Phantom Summer Read online

  Phantom Summer

  Amy Sparling

  Copyright © 2012 by Amy Sparling

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Formatted for Kindle

  First Printing, March 2012

  Second Edition January 2013

  AISN: B0082HNS34

  Chapter 1

  This is the wrong part of town for a teenager to be waltzing around at midnight. But I'm not wearing anything valuable, just my Joe's Diner uniform and beat up flip flops. The high school quarterback once told me I had a face only a mother could love, so I'm probably fine. But just in case any crazies from the ghetto are creeping in their low riders thinking of mugging me, I tighten my jaw and walk like I'm some kind of deranged woman seeking revenge in a Quentin Tarantino film.

  No one messes with that type of woman. And no one's going to mess with me.

  A dark figure sits on the sidewalk up ahead. He's some kind of punk emo kid, dressed in all black with a black hoody pulled up over his head. His bangs, dyed black probably, swoop over his forehead, blocking most of his face. He's sitting there holding his IPod, swaying his head all slowly to the music, like it's filling up his soul with every beat. How freaking pathetic.

  He notices me as I get closer to him. "Hi," I say, surprisingly cheerful for this time of night and in this somber mood I've been in all day. Maybe I feel compelled to put some happiness in this loser's life. Maybe I'm just delirious from lack of sleep. "Great night, huh?"

  "It is never a great night," he says, glaring at me. At least, I think he's glaring but the shadows bounce off the brick wall he's leaning against and cover the half of his face not hidden by his hair. I'm not even sure a mother could love that face.

  "Yeah, have fun with that way of thinking." I smack my gum and leave him to wallow in a puddle of his own self-pity.

  The pawn shop has a smokey haze permeating throughout the room, covering guitars, exercise bicycles and old video game systems. The source of the smoke drifts off a cigar in the hand of an obese middle-aged man with a laughable comb over. I imagine myself as Uma Thurman in Kill Bill as I slip the velvet box out of my pocket and put it on the glass counter in front of us.

  "How much will you give me for this?"

  His chubby fingers open the box and take out the ring. He studies it under a magnifying glass. The only sound for a long time is his wheezy breathing. "I'll give you five hundred, just cuz' you're a pretty little thing."

  "I want two thousand." I clench my jaw to avoid inhaling his gross cigar smoke, but also to maintain my no-nonsense façade.

  "Two thousand?" He laughs, a rusty old man laugh. "You must be all beauty, no brains. I ain't givin' you two thousand."

  "It's appraised at thirty-two hundred." I reach across the countertop and put my hand over the ring box, afraid he may steal it or something.

  "This ain't no jewelry shop. If you want two grand, you shoulda gone somewhere else."

  "Nowhere else is open at midnight," I say, sliding the ring box closer to me. He stares at me, either lost in thought or spacing out from years of drug use. The neon pawn shop sign buzzes over us, making the silence unbearable. I slide the box into my pocket and turn to leave.

  "Wait a minute," he says so quickly that he bursts into a gurgly smoker's cough. "Let me see it again."

  I take it out of my pocket, open it and place it in front of him. The one-point-four carat diamond sparkles under the fluorescent lights. I wish it were daylight so he could see how beautiful it truly is. The man holds up his dirty magnifying glass and examines it again. I look at the rings on display under us; none of them even compare to mine. My stomach tightens. I should have waited and gone to a real jewelry shop.

  But I don't have time to wait.

  He takes it out of the box and puts it on his finger. The gold band only goes as far as his yellowed fingernail. "How did a girl like you get a ring this nice, anyhow?"

  "Inheritance."

  His eyebrows come together. "You can't pawn an heirloom. That's just wrong."

  "And I'm supposed to believe your moral character, why?"

  He grunts. "It just ain't right."

  I cross my arms. "My grandmother was divorced. She wouldn't care." I can almost see her face up on her Heaven cloud, nodding in approval. That lying, cheating bastard, she'd say. Sell it.

  "I'll give you fifteen hundred. Final offer."

  "Two thousand."

  "Nineteen hundred."

  "Nineteen hundred plus one hundred more."

  I don't look away as we stare at each other for an uncomfortably long time. He pushes a button on the cash register and the drawer pangs open, slapping him in the gut. "Fine."

  I revamp my Uma Thurman impression as I leave the pawn shop with an extra two grand in my pocket. I add in a little Chyna, that jacked female wrestler from back in the day. Now fully confident, and somewhat manish, I head back to the Ford, which is parked at Joe's Diner two blocks away. That emo kid is still on the sidewalk.

  He sees me coming and tosses his head back to rest on the wall behind him. His eyes are closed and he's really feeling the groove of his music now. His fingernails are painted black too. I should do humanity a favor and kick him in the balls right now. It's not like he has any, or he wouldn't be sitting here wasting away his life.

  "What are you so sad about?" I say, all cocky-like, like I wanna bang our chests together and hoot and holler. Yeehaw!

  Emo kid lifts up his head. "Wouldn't you like to know."

  "Nope," I say, kicking a crushed Coke can out of my way. "I don't give a shit about your problems."

  He stares at me now, shaking his head like I'm such a fool for disregarding him. Like he has all the answers in life, and he'd be happy to share them with me, but I wouldn’t want to hear it. Because he thinks the world is a low and sad place, not accepting of people like him.

  Truth is, he doesn't know anything about anything. I bet he goes home to his loving parents and sleeps in his warm bed and works at Starbucks on the weekends for money to buy more music. I bet his emo gig gets him a lot of attention from other attention-starved emo girls.

  What's he trying to prove by acting all sad? I bet he's never truly been sad in his whole life. You don't know what sad is until you do something really bad. Like if you accidentally kill your best friend. And once you've known sorrow like that, you don't have to wear all black to prove it.

  I'm not.

  Chapter 2

  I leave in the morning and I say bye to Dad but not to my tree house. It feels like one of those choices that will turn into an epic mistake in the future as I look back at my past and curse myself for not going in that tree house one last time. But I just can’t do it. It was Brendan's tree house too, and he never got to say goodbye.

  Two more hours of driving and I’ll be on Sterling Island. I make it about five miles in before I’m desperate for a radio. Short trips around town aren't so bad, but it sucks driving with no music and only your thoughts to listen to. Because my thoughts aren't always so happy. They're usually focused on if I'll make enough tips to help Dad pay the light bill, or wondering if the funny sound the truck is making is normal or something bad that will blow up and leave me without transportation. But then, other times, like now when my drive is longer than a few minutes, I start to think about things I'd rather not.

  Like how the truck can't possibly be making a funny noise because Brendon took such good care of it. And remembering that will make me remember what his mom said when she gave it to me: "Brendan loved this truck. He would want you t
o have it."

  "No way," I said. "He just paid it off… it's worth a lot of money. You should keep it."

  "You were his best friend." She held out the keys to me. "Take them. You deserve it, Taylor."

  And now that all the feelings of last year are bursting out of the spot in my heart where I had buried them, my eyes fill with warm tears. My vision goes all blurry and I have to blink to be able to see, which sends the water streaming down my cheek in a neat little tear. And just like that, I'm crying again.

  I tap my fingers on the steering wheel, wishing the radio worked. Out of all the ways Brendon loved his truck, he was never satisfied with the radio. He kept buying fancier newer ones and changing it out with the old one, never happy with the sound it made or the optional features it had. I wonder if he's sitting on his heaven cloud laughing at me. Thinking that I deserve to suffer in this life because of what I did to him.

  You know, if heaven actually exists.

  When we were about ten years old, Brendon's grandmother died. She was incredibly old and always scared me with her wrinkly hands and the way she'd stare at me long after I finished talking. But Brendon really loved her. He was devastated when she died, even though she was almost a hundred and everyone said she had lived a long fulfilling life. It was the first and only time I ever saw him cry, but in recent years he liked to say that didn't count. Crying when you were ten didn't count. Crying after the age of fifteen was forbidden if you were a real man.

  After his grandmother's funeral, something I was absolutely not present for, Brendan and I went back to the tree house and I tried to console him while he tried to act like he was macho and wasn't sad. Neither of us did a very good job. This is where he told me about his belief in this magical place called heaven.

  He said his grandma was up in heaven, sitting on a cloud and looking down on everyone. This creeped me the hell out. I didn't like his grandma staring at me when she was alive, and I really didn't want her staring at me from some magic cloud above our heads. But he just laughed and said that we can't see them because when you die you go to be with God and all this stuff I had also never heard of. I thought it was a bunch of crap, like believing in Santa Claus, but I just humored him and let him believe whatever he wanted because it made him feel better.

  Brendan was the kind of kid who believed in things like Santa Claus and the tooth fairy and God. My mom told me at a very young age that Santa doesn’t exist. She said if he did, then he would bring toys to all the poor kids too, not just the rich ones. I don't believe much of anything my mom says, but she had a point with that one.

  I want to believe that heaven clouds exist and that God is this magic invisible guy who loves everyone and lets you live in heaven with him. I've never wanted to believe something so much in my whole life. Because if that is true, then Brendan is looking down at me right now. And that would mean I haven't lost him forever.

  I lean over the steering wheel and look up at the sky.

  Although I know I won't actually see him sitting up in the clouds, wearing his beat up mechanic shirt and sporting his Mohawk, I still look for some kind of sign. Like maybe a shooting star in the middle of the day, or a rainbow or something.

  But I see nothing.

  And then I see lots of water. The highway has narrowed to a two lane road between lots of marshy wet land. Has it really been two hours already? I check for a mile marker.

  Five. What happens when you get to zero? Does the world end? Do you just drive off into the ocean?

  A large bridge looms less than a mile away, and it's just two lines wide. It's incredibly steep and my hands start to shake as I grip the steering wheel. What if the Ford can't make it up something so steep? I press harder on the gas. What if there's no end to the bridge and I drive straight off it and die?

  I look up at the clouds again.

  Maybe that wouldn't be so bad.

  Chapter 3

  I don't die. I end up on Sterling Island—population three thousand and forty two. Home of some famous baseball player I don't care about, according to the weathered sign on the side of the road. So this is the island. It has the ugliest beach on the gulf coast. Brendan's words, not mine.

  Brendan had been to the island several times with his Dad both for business and pleasure. He was lucky enough to have gone to the annual Bike Rally three years in a row. Brendan's life goal was to move to Sterling and work as a motorcycle mechanic at Sterling Cycles. My life goal was to go wherever he wanted to go.

  I follow the British woman's voice on the GPS as she tells me which turns to take to Mom's apartment. Mom used to live in downtown Sterling, in one of those lofts above a bar with her best friend as a roommate. It was like Mom was Sandra Bullock Pretty Woman—only without being a prostitute. And without falling in love with a rich dude who has a soft side. The roommate eventually got married to a drug dealer-turned-pastor and Mom had to find her own place.

  She told me it was on the beach. Although I do see a beach, it doesn’t exactly give off the “Let’s vacation here for spring break” vibe. The Ford slows to a crawl as I take in my surroundings on this tiny asphalt street. I may not have had straight A's in school, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out that I'm in the ghetto. "Turn right in zero point three miles. Destination is on the left." The apartment complex to my left looks like it's straight out of the projects on some rags to riches movie. I watch the GPS as I idle along in the Ford, hoping the British woman tells me to keep driving. I picture her voice saying, "Whoops, I meant one point three miles. Pass up this crap hole and your mum's apartment is a mile away. Cheerio!"

  She doesn't say any of that, so I turn her off and pull into the freaking parking lot. Sandy Cove – Beach living at an affordable price. Yeah, if by affordable they mean even the homeless can pay for it.

  I drive through the remnants of what used to be a gated entrance. Now the metal gate lies on the ground, weeds having grown over it. Mom's place is number 336-A. I park in the visitor section closest to Mom's address and step out of the Ford.

  As I slam the truck door behind me, the smell of salt in the air fills my lungs. Waves crash on the shore, and seagulls…well I'm not sure what kind of sound they make overhead. A quack-ish type of caw. It's unlike any other bird's song I've ever heard.

  The shabby buildings are long overdue for a new paint job and many of them have blue tarps nailed over sections of the roof. People usually do that when a hurricane comes through and blows off shingles, but it's a temporary solution. We haven't had a hurricane in over four years. Please, please let the inside look better than the outside.

  I grab my backpack and suitcase and drag it up to Mom's door, tapping on it with my keys. The door swings open and a thin woman with white-blond hair stares back at me. She's wearing a purple bathrobe and has a cigar in her hand. Shit, I'm at the wrong address.

  "Hey babe, I didn't expect you so soon." She puffs from her cigar and swings open the door.

  "Mom?" I say, as she grabs me in a one armed hug. My mom has dark brown hair like me and a beer gut. At least, that's what she used to look like. She pulls my suitcase inside for me and closes the door behind us.

  "Let me get a look at you." She grabs my shoulders with her bony fingers. "You're so different. All grown up."

  "Yeah, you too," I say, studying this woman who does look a little like my mom. She has the same butterfly tattoo on her chest. Even still, I can't shake the feeling that I walked into the wrong apartment, that I'm standing here being embraced by a woman who isn't my mom.

  Two seconds later the loving moment is gone. I watch Mom’s lipstick smudge onto her cigar as she takes one last puff and snuffs it in an ashtray on an end table. "I go to work at four, so you'll have the place to yourself all night,” she says, winking at me.

  Mom shows me the kitchen, complete with microwave, and the bathroom and the living room with a two-seater couch which will now be my bed. "Maybe we can get you an air mattress or something," Mom says, kicking at the springy cushions
with her slipper.

  The old me would have freaked out if I had to spend a weekend here in Mom's living room. The old me liked having her own room, with her own bed and all of her stuff. And her best friend and lover living next door. But that's the old me. The new me doesn't mind all of these new changes.

  I sit on the couch and place a smile on my face. Okay, well maybe now that I've pointed them out they kind of bother me. Sleeping on a couch? Oh well. Brendan doesn't get to sleep in his bed either. He gets to be dead in his coffin. And that thing didn't even have padding like this couch. I know because I left a copy of the Denali user's manual in his coffin when no one was looking. He wanted a Denali so bad, but as an eighteen year old he didn't have the money to spend on luxury motorcycles. I figured in the afterlife he could at least read about one.

  But that was Old Taylor. And Old Taylor doesn't exist anymore. She has left the building and wants me to get acquainted with New Taylor. New Taylor lives in Sterling with her mom, and she's not afraid of anything and she has no regrets in life. New Taylor won't remember Brendan.

  I hope.

  Mom holes up in her room while she gets ready for work. She works at a bar or a restaurant or something that involves her being waitress-like. I sit on the couch and flip through all thirteen free channels on her twenty-six inch television. It's probably for the best that she's working all afternoon; there's not exactly anything to talk about with Mom. She and I are polar opposites.

  I'm the only girl I know who chose to live with her dad instead of her mom when her parents split up. Dad and I get each other. Dad is a loner, I am a loner. Mom, well, she's outgoing and charismatic to put it nicely. She's the one with the loud laugh who's made all the bad choices in life. In the movies, she'd be the main character's side kick. Dad and I, we're the antagonist’s side kick. No one in my family will ever be a main character.