Forever Summer (The Summer Series) (Volume 4)

One

I thought leaving Onslow would be the answer to all my prayers. That leaving behind all the small-town nostalgia would suddenly transform me into this extremely mature grown-up. New job, new flat, new town would all equal a new life, right? Then why was I sitting in the middle of my lounge room floor on a Friday night in tracky dacks, baggy T, and my long blonde hair swept up in a high ponytail in the messy look that wasn’t wholly intended? Crying into a glass of wine and procrastinating over a pile of unopened boxes in the hall. Yeah, a month into my move and I still hadn’t finished the unpacking phase. No rush, I thought, I’m going nowhere fast.

Ha! Ain’t that the truth? I said, squinting into the empty wine glass.

Four weeks, FOUR bloody weeks I had been in Maitland and I still hadn’t ventured out of my own shadow. Aside from not trying anything new in my life, there was something I was trying out, something that I promised myself not to do.

Go back to Onslow for the weekends.

Something that most did when they started out at uni or landed a job in the big, bad city. Maitland was only a two-hour commute to Onslow, so as big and tough as all my fellow school chums thought they were, they still commuted back home for Mummy to do their washing and for Daddy to fuel up their car. Well, not me; if I was going to seek independence, then I was going to do it right, even if I was desperately lonely and missed home. Ha! Actually missing Onslow: the girl who by all accounts was the last fledgling to leave the nest; well, aside from my ex, Stan, but he had his parents’ business to tend to, so that gave him some form of street cred. Never did anyone look at Stan and think tragic.

Since finishing Year Twelve, two life-changing things had happened: My best friend, Tess, moved across country to be with her boyfriend, something I didn’t support at all, mainly because I was selfish, not because I didn’t think they belonged together. When it came to Toby Morrison, there was nothing you could say that was bad about him; he was practically perfect, which is why he and Tess worked. They were the golden couple, the kind you would expect to find on the cover of a Bonds catalogue; although I was happy for them, they also made my heart twang with a deep-seated jealousy, never more so than when Toby proposed to Tess in the most epic way. Rooftop at the stroke of midnight into the new millennium: fireworks and tears; it was beautiful and I was happy and sad all at once. Happy for Tess and her amazing new life, but sad that I had lost a part of me, had lost my best friend. Even though Tess assured me nothing would change, I knew that wasn’t entirely true. Everything was changing. It was the big reason why I was forcing my own change, to get out of Onslow and away from all the happiness that surrounded me.

The second life-altering moment was Adam. When he joined the army it rocked my world like nothing else; I guess I came to believe that Adam would just do what his brother Chris had done: run the Onslow Hotel and just be there, getting me drunk on the weekends and making me laugh. Even as I sat in the confines of my flat, I couldn’t help but wonder, like I did every weekend, if Adam and the boys would be at the Onslow right now. I shook the thought from my mind.

Come on, Ellie, get your shit together. So what if they were there? Need you remind yourself that you were still mad at Adam; no, make that furious at him for not coming to say goodbye? For not being reliable enough to come to my farewell party, to stand me up without any given explanation. I had waited on the edge of the driveway outside the Onslow Hotel calling his mobile, worrying that something was wrong. Adam was often late but I would never have believed he wouldn’t come. And then of course I remembered back to when he had joined the army, and what an utterly crap pen pal he had been. It had been one of many but one of the most serious fights when he had come back to Onslow. In typical Adam style, he returned as if nothing had happened; he simply walked back into my life with that cocky, confident smirk on his face, the one I had wanted to wipe off his face with my fist, I was so mad.

It was one of the bigger reasons I decided to stay away this time: to punish him. That, and ignore all his messages, messages I found myself flicking through on my phone with a smug smile on my face.

Adam 8:05 p.m.

Ellie, I’m sooooorrryyyyyyy.

Adam 9:01 p.m.

Elliiiiieeeee, what are you dooooooing?

Adam 10:48 p.m.

Ellie-Ellie-Ellie-Ellie!!!! Come on, answer me!!!!

Adam 12:04 a.m.

E

Adam 12:04 a.m.

L

Adam 12:04 a.m.

L

Adam 12:04 a.m.

I

Adam 12:04 a.m.

E

Adam 12:05 a.m.

Please don’t make me use your middle and last name.

Adam 12:10 a.m.

Fine! You may have won the battle, but you have not won the WAAAARRRR.

And this was the general one-sided exchange that had continued from the moment I’d left Onslow. Tess thought I was being overly cruel, that he really was sorry for standing me up, that I should just get over it. But it wasn’t just about getting over it; there was more to it than just punishment. I kind of liked Adam’s texts; I had never heard from him so much in my life. In some sick way they were a link to him, a very one-sided link, one I didn’t know how long would last if I didn’t answer. My thumb hovered over the reply button, staring down at the last message, tempted to reply as I read his latest addition over and over.

Adam 7:09 p.m.

x

Bastard! It was a simple enough gesture, certain to melt my icy façade, something he would no doubt be taking bets on that this above all else would have me replying.

I chucked my phone onto the couch. As it bounced and slid away, I looked at it as if it had given me an electric shock. I had to keep busy. I had to refrain from the temptation of replying to Adam’s texts; he was wearing me down and that’s exactly what he was working on.

I don’t think so, I groaned, pulling myself to stand, hearing the bones click and pop as I stretched. I placed my hands on my hips, surveying the damage of all the unfinished business in my flat, which resembled more of a residence for a hobo than that of a dental nurse in her twenties. Enough was enough. Time to commit to neatness and get into the land of the living.

I started with the first box in the poky hall, sliding it rather inelegantly toward the lounge as my bed socks failed to gain traction on the glossy tiles.

Shit, it was heavy. I fell to my knees, breathless and confused at what the hell I had packed, as my head tilted to read ‘Books’ written on the side. Now that made sense; I did have a rather impressive book collection, not something many knew about: Ellie Parker, the bookworm. Well, Adam knew, but I quickly wiped that from my mind. I made work on ripping the packing tape from the box and exposing the interior crammed with books, ranging from Enid Blyton childhood classics, Sweet Valley High to Christopher Pike horror books. My entire reading life’s catalogue was here and I suddenly felt more at home than ever. When I wasn’t out with Tess and Adam, I could be found tucked up on my favourite couch with a book. Both my mum and dad were avid readers, and that love had been passed on to me. I didn't need to go out and explore Maitland just yet. Books were my comfort zone, and that would be fine for now.

I smiled. Rock on Friday night.

Another bottle of wine and some tunes later and I had all but forgotten about the Onslow Hotel, about Adam, and the messages on my phone, all of it. I was swept away in a different kind of nostalgia, getting sidetracked in long-lost books that I had forgotten about reading.

"Awww, Hating Alison Ashley." I held it up to the light, pouring over my absolute favourite book by Robin Klein. I was soon lost in its chapters until I snapped my mind back to the task at hand and the half-unpacked box. The room actually looked worse.

Shit, I sighed, putting the book aside and pulling myself up onto my knees to look inside the box for the next treasure, when I paused, my brows knitting together in confusion.

No. Way.

Gone were all the hardcover classics; the last of the childhood memories had well and truly been cleaned out. Instead, the box was filled with a new layer of history, one that I hadn’t even realised I had packed: my diaries.

I reached in, retrieving the first pink-bound diary, gratified by inky love hearts and the words PRIVATE: KEEP OUT scrawled over its cover with the year 1990 embossed in gold.

I laughed, quickly moving to the next books: 1991, 1992, 1993. My intense, if not shambolic, boy-crazy chronicles that had been documented all through my teens were all there, all with similar warnings of promised death if anyone so much as looked into the pages. I couldn’t believe it: how had I not remembered these? How had I not recalled packing the … Oh God. Sudden sickness flooded me as I recognised the writing on the side of the box as my mum’s.

Oh no, no, no … please, God, please tell me she didn’t read them. I cringed.

When Mum had stuck her head into my room the day before I was ready to pack up and leave and was still horrifically behind, I had absentmindedly pointed her in the direction of my bookshelf, which of course included the pretty little shoe boxes on top, the ones containing my deepest, darkest secrets, including probably the biggest, most unbelievable admission of my life. One that I had not had a real chance of pushing into the deep depths of my mind, mainly because it was extremely powerful and the fact I had not long ago written it. I sat there, with a diary marked 1999.

Suddenly, a wave of nostalgia washed over me, drowning me to the point my lungs struggled to expand and make room for the air I so desperately needed.

Don’t open it, Ellie; just put the diary back into the box and slide it into a cupboard somewhere and forget about the things scrawled between the pages.

The thing I tried to tell myself about diary entries was they were usually written at the height of emotion, that surely a huge percentage of it was overly dramatic and not entirely true.

My finger traced along the thin red ribbon that marked a page; I had no doubt what it would say, as I parted the book to sit open on my lap. My eyes ticked over the paper and sure enough my greatest fear had been revealed in navy ink, almost like it had been written in a panic.

Heading to Point Shank tomorrow to see in the New Year, no more than that … a new millennium!! If the world isn’t drained into a sinkhole at the stroke of midnight, it’s time to come to terms with a few resolutions.

Joining a gym

Moving to Maitland

Cutting my hair

Saving for London

I laughed at all these hopeful yet predictable resolutions until inevitably I came to the bottom of the page, to the bold block letters that had been underlined, twice.

And last but not least: TELL ADAM HENDERSON I’M IN LOVE WITH HIM.

I snapped the book shut.

Oh Fuck!

Two

Reading this wasn’t exactly news to me, and that was the problem. The moment I had admitted it to myself had been bad enough, but I had also made another terrible mistake. I had admitted it to Chris’s new girlfriend, Tammy Maskala. Not by choice, mind you; if Point Shank hadn’t become so out of hand with crossed wires, with Tammy mistaking my secret feelings for Tess’s boyfriend, my feelings would have gone to the grave. But in order to clear up the fact, I unwittingly admitted my crush on Adam, and now it was out, like an airborne disease; okay, maybe that was a bit extreme. But I had forced Tammy into a vow of silence, one I had almost made her seal in a blood oath, especially since she was dating Chris, Adam’s older brother. Ugh, this was what I didn’t miss at all: small-town gossip. A lot of the time I tried to put my feelings down to small-town syndrome—that you just run out of boys to admire and then this happens, you fall for your best friend. Inevitable disaster, right? Then why was it that no matter how I tried to convince myself that what I was feeling was a really bad idea, that my heart grew more and more adamant with every moment I spent with Adam? Yep, I definitely had to get away, this could not happen. I was determined to convince myself of it, not even telling Tess my secret, and I told Tess everything. So, yeah, this was