Broken Summer >>> Luke Hemmings

Chapter 10

Chapter(s): Chapter 5
[word count: 1436 words]
Song: Problems, A R I Z O N A

MY BODY WAS RUNNING BUT my mind was also running. It was as if it were on overdrive and the odometer was broken as well as the brakes. I looked around and around and didn't see anything but the sun. All my surroundings were but a blur, blues and reds and yellows and greens turning into one mess inside my brain.

Inside my mind, a poem we read in English last year came into my head. It was called "A. Machine" by Terrace Hayes, an African-American poet. It was mysterious and for some reason, it had resonated with me and I memorized it on the way home from school that day for a while. I even wrote it down several times in my notebook even after we moved on from our American poetry unit and were doing something new. I'd say it in the car ride home in my head and in the shower.

Hey, I am learning what it means to ride condemned.
I may be breaking up. I am doing 85 outside the kingdom

Of heaven, under the overpass and passed over,
The past is over and I'm over the past. My odometer

Is broken, can you help me? When you get this mess-
Age, I may be a half-ton crush, a half tone of mist

And mystery, maybe trooper bait with the ambulance
Ambling somewhere, or a dial of holy stations, a band-

Age of clamor and spooling, a dash and semaphore,
A pupil of motion on my way to be buried or planted or

Crammed or creamed, treading light and water or tread
and trepidation, maybe. Hey, I am backfiring along a road

Through the future, I am alive skidding on the tongue,
When you get this message, will you sigh, My lover is gone?

By the time, I was hearing the sounds of cars and was milimetres away from the falling into the pier. The pier looked so bright with the sun's rays reflecting off of the water that I could hardly see. Then again, my contacts weren't the best thing in the world. My face felt wet and my shirt clung to my body. I was even losing my balance.

"Hey!" Someone yelled behind me, reaching to grab my arm and pull me back. With all the force, I fell to the ground, landing on my bum. "Are you alright?" The voice asked.

She was a young adult, no more than my age. She was taller than I was by a good quarter of a metre. She had black hair that came down in waves on her back. Her eyes were light brown with burgundy glasses covering them. There was a dimple on her left cheek and she was tanned, but it obviously wasn't her true skin tone because her tan lines were a little uneven, especially around her neck where her bikini lines were shown. This girl had on a white floral sundress with low white Converse and a gold anklet jingling around her right ankle.

I only looked at her from where I was on the ground. Since I didn't say anything, she proceeded to speak again. "I'm Camilla. Who are you?" Camilla extended her arm and I took it. From there, she lifted me off the ground.

I pat my back upon rising up. "Ellie."

   "Let me walk you home, Ellie. Wouldn't want you to end up in the water."

   "I'm fine. No need to worry."

   "Where do you live?" I told her and she gasped. "There? That's where the Hemmings live! Are you sure you live there?"

I nodded. "I live there every—"

Camilla cut me off. "I know who you are." She smiled. "You do live there indeed. But you aren't related to them, not even Luke Hemmings. Heavens no. You've got red hair and he's got blonde. You've got green eyes and he's got blue. You've got a fairer skin tone than he does. You're also shorter than he, and me if you wanna know." She chuckled and I ended up doing so too. "You're from the city, right?"