That Summer

That Summer

“The day we stop resisting our instincts, we’ll have learned how to live.”

- Frederico Garcia Lorca

When Hannah and I are sixteen, she asks if I want to come over for a while during the summer. She asks it like it’s not big deal; just: “Do you want to come over for a while during the summer, Su? Mum said I could invite you.” And I hate her, because it’s so easy for her, but I accept anyway because it’s Hannah and I can’t refuse her anything.

Her dad picks us up at the train station and takes us to an Italian restaurant— Serafina’s— and Hannah orders a pizza because it’s her favorite food in the whole world. I order a Coke and say I’m not hungry, which isn’t true, but all the food seems so dangerous— cheese sticking to my lips or slurping noodles or getting sauce all over myself or something equally stupid. So I sip my Coke and try not to be very obvious about watching Hannah, who has her long legs crossed and keeps running her tongue along the edge of her mouth.

There are a couple of boys staring at her, because she is that gorgeous, and I want to break their faces and tell them, She’s not yours. Of course, she’s not mine, either.

I don’t really listen and my eyes flick around the room, wandering over the pictures of Hannah. There’s one of us together at the Yule Ball, and I blink, because I’d forgotten that Megan had taken that. In the picture we’re standing really closely, arms resting on each other’s shoulders.

When Michael had said that year, “I’m going home for Christmas, Su; I can’t take you to the Yule Ball,” Hannah had hugged me and said, “We’ll go together, then. C’mon, I’ll ditch Justin and we can pick up some boys, use them, and throw them away.” And I hated her then, because it was so easy for her, but I said, Of course, I’ll go, because it was Hannah and I couldn’t refuse her anything.

“So, anyway, Justin picks up this gnome, spins it around, and the gnome is protesting the whole time, ‘I’m not a gnome!’ and throws it and then Justin thinks for a moment, and he blinks, and he says, ‘I just threw Professor Flitwick, didn’t I?’ It was so funny. Wasn’t it funny, Su?” She puts her arm around me.

“Oh, yeah, it was really funny,” I say, and lean into her arm.

Hannah has a lot of artwork in her bedroom. I gesture to the pictures curiously, and she says, “Oh, you know, French Impressionism.”

But I don’t know and I frown and she says, “Oh, like Monet and Renoir.” She sits down on her bed and points to a picture of a bridge, “Like that’s Monet, and those water lilies over there are Monet, so is the woman with the parasol. The woman at the piano and the bathers, those are Renoir. And the fruit—that’s Cezanne.” And I frown some more because there was a side of Hannah which I didn’t know about.

“How come you’re into all this stuff?” I ask, finally.

“I don’t know,” she says, casually. “I mean, most of my cousins are Muggles, you know, and I just kind of got into it.”

And I frown again and feel insecure because Hannah is my other half; even if she doesn’t like me that way, she’s still supposed to be my other half, and there are parts of her I don’t know about. I ask, hesitantly, “Does Justin know about it?”

“No. Of course not. I mean, you didn’t even know about it, did you?” I sit down next to her and she puts her arm around me and leans her head against my shoulder. She yawns. “I’m tired.” She lies back on the bed and I do, too, and I want to cry because she’s so beautiful and I can’t have her.

So the days melt together, hot and sticky, and we move about with our arms around each other, eating melting ice cream—she always eats strawberry— or smoking stolen cigarettes and always together and always with the knowledge that she is not mine, and suppressing salty tears. Her dad grills a lot and we eat mainly hamburgers smothered in ketchup and onions and we eat outside and I’m very careful not to get any ketchup on me; and every other day we get a pizza because it’s Hannah’s favorite food in the whole world. And at night we lie on her bed, which has a soft white comforter and our arms touch each other.

One day Hannah says, “Do you want to go flying?” and I say yes, so we get out our brooms—hers is a Nimbus 2001 and mine’s a Nimbus 2000— and we go out late at night, when its pretty dark, and race each other. There’s a light breeze blowing through her hair, making the gold tendrils wave and blowing them into her face, and I fly by her and brush her hair out of her face and she smiles at me. She says she’s going to try out for Quidditch next year, and I tell her she ought to because she’d be a perfect Seeker, and she smiles again.

And sometimes we talk about times gone by, and I remember her yellow pigtails that she wore for three years straight and how they bounced and I tell her she was pretty but she laughs and doesn’t believe me. And next year is our last year, and I say I’ll miss her when we leave, and she says that she won’t miss me because she’s never going to leave me and we’re going to travel the world together and be friends forever.

She has her hand around my waist and a cigarette, which she isn’t really smoking, but faking that she is smoking, and she says to me, “Justin wants to come over for a few days. Wouldn’t that be cool?”

I want to snap Justin’s neck.

He knows what her mouth tastes like and what it feels like to run his fingers through that blonde hair, and she belongs to him; they belong to each other. And it isn’t fair because I love her and by all rights she should be mine, but she isn’t, and I want to kill him.

“Yeah, it would be really cool, Hannah,” I say.

So Justin comes over a couple days later and they sit together and hold hands and they look really, really perfect together, and even I can admit that. Justin with his curly hair and Hannah who always looks beautiful— they’re perfect together, and I hate that. And Hannah wants to go get an ice cream and I see the way that she and Justin are looking at each other, so I say I’m feeling sick and let them go alone.

And I lie on Hannah’s bed and stare at the ceiling and try not to think, except I keep hearing these voices, Susan Bones…Susan Bones…Bones, and I think I’m cracking up, and I probably am…Susan Bones…Bones…Bones, and the room starts spinning and I actually do feel sick. And I faint or fall asleep or something; in any case, it all goes dark.

And later it actually is dark, and Hannah is shaking me and saying, “Susan, wake up.”

I am tired but I open my eyes and say, “Hey.” And she smiles and lies down next to me, and her hand snakes its way into my hand, and she says, “Hey.”

“Where’s Justin?” I ask. We are both staring at the ceiling.

“He left.”

“I thought he was going to stay for a while.”

She sighs. “I told him to leave. He wanted to, um, you know.”

“Oh,” I say.

“And I told him, no, that I wasn’t ready, but he kept insisting, so I told him to leave.” She looks at me. “We broke up.” She says these words as if they had some great meaning for me. And I look at her and smile and then I start to cry, and I don’t know why I am, but I can’t stop, and she’s looking at me and then she puts her hand around my face and strokes my hair. She moves closer to me, so close that I can smell the honey and flower smell of her, and she kisses my forehead. And then my eyes. And my nose. “Susan,” she says, “What’s wrong?” and I can only look at her.

And then she places her mouth on my mouth, and she tastes like strawberries, and her tongue licks at my lips and she kisses nice and slow and easy, not at all like Michael who kisses too rough and too fast; she kisses exactly the way I thought she would, perfectly.

She breaks away from me, and says, “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to, Su,” and I want to punch her and say, Of course I want to do this, you idiot, but instead I put my hands around her head and bring her toward me and kiss her again.

Fin.