Page 56 of A Summer to Save Us

“ T hat’s Asher Blackwell!”

The sentence whizzes through the air like a boomerang and knocks me over.

I don’t even know who said it. And even though I know it’s true, I turn and look back as if Asher Blackwell was somewhere behind me and not right at my side—frozen, with eyes so wide all the water in the ocean could fit in them.

The guard behind us drops his jaw and lowers the black pistol pointed at me.

The other security officers who have arrived by now also step back, almost in awe.

“My daughter will kill me if I come back without an autograph,” one of them murmurs, but his voice echoes loudly between the high-end shops like a ping-pong ball.

Kill me, kill me, kill me.

Asher Blackwell .

I look from River to the crowd where my mom is and back again. I realize the crowd is framing us like a painting, and we’re no longer separate from it. Voices rain down on River.

Young women push their way to the foreground, holding pens and paper out to him, and a blonde in a floor-length evening dress exposes her thigh. “Sign for Evelyn!” she shrieks next to me.

“Asher! Asher! Asher!” The frenetic shouts swell and become so loud, I want to cover my ears, but my body has forgotten how to move. I’m freezing cold, and the water is still dripping from my clothes.

“I’m sorry.” River squeezes my hand tightly and looks at me, his eyes shining—deep, dark, and wet. Like a river. “Nothing changes. We’ll still do it. Remember the lessons in the store.”

Everything inside me is numb. A thunderstorm of flashing lights rains down on us. We can’t do anything anymore—that’s it, I think, a searing pain in my chest as a grown woman almost rams her pen into my eye. The crowd closes in around us like a boa constrictor, cutting off my breath.

“Asher, I want a baby with you!” shouts another woman, who I hope isn’t my mom with dyed hair.

I’m roughly pushed around, punched, and lose River’s hand. I feel like I’m in Kensington. “Kansas!” River reaches out for me, but he’s snatched away.

“Asher! Asher! It’s Asher Blackwell!”

With an unreal buzzing in my head, I notice more and more people are streaming into the passage.

“The art prints!” screams a hysterical female voice. “Get the prints to safety.”

It feels like everyone is running all over the place.

The few security guards are completely powerless. The news of Asher Blackwell being at the opening without his mask must have spread like a tidal wave throughout the Forum.

Always be River McFarley .

Only now do I understand the meaning of those words.

“Kansas!” River calls my name again. His face is as rigid as a mask, even though he doesn’t have any makeup on this time. He looks like he’s afraid of these people—his fans—who idolize him.

He raises his hand as if to show me where he is, but I’m washed to the edge like driftwood by the tide.

They separate us. That’s why I hate that he’s Asher Blackwell.

An entire nation loves him. An entire nation worships him, and I can’t compete with that—ever.

Whatever we had, wherever we were going, it died the second his name was called.

Asher Blackwell and Kansas Montgomery will never be River and Tucks again.

I’m still unable to act, and even if I wanted to, I could never get out of the crowd now. I’m held captive by his supporters and the visitors to Mom’s opening, who are apparently also fans of the band.

Mom .

I don’t see her.

The chrome stands have tipped over, and an employee disappears into Tivoli Hall with one of the pictures.

More security personnel are being called, but this is all happening far away from me.

The apocalypse is unfolding before me, and I can only hope I’m not trampled or crushed to death.

I press myself firmly against the rear entrance of a posh boutique and see River’s blond head.

Memories flutter past me like a flip book—River McFarley at Old Sheriff, the smell of river water, and the blue-green morning light. The fluttering swan, the kiss in the midst of the cold, the waves of hot showers on my bare skin.

Over. The image in front of me blurs into a wet, colorful flood of tears.

I don’t know how much time has passed when calls for a song grow louder. Someone is given a microphone.

“Calm down! Calm down! Calm down! This is all confusing and unbelievable, I know. But we are here. Without masks. And we’re all yours.”

I recognize that deep voice. I’ve heard it before, by the river. It must be one of River’s friends. No—one of his bandmates, I think bitterly. Why are they here?

He continues talking, and the words melt in my mind.

He says something about Mom, who originally hired them and then had to get a replacement because Demons ’N Saints canceled their gigs.

I hear a bit of a song they play before they disappear, and everything inside me burns with pain.

I want to scream with frustration and anger, disappointment, and my own blindness.

I want to fall back into the land of silence, where no one reaches me and no one hurts me.

It’s better there.

Stiller. As if a veil were covering me.

And even though I don’t want to hear them sing, even though I don’t want to see River as Asher because it folds me up like origami crumpled in my hand, it’s a compulsion.

I have to look and then suddenly, he’s standing elevated on the Roman edging of the nearby café, violet-blue spotlights on his skin, microphone in his hand.

Next to him stands a young Asian man with chin-length hair and an electric guitar. Someone is frantically laying a cable.

“Come on, Las Vegas!” River yells, his rough whiskey voice sending a dark shiver down my spine. “You want a song, you’ll get a song.”

The crowd goes wild, hands fly into the air.

“We only have one guitar, which Knox from World without Truth kindly lent us. Knox, thank you so much!” The cheering is so loud that River almost has to scream into the microphone.

“World without Truth is playing live for you in the Colosseum tonight! Apparently, there are still tickets available at the box office…”

“Ash-er, Ash-er!” they chant in a wild, exuberant chorus.

He raises his hand, and it immediately grows quieter. “We’re almost playing a cappella for you now, just me and Zozoo—it’s gonna be great. Phenomenal!”

He is so confident. So different. So strong.

Goosebumps crawl across my skin, a mix of fear, confusion, and longing. This is no longer the boy from the river.

River looks into the crowd, but it feels like he’s only looking at me. And then, when he sings, I don’t understand the words even though I know the song. It’s “All Your Glittering Pieces.”

The lights dim, and suddenly, hundreds of cell phone lights shine in the darkness. I understand why he’s doing this. He wants to subdue the crowd until more security arrives. He doesn’t want the situation to escalate, and this is the only way to keep his fans in check.

As if in a trance, I listen to his voice, the voice I know and love. It sends a shiver across my skin like a spring storm of butterflies, every time.

“Zozoo says you’ve been traveling with him all summer,” someone next to me suddenly says.

I glance absentmindedly at the brunette woman with flushed cheeks.

She looks worn out. Her sequined dress casts a thousand shimmering points of light around her, as if she were the sun around which everything revolves.

A fixed star. Her makeup has melted in the heat of so many people, and her eyeliner or mascara spreads under her eyes like blue war paint.

Mom , I want to say it, but the word is stuck in my throat like a fishbone.

“Perhaps you could give an interview later. I know a well-known reporter, Shelly Gibson. The people here are keen to hear every detail, and I owe them a favor.”

She doesn’t recognize me. Mom, it’s me, Kansas!

She wipes her forehead nervously. “What a mess, isn’t it?

” she babbles on, and I feel like we’re in the middle of an island, cut off from everyone else.

“Luckily, the staff was able to get the prints to safety in time and locked up the hall.

.. My goodness, I need to get my daughter something personal from him.

Maybe a T-shirt or a cap. Something he wore. .. Are you a couple?"

Something inside me breaks. Maybe the part of me still sleeping at the kitchen table, waiting for her to come home and put my life back together.

I don’t know what’s worse. That she mentioned a third daughter or that she doesn’t recognize me.

I grab her arm and squeeze. And somewhere, from the depths of my soul, I squeeze out the one word: “Mom!” It sounds scratchy, rough, and pathetic. As miserable as I felt at the beginning of the summer.

Her green eyes, which could be my own, widen. For a few seconds, she seems confused. “Arizona?” she asks, uncertain.

She might as well have rammed her fist into my stomach. I lower my hand. Hot tears well up in my eyes. Of course, I’m blonde like Arizona right now, but apparently, she’s not looking properly. She never really looked. Maybe she just never cared about us.

Suddenly, it seems to me like one of her oil paintings—shrill, strange, and distant. An artist who only cares about one person: herself.

“M-om, w-w-why?” It’s the child in me squeezing out these words from the past.

She’s still staring at me, a hint of recognition finally flaring in her gaze. She shakes her head. A few times, her facial expression changes from bewilderment to disbelief, and then there’s a spark of regret and aloofness.

“You’re still having trouble speaking.” She doesn’t move, doesn’t take me in her arms. She stares at me like she can’t believe I’m her daughter—this loser who still has problems.

I want to punch her in the face and tell her she’s the shittiest mom ever, but her expression pushes all my words back into my throat.