Page 1 of A Summer Thing

Chapter One

Declan

It feels like a story I’ve heard on repeat. It was a horrible accident, and we lost him. We almost lost Declan, too.

A crash.

But I don’t remember it. Not really. I just remember him being gone, and all the shadows he left behind when he was.

They darkened everything, and my mom became someone else inside of them.

A completely different person. And my dad…

well, he just became… worse. Worse than he already had been.

And for that, I’m thankful my brother wasn’t around to see it—who our parents turned into when he died.

It doesn’t feel like they should have been able to leave their mark on me.

These scenes of ugliness feel like someone else’s life.

Raging, screaming battles, and being told they wished I was never born.

Or worse, that they wished I had been taken from them instead of him.

That I should have been taken instead of him.

But now that I’m leaving, I know they have somehow.

They’re awful memories, every single one of them.

My dad shoving me down into the bathtub until I couldn’t breathe, and then laughing about it later like it was all some joke.

Being slapped across the face for saying Quinn’s name out loud.

My mom turning a blind eye far too many times to countless scenarios painted in the same ugly hue.

I don’t know, exactly, how something like that digs deep and embeds itself in you; it just does. It creates a blockage in the veins of your soul, and it changes who you are from who you might have been.

Sometimes I’m almost sure I can feel the degrees of separation between that person and who I am. The dark void between existences, tied together somehow but never the same.

I yearn for that version of me. The one whose brother is still alive, and who finds it easy to smile.

The one who hasn’t fought these kinds of battles against her own parents.

The one who knows, deep down, that even if something as devastating as losing her brother had still happened, it wasn’t her fault.

Or… maybe I’m wrong, and it’s just who I wish I could be.

I hate that I’ve let them inside my head. Hate that their fucked-up words have twisted my own thoughts into something similar.

I know it wasn’t my fault. I do. I was just a child when it happened. But I still find myself wishing it was me sometimes, too, who had been taken instead of him.

______

My well-loved, but beat-up car is loaded down with one whole suitcase full of all my belongings. I didn’t tell my parents goodbye. Why the hell would I? I slipped away in the dark in the middle of the night, and when they wake, I hope they never think of me again.

But Quinn…

I can’t leave without saying goodbye to him one last time before I go. Because once I’m gone, I’m never coming back. Not for anything or anyone.

I pull into a spot at the cemetery, letting my car idle as I tap my fingers against the steering wheel.

My chest shakes with the rapid beats of my heart, and my throat closes around the knot that’s settled in there, making it hard to breathe.

I close my eyes, my hands tightening around the steering wheel.

I clench them so tight that my fingers hurt, but it keeps me here, in the present, making it easier to find my breaths, my thoughts, the will to open my eyes again.

The clock on my dashboard reads 3:01 a.m.

A cemetery, at three in the morning. I’ve lost my mind. My leg bounces and bounces, ratcheting up my anxiety. I glance around the dark grounds, the sidewalks, the parking lot. No one is here. No one but me.

Of course no one is here, it’s three in the morning.

Shutting off the engine abruptly, I plunge myself into silence save for the tink, tink, tink of the motor cooling down. I grab my purse, curl my fingers around a small tube of pepper spray, force my body out of my car, and slam the door shut behind me.

I don’t really slam it, but it sounds that way when the world is so quiet.

With quick feet, I make my way across the lawn to his headstone.

Quinn Malcom King.

Fifteen letters engraved in stone that hold my heart in a vise.

I run my hand over his name, trace each letter with my finger.

When I get to the end, I do it again. My throat grows thicker, my chest shakier.

“I still miss you,” I whisper. “Every day.” Every single day since I was thirteen years old.

Wondering what he would look like now, what his laugh would sound like, the kind of things he would say that would make me smile.

Wondering about his future and what it might’ve looked like, too—if he’d be leaving California with me to go to New York, or if he’d already be off doing his own thing somewhere, and where that somewhere might be.

I wonder about the stupid, inconsequential things, too. Like what his Instagram feed would look like, or what kind of music he’d be into, or what shows and movies his Netflix watchlist would be filled with.

But mostly, I wonder about us and how close we’d be. I wonder about the things I’d be able to say out loud because he would be the one listening to them.

“I got into NYU,” I say. “Addy, too.” I think he’d be proud as hell of the both of us.

Addy is— was —our best friend, and is still mine, though it sounds small and insignificant in comparison to what she really is to me. A lifeline. My north star in the dark sky. An oxygen tube feeding me air when I’m drowning. She’s more than a best friend because she’s my everything.

But Quinn and Addy were friends first. And Addy… she loved Quinn almost as much as I did.

Quinn and I were born less than a year apart, ten months to the day, and when he was held back in the first grade, we ended up in the same class together—Addy, too.

He introduced us at lunch one day, and the rest was history.

We were as close as close could be. For six whole years before the accident that took his life and almost took mine.

Now it’s just Addy and me, from four states away.

“I’m spending the summer with her, and then we’re off to college,” I tell Quinn.

Or the spirit of Quinn. Or just a slab of concrete with his name on it.

I don’t really know what I believe happens to us when we die, but I hope he is out there somewhere, listening.

“College,” I say again with a layer of disbelief.

I don’t know how the hell I pulled it off, but I did somehow.

Fucking NYU at that. And if that isn’t proof that Quinn is around, pulling strings for me, I don’t know what is.

My heart batters against my ribcage, dragging its way into my throat.

I press my fists to my eyes, fighting back the burning sting behind my eyelids.

Fighting back against all the things I want to say.

How much I wish he were here. How much the last five years have been hell without him.

How lost I feel. How damaged I think I might be.

There are so many demons caged inside my cell of skin and bones, and I don’t know what to do with any of them.

I don’t know how I’m supposed to walk away from here, from Quinn. How to start over after the last five years, and the thirteen before that. I don’t know, but I know I have to try.

I crouch lower and rest my forehead against the chilled stone. “I love you, Quinn.” I release a shaky breath, and a wave of heartache tears through me, threatening to drown me in its undertow, forcing my tears to flow free. I don’t bother to wipe them away as they spill down my face.

Quinn will never know this, but he’s saved my life. Again and again, and again and again. He’s gotten me through the darkest of hours when I knew I had to keep fighting because he wasn’t here to anymore.

“Okay,” I whisper. “I have to get going now.” The words are barely formed, broken letters on a broken voice.

“I think you know that I can’t come back, but I know you understand why.

” My fingers twist at the thin pendant on my necklace, holding him close.

“But I’ll keep you right here. With me, always.

” I choke back another wave of sadness and force myself to stand, but gravity works overtime, dragging me back down, back toward Quinn.

I force steady breaths in and out of my lungs, clenching my fists against the pain and squeezing at the necklace buried within my grasp.

I stole some of his ashes from the urn in my parents’ bedroom a few years ago before they buried it here, and just last week, I had them put inside this small, golden pendant hanging from a thin gold chain.

I don’t feel an ounce of guilt about it; my parents are lucky I didn’t steal the whole damn urn and run away with it like I’d wanted to.

Even if all I have left to my name now is eight-hundred bucks, my barely running car, and a single suitcase with all of my belongings in it, I’d do it again.

Spend the three hundred dollars—hell, I’d spend every last penny I have—just to keep him with me like this.

I’ll keep you right here. I claw at my heart and the necklace beneath my fingers.

And then finally, I stand and turn to leave.

I walk slower on the way back to my car, each step growing heavier.

Dragging me forward, or backward, I can’t tell anymore.

But walking away from Quinn’s gravestone is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

When I fall into the front seat of my car, I release a weighted breath and vow that this is where my life begins. This is the moment I leave everything else behind. Because I have to. I have to.

My phone buzzes in my pocket with the thought. I reach down and pull it out, connecting the call and holding it up to my ear. “Addy?” I say quietly.

“Hey, girl,” she says in a sleepy tone. “Just wanted to make sure you’re up and on your way.” I can hear the smile in her voice.

“I’m up. I’m just…”