Page 48 of A Summer to Save Us

R iver is frozen too, but he looks at me like I’m a genie in a magic lamp. His eyes begin to shine.

“You spoke,” he whispers slowly, as if his mind refuses to believe it. Then, louder: “You spoke!”

I nod as if paralyzed.

“No, don’t nod. Say something!”

He expected more words; I knew it! I can’t!

My cheeks turn bright red. There’s something strange in my voice that I don’t remember.

I stuttered. As if in shock, I take a step back and press my fingers to my mouth.

“You’re b-bleeding!” I choke out behind my hand, but everything inside me is screaming.

I don’t want this. I don’t want to speak. I don’t want to go back to the world where everyone pushes me around. But I was also pushed around when I was mute.

River stares at me, wide-eyed, grabs my hands, and lowers them. “That’s fantastic, Tucks. Keep talking!”

I feel stupid. I’m sure he thinks I’m idiotic.

I wanted to help him, and now it’s the other way around.

I point to his arms with my chin. There’s blood everywhere; you need help!

I shout desperately in my mind. I can’t say it, but I don’t have to because River pulls me to him and kisses me so passionately that I want to cry again.

I feel his tongue deep inside me, as if he’s kissing me and my words.

Within me, happiness, fear, and sorrow are so intertwined that my heart hurts in my chest. It hurts to breathe, but I should be dancing and screaming.

Incredibly confused, I pull away. I can hardly think clearly.

“Say something else!” River prompts me.

Fresh tears stream down my cheeks as I shake my head. He’s still bleeding.

“I read that people with a speech phobia should whisper. Whispering helps. Can you whisper?”

No! Too many feelings are overwhelming me.

In the mirror across from us, I see River’s blood on my face from crying on his arm.

There’s blood everywhere, even in my blonde hair.

It runs from River’s forearms into his hands and from there onto the floor.

Our kiss also spread it onto his lips and chin.

I quickly grab my cell phone from the next room, and River doesn’t stop me. We need to stop the bleeding , I type. Oh God, writing is so much better! Further away, not so close.

Luckily, he reads it without commenting. “It’ll heal; the cuts aren’t that deep.” His gesture couldn’t have been more dismissive.

Sure, of course! He’s done this many times before. Rather carelessly, he wraps a towel around each forearm. Finally, we stand in front of each other and look. I can’t read his expression, and I don’t know what I feel.

My words somehow changed everything. It’s like I’m naked, exposed, like what River is saying now could penetrate my soul.

Why? I type into my phone and look him in the eyes. Please, I think, don’t let him say anything more about my words.

River reads again and looks past me. “Because I love you. Because it still hurts. Because I can’t forget.” He puts his hand to his head. “The chaos in here—it was too loud.”

“June?” I whisper quietly, and he understands.

He sinks to the floor and leans his back against the bathtub. “She killed herself, Tucks. It was my fault.”

I did something terrible , he had said. For a few seconds, I feel dizzy. I have to think about so many things at the same time. I have to save you! Not a girl!

What happened? I type.

River stares at the ceiling as if it was the sky.

“I should have been there for her. I have no idea what went on at her house... she never told me. That was her Pandora’s box.

Top secret, almost like with you... and my brother.

” He looks at me, and I see how he’s trying to hold back old feelings because his gaze is too hard.

“So many people talk about true love, Kansas. But the thing with June and me—that was just magical. It was as if no one but us knew what love really meant. She understood me without words. We didn’t have to talk.

Sometimes, we just sat together, staring at the sky and counting the stars. ”

Each night the moon kisses the lover who counts the stars. I hold out the phone to him, and he gives me a sorrowful smile.

“June was more into that modern nonsense. You know, we rarely agreed on those things, but there was this familiarity between us, like we knew each other from another life. It didn’t matter that she didn’t like meat and I more or less lived in a burger joint. She liked Adele, and I love punk rock.”

Demons ’N Saints? I type. I’m thinking about the fan T-shirt.

“Guilty.” He looks at me as if he’s trying to figure out how much he can tell me about June without hurting me. At the moment, I’m just glad that it’s not about me and my words but about him. I’m so relieved that he’s finally talking. Really talking, I mean.

Tell me more , I type.

“I should tell you.” He laughs harshly, and I love that laugh no matter what has happened or will happen.

He grabs my hand and pulls me next to him, and there we sit, covered in blood, both on the edge of our own drama.

“June and I... we were never perfect. We were far from perfect. But somehow, I started early on to see the beauty in what many find flawed or ugly. I mean loving beauty is easy, right?”

I wonder what he sees in me, what he loves about me. My silence?

“I think it’s because of my family. Everyone is impeccably beautiful, everything always two hundred percent perfect.

The dinner parties, the interior design, the art on the walls—even the doormat looked like it was Dior.

.. and our trash can smelled like violets.

That’s kind of sick.” He chuckles briefly, but it doesn’t sound happy.

“I longed for something different. Imperfect.”

I nod, even though I know how sick this family is apart from the blinding glow. But River knows too, and maybe he longed for something genuine, something real.

“Tucks?”

I look at him.

“Say something,” River whispers, as if he’s afraid I’ll vanish into thin air if I don’t speak.

Panic rises within me. Every word was a fight. I can’t.

He takes the cell phone from my hand. What are you afraid of? he types.

I don’t know.

Yes, you do.

Maybe I’m afraid of life.

Which part of life? In any case, you’re no longer afraid of kissing, are you? He smiles at me with a wink, and I poke him in the ribs.

“Are you afraid of being abandoned because your mom left?” he asks softly.

I sometimes forget how much he knows.

I slept on the kitchen table for a year so I’d be the first to see her when she came back.

I feel the echo of longing well up within me, that hot, burning pain I felt as a child. I feel the endless disappointment when I woke up frozen in the morning. Alone.

River wraps his arm around me and pulls me to him. The touch, this kind of closeness, feels so good that I feel like crying again. “When I lost June, I did something similar. Only I knew she’d never come back... Hey, tell me more about yourself and your silence, okay.”

I look at him.

“With your cell phone.” He laughs, and I breathe a sigh of relief.

Everything here is twisted. He cut himself, which is sick, but it made me say three words, and that’s incredible.

So unbelievable that I still don’t understand it or know what it actually means.

And now, here we sit, closer than ever. I type:

When Mom left, I stopped talking to people. I only talked to James, Arizona, and Dad. Not so much with Dad because he often scared me with his serious manner.

And when did you stop talking to your family? River types.

It started with a Ming vase story at your parents’ .

He raises his eyebrows. “A Ming vase story at my parents’?”

Chester... twisted the facts. Told lies. Arizona hasn’t spoken to me since.

She probably entered his wing at the exact moment Chester pushed me against the wall in his living room and kissed me.

At first, I was so paralyzed with shock and horror that it might have looked like we were kissing consensually.

At least, that’s how I perceived it happened since I didn’t see Ari.

And to this day, she still has no idea what happened afterward—how Chester tackled me to the floor and shoved his greedy hands under my shirt.

How he lay on top of me and pushed his tongue into my mouth.

He whispered to me that he would look after me at Kensington.

I thrashed, kicked, and accidentally knocked over a side table with a sixty-four-thousand crappy Ming vase on it. For a few seconds, it shocked him so much that he froze, and I was able to escape.

Unfortunately, I became lost and ended up in another wing.

That’s where he found me—shaking and confused.

Someone had seen me running, which was my salvation, at least in some way, although afterward, I often asked myself if it wouldn’t have been better if I had just let it happen.

Chester dragged me out from under the bureau, and suddenly, his mom was in the doorway with huge, indignant eyes.

“She did it,” I hear Chester whispering to his dad.

“Hurt pride, no idea what she was thinking. What was she even thinking? As if I could ever be into her.” He twisted everything, and everyone at the barbecue who noticed naturally believed the renowned head doctor’s son and not the mute, shy, strange Kansas Montgomery.

I lost Ari then , I continue to type. So all I had left was James and Dad.

One night, shortly after the incident, Dad came into the laundry room and thought I was Mom.

I tell him briefly about it, including the hug, which I held for too long and felt guilty about.

Somehow, I couldn’t talk to Dad anymore after that.

And James... I should have told him about Kensington.

What they did to me... it started shortly after that barbecue at your parents’ house. I had...

I hesitate but continue typing. I rejected your brother. He punished me for it.

Concerned, River looks at me.