer, but people do come.”

He still doesn’t look convinced, so I add, “You don’t get it. It’s always been Dad and I versus Mom and Sadie Ann. He depends on me and he loves this place so much. He thinks I love it too and I do, but—”

Nathaniel brushes the hair back from my face. “You want to follow the stars.”

“I do… And planets. They all fascinate me.”

“What happened tonight?”

Automatically, I open my mouth to tell him. “I don’t think my mom loves my dad anymore. She said she wants to leave…to take Sadie Ann and go.” The words make it all too real again. My chest aches.

“Shit,” Nathaniel mumbles and puts an arm around me. I drop my head to his shoulder and let a few silent tears trickle down my face. He doesn’t talk and that’s perfect. He just lets me be and holds me because nothing he could say would fix this. I'm grateful he seems to know that.

We sit like that for a long time. He smells fresh like after the rain, but with a hint of something else. I hear him breathe and wonder if he hears me, too. Finally, after who knows how long, I can’t stop myself from asking the question that’s filled my head since Sadie told me.

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

Nathaniel stiffens beside me. It’s all the answer I need, but he offers one anyway. “Um… Kind of.”

I chuckle and pull away from him. It hurts my chest, but it’s not something I didn’t know. “You can’t kind of have a girlfriend.”

“I’m serious. We were together. We’ve been together since December, but when summer came, and we knew I would be leaving, we decided to take a break.”

I sigh. “But you’ll get back together when you go home.”

He looks like he doesn’t want to answer. “Probably.”

I nod, not willing to let myself cry again. There’s no point. What will the tears do? It’s not his fault I like him. That I...what? Became infatuated with him the second I saw him? It’s so stupid. It serves me right that he 'kind of' has a girlfriend.

“You’re so freaking cool, Charlotte. I wanted nothing to do with this place when my parents told me we were coming. Both Brandon and I were pissed, but we’ve had a kick ass time. You’re fun to talk to and I’ve never met another girl like you. You’re like…hell, you’re almost like my best friend.”

Talk about ironic. Of course I would end up with another boy for a best friend. One who’s always been there for me, and the other who makes me breathe faster and my heart bounce. Who makes me feel like a girl when no one else does and who looks at me like he sees something that only he can see.

One that if I gave into my heart, I would love.

“You’re my best friend, too.”

He shakes his head. “That’s Alec.”

“He is. He’ll always be my best friend, but…I don’t talk to him the way I do you. We don’t talk about the sky and I never could have told him what I told you tonight.”

Nathaniel’s quiet for a few minutes before he turns to look at me again. “Things would be different for us if we lived close, huh?”

It’s not what I want. I want things to be different for us now, but I feel lucky to hear that. Because I believe it. I don’t know what it is, but I know he’s right. Things would be different for us if we lived closer. I wouldn’t be afraid to follow my heart.

“Yeah…I think they would.”

Nathaniel puts his arm around me again, and together we watch the night.