I really was crying now. Kyle awkwardly patted my back, in that oh-God-I-really-don’t-know-what-to-do way all boys adopt when a girl is crying. It reached a crescendo whenever I pictured the scene, or whenever I remembered that we weren’t going to LA the next day after all. And then, slowly, the tears ran out. Maybe I was too dehydrated to make any more.
“Should I have told you?” he asked, nervously. “I’ve been wondering since I met you. I wondered how much you knew. Why we’d never really heard of you until this summer…”
“I’m glad you told me.” I looked up at him through my hazy tear-stained vision. The moon still caught all his best bits. In this light he looked like an All-American-Dream-Ghost – like if Casper won Prom King. He looked right back at me. We were so close. Our noses almost touching, his hand still on my back… I wondered if this was how close he’d been to Melody before they got together and did whatever they did… That thought hurt. I backed away, leaning against the tree again.
Noise. Noises in the wood.
“Guuuuuuys?”
It was Whinnie.
“Guuuuuys, you out here?”
Kyle took one last look at me and then turned in the direction of her voice.
“Whinnie?” he called.
“Where are you?” The uncertain wobble of torchlight came out from behind a tree, making both of us squint. I tried to stand, but struggled, and Kyle took my hand to pull me up. Whinnie’s torch found us like a spotlight, and I turned my face from it, as it scorched into my eyes.
“Oh, thank God. I thought I was going to get eaten by a coyote before I found you.” She ran over and hugged me. “How are you feeling? You look like the last survivor from a horror movie. Everyone else has gone to bed, but your mum is going frantic and Russ is pissed at you for drinking all the whiskey…”
“I bet he is,” Kyle muttered.
“Well, he wasn’t to know…everything,” Whinnie said.
My stomach blobbed with yet more guilt. “I’ll pay him back. I’ll get some in LA tomorrow. If I can get served.”
“You coming to LA?” Kyle and Whinnie both asked at the same time.
I shrugged. “What choice do I have? Where else do I go?”
“Do you want to go to LA?” Kyle asked. I shook my head instinctively.
“Honestly? No. But I don’t want to hang around here in Kevin’s cabin, feeling guilty that I’m not working. And I don’t particularly feel like wandering around San Francisco, waiting for my mum to give a shit about me. I don’t drive yet, and you can’t walk anywhere in this bloody country. So yeah…LA. Great…”
Kyle gave me another big searching look. I swear he got searching looks on special offer at the emotion store or something. 2-4-1.
I stretched my legs, my heart feeling numb. Probably because half of it was still burning on the campfire. “Let’s go.”
We all walked back through the darkness, past the smoking corpse of the spent campfire, and along the twisted path towards the centre of camp.
“Thanks, guys.” I was sobering up enough to feel very very embarrassed about the last two hours. “I’m not usually so drama.”
Whinnie smiled and squeezed my hand.
“Yeah,” she said. “What’s up with that? I thought you guys were supposed to repress everything with a stiff upper lip until you’re constipated.”
“America is wearing off on you,” Kyle added.
We all laughed. And I never thought I’d laugh on that evening. Not without Lottie and Evie anyway. All sorts of American sentimental gushes flooded through me – with added emotional gushes of something else that I felt for Kyle… Something that I was certainly going to repress, as I’d been hurt and rejected enough for one summer thank you very much.
Whinnie handed me some gum. “Here,” she said. “So you don’t smell like Jack Daniels.”
“Thanks, Whinnie, for you know, helping.”
She gave me a sad feeling-sorry-for-you smile. “Well the word ‘counsellor’ is in the job title.”
Eventually we stepped out of the dense forest overhang, the moonlight almost as bright as the sun. It hung all big and proud of itself in the sky.
“Why don’t I take you back to the cabin?” Whinnie suggested. She gave Kyle a knowing look. “It might be better if it’s just me.”
Kyle nodded. “Cool, well I better go see if the weekenders have managed to get my clan to sleep. See you tomorrow, Amber. For LA?”
LA. I really didn’t want to go to LA…
“Yeah, sure.” I wanted to say so much more but Whinnie was there. I didn’t know how to thank him. “Thanks again, and tell Russ I’ll try and replace the drink.”
“Don’t worry about that. Night.”
“Night.”
Whinnie steered me to my cabin without asking what had happened while she’d been gone. She didn’t even ask why I’d gotten so wasted and I loved her for that. Maybe she was just doing what Winnie the Pooh would’ve done.
Mum flung the door open and her arms around me. I was so shocked by the intensity of her affection I almost fell over.
“Amber, you poor thing. How are you feeling?” she gasped into my shoulder. “Was it the hot dogs? Aww, you poor munchkin. Have you been sick? You smell quite sick.”
Despite everything that had happened I dissolved into her, hugging her back so hard – like a diver gasping for oxygen, not knowing when they’d get any more.
Kevin stepped out, stopping halfway through the door, so he was all highlighted from the lamp inside.
“Thanks for looking after her, Whinnie. We’ve got her from here.”
I waved as Mum took me inside, her arm still round me. “My poor little baby. You just vanished! We didn’t know where you were. I was so worried. It’s horrible being sick, poor thing. What can I get you? Let’s tuck you up on the sofa, hmm? Kevin? Will you get Amber some water?”
Water came. I drank it. More came. I drank more.
I wasn’t even the slightest bit drunk any more, just drained.
Mum was stroking my hair, singing softly, one of my favourite Peter Alsop songs, the one she used to sing at bedtime – if she wasn’t passed out before me.
“Go to sleep, you little creep,” she sang softly, her husky voice warming each word like a microwave. “It’s time to get undressed.”
I was being carried to my room. My sicky T-shirt was raised over my head, I was put on my side. My pillow was fluffed. She kept stroking my hair. Everything was warm, so warm. Mum was being the mum I remembered from way back. The one that I knew was in there, somewhere…
I was so very tired.
“We love you when you’re wide awake, but when you sleep we love you best.”
And the last thing I heard was Mum giggling at the funniest line as I slumped into a happy but confused unconsciousness.
SITUATIONS THAT ARE DESTINED TO FAIL:
Woken before 5 a.m.
+
With a hangover
+
By a boy you really quite like
Nineteen
I woke.
It hit me.
It all hit me.
I wasn’t going to LA with Mum. She’d chosen a rehab centre over spending time with me. I’d gotten so drunk. I’d drunk all of Russ’s whiskey. I’d been sick – oh God! In front of Kyle! And Whinnie! I’d cried, I’d told Kyle everything.
Why why why why why why why why? WHY?
I sat bolt upright, the uncomfortable yanking twist of humiliation wrenching my stomach. Such an idiot. Why was I such an idiot? Why was I just like her?
All the sadness came too – she wasn’t coming with me today. She cancelled.
Just like that.
Just like that.
There was a gentle knocking at my window. What? I was still half asleep. Did I really hear that?
Another knock.
I leaned over and opened it.
Kyle’s face was in my window, smiling in a way that could make you hand over all your money and worldly belongings. My eyes widened, in total shock.