The Summer We Forgot, page 13
One night, Christian returned home tipsy. I confronted him and said a bunch of angry words. He didn’t realize what he’d done to me, still doesn’t. He called me self-righteous, said he’d prove I was no better than him.
And he did.
During a game of hide-and-seek, Christian ambushed the closet. He flung open the door and caught a kiss on video. I begged him not to snitch. Mom and Dad would separate Morgan and me if they found out.
Christian smirked, his eyes unkind like his words. You must feel gross, huh? My little sister . . . rubbing lips with some dude. How embarrassing. You’re embarrassing. What’ll Mom and Dad say when they find out? At least I’m not a hypocrite.
He sent a screenshot from the video to Morgan and me. He looked at me as though I was dirty, like I wore a scarlet letter because I kissed my best friend. One kiss. A natural thing. But I was made to feel guilty because a kiss at fifteen didn’t match my family’s idea of perfect.
My brother sculpted a wonderful moment into a nightmare.
The photo leaked not long after that. I blamed Christian, which led to him showing the video to Mom and Dad. They gazed at me with disappointment, and I hated myself even more.
Morgan later revealed he’d sent the photo to his friends. He apologized over and over. I forgave him. Too late. The damage had already been done.
Mom and Dad never hated Morgan. They might’ve welcomed him as my boyfriend a few years down the line. Problems didn’t exactly lie with them but with me.
I couldn’t rid myself of the guilt.
Social media circulated the photo, and gossip turned bombastic. I thought Morgan and I could weather the storm. We didn’t. I thought I’d self-helped my way to healing. Obviously not.
Because I still panic at the thought of someone broadcasting my true self to the world.
Other people gave me the shame I still feel.
Another leaked kiss won’t incriminate me or ruin my reputation. Yes, I kissed a boy more than once. Who cares? I shouldn’t feel these feelings. I couldn’t regret Morgan even if I tried.
Loving him was honest, sky blushed pink, hair stiff with salt as we raced down the beach. At fourteen, he said, “Hurting you won’t ever be my way of fixing me.” He meant it.
That’s more than I can say for Christian.
Why can’t I escape the shame?
“Morgan must not remember either.” Eliza strokes the back of my neck until I roll over. She places her nachos on the nightstand, then nestles into my side, holding me tight.
Dread and nostalgia fill my chest as if I inhaled seawater. I wish I could reverse to a time when the world smelled of salt and second chances, before parts of me went missing. I wish I could look Morgan in the eyes and tell him, “You broke me every which way, but my heart still flutters from the jump I should’ve made.” I wish to make amends and keep my head above water.
“At the risk of sounding judgmental, how did you forget that?” Eliza wags her finger at my cell phone. She cracks a smile, the video like a locker-room confession.
I’m not squeaky clean, not a powder-pink daydream.
I made out with a boy and let the memory be taken from me.
“How did we forget a murder?” I let my head loll against her shoulder. Already I feel older than I am, younger than I should be.
“Fair.” She rests her hazel cheek against my temple. “I got a video too.”
“Really? Show me.”
“My phone is downstairs.” Eliza reaches for a nacho and stuffs the guacamole-smeared chip into her mouth. “Like, what does the blackmailer want from us?”
“Spooner must’ve remembered the murder. Whoever took him might want to scare us into silence, you know, in case we get our memories back.” I point my toes at the ceiling, where glow-inthe-dark stars wait for their time to shine. “One of the papers said I stole—”
“Oh, I got that message too.” Eliza slides off the bed and goes to her desk. She removes two notes from its drawer, both inked with the same block letters.
I know what you did that summer.
Give back what you stole from me or else everyone will know.
“We need to meet with the other counselors.” I sit up and drape my legs over the mattress’s edge. “Our videos were recorded two years ago, right?”
“Yeah.”
I grab my phone from the comforter and swipe to view the recording’s timestamp. It’s dated two weeks after I returned home from Camp Choctawhatchee. “What if the blackmailer is showing us what took place that summer? What if . . . they’re helping us?”
“By threatening to expose our secrets?” Eliza folds the notes into a neat square, then returns them to their drawer. She bounces her leg, a nervous tic.
“They’re giving us clues by accident.”
Our blackmailer must intend to frighten us with the recordings, but my video adds a mark to the timeline, another piece to the puzzle. If everyone who attended staff training divulges their marks, maybe we can piece together a diagram of events.
Eliza paces the room, her nose reddening.
“We need to share our videos with the group,” I say as my heartbeat accelerates.
“No—” Eliza freezes and looks at me with tears in her eyes. “I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
She lowers onto the bed’s corner, her complexion paling to ash brown. “Please believe me, Darby. I don’t remember doing it—”
“Doing what?” I scoot toward her. A weight settles in my gut. I did a bad thing. She did too. The guilt chisels her expression, tensing her jaw, pursing her lips.
Everyone makes sense of the world by dividing it into two categories: good and bad. We try our darnedest not to fall into the latter, when really, even the best people are a mix of both.
We’re part the lies we believe about ourselves and part the truths we forget.
“The video . . .” Eliza gazes at me, her breaths quick and shallow. “It shows me at the Sandpiper Beach Club a month after the marine retreat.”
“Okay.” I shrug.
“It shows me . . . kissing your brother.”
My body jerks as if someone ripped the mattress from underneath me. “Christian?” I blink to wipe away Eliza’s confession. “You kissed Christian?”
He graduated from high school two years ago, which means he would’ve been eighteen when Eliza was fifteen. He spent that summer packing for college and partying with his peers. No, no, he wouldn’t have kissed my best friend.
Eliza nods. “I’ve never thought of him like that—”
“You and Christian?” I lurch from the bed and stumble backward. My chest aches, not because Eliza kissed my brother, but because he kissed her. No wonder he hung around Eliza and me during our freshman year, offering to buy us food, taking us shopping in Destin.
I clutch my abdomen, a wave of nausea swelling. A perfect storm of needing to puke and cry and yell at Christian. He never said a word about liking Eliza. He said he wanted to spend time with me before he left for FSU. What a liar. He didn’t want me.
He wanted her.
“How can you be mad?” Eliza yells. “I don’t remember—”
“I’m not mad.”
“You fooled me.”
The atmosphere becomes a riptide dragging me into open water, and I’m drowning in deep-house music, Christian making out with my best friend, block letters and death threats and a corpse hauled from the marsh. Too much. I can’t process any more.
“I need some air.” I snatch my purse and rush into the hallway.
Christian almost killed me when I was ten years old. He pinned my face under waves until I grew still. If Dad hadn’t come to my aid, I would’ve died in the water.
Christian kept secrets. He stashed alcohol and magazines in his room’s air vents. Once, I saw him smuggle a girl out his window, and he threatened to destroy my poetry journals if I didn’t keep quiet. He wasn’t always terrible. He was good before the lies and partying and disrespect.
He was bad when he kissed one of my best friends and sabotaged the other.
“Darby, stop!” Eliza follows me downstairs and out the front door. She blocks my path, her face streaked with tears. “I’m sorry, okay?”
“Look, I’m not mad you kissed Christian. How could I be? We both did stuff we regret.” I suck the night air between my teeth and release it as a huff. “It’s just . . . what if we’re not the people we think we are? What if we’ve been lying to ourselves?”
Eliza dries her eyes. She crosses her arms and shrugs. “I’d rather believe a lie.”
I step closer to her and soften my voice. “A murderer, kidnapper, and blackmailer are out there on 30A. I don’t think believing lies is an option anymore, not if we want to avoid ending up like Spooner.”
“You really think someone would hurt us?”
“Someone already did,” I tell her, the confession blurring my vision with heat. “Please help me find Spooner. If we learn the truth, we can go to Detective Sutter—”
“We need to lay low, Darby. I don’t care so much about secrets getting out, but I do care about us surviving high school.”
“Spooner needs to survive high school.”
“That’s not our problem though,” Eliza snaps. “You can’t fix everything and everyone. Like, I understand you want to protect your image or whatever—”
“Excuse me?”
“Come on. We both know why you want to solve the case. You’re afraid the truth will emerge, and everyone will know you’re not perfect.”
“I’m not perfect.”
“Yeah, but why can’t you accept that?” Eliza stuffs her hands into her sweatshirt pocket. “Leave investigating to Detective Sutter. Please. Haven’t we gone through enough?”
A silhouette darkens my peripheral vision.
Rolf Becker watches us from an upstairs window, shadows etching his Germanic features. He draws curtains over the pane.
Chills slither across my skin despite the late June warmth, and I sense it. The secrecy. Lies tinting the space between Eliza and me.
It takes a liar to know a liar, Mom once told me.
“We should tell our parents about the messages,” Eliza says. “If anything, they prove our innocence. I mean, somebody else is obviously at fault.”
“No. This stays between us. Promise?” I hug my purse, the lump of a cell phone protruding, and I study the townhouse where I attended countless sleepovers and study sessions.
I consider the Beckers’ home a safe place, but all safe places have their limits.
“Why don’t you want them to know?” Eliza grips my bicep, her nostrils flaring.
I can’t believe I’m about to say it. I don’t want to say it, but the words melt off my tongue. “The blackmailer, kidnapper, murderer—he . . . she . . . they could be anyone. Anyone.”
Chapter 11
Morgan
JULY 2
GRAYTON BEACH
I plug an extension cord into a wall socket. It sparks and sizzles, then goes quiet as the projector hisses awake, beaming white light onto a bedsheet screen in the center of What SUP.
A screen that’ll show a horror film of the skeletons in my closet.
Dad helped me turn our paddleboard showroom into a theater. He arranged mismatched chairs and picnic blankets in a semicircle, hung the bedsheet, even bought popcorn and soda for my so-called movie night with friends. I hate lying to him, but he doesn’t need to watch my horror film. He doesn’t need to keep these secrets.
I rise from the floor and go to the checkout counter, where Brent left the snacks in grocery bags, didn’t even bother to put the lavender latte I got for Darby in the fridge.
The bell over the main door chimes. “Knock, knock.” Eliza and Cyrus enter the shop, holding notebook paper scribbled with handwriting.
“Make yourselves comfortable.” I dump junk food onto the counter and create a buffet of sodium, high-fructose corn syrup, and engineered protein.
“How was your call with Darby?” Cyrus shuffles toward me, hugging a to-go bag from the Comber. He must’ve had a rough day. He wears pajama pants, a What SUP T-shirt, and Crocs that squeak when he walks, otherwise known as his crisis shoes.
“Good,” I say with a nod. “She didn’t seem to hate my guts.”
Darby and I talked on the phone a few days ago. We discussed the blackmail, agreed that everyone needed to swap information.
“Hate you? Ha! Darby wouldn’t dislike a bone in your body even if you ran her over with your car.” Eliza plops into an office chair and rolls closer to the screen. “Cool setup by the way.”
My smile widens until my cheeks ache.
“Nanna and Baba want me home by ten o’clock,” Cyrus says while stuffing fries into his mouth. He waves his report at me. “Do I give my homework to you?”
“Keep it for now.” I reach into my pocket and touch the edges of folded notebook paper.
“Anyone else stop receiving death threats?” Cyrus squeaks to the makeshift theater and sits at Eliza’s feet. He unwraps a grouper sandwich, diffusing a fishy grease smell.
“I haven’t found a note in days,” Eliza says.
The front door chimes. Darby steps inside with a platter of brownies on her arm. She waves at me, her lips stretching into a smile.
My heart runs suicides as Darby approaches. She looks more dressed up than usual, her work uniform replaced with jeans and a frilly top. She wears her hair down in soft curls.
Attraction, in my experience, isn’t based on whether someone is the sexiest or most intriguing. Attraction is looking at a girl—that girl—and knowing without a doubt she’s the home I’ve always wanted. Knowing I could spend every day looking at her and still believe she’s the loveliest, kindest, most wonderful person who ever breathed.
“Hi.” Darby sighs and tilts her head to one side, a spark lighting her eyes like my extension cord in the wall socket. She lifts the brownie tray. “I brought snacks.”
“For our weird party.” I grin, my face burning.
“Yeah. So weird.” She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “Thanks for hosting.”
“Of course.” I can’t stop staring. I open my mouth to speak, but words get tangled in my head, a repeat of how I love her brownies and white nail polish and everything.
The sight of her must’ve short-circuited my brain.
We didn’t act this way before the Forgotten Summer. Darby used to help me flirt with other girls. She picked my outfits for our middle school formals so Ashlyn Merce would agree to slow dance with me. If wingman competitions existed, my pal Wallis would’ve won first place.
Falling for her, then missing her . . . it screwed me up. I got tired of thinking about her lips when I couldn’t kiss them, so I kissed someone else. Last summer I made out with a part-timer named Emma Roberts. Not the actress. A girl with black hair and killer legs. We met at an outdoor movie in Rosemary Beach. She tasted like bubblegum and bad decisions, and I swore never to lose my head like that again. I didn’t enjoy kissing her. Maybe I did for a moment, but I felt wrong afterward, and not the kind of wrong I felt after kissing Darby.
No, no. Kissing Darby wasn’t the problem. Losing her was.
“Sorry.” I clear my throat and search my vocabulary for what to say next.
We all feel eloquence we can’t put into words.
“Chin up, Morgan.” Darby laughs away the awkwardness. She pats my arm, then heads toward Eliza, her blonde curls swishing around her shoulders.
She glances back at me and smiles.
Yep. We’ll end up together. It’s in the cards for us. No matter who we kiss at outdoor movies, how many years and unanswered texts separate us, I’m sure we’ll find our way back to each other. Because sometimes—despite the odds and pessimists—a teenager falls head over heels for the right person. Because sometimes best friends grow into more.
Because Darby smiles at me the way Mom smiled at Gil.
And like Dad, I’m breathless for that smile.
Kip and Annabelle join our memory-reveal party moments later. They wander across the store, inspecting paddleboards and inflatable life jackets.
“I didn’t know this place was still in business.” Kip hops onto the stool closest to Cyrus. He must’ve been on the tennis courts because he wears a visor and white shorts, his sneakers dusted with orange clay. Uniform of the Rosemary Beach elite.
“Because you rarely leave the racquet club,” Eliza tells him. She grabs a handful of Cyrus’s fries and yelps when he smacks her leg. “Ow! What, you won’t share?”
“Never have. Never will.” Cyrus hugs the takeout bag. He glances at Annabelle and wipes his mouth as though to mend his appearance. “Glad you could join us, Annabelle.” He drags a chair to his side. “You can sit here if you want.”
Woah. Is he flirting?
“If you share your fries with her, I’ll murder you,” Eliza whispers loud enough for everyone to hear. She spins her chair faster, her shoes whizzing close to Cyrus’s head.
“Don’t worry. I won’t touch your food.” Annabelle sits next to Cyrus and clutches a pink report cover to her chest. She appears more stable today, not pale and trembling like she was the last time we met.
Cyrus turns beet red, the reddest I’ve seen him. He grins and looks at Eliza.
“Shut up.” Eliza rolls her eyes. She doesn’t seem to like Annabelle. It’s either that or she doesn’t trust her, which makes sense. None of us remember Annabelle, and bringing someone we don’t know into our inner circle poses risks. Add the fact we spent days texting her and visiting her house before she agreed to meet with us again.
Yeah, nothing screams friendship like coercion.
Darby places her brownie tray on a paddleboard rack. She goes to the projector and hooks up an HDMI adapter so we can connect our phones. “Did everyone bring their videos?”
“I didn’t get a video,” Kip answers.
“Me neither,” Annabelle says.
“What about any creepy messages?” Cyrus stuffs the last bite of sandwich into his mouth. He sneaks not-so-subtle glances at Annabelle, his cheeks bulging. Darn it. He likes her. Get ready for a cringe fest, starring Cyrus Gunn, worst flirt on planet Earth. Even the peppy band kids who chant “Go Seahawks” are smoother than him. Heck, I’d go so far as to say the five-foot-three freshman with cystic acne and a vampire obsession has more game.
