Remembering Summer

Chapter Four

CHAPTER FOUR

Pale white light finds it's way through my eyelids. I slowly open them and close them again, the light being too intense for me.

"Tyler!" I hear a soft voice giggling my name. I shoot up. This voice is familiar and comforting. I haven't heard it in so long.

"Emily?!" I tear through my comforter and race to my window. The blinds are pulled and the curtains thrown to the side, revealing her. Her. She's standing there in her window smiling, waving and laughing. She looks happier than the last time I saw her. The last time anyone saw her.

"It's been a while since you visited me." I realize I'm crying at her words. Here she is, my Emily. Bright and happy and bubbly Emily. The only girl I've ever loved before. Emily. My breathes cannot be controlled as she tells me she'll be at my house in less than a minute. I pull at my hair out of excitement. Emily is here. I can hold her again. Kiss her again. I can make her alright. She won't do what she did...what everyone thought she did. I'll be there. I am here. I will not let it happen. I won't.

I think of her. Her funeral. My mind begins to race. This isn't right. Something isn't right. I saw her. Her dead body; lifeless, pale, unmoving.

"You've got that look on your face, Tyler. Aren't you happy to see me?" She's suddenly in my doorway, dark curls framing her round face. Her words sound hurt but her green eyes and her perfect pink lips are smiling.

"You left. How are you back?"

"I left yes, but not in the way that everyone thinks. It was fake. All of it. The funeral, my suicide. All of it. If they thought I was dead...it would all stop." I feel something in my stomach, but they weren't the butterflies that usually came with Emily. This was pure anger. Rejection and hurt and betrayal.

"And what about me? You let me think you were dead for three years Emily! Three years! I have never gone a day without thinking about you! That's 1,095 days thinking about you! 1,095 nights waking up at 2 FUCKING AM because I can't sleep! Because I see you! Was I nothing?" She looks hurt. Like she's about to cry. My hands make their way through my hair. This wasn't what I was supposed to do. I was supposed to build her back up. Not break her back down.

"Em, I'm sor-" Her lips are suddenly at mine and I feel every weight that's been built up over the past three years fall off. I pick her up and carry her over to my bed? Laying her down softly, I hear her speak.

"Why weren't you there?"

"What?"

"You left."

"Emily, I-"

"I was all alone." I kiss her again. And again, and again. She speaks again.

"Who's that?" But it's not Emily's voice. It's Summer's. Summer is underneath me, blonde hair fanned across my bedspread and blue eyes frightened. She is surrounded by a pool of crimson liquid. I'm shocked, scared. I am terrified.

"Who's that?" she repeats weakly. I see the light fade out of her eyes, my blood soaked hands shove myself up. Turning slowly, I see the girl I thought I was holding. Only she's not standing. Emily is hanging from my ceiling by a rope tied around her neck.

I wake up panting and sweating. There is no blood on my bedspread. No girl hanging from my roof. The clock on my bed side table reads 3:58. It's almost 4 AM and I'm awake with no chance of getting back to sleep. I sigh and swing my legs over the side of my bed. The carpet is warm from the summer air blowing in my still open window. Walking to my drawers feels like running a marathon. Pulling on shorts and a tee shirt over my bare body is like lifting a million pounds. Tying my shoelaces on my sneakers loosens my muscles, though. Walking out the door wakes up me. Taking the first step unlocks the chains. Running sets me free.

An hour and a half later, I'm almost back home. I ran down the main road and to the freeway. It started to rain but I didn't really care. Raindrops and sweat is better than blood and tears. My gray shirt is now black and sticking to my torso, but the rain seems to be letting up. How could I dream that? Her. She was there. And she was with me and then she was Summer, and then Summer was dead. And then Emily was dead too. Why am I still alive? In every dream, I live and she dies. But now Summer was dead too. Why did that faze me? I'm still in love with Emily. I know I am because I think of her lips. Her eyes. Her nose. How she couldn't land a backflip on a trampoline but was perfect on the ground. How she crinkled her eyebrows together when she thought really hard. How she had kissed me and said 'I'll call you at midnight' before going home and killing herself as the clock struck 12. I know I'm still in love with her.

I find myself wishing I had another girl here. Or a party to go to. I could get drunk, sleep with another girl. I could forget for a night. I'm back at home, walking between the little alley way between Summer's house and mine. The minute I see the old brick wall where I first kissed Em, I lose it. I sob and cry and slam my fist against the brick wall. Ten minutes of crying, and finally I control myself. I step in through the side door and go back up to my room. It's 5:47 and I am finally going to sleep. I notice my phone is still on its dock and that I have three texts. Two from my best friend Logan and one from a girl named Natalie.

"Hey man, I'm throwing a party tomorrow. There's gonna be chicks in bikinis and beer. BE THERE!"

I scoff at Logan's perverted obsession with parties. He's popular, so he gets girls bent over tables. I'm not too much of a virgin, but he hasn't been since he was 14. I check his second text.

"Natalie Hollaway is gonna be there. In a bikini. If you're not they'd in telling everyone you're gay."

Then the one from Natalie.

"Be at Logan's party tomorrow;)"

I throw my phone on my bed and huff. Natalie is a slut, no other way to say it. She's screwed everyone at the school, including a few teachers, male and female. I would judge but ive had sex with her before. A lot actually. But I'm surprised she doesn't have an STD yet. I decide I'm going to the party, cause less than fifteen minutes ago I was wishing for 10 beers and Natalie Hollaway in my bed. I need to realize Emily isn't coming back. Drowning myself in sex and alcohol might help.

I wake up for the second time in twenty four hours at 11:56. I shower and get dressed. The party starts at 8 and Logan's parties usually go until 3 AM. I already told him I'd stay the night to get off the hangover, pick up so his parents wouldn't know and get rid of anyone who's left after 4. I have no idea why I get like this after I think of Emily. I turn into the douchebag 17 year old. I just do. I tumble down the steps to find Summer in my family room. I think about the dream, her bleeding beneath me. Dying. I shake my head and walk into the room.

"Tyler! Wonderful! We needed one more person to help me plant the petunias in the back! Summer was sweet enough to lend a hand." I hear my mom announce that I'll be working with Summer in the backyard while she works in the front.

Not even three minutes into the work, she speaks to me.

"Are you okay?" I nod.

"It's just..last night...or more early this morning...I heard you crying." Shit. Her window must've still been open.

"Why the hell were you even up?" I can taste the venom in my voice and she lowers hers.

"I found old pictures...in the attic...they were of a girl. And you. On the back of one it said 'Emily and Tyler, spring 2011'. I looked up the town and Emily and got a rather...extensive list of the same result." I feel tears brewing again.

"Did she really...I mean why? She seemed like she had a perfect life...her Facebook said she was a straight A student, captain of the cheer and lacrosse team. Had a job bagging at the local grocery store...she was fucking perfec-"

"Shut the hell up right now. Don't you dare talk about her like she was stubborn or shallow. Like she ended herself for attention. You do not know her. And you never will. Afraid you showed up about three years too late to be her best friend." Summer shuts up. Minutes later she talks again.

"I'm sorry." She barely whispers it, but I can tell she's crying, whether it's over Emily dying or over me snapping at her I don't care. But suddenly a little voice inside my head pipes up.

Yes you do.