She slaps her hand over her mouth in horror. It feels like the kind of moment that should be followed by a dramatic “DUH-DUM!” swell of music; or maybe just a sad trombone.
“She… she what?”
Jamie blinks in confusion, then his face takes on an odd, closed expression that makes something inside me shrivel up and die.
Yes, a sad trombone would definitely be appropriate around about now. “Chloe’s just winding you up,” I say firmly, feeling almost as if the words are coming from someone other than me. “Come on, Chloe, best get you back to the hotel; you’ve obviously had way too much to drink.”
Jamie nods as Chloe follows me meekly to the taxi rank that’s just along the street, apparently lost for words for once in her life.
“Sorry,” she mouths at me as we get into the cab, which is — mercifully — waiting for us. “It just slipped out.”
Jamie leans through the open window of the car to say goodbye. He’s smiling as if he’s already forgotten the bombshell Chloe casually dropped on him back there outside the club, but he doesn’t quite meet my eyes when I say goodnight, and I lean back in my seat as he and Chloe exchange numbers, wishing I was anywhere but here.
“Well, that was fun,” she says as the cab pulls away. “Wasn’t that fun?”
I don’t even bother to answer her.
Eighteen
The Secret Diary of Summer Brookes, Age 17
Dear Diary,
So, tonight’s the night. I’m going to tell Jamie how I feel about him at the prom tonight. I don’t really want to, to be honest: I’m so scared he’s going to say he doesn’t feel the same. But it’s a now-or-never kind of situation, really, because everything’s changing. High school’s ending. After tonight, everyone will go their separate ways, either to uni, or to start work, and some of us will probably never see each other again. That’s why I have to do it now, before it’s too late. Because if I don’t, and nothing ever happens between us because of it, then all these years I’ve spent pining after him will have been wasted, and I don’t want to feel like my life has been wasted. Not ever. This is my last chance to make it all mean something. I don’t want to look back one day and regret not telling him. I guess if I’m going to regretanything, I’d rather it be the other way around.
Speaking of regrets, I’m supposed to be singing at it too. Every year the music department picks someone to perform the last song of the night, and I can’t believe I’m actually writing this, but this year they picked me. I know! I’m nervous, obviously, but I’m excited too, because it’s going to be my first time singing on stage, in front of actual people, and I just feel like this is my big chance to show everyone that I can actually do it, you know? Also, by the end of the night, me and Jamie will hopefully be an item, and if that doesn’t give me the confidence to sing, I don’t know what will.
Anyway, I’m going to singFast Car, by Tracey Chapman. Chloe says it’s a stupid choice for a high school prom, and I should just doDon’t Stop Believin’, which is 'a guaranteed crowd-pleaser' but I likeFast Car. It speaks to my soul. And I feel like tonight is the night that will change everything — it will literally be my ticket to somewhere better than here, just like in the song, so I think it’s pretty appropriate, too, no matter what Chloe says.
Wish me luck…
Summer, XOXO
I close the diary and pick up the glass of water I poured earlier instead.
It’s 1 a.m., and I’m sitting on the balcony outside my hotel room again, desperately trying to re-hydrate before bed, while determinedlynotthinking about Jamie, and the look that crossed his face when Chloe dropped her bombshell. But the image keeps popping into my head anyway, and it makes me cringe so hard that when I go toput the glass back down on the table, I miss altogether, and it goes tumbling to the ground, where it shatters dramatically on the tiled floor of the balcony.
Whoops.
“Please tell me that’s not you throwing things around again,” comes Alex’s voice from the balcony next door as I bend down to pick up the pieces.
I freeze on the spot.
What’s he doing out here at this time of night?
“Summer?”
There’s the scraping sound of a chair being pushed back, then Alex’s head appears over the wall between us, which gets higher the closer it gets to the building. I’d been sitting just in front of the doors to the room, and he presumably was too, on his side of the wall, which is why we haven’t seen each other… until now.
“Sorry,” I say, straightening up guiltily. “It just slipped out of my hand. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“It’s okay,” he says. “You didn’t. Oh…”
His voice trails off as I step forward to see him better, moving into the light that’s being cast upwards from the pool area.
“What is it? Is there something wrong?”
Alex swallows. “Er, no,” he says. “No, it’s just, you look… different. Nice, I mean. You look nice.”
