That Summer(32)
Author: Sarah Dessen

“It’s all gonna be okay, Haven. You know that, right? You know it.” She was rambling now, her voice softer, then louder, falling off into sleep. “Mom and Dad and everything, it’s all gonna be okay. And Lorna. And me and Lewis. We can’t be sad about it forever, you know? We’ve got to think back to the good times, Haven, and just remember them; that’s all we can do. We can’t worry about the past or what happened at the end, anymore. I can’t and you can’t.”

“I don’t,” I said softly, hoping she’d fall asleep.

“You do, though,” she said quietly, her voice muffled by the blanket. “I can see it in your face, in your eyes. You gotta grow up, you know? It’s nobody’s fault. We had good times, don’t you understand? Some people don’t even have that.”

I saw a shadow passing on the street outside, suddenly, and thought of Gwendolyn. Of going wild. I said, “Go to sleep, Ashley. It’s late.”

“We had good times,” she murmured, more to herself now than to me, if she’d ever been talking to me, really. “Like that summer, at the beach. It was perfect.”

“What summer?” I sat up now, listening closely. “Which one?”

“At the beach… you know. With Mom and Daddy, and the hotel, and playing Frisbee every night, all night. Remember, Haven? You have to remember that, and try to forget the rest….” Her voice faded off, muffled.

“Sumner was there,” I said to her, “remember, Ashley? Sumner was there the whole time and you guys were so great together, remember? He was the greatest.”

“The greatest,” she repeated in that same sleepy, soft voice. “It was the greatest.”

“I didn’t think you remembered,” I said to her, leaning closer. “I thought you’d forgotten.”

I waited, listening for her response, but she was out, her breathing steady and soft. “I thought you’d forgotten,” I said again, quietly, before pulling the blanket tighter around her, smoothing my hand across her hair and sitting for a while in the dark, watching my sister dream.

The next morning Ashley spent three hours in the bathroom, moaning and flushing the toilet, while my mother and I stood outside the door wondering if we should intervene. Finally, in early afternoon, she emerged after a shower, looking kind of pasty but alive. Lewis showed up a half hour later, with Pepto-Bismol, ginger ale, and oyster crackers. He was quite a guy, that Lewis.

“I can’t believe they just left me on the porch,” Ashley was saying as I came into the kitchen later that afternoon. She and Lewis were at the table going over wedding details. She had her legs across his lap and he was rubbing her feet. “Some friends.”

“They must have thought it would be funny,” Lewis said in his soothing, even voice. He was wearing a pastel oxford shirt and madras shorts, a veritable explosion of color next to Ashley in her gray sweatpants and white T-shirt. She was nibbling on an oyster cracker, eating the edges.

“Well, it wasn’t.” She took another sip of ginger ale. “If it wasn’t for Haven, I would have died, probably.”

“No, you just would have woken up on the porch,” I said.

“I’d rather die. Can you imagine what the neighbors would think?” Overnight, my sister had grown old again, worried about consequences. I missed the loopy silliness of her the night before, hanging off my arm with her hair in her face.

“Well, if you hadn’t gone out drinking, and done what I did . . . ,” Lewis said in a tsk-tsk voice, checking something off the list.

“Shut up,” Ashley said, rearranging her feet in his lap.

“What did you do?” I asked, pulling out a chair and sitting down beside them.

“We went to a dinner, and then a baseball game, ” Lewis said smugly, “where I had two beers, and made it to my own bed without incident.”

“And without underwear around your neck,” I chimed in, reaching for an oyster cracker.

Suddenly I knew, without even looking up, that I’d said something wrong. Very wrong. I had the sensation of eyes boring into my neck, hard. As I lifted my head Ashley was staring at me, her mouth twisted in that tight line that meant I was in trouble.

“Underwear?” Lewis said, turning to face her. “What’s this about underwear? I never heard anything about underwear.”

“It’s nothing,” Ashley said, shooting me a death look.

“Underwear is not nothing,” Lewis said, shifting in his chair so that her feet fell out of his lap to the floor. “You said you just went to dinner and had too many margaritas. You didn’t say anything even remotely related to underwear.”

“Lewis, please,” Ashley said. “We went to this place, right before we came home. We didn’t stay long, it was stupid, but they told the guy I was getting married and then he …”

“Oh, God,” Lewis said, throwing down his pencil. “Strippers? You were with strippers last night?”

“Not strippers, Lewis,” Ashley said in a tired voice. “They’re exotic dancers, and I didn’t even want to go. It was Heather’s idea.”

“I don’t believe this.” Lewis looked at me, as if I could help, and I looked back at the table. “We promised each other we wouldn’t do any of that traditional stuff, Ashley. You made a vow.”

“Lewis, don’t do this. It was just a stupid thing.”

Lewis crossed his legs, a habit that always made my father cringe. “Did you touch him?”

Ashley sighed. “Not really.”

There was a silence and I thought about making a quick exit, but as I moved to go I felt Ashley’s foot lock around the bottom of my chair, holding it in place.

“Not really,” Lewis repeated slowly. “So that would be a yes.”

“It wasn’t like I touched him,” Ashley said quickly, “but he danced in front of me and I had to put money in his… , thing… because it’s rude if you . . .”

“His thing?” Lewis shrieked. “You touched his thing?”

“His underwear,” Ashley said. “God, Lewis, his underwear, for Christ’s sake.”

“The same underwear that was around your neck, right?” Lewis stood up, pushing his chair out. “I don’t want to hear about this, okay? A week before my wedding and my fiancée is out putting her hands on strange men … I just can’t think about it right now.”