15
The next day, Autumn got the biggest news of her possibly-waning existence: her doctors could not find any more traces of cancer. When she called me to share the news, her voice sounded triumphant but muted, like someone whose oceanfront home had just survived a hurricane when there were three more still headed straight for it. But still, this was Autumn, and she know how to celebrate the moment more than anyone. It turned out she was having a day-drinking party under the pier to celebrate, but I politely brushed off the invitation – I was feeling weirdly tired, and besides, I had other things to do.
Cooper didn’t text me all day, which I found a little odd, but it was fine – like I said, I was busy, and I wasn’t the type to desperately wait around on anyone, even someone as swoonworthy as him. That night I was sitting in my kitchen, having spent the afternoon at Office Max preparing Cooper’s surprise I’d come up with under the pier, when I got the following text:
Hadley is dying. I need u
My heart skipped a beat, literally speaking. (It had been doing that lately, dizzying me and making me plant my feet firmly on the floor to keep from swaying or falling, but I didn’t really think much of it. That was just what love felt like.) Within a moment, Cooper texted again:
Or maybe I don’t need u. Idk.
Huh?
I sent him a series of question marks, and when he said nothing, I really started to get nervous. That night I was supposed to help Chase with his summer reading essay questions while my mom went out with some dude from a dating website for one of the first times since The Big News – or at least one of the first times she’d admitted to, anyway. Before that, this had been a near-nightly occurrence, me babysitting Chase while she ran around trying to reclaim the years I’d taken from her by being sick. She’d pop her head into my doorway at around six PM, and the conversation would always go like this: Hey, Chase has a fever and needs a babysitter, and I’m wiped out from taking you to the hospital yesterday, so would you mind? I wanted her to be with someone and live her life, but I also wanted her to watch her own kid, so…yeah. It was complicated. She was already texting me about how miserable her date was and how badly she wanted to leave, but it wasn’t like I could leave Chase to go bail her out, so I’d kind of rudely told her to deal with it herself.
I can’t be there, like, now, I told Cooper.
But I can come later?
Ok, he said. But come. Don’t bail on me. I’m a mess
And then, two minutes later: Wait. Don’t come.
I frowned as I read the latest texts. He was being weird. And needy. But I didn’t want to let the darkness govern me, and so I chalked it up to the dog situation to save myself from having a heart attack.
I wouldn’t dream of bailing and you know it, I said. See you soon.
“Where are you going?” my mom asked from the foyer fifteen minutes later, her date having ended awkwardly early. Because of Cooper’s weirdness, I’d put on my best dress to impress him, this ice blue thing Shelly had gotten me on special at some department store last summer. I’d also done some makeup tricks I’d learned from this YouTube tutorial thingy I’d watched a few days ago during a spell when Cooper was busy and wasn’t talking to me, and all in all, I was starting to feel just a little bit cute, if I could say so myself.
“Out,” I said as I grabbed my bag and Cooper’s surprise.
“Wait,” she called as I hit the door to the garage. “Stop, Sum. What about me? Don’t you think I want to see my daughter during her last-”
“During my last what, Shelly?” I interrupted, turning around. “My last…summer?”
The second I’d said it, I wished I could unsay it.
“Wait, I just…sorry,” I told her. “I’m sorry. But please let me live my life. I need this. Do you understand? ...Come on, don’t just stare at me. Do you?”
I turned and left before I could hear her start to cry.
Ten minutes later I pulled into Cooper’s driveway and walked into his garage to find a total mess. An empty bottle of whiskey lay at his side, and some of it had spilled out onto the concrete, staining it with loopy amber veins. He was next to Hadley, who looked fine, if a little tired, and his shirt was soaking wet with liquor and what I determined to be tears.
“Oh my God, did you drink all that?” I asked as I fell at his side and started to pull off his shirt. He was drunk, that was clear. And crying.
“I don’t know,” he said. His body language was distant and weird and I tried to ignore it. “One sip turned into a lot more sips and now I don’t know where my shoes are. And why are you so pale? You look strange.”
“Um,” I said as I lifted his arm out of the puddle of alcohol. “Come on, let’s get this shirt off and talk. You’re drunk.”
He glared past me. Figuring he was just wasted, I helped him clean up in the outdoor shower, and then I found his shoes under a ladder across the garage and grabbed him a robe. When I was done he grunted something, and I asked him to repeat himself.
“What?”
“It’s Hadley. We have to fix her.”
“Okay then,” I told him. “Go sit in the garage again, by the wall. I’ll handle this.”
Soon I got an assistant from the vet on the line, even though Hadley seemed no different than she had the other night when I’d dropped by to pick up Cooper for a movie. Then the assistant put us on hold. Twice.
“It’s a twenty-four hour place and it’s priced like one, too,” Cooper slurred from beside me. “Those bitches had better answer.”
“Shhh!” I said as I finally got the assistant back on again. I helped Cooper explain all of Hadley’s symptoms, and soon the assistant decided Hadley probably wasn’t going to die immediately, because her body was still strong enough to try to fight. In the end the assistant told us to hold off on taking Hadley to the emergency vet, and to wait until at least morning, since she probably had a few days left in her.
“Okay, fine, I overreacted,” Cooper said after I’d thanked the assistant and hung up.
“It’s okay,” I said as he glared at the wall again with that weird, far-off look on his face. “She is breathing slowly, I guess, which isn’t good. Just try not to freak out.”
He stared ahead, breathing heavily, and since his defenses were lowered I figured this would be as good a time as any to spring something on him. (See previous statements re: me being a shameless bitch.) Autumn’s friend’s wedding was the following week, and before meeting Cooper I’d figured I’d just go alone, but now I was beginning to imagine more. I saw Cooper and me laughing at a softly-lit table in the corner of the venue; dancing under the hipster-ish Christmas lights strung from oak tree to oak tree along the dance floor; drinking champagne together by a river while we made out like teenagers.
“So,” I said with a smile and a blush, “I have this thing next week, this wedding, and I was wondering if you wanted to-”
“Autumn told me,” he suddenly blurted out with dead eyes, turning to me.
“What?”
“Autumn told me. Your mom told her mom, and her mom told her, and she told me.”
My chest vibrated with pure, yellow panic. I tried to swallow it down. “She told you what?”
“I can’t believe you,” he said, emotionless. “You’re a liar. My heart is broken.”
Hadley yawned. I said nothing. I couldn’t. Nothing in the world made sense anymore.
“I could’ve dealt with it, you know,” he said with a trembling lip, his voice starting to shake. “I could’ve understood. You should’ve told me. But I cannot deal with this. You’ve been lying to me this entire time. You’re a liar.”
I stared at him.
“Was this your plan all along?” he asked, his voice falling in on itself, getting harder, as he hated me with his eyes. “To find some boy and trick him into falling in love with you before you died? Was this all just some joke – some last laugh, some last summer fling before it all went to hell?”
“I…I don’t know what to say,” I finally croaked, my vision flickering. “I didn’t think any of this would…”
“That’s it,” he interrupted. His eyes were now closed doors, and all of my ivory taffeta dreams were seeping out of the cracks. “That’s exactly it – you didn’t think. I can’t believe you led me on like this and didn’t tell me, and now I might lose you, and…and…”
He turned back to me, his eyes suddenly wild. “Actually, here’s a secret. Secret reveal time! Bombshells for everyone! Ready? I’ve been clinically depressed my whole life, and I got addicted to antidepressants and anxiety medication when I was twenty-one.”
“Wh…what?”
Some sick kind of glee took over his face. “Yep! I actually know your friend Hank, from the group – we’ve been to Narcotics Anonymous together. When I was twenty I buckled under the pressure of working for the newspaper and taking care of my mom and being scared shitless that I would eventually leave her like my father did, and I started stealing her pills when mine wouldn’t fuck me up enough to escape the worry. One night I got blitzed on Xanax and drove a company car into a ditch and then walked home, and when I woke up I had no clue what had happened or where it was, and I was caught. I went to counseling with my mom after that, but I still never recovered, not really. The version of me you know is an act – I am damaged, Summer. Fucked up. Every time you talked about people staring at you, every time you said it made you feel awkward, you were wrong. They weren’t looking at you, they were looking at us, because they knew my past and didn’t understand why anyone would date such a loser. I’m a loser, Summer. A reject. A failed writer. There you go! I’m a liar, too! Any more secrets?”
“Um…I didn’t…”
He took a breath and steeled himself. “Actually, I don’t care. I don’t care what happens with anything. I hope I never see you again. Good luck, or just die, either one.”
I winced like I’d been hit by a gust of wind on a winter day. The room started to spin, but I fought off the dizziness and pushed myself up to leave. All I knew for sure was that I had to get away from this place, and be anywhere else than here. In the corner of my eye I saw his face crack, and he sat up and reached for me.
“Wait, Summer, I didn’t mean it.”
“No,” I said faintly. “No. I have to…go. Leave.”
“Don’t leave,” he called, louder this time. “Summer, I didn’t mean it. Stop. Come back. I love you, Summer. Stop!”
I staggered out of the garage and vomited into the bushes. I could hear him calling my name, but I wiped my mouth and kept stumbling until I reached my car, throwing it into reverse and speeding away as if on autopilot. All I could think as I sped down the street, ruined in my best dress, was that I’d been caught. We were over. This was over. I was broken. I hated him. I hated Autumn. I hated the world.
Just give me the stupid surgery now – I wanted to die.
At precisely the same moment I turned onto Third Street, I knew Cooper would be running around his garage to come up with plan B, and that’s when he’d notice the book I’d made at Office Max that day and had accidentally left on the garage floor like a moron. His story had been turned into a real-life book, printed, bound, and covered, with EIGHTY EIGHT by COOPER NICHOLS written in elegant black lettering on the cover, along with a simple Post-It note inscribed with the following message:
You told me you’d never write a real book, Cooper. I beg to differ. This book is as real as the love I feel for you.
-Summer
~
I got home at eleven after almost falling asleep at the wheel twice. I was beyond exhausted and just wanted to sleep more than anything in the world, but my mom’s voice stopped me.
“Where have you been?” she asked. She was sitting in the dim kitchen with a half-empty empty bottle of wine and was clearly furious. I didn’t even want to imagine how long she’d been there.
“I was at the Nichols’ house,” I said faintly, because it was true. “I had to help them…do something. With their dog.”
“Which one is Nichols? Is it that boy you’ve been going around with?”
I paused. Something about the way she’d said “that boy” triggered some deep fury within me.
“No, one of my other boys,” I said as I turned and looked in the cabinet for a new carton of Instamilk to make this weird feeling go away. “You know how I am. Different boy calling me every night. There are never enough for me. Their thirst for me is literally more insatiable than Niagara Falls’ thirst for water. They just love me and my scar and my fucking feeding tube. That’s me!”
“I…I didn’t mean it like that,” Shelly said. “And please don’t talk about yourself like that, it hurts me. But tell me something: does he know?”
“That I’m getting life-threatening surgery?” I suddenly asked, turning to her. “Yes, Shelly, it was the first thing I said when I met him. I was like, ‘Hi, I’m Summer. I like pretentious literary novels, long walks on the beach, and oh, I might die soon, but love me anyway. What looks good on the menu?’”
She winced. “Sum, I wasn’t saying that. Please chill out. And don’t talk like that, you’ll be fine. If you’re hungry there’s some milk in the – wait, actually, you are looking beyond pale. Do you want me to make you some gravy?”
I glared at her. For some weird reason, probably because it was fatty but also kind of liquid-y and I could eat it sometimes without barfing, my mother had spent my entire life laboring under the bizarre delusion that I liked gravy. I never usually made a fuss about it when she shoved it down my throat, but tonight I was in no mood to beat around the bush. Some truths you just had to put out there, even Gravy Truths.
“I don’t like gravy,” I said. “I don’t like it and I don’t want it and I will never want it and I did not just get my heart broken by Cooper and that fucking bitch Autumn.”
“Huh?” Shelly asked, squinting at me as she stepped closer. “Summer, what happened? Are you okay?”
“I don’t have time for this right now,” I said, the kitchen blurring around me as I lifted up my shirt to insert some milk. “I just wanna lie down.”
“Don’t shut me out, Summer Martin. Don’t be like that. Look – I know you’re dealing with a lot, and you’re trying to live your life.”
“Yeah,” I said. By this point the room was spinning.
“But just please stop running away from me. From us. I like having you around. I want you around while we…while I still can. And it’s not just that. You think you’re all grown up but you’re so young, Summer. You don’t know it. You’re so young. Didn’t you get my voicemails about the carnival tomorrow?”
“No,” I said absently. Sleep Sleep Sleep Cooper left me Sleep. “I don’t even check my voicemail. Voicemails are awkward.”
“Well, I needed you around today. Chase has the flu and I’ve been so stressed out with work and-”
“Chase doesn’t have the flu,” I said. “I saw him this morning. He’s fine.”
“He’s practically on death’s door, Summer, and you denying it isn’t going to help.”
Even though I was getting groggier by the second, I felt my body shiver with that weird thrill you get when acidic words rise into your throat and you know you won’t be able to keep them there.
“Why do you want him to be sick?” I asked, letting the acid out. “So you can stay in denial about me and shove all your anxieties onto him and live in your fantasy world where you make me babysit him while you go off on dates looking for a replacement for Dad?”
Once again, I regretted it the moment I’d said it. I turned around, and my mom’s eyes were filling up with tears.
“You…you really think I do that?”
“I don’t know what I think anymore,” I said as I looked away, my vision going in and out for some reason. “Sorry.”
“Sweetie,” she said, “I feel weird even talking to you about this because I feel inferior to you and you make me nervous for some reason, and I would never blame anything on you, but…you have no idea…you have no idea how hard it was. Caring for you became my whole life, and I let everything else fall away, including my marriage. And sometimes I…sometimes I think I waited too long, and it’s too late for me.”
The pain grew. “Shelly, it’s not too late for you, but I…”
“No, I need you to hear this,” she said. “It’s just that I wanted to take care of you, but I also wanted a life, but I forgot about myself, and now I have nowhere to direct my energies, and-”
“You think I don’t know all this?” I asked as I leaned forward and propped myself up on the island’s countertop, growing delirious from the pain. The light was fading but I needed to get this out. “You think I don’t know that I’m the reason you’re broke, and alone, and obsessed with Chase’s nonexistent health problems? You think I don’t feel like a mistake, a flawed model, a scar on the face of humanity? News flash, Shelly: I’m fucked up, and I might die, and my existence is going to fuck up the lives of you and Chase and everyone else I love. It is my destiny to ruin you, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.”
A shocked silence followed.
“Do you…do you really feel that way?” I was vaguely aware of Shelly asking next. She turned on the light to see me better. “Do you – oh my God, you’re white as a ghost, Summer! What’s wrong? Are you okay? What’s wrong?!”
I clutched the edge of the counter and then felt my knees buckle under me. All the pain and light shrank into one pinprick of unbearable misery before everything fell away, and my mother screaming Chase’s name was the last thing I heard before I sank into the warm, comfortable darkness of sleep.