Read Online The Last Summer of Us by Maggie Harcourt - Free Book Online

they’ll have the same soppy look on their faces that they always do, and they say it in chorus.
    â€œUhura.”
    Like I said: predictable .

six
    Mothers. Our mothers. Steffan’s baked. Jared’s is…best left out of the discussion.
    Mine?
    Mine likes… liked… to control things. Events. People. She was the one who did everything, organized stuff and ran things. When I was little, she always said it was because that’s what she was trained to do, what she’d learned in her management course at college, and it was just easier for her to do everything. As I got older, it changed to being because nobody else could do it as well as she could. We’re talking about the small stuff: Sunday family get-togethers, barbecues. Dinners – not for thirty or forty people or heads of state, but for a couple of my parents’ friends. People who had never cared whether the bookshelves in the hall were dusty, and never would…but she still spent three days getting everything perfect for them.
    Gradually, it started to wear her down. I didn’t see it at the time, and maybe I should have. But you kind of assume your parents are…well, your parents. They’re the ones in charge, right? They remind you of it often enough, so it must be true. They’ve got it all worked out. You’re the one who’s stuck figuring out how the world fits together and what the hell you’re going to do in it, and why you shouldn’t be so terrified of the thought that it sets your teeth on edge. They’ve already had their turn.
    I wrote my mother’s eulogy at three a.m. and I told myself it was just like any other piece of homework I’ve ever been given. But it wasn’t. How do you catch someone in words? How can you trap a complete soul in a handful of pages and bring them back to life in front of the people who’ve known them their whole lives? People who know them as someone else . I only ever knew my mother as my mother…but they knew her long before she became that. How do you tell them who she was and not lie? How can you?
    One way or another, everyone lies at funerals.
    Jared has spent a good five minutes adjusting the driver’s seat and we’re still parked by the bridge. (Thankfully, alone now. Because Becca’d love this.) Five minutes. I’ve watched as the hands on my watch ticked round. Five minutes of shuffling the seat one click forward, two clicks back. Twiddling the cracked plastic dial on the side of the seat to tip it forwards and back. The Rust Bucket being what it is, most of the car’s held together with hope, faith and chewing gum, so when it’s fiddled with too much, the seat mechanism has a strop and bangs the whole thing back onto my knees right as I’m sliding across the back seat.
    â€œOi!” I shout and Steffan glances over his shoulder at me from the passenger seat as Jared sighs and yanks his chair forward again.
    â€œRemember: not my fault,” Steff says pointedly.
    â€œIt’s your bloody car,” I snap.
    â€œAnd who wanted to bring it? Hmm? We could’ve—”
    â€œNo. We couldn’t.” Jared’s finally happy with the seat. And now he’s started on the steering wheel.
    I do not remember a time when I wasn’t stuck in the back of this car in the hot sun – a car, I might add, with no air con and with windows that barely work – waiting for Jared to be ready. Eons have passed. When they find me, I’ll be nothing but a pile of dust, still waiting in the back seat.
    Dust to dust.
    I know.
    Suddenly, it comes to me. The sunroof. There’s a sunroof. It’s closed. Hot air rises, doesn’t it? So if I open it, the car can’t possibly get any hotter. It’ll get cooler, because of physics. Or something. Not even the Rust Bucket can argue with physics. Of course, getting to the handle is going to be tricky, but the pair of them are too busy