Summer's End

“Suck my cock you pervy cunt!”

Layla gaped, aghast at Merryn’s use of the “C” word, on a playground no less, but she gathered herself fast, taken by the preposterousness of the request.

“You don’t HAVE a cock you dumbass!”

Laughter folded them over themselves, arms above bent heads, hands wrapped around the ropes that dangled the two rubber seats to hover over the ground. Merryn, that spark of adolescent energy now too unruly for her to keep her cool, pressed her toes to the ground and extended her legs, thrust herself on her seat upwards and backwards, then dropped her body to hang from long arms, and felt the rush of the breeze as she surged downwards and through and upwards once more, her coat a purple parachute at her back. At the edge of the path, Mr Burrows stood from the bench he sat on each day at dusk to watch another day fade and keep fresh the remembrance of a long abandoned love, and shuffled towards the park gate.

*

“Past ten! Past ten and you waltz back through that door and tell me you’re hungry? The sun went down two hours ago Merryn Smyth. Two hours! Ten more seconds and Tony would have us put together a search party!”

“We were only at the park though” Merryn watched her mother’s mouth stretch all the way to the corners, saw the verbal onslaught she was about to have come her way, and bolted for her room. Over at Layla’s house, escape had not been that easy.

“You know the rules Layla.” Layla rubbed her thumb along the rough wood of the table and stuffed the need to cry somewhere deep below her stomach. “Once more and you can go and stay at your grandparent’s house for the rest of the summer. That Merryn has some sort of spell over you, you used to behave yourself, before you started to hang around at her heels.”

“Sorry.”

“What was that? You come home late, you’ve been God alone knows where, and as for who…. And all you just mumble at me?” Layla jumped as her mum’s closed hand banged onto the table. She made herself concentrate, enounce the words as she’d been taught.

“Sorry Mum. My watch broke, when we saw the street lamps came on we came home. Sorry. We just… we lost track.” Her words petered out under her mother’s stony glare.

“Lost track. Lost track? Have you ever heard such tosh? Were there boys? Was that what happened? Boys?” Her mum’s face was too near her own now, Layla felt she must be able to read her every thought.

“No! There was just me and Merryn, we were on the playground, honestly, we just…talked.” Cold eyes searched her own for clues of a suspected untruth and found none.

“Come home late once more and you won’t see Merryn anymore. You can start next year at the other school near Gran’s and you won’t be able to blame anyone but yourself when you mess up your whole future there.”

Layla released the breath she had held onto and went to her room. She would do better, she swore to herself. She could not afford to be sent to her grandparents’, not now. There was too much at stake, and her heart throbbed at the thought of what she could lose. How close her mum had come to the truth though.

There was a boy. Merryn was obsessed by Luke, two doors up from Layla’s house. She talked endlessly about sexy eyes and sexy bums and sexy jaws, neck, legs, back. All parts of Luke, apparently, were sexy. Layla would have mocked her, except she couldn’t. She felt exactly the same about Dan. Dan was dark and a head taller than Luke, a storm cloud that brooded over the sun bleached sand and ocean blue of Luke’s features, and Layla longed to lay herself out under that same cloud and feel the charged buzz of the space beneath.

She had told the truth, though. Partly. There had been no boys at the playground. Not afterwards, not then. But there had been boys. Boys to share the close summer dusk of the park, boys to lay down next to beneath the dense leafed bushes. Boys who’s hands held and touched and groped, who’s mouths, wet and eager, searched and pressed, who’s jeans unbuttoned, who had probed and, met only by needful assent, had penetrated, and after one tender moment of shock, a vulnerable moment unseen by the other, had swaggered out of the park together, assured of themselves as men.

The boys had not made them late. But they had made them ruffled, awakened, aroused. They had made them bold and brash. They had made them careless, fearless, masters of the world. Unconquerable queens of the dark. They had lost track, that was true. They had lost track of the world they had known and for an hour as the park turned from dusk to dark, they had floated encased by a bubble of elated joy, buoyed by lust and love and never grounded enough to know that the two were not the same.

*

“You can’t get pregnant when you’ve never had sex before” Merryn stated, assured of her own knowledge. “Before the hymen breaks the sperm can’t get through. We should get some condoms now though.”

Layla’s part of the plan was the safe part. She stood near the checkout, a glass jar of pasta sauce held ready, and when Merryn gave a nod, she let loose a cacophonous shower of glass and tomatoes. No one was meant to spot the condom packet under Merryn’s jumper as she walked out the door, but the guard barely glanced Layla’s way. “Not even my fourth rodeo”, he told Merryn. But he let her go, all the same. Layla caught up to her two streets away.

“Was there much blood for you? You know, afterwards?” Merryn asked her.

“Not much.”

“Probably got some hymen left then. Anyway, people try for ages to get pregnant.”

The boys were on the monkey bars when they got to the park, and the four of them walked up the slope and under the cover of the trees together, where they knew there was a hole through the fence, to the deeper shade of unkempt shrubbery. Enveloped by the green smell of warmed earth and warmed plants and a warm body next to hers, Merryn felt a swell of love and noted, puzzled, that Layla and not Luke was the focus. Layla felt the cool of the scrubby gloom and wondered whether to heed her worry or her lust, but Dan’s hand on her muted her reason and left her only want. Merryn and Luke turned left beneath the rhododendrons and Layla and Dan found a dry hollow under a canopy of leafy sky. Later, Layla’s mum asked her why her top was so grubby and told her she could do her own laundry from now on and maybe she’d take better care of her stuff as a consequence, but Layla barely heard her, as her thoughts returned over and over to Dan, and the remembrance sent waves of pleasure to undulate through her body.

*

Merryn could see the tears that streaked Layla’s face before she even reached the bench. Only one week had passed and there was another to go before Dan would be back from camp, and Merryn thought that Layla was a fool to take two weeks apart so hard. She hadn’t seen Luke for two weeks already, and wasn’t sure she would actually cry were he to move to France permanently and never come home.

“You’re wrong” Layla wept onto Merryn’s wool jumper. “He wrote to me, you know. We both want to be together when he comes back, but why would anyone cry about that. Two weeks? We have years and years ahead of us, two weeks apart only makes us love each other more!” Here she collapsed to snotty sobs, and Merryn was unsure whether to pull away or squeeze closer. “My monthly hasn’t come. Two weeks late. Do you…?”

The test was clear. Beyond doubt.

“You have to tell her,” Merryn pleaded, but they both knew Layla could never tell her mum she was pregnant. She was fourteen for goodness sake. Her mum would murder her. And then she would send her away to stay at her grandparents and she would never see Merryn or Dan or even Luke forever after.

“Then go and ask the doctor” Merryn suggested.

“How would that even help?”

They sat together on Merryn’s bed as Layla felt the world close around her.

“Do you want to have the baby?” Merryn sounded more unsure than Layla could ever remember. She wondered what she was supposed to say. Yes, at fourteen a baby would cement my future, and be my dream come true. Or no, please, make the baby go away, but don’t damn me forever. Or the truth. How can anyone know the answer to that?

“Want has no part to play here, you know that. My mum would send me away, Dan would bolt and no man would have ever marry me. There would be no more school, no exams, no job, no pay, no home for us. Want has no relevance.” Layla stared at her hands as though there was nowhere else to look.

“Layla, the world has changed. That doesn’t have to be true anymore.”

“But Merryn, perhaps what has changed for some of us hasn’t changed for all of us. For me, a baby out of wedlock shames a person. A teenage pregnancy? They would never see me as a decent person.”

“What about…. You know?”

“Abort the baby?”

“Yeah.”

“That would not even be legal.”

“But doable. Trust me.”

*

Layla threw up on the pavement, but got on the bus all the same. The other passengers sat further away than they needed, you couldn’t catch fear. You couldn’t catch repugnance at your own self or what you were about to do. You couldn’t catch sorrow or regret or hope or the way confused tumult churns up your stomach. Or perhaps you can. Merryn waved from the kerb, and went home. She told Luke she would rather not see anyone today, and he went to the park anyway, to play football. Merryn lay on her bed, and wondered whether prayer was real, after all. At half past four, she met Layla off the bus and walked her home.

“Are you ok?” Layla was usually a fast walker, on the way home.

“Yeah.”

“Was the procedure….you know. Could you feel the….the…..”

“Merryn, can we just not, you know….”

“Talk?”

“Yeah.”

She squeezed Layla’s hand at the front door, then walked away, a loud shout of “good game at drafts today. Tomorrow, let’s play monopoly!” the only subterfuge she could muster for Layla’s mum.

But the next day, Layla was not well. Merryn called, Layla’s mum answered the phone. “No Merryn, you may not speak to Layla. She has a fever, she seems really very poorly, and she needs her rest.”Merryn heard a note of alarm spangle the older woman’s tone. “Has anyone at your house been unwell lately?”

“No, we’ve not had even a cold here. Sorry she’s poorly. Would you send her my love?”

Layla wasn’t well the next day, or the next, and on the fourth day, the ambulance came. Merryn saw the blue flash pass along her street, and found out from Mrs Foster that Layla had come out the house on a stretcher and whooshed away. Merryn wondered whether they knew. Or whether she should tell her mum. She thought about Layla’s shame and kept her mouth shut.

On the seventh day, news of Layla’s death flooded through the network of closely packed houses, a deluge of tragedy that swept away petty arguments as a flash flood washes out the flotsam and jetsam of the every day. Merryn heard her mum gasp on the phone, and start to cry, and knew what had happened though she hadn’t been told.

Her mum was gentle, stayed nearby and stroked her head, brought her sweet tea, let her eat soup sat on the sofa as though she had the flu. Merryn wept and slept by turns, consumed by her sense that she was at fault, that had she told someone, anyone, perhaps Layla would not be dead, but her mum saw only loss, and wondered why Merryn seemed to hate herself so.

Dan was not at the funeral. Merryn had not seen Dan for weeks, but she heard from Luke that Dan’s parents had moved out of town for a better job. Merryn wondered who knew about Layla, about what she had done. Or about how Layla had not wanted to abort the baby, or about how much she had loved Dan, or about how she couldn’t talk to her mum. About how there was no other path open to her. She wondered whether you could feel ashamed once you got to Heaven.

Later, as she swung forwards, down and up, breeze on her face, and backwards, down and up, breeze on her back, a pendulum propelled by the thrust of her body, she thought about that day they had swung together at the park, just weeks and eons ago and she wondered what was the worst part, that Layla was dead, or that no one thought that they may share the blame.

Merryn closed her eyes, stretched out her legs, dangled her body from elongated arms, and felt herself fall from the sky.