Remembering Summer

Chapter Eight

CHAPTER EIGHT

TYLERS POV

Do you know how it feels to drown? You feel water flood your nose and mouth, suddenly you're panicking. Heaviness and fear, just sheer terrifying fear, is all you can possibly feel. You thrash around for something to hold on to, desperately trying to save yourself. But once you begin to drown, thrashing and trying to breathe will not help you. It will only make you drown more. You know this but you can't seem to stop. Everything you're telling you're body is wrong and will hurt you is what your body does. After a little while, it starts to hurt. You're lungs are filled with water, your arms ache from thrashing, your legs burn from trying to keep yourself afloat. Death is welcomed with open arms not long after the pain. The lucky ones recieve death. They die and are found and they're given a funeral and people cry. Life is like that though. People die, people cry, they get mad and upset or they fall in love. But what they don't know is that in everything we do, we are drowning. It just takes a little while longer for the pain to begin. Or maybe it takes a little while longer for the pain to be noticed. That doesn't matter, though. The pain is always there, and it is always discovered.

I now sit, drowning in air, for the third time in the past three years. Everyone around me is careful, walking on glass on only the precisely right points so that the glass doesn't shatter. The glass still groans though. It still bears the weight of those walking on it and it still feels the pain and pressure. It doesn't break though.

"Tyler, what would you like for breakfast?" my mother smiles. She knows what today is. She's trying to plan her next careful step in the glass.

"Heather, he probably just wants to go up to his room," my father chimes in. My mom slowly closes her eyes, the edges of her lips twitching, trying so hard to not fall into a frown. She walks out of the room and I hear her and my dad arguing quietly.

"He doesn't need this now, Heather."

"He needs this now more than ever, Shane! Look at him! He is dead inside. He misses her like hell and we can't just ignore him!"

"We don't have to treat him like he's fucking five, though! He's gotten through this every year."

"I barely have! How the hell do you expect him to? I'm broken too! That girl was like a daughter to me!"

"Don't you dare turn this to you. Tyler needs stability right now. You said we wouldn't fucking do this until after today, Heather!" I can't breathe. I've begun to drown and there's nobody around to hold on to. Something is wrong with my parents. I've known it ever since Summer moved in a month ago. I pick up a Pop-Tart from the cupboard and walk up to my room. Right now, I can't do this. Not right now, not today, not for a while.

My room seems empty. It honestly isn't very full. I only have my bed, my side table, a lamp, my demolished clock and a desk with a laptop on it. Temptation pulls at me, pulling me towards the desk. This shouldn't happen, it would only make today hurt more. But I walk to my desk and open my laptop anyway. The Pop-Tart wrapper is ripped open and thrown into the trash. I see my computer boot up, every fiber of my being screaming at me to run away, to throw the computer out the window and never look at it again. But I'm stuck in this position. I click on my photos and scroll to the very bottom of my albums. I can hear my mother's voice, and the therapist she had me go to when I stopped eating.

"You need to grieve, and then get rid of anything that could pull you back into that depressed state. At least until you're okay again."

I'm not okay and I know that. Every year I do this, hoping it will make me better but it only makes it worse. Which is crazy, seeing as I keep doing it. Photos appear and I let myself cry. I'm alone, and today of all days I should be allowed to cry. The pictures begin to change. Rey started as pictures of the two of us. Now they've faded into just pictures of her. She was beautiful, in every imaginable way. I study each only carefully, looking for any sign at all that she would do what she did. But there's nothing. Very picture she is smiling, or laughing or at least happy. I come to the last picture, the day we went up on to the hill behind my old elementary school. God, she was only 15 and yet she was stunning, like a movie star. She was laying down, knees up with her bare feet flat on the grass. Her long dark hair was sprawled around her tan face, little nose scrunched and green eyes lightly closed. The sun shine down on her and reflected off her long lashes. She never had to try. She never had to be someone she wasn't because everything she was...was incredible. Her laugh, the freckles across the bridge of her nose, her collection of black and white movies. How I had win her I didn't know. I didn't care either though.

That's when I saw them. Barely noticeable at the time, in the moment. Yet they were there. Covered in makeup, right I'm her wrists, were little slices. I feel the pain of drowning start. No. No no no no. There was a sign. I go back through all the pictures and see that they were there the whole time. A sign that could've been noticed. A sign that should've been noticed. No. I didn't see it and I do now. God must hate me. I'm being punished and I feel the weight of it in my entire being. I had the tells where I could've saved her. And I never used them, never noticed them. Rage and regret and pain and desire to die fills me. I have harbors this pain for three years, it is time I welcome death.

I'm sobbing. Tears down my face, face red, nose stuffed, chest heaving. That awful kind of sobbing where you can feel it in your heart. Every part of me wants to stop.

I take a step towards my door.

To stop moving.

I walk into the hall.

To stop hurting.

I flick on the bathroom light.

To stop feeling.

I reach for old razors.

To stop knowing.

I place the sharp edge right at the base of my throat.

To stop breathing.

A knock a the door stops me.

"I'll be right out." I try to hold myself together.

"Tyler, are you ok? I saw you freak out through the window. I didn't know if...are you ok?"

Summer.

If you have ever felt like you were drowning and lived to tell the tale you are obviously alive. You know what it's like to have something stable hold on to you, to pull you up, to feel air in your lungs, to see the sun. She was all of that. The stability, the pull, the air, the sun. And I needed her now. I needed her forever. Because usually, the pain of drowning doesn't stop as soon as you're saved. But with Summer it did. She took it all away. She took it all.

I burst into the hall.

"Tyler you scared the hell out of me, your parents left and I saw you freak out and I didn't know so I came in and I just-"

I push myself and force my lips against hers. She doesn't fight, but she does seem a little shocked. Then she winds her hands around my neck, her fingertips in my hair.

I see the sun.

AN- hey guys. I'm on vacation right now, but I'm stuck in my hotel a lot. So I might actually update a lot more. I know Summer and Tyler moved pretty fast but it's been two weeks since the last time they talked. Summer has been here a month and this story ends when Summer vacation does, so I only have two months left to work with. I have already planned out an ending and everything, even an epilogue. Sorry if this chapter is short, I might do a double update. Thanks for over 100 reads and all the new votes!