The Almost Summer

Chapter 6: Sidewinder blushes♥

I’m walking across a soft expanse of sand, the turquoise sea curling onto its edges. The sun is high in the sky, the air hot and heavy against my forearms. I breathe deeply, inhaling the scent of sea salt and burning sand - with the humidity, it's practically drinkable. I glance up, and realise I'm not alone.

“Jake," I breathe, and he smiles in reply.

“Autumn?" When he speaks, he has my brothers voice, and I start. "Autumn, wake up!"

The water has turned choppy, the foam froths and flickers around my ankles, a spray shoots up and blasts me in the face.

I wake up, water dripping down onto my pyjamas. I blink, spluttering out the water that went into my mouth. Who did this?

My vision clears, and Charlie stands watching me, holding an empty glass of water in his hand. A prime suspect, then.

“Charlie, what the hell?” I shout, leaping out of bed. The covers twist around my legs so I fall over, but I have no dignity anyway - having just been soaked by a pint of water – so I don’t care.

“I tried calling you first! But you’re a real heavy sleeper. You were muttering something while you slept.” I feel my cheeks flooding with colour. He didn’t hear anything, did he? Meanwhile Charlie’s looking wistfully at the empty glass. “I was really looking forward to drinking that.”

“What was I saying?” I demand.

“Not sure, but it sounded like: ‘Leave me alone, I'm wooing.’ I’m really glad we don’t have the fabled twin telepathy, I honestly do not want to be in your head.” I sigh in relief. Nothing too embarrassing then.

“Why did you need to wake me up anyway?”

“Well we need to be at the station in half an hour. Blackpool, remember?” He calls over his shoulder as he walks out of my room. Immediately I rush around, throwing clothes and towels onto the bed. I put my bikini on under my clothes to make getting ready for the water park quicker. After hastily applying my make-up, brushing my hair into a loose side plait, unplugging my phone from the charger and shoving a piece of toast in my mouth I am ready for anything. And by anything, I mean adventuring to Blackpool.

The sun’s playing tricks on me: it’s high and bright in the sky, but the air has a chill to it. After all the hot days we’ve had recently it feels strange. It reminds me that I live in England though, where sunshine is as rare as a wish-granting unicorn.

Mum’s offered to give us a lift to the train station. By us I mean me, Charlie, Lucas and Piper. We pile into the car. Charlie calls shotgun from the door, and slides into the front seat whilst I’m squished in between Piper and Lucas, their bags piled up on my knees. It’s close quarters in the back, so I keep accidentally elbowing Lucas in the stomach. After a while he elbows me back, and we end up having a full-scale poke war in the back seat.

“Stop it you two! You're worse than a couple of toddlers!” Mum yells over Kanye, chosen by Charlie.

“Kanye, I’m really happy for you, I’m a let you finish,” Charlie says, pressing pause. He then turns round and looks at us. “But Lucas and Autumn had one of the greatest poke wars of all time! All time!” He starts snorting and wheezing with laughter.

“Charlie that was bad, even for you,” Mum says, turning Kanye back on. She sings along, drumming the steering wheel.  Piper starts humming in time with the music. The poke war continues.

After a near-death experience at a yellow light, we arrive at the station in one piece. I give mum a hug before hopping out the car. She screeches off down the road, Kanye still blasting, shaking the sides of her tiny mini. The others are inside, holding their orange tickets and coffee cups.