Free The Last Summer of Us by Maggie Harcourt Page B

unfolding the fabric of the next tent, and there must be something about my expression which catches his eye, because he stops unfolding and he straightens up and the grin fades from his face.
    â€œShut up, Steff.” He takes a swipe at Steffan’s arm, making him look up, then turns back to me. “What’s the matter?”
    â€œIt’s nothing. I just…” I run my hand through my hair, brushing it away from my face. This isn’t a thing. It’s not. It’s just me getting freaked out because I almost stood on some junkie’s needle. It’s fine.
    I’m easily freaked out these days. I keep feeling like I’m resting on a knife-edge: one nudge and I’ll tip completely over into…something else, some one else. I’ve been told it’s shock, it’s normal, it’ll pass. But when? When do I get to go back to being me? The old me, the me who started the school holidays? Her life might not have been perfect, but I’m not asking for perfect . I’m asking for me. That’s all. When do I get to be her again? When will this – this other person who has taken my place – when will she pass? She and I, we’re not the same person. We’re not the same and I’d like her to leave now.
    I try again. “It’s nothing. It’s stupid, honestly. There was just this pile of rubbish round the back and there was a needle in it and I almost stepped on it. It was kind of…you know?” I tail off. Saying it out loud doesn’t exactly make it sound any less stupid.
    â€œA needle?” Jared’s eyebrows go up. “What’s that doing there?”
    â€œOh, come on,” Steffan laughs. “It’s St Jude’s. Wouldn’t you be more surprised if there wasn’t one?” But then he looks at me and turns serious. “You’re sure you didn’t actually tread on anything though, right?”
    â€œNow you’re concerned?”
    â€œPiss off, then.” He grins and shakes his head and goes back to the tent – and I’m half-grinning too. Freak-out officially over.
    Jared lets the tent fabric drop to the ground and rubs his hands together. “Bet you a tenner they’ve turned off the electrics for the summer.”
    â€œWell, yeah. Even I’d got that far…”
    â€œAnd you’d know how to turn them back on, would you?”
    â€œCan’t be that hard, can it?” I sound more sure about this than I feel.
    â€œHow about I come with you this time, and I’ll turn them back on.”
    â€œAnd I can’t manage because I’m a girl. Is that it?”
    Steffan snorts. “Don’t be thick. It’s because you can barely even work a toaster. Christ knows what you’d do to yourself turning on a circuit.”
    Jared, however, just smiles and shrugs. “Offer’s there.”
    How can I refuse?
    Principles are all well and good…but I really, really want a shower.

eight
    Trailing over the field behind Jared, I find myself wondering whether things would be going this way if the trip had happened a week ago. I correct myself as a small but insistent chime goes off in the back of my head. Three weeks ago, then; would this have happened three weeks ago? Three months? A year? Have things between the two of us changed because my mother died; because his mother suddenly sees his dad’s release as her own – a release from being a parent?
    I am a cracked glass. Set me down too hard and I will shatter into a thousand jagged pieces. Knock me and I will cut. “Crazed” – that’s the word, isn’t it? Is that what I am now? Am I crazed?
    My mother always used to put broken glasses in the bin, wrapped up in sheets of newspaper so that no one would get hurt. Am I like those glasses – fractured, useless – or can I be mended? Is it too late? After all, people have already been hurt. But that wasn’t my fault.