A Twice Lived Summer

Part 1 - An Unexpected Job Offer and Uncanny Parallels

It was weird how many coincidences occurred that summer. So many that, before the summer was over, Martin began to wonder how many coincidences there needed to be until it turned into a kind of magic?

He had been crouched, rummaging in a clutter of boxes containing old books and crockery in The Second Wind, the local second-hand shop, when the name 'Martin' jumped out at him from the spine of a slim, faded blue, cloth covered book. He pulled it out and stood up to stretch out his long, cramped legs and turned the book over. The front was blank and only the words "Aubade - Kenneth Martin" on the spine identified the title and author. It must have previously had a dust cover, now long lost. He flipped it open to the first page and read:

"Paul first saw Gary at church. He sat in the pew in front, sometimes with a woman who Paul supposed was his mother, more often by himself. When Paul was bored by the sermons, he examined the back of Gary's head carefully."

Immediately an image of himself in church, bored and spending long minutes examining the back of David's head sprang into Martin's mind. He flipped the page over and read the first line of the next section:

"When Paul left school for good, summer was just beginning, and the days were long and hot."

Martin smiled, as the first real days of summer had recently made their appearance and he had just left school for good. He let his glance rest on the other side of the page where he read:

"The place where Paul lived when he was young was very beautiful. His home was a yellow house by the sea, and from his room he watched the sea, for it changed with the season, just like the sky and the trees."

Martin felt a strange chill feeling between his bony shoulder blades that made him hunch and then straighten in an attempt to throw it off. He too lived in a very beautiful place and although his parent's house was more cream coloured than yellow, it was definitely near the sea and during his life Martin had spent a great deal of time looking out his bedroom window, watching its changing moods.

"It's nothing," he thought, "just three small coincidences."

A little defiantly, he put the book on top of two others he had already selected and made his way to the shop counter.

He had only gone into The Second Wind in a weak attempt to fill the no-man's land that existed between the last day of high school and leaving home to start university in the city. Martin knew he had been considered a nerd at school because he had liked to visit the library and read, dressed plainly, didn't smoke, and never swore. It would have been of no use trying to explain that his mother was a member of a rather strict religion that forbid smoking, bad language, or excess drinking and that she had always been determined Martin would grow up to follow it as well. When it came to determination and her religion, his mother could make a marathon runner look lazy.

His only two friends, Nick and Matt had just shrugged and accepted it whenever he had to make an excuse not to join in with their attempts at smoking, swearing and lately, their drinking. For the first year of high school Martin had resented all his mother's constraints and had done his best to go through a rebellious phase. But, when he had realised how average he was in looks, sports, hobbies, and every other student achievement, he discovered that being the tidily dressed nerd who never, ever swore could be what set him apart and made him just a little bit special. He had even begun to cultivate it by making sure he carried a book with him everywhere, swopped his trainers for black lace ups – which brought sighs of approval from his mother, so were a double score – and took to using his dad's old, leather university satchel instead of the more usual sports backpack. He was rather proud of himself for having come up with 'his' style. That he was tall and lean for his age had only added to his image of being a bit different to the rest of his peers.