The fresh morning sunlight gleamed on the surface of the sleek silver mobile phone Summer held in my hand. The phone was slippy from her sweating palm but finally, after staying up all night panicking and crying her tent, refusing to let anyone in, her face is now clean of any trace of tears. Summer arose around dawn and washed the tear tracks off of her cheeks vigorously, the cold water easing her red, puffy eyes. She then went to the main base of the charity down the lane, a small red brick building with poor ventilation and asked to borrow the charity mobile for a brief but important phone call, and made her way to a secluded part of the building site nearest to her.
As she dialed Drew's number by memory Summer thought of all of the different times she had dialled it before, causing it to be forever imprinted into her memory. The line was static as the reception was extremely poor, but Summer was just thankful at that moment that she had any signal to begin with. It rang once, twice, three times and she found herself holding her breath. "Hello?" Summer almost passed out at the sound of his voice, washing over the airwaves to melt her eardrums.
She cleared her throat, opened her mouth and stopped dead, completely mute at the thought of finding the words to explain her current situation to Drew. "Hello?" Drew repeated at the other of the line, obviously growing impatient to his callers unexplained silence. She could hear some movement on his part and the thought of him hanging up on her made her blurt out "Its me, D." Silence ensued her senseless statement as she practically heard the confusion and disbelief radiating from the phone. "Summer." That one word was so filled with a mixture of joy, relief, confusion and grief it made her head spin.
"Yeah, it's me," came her brilliant reply. "Where are you?" Drew's voice was now curt and guarded. "Haiti. Volunteering to build houses. I've been here since I left. Well, after a day or two in Thailand." Drew paused, trying to judge by her tone whether she was being serious or not. "Haiti? Thailand? Are you being serious with me right now Sum, because if you're just kidding with me I swear to God you have another thing coming after all you've put us through these past-" "Us?" Summer interrupted him, confused. "You're parents, Summer! They tried to file a missing persons report but since you were over 18 and a wild card at that we convinced them it was a mistake, that you just needed space. And now I find out you're on the other side of the world? Why, Summer? Why leave in the first place?" The 'me' in that last sentence hung in the thousands of miles between them, unspoken.
"I didn't want to. Well, a part of me did. The same part that's always wanted out of that town. But the other part of me, the part convincing me to stay on and go to college there, that part gave in and admitted I didn't fully just want to go anymore, I needed to. I was changing, going stir crazy and becoming some I didn't recognise. I honestly didn't like who I was turning into there, Drew." "I did." His reply was quiet, loaded. "To be totally honest I loved it, Sum. I loved you." Summer's breath hitched in her throat. "But I knew you stopped having any real feelings to speak of towards me months ago, you were just with me out of habit. I knew you'd leave, just not to go to the other side of the world..." He cut himself off and when he spoke again the raw emotion was gone from his voice and he was back to being curt and serious. "Just go call your parents. They've been losing their minds." He paused and his voice softened once more, becoming the tone of comfort she was so ued to as memories of burying her face in his old soft blue t-shirt, staining it with tears as he spoke to her in that same caring, loving tone came rushing back to her. "Take care, Summer." And with a final sounding click, the line went dead and Summer felt numb.
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After turning the phone back into the base building, Summer walked the short distance back to her tent, her skin feeling frigid in the sweltering air around her. She headed straight to Kyle's tent, desperate for comfort, only to find it empty. She stumbled blindly through her tears to a hospital site she knew he had been working at a few days previously. She spotted him immediately when she finally got there an eternity later, unloaded large white sacks of something from a white truck. He had his shirt off in the heat, and the strong, toned planes of his back gleamed with sweat. He was deeply tanned, and his weathered face was handsome and focused completely on the work at hand. She was overwhelmed at the thought of what she had to do.
"Kyle," she called out, breaking his focus and catching his attention straight away. He straightened up, and she held his questioning gaze, swallowed, and said simply, "I have to leave. I have to go home." Summer braced herself for his questioning look to change to one of disappointed or anger, or a mixture of both, for deserting him, the charity, all the work that remained to be done. Instead his face relaxed, eyes glittering as his mouth curved up into a gorgeously crooked smile. "Okay then. When do we leave?"
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Summer
Teen FictionSummer is seventeen, carefree and wild. Until she gets a wakeup call that jolts her back into reality. The pressure to reform, to become that good child she once was is overwhelming, and she soon realises that's not what she wants, not who she is. T...
