Summer's End Read online

  For Colleen

  Forever and always, till the end of time

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also Available

  Copyright

  ONE

  June 30

  The red cardinal whistled a panicked, pained song. Its wings twitched frantically in the air. The rest of its body lay broken in the dirt, statue still. Its eyes, though. Its eyes — black like tar — were wide open, startled, very much alive. Jacob couldn’t peel his own eyes away. The cardinal’s gaze was pinned on the four friends — giants towering over the small, dying bird — who ringed it in the woods.

  They’d come across the bird as they walked aimlessly through the forest behind Jacob’s house, killing time and avoiding grown-ups on the first day of their summer vacation. When they had first set out, their conversation easily shifting from baseball to movies to superheroes, their moods were light and carefree. But now, knowing what they must do to end the bird’s suffering, their moods had darkened like a storm cloud.

  Hayden picked up a jagged rock the size of a human skull and handed it to Ichiro. “You do it.”

  “Chicken,” Hayden’s twin sister, Hannah, said. She punched him lightly on the arm.

  “Am not,” said Hayden, rubbing his arm gingerly. “And also, ow!”

  Hannah tucked her thumbs under her armpits and flapped her arms like wings. “Bawk, bawk, bawk-bawk-bawk,” she said.

  Hayden sighed but didn’t say or do anything in response. Since he wasn’t putting up a fight, Hannah slowly stopped her chicken imitation, and their focus shifted back to the dying bird and the rock in Ichiro’s hand.

  Ichiro turned it over and studied its surface, then raised it above his head. For a moment Jacob thought he was actually about to do it. But instead of striking, he lowered the rock slowly.

  “No,” Ichiro said. “Jake should do it.”

  “Why?” Jacob asked.

  “You’re the oldest.”

  It was true, by two months. A short amount of time that made a world of difference to the three younger friends.

  Jacob’s birthday was in January, and the twins were born in March of the same year. They were fourteen, but Ichiro’s fourteenth birthday was still five months away.

  Jacob knew growing up had its advantages. Adults trusted him to be on his own more often. He got to stay up a little later, watch scarier movies. But it also had its drawbacks — more chores, the expectation that he act more mature, being handed a rock.

  He took the rock from Ichiro. It was heavier than he expected. It slipped a little in Jacob’s fingers, but he managed to get a hold of it before it fell completely from his grasp. He didn’t look at his friends, afraid someone might be suppressing a smirk.

  A cloud passed overhead and blocked the sun, giving the forest a grey, sluggish aura. A light breeze blew Jacob’s hair and chilled the back of his neck. The cool air was welcome and refreshing. The town of Valeton was bracing for a scorcher of a summer. One for the record books. And with the heat would come the storms.

  With his free hand Jacob brushed a strand of hair out of his eyes. He looked down on the cardinal. Its wings hadn’t stopped twitching.

  A string of muscles in Jacob’s gut clenched. He tried not to think of the breakfast he’d eaten. He also tried not to think of the bird more than he had to, but that proved to be impossible. He hoped it wasn’t a baby, just small. Maybe that would make killing it easier, somehow. Like swatting a mosquito or stepping on an ant. No one hesitates to kill an insect. Why should this be any different? Plus it was a mercy kill, the right thing to do. Leaving the cardinal — baby or not — to die slowly and painfully would be cruel.

  So why did it feel so wrong?

  A shadow passed between two large trees, about fifteen metres behind Ichiro and the twins. He could have sworn it looked like a boy wearing a red ball cap.

  “What are you looking at?” Ichiro asked. He turned around and scanned the woods.

  Jacob shrugged. “I don’t know. Nothing, I guess,” he said weakly, but he couldn’t help wondering.

  A boy in a red hat. Could it actually have been …? Jacob shook his head. No, impossible. It’s been four years. And the longer Jacob stared through the woods without seeing anything, the more he began to doubt he’d seen anything at all.

  “It was probably just my imagination,” he mumbled.

  “Jacob,” Hannah said, with an edge of urgency but not without kindness, snapping him out of his thoughts. She could switch from sarcasm to sincerity as quickly as a darkened room suddenly lit with golden light. “The bird. It’s … It’s time.”

  Jacob peeled his sight away from the distant trees and nodded. With a muffled grunt and a clenched jaw, Jacob raised the rock above his head. The forest grew unnaturally quiet, as if the wind and the trees were holding a collective breath. In the sudden silence, the cardinal’s panicked whistles were amplified, piercing Jacob’s skull with each rapid trill.

  Jacob sighed. He lowered the rock and closed his eyes. “I can’t,” he whispered.

  Without warning someone pulled the rock from his hand. He opened his eyes and saw Hannah, her face as hard as the rock she now held. She cupped it between both hands, high in the air. In a flash she drove it down. It sank a good depth into the soft forest floor, burying the cardinal’s crushed body beneath it.

  Its left wing — the only part of the bird they could still see — went ramrod straight and then fell limp.

  Time passed — a lot or a little, Jacob couldn’t say — before he remembered to breathe again. No one spoke. The wind picked up once more, and the leaves rustled their familiar tune. A woodpecker tapped a tree trunk somewhere nearby.

  The stone jutted out of the dirt like a tombstone. Jacob pictured himself and his friends dressed in black, someone reciting the Lord’s Prayer. With this image in mind he had to suppress a nervous laugh.

  Hayden broke the silence. “Hannah, what was that?”

  She shrugged. “Someone had to do it. I got tired of waiting.”

  The three boys couldn’t argue with that. Killing the cardinal had to be done, and none of them had been able to do it.

  She bent before the rock as if kneeling to pray and yanked it free from the earth.

  Ichiro groaned in disgust and Jacob flinched. He quickly looked away. The cardinal’s body had been flattened. Blood pooled in tiny pockets of dirt. A small twist of intestine had ruptured through its breast.

  Hannah tossed the rock aside. A small red feather was stuck to it. She kicked some dirt over the bird and stared at the forest floor, her expression unreadable.

  Jacob had no idea what she was thinking. Nor was he sure he wanted to know.

  Hannah’s face softened. She even smiled. “C’mon. Let’s get out of here and go swimming.” She said it as casually as someone who hadn’t just crushed a bird with a rock and her own hands. Without waiting for the others to respond, she walked along the path to the country road and the town limit sign where they’d left their bikes.

  Jacob’s eyes fell back to the thin layer of dirt that failed to fully cover the crushed bird. He groaned and quickly looked away from the gore.

  “Well …” Ichiro said. After a few
silent moments, it became evident whatever else he had planned to say was going to remain unsaid. But Jacob had a good guess what Ichiro and Hayden were thinking. Same thing as him.

  It was no surprise that it had fallen to Hannah to kill the cardinal. Jacob had been friends with the twins nearly his entire life. Their house was around the corner from his. They’d been in a few scraps with other kids over the years and Hannah had always held her own. Often, she walked away from fights with fewer bruises and scrapes than anyone, boy or girl. She was tough, both of body and mind.

  The grey cloud overhead rolled on, and sunlight once again fell heavily on their shoulders. The air was humid, thick with the earthy smells of an old, cold forest entering a heat wave.

  Beads of sweat prickled Hayden’s forehead and dripped into his eyes. He wiped his skin and said, “Hannah’s got the right idea. Let’s go to the beach.” The plan sounded good to Jacob too.

  They walked quietly, leaving the dead cardinal behind. Their final summer before they split up to go to different high schools lay ahead. The twins were going to Robert Koch Secondary School, while Jacob was going to Valeton’s only other public school — Valeton High, which was on the other side of town. Ichiro wasn’t only going to a different school — he was moving to a different country. The Miyazakis were leaving for Japan on the third of September, a few days before the start of the school year. Summer break was Jacob’s favourite time of year, but this one, he knew, would be bittersweet.

  Hannah had already started pedalling away down the road, zigzagging side to side in a carefree manner. Ichiro and Hayden started biking to catch up, leaving Jacob alone for a moment. His bike was leaning against the town sign, which he read for the umpteenth time in his life.

  Welcome to

  VALETON

  Touched by the Past, Embraced by the Future

  Population 16,600

  Please Keep Our Children Safe

  Years ago, someone had spray-painted a line through the word safe. Whoever had defaced the sign had done so hastily, and the red paint had run down the sign before it had dried. It was only the previous year that Jacob had finally understood the joke: Please keep our children. Period. And don’t bother bringing them back.

  Jacob hated that sign, especially the graffiti. It cut too close to the bone.

  He mounted his bike and looked back down the path through the trees, into the woods. A cloud of small flies flew through the air and the leaves swayed in the breeze, but Jacob didn’t see any other movement. The boy in the red hat wasn’t there. As Jacob suspected, he probably never had been there — just a figment of his imagination.

  That was for the best. The boy in the red hat and what had happened between them was in the past. It was better not to dwell on it. Not to dwell on him.

  As for the future, it was better not to dwell on it either — even if he had a bad feeling in his gut whenever he thought about starting grade nine. He didn’t know what lay around the corner. By summer’s end his life would be different, of that Jacob was sure. So for now he would focus on the present.

  He snuck a final wary glance over his shoulder, then pedalled hard to catch up with his friends. “Hey, guys. Wait up.”

  TWO

  July 4

  Jacob and Ichiro coasted down the long, curving driveway. Tall maple and pine trees blotted out the sun and swayed in the wind, creating a soothing symphony of rustling leaves and creaking wood. The boys came to a skidding stop beside Ichiro’s house and leaned their bikes against the garage. A little farther downhill sat the lake, gleaming, lapping, calling them toward it.

  Nestled on a gently sloping hill on the north bank of Passage Lake, a twenty-five-minute bike ride from the centre of town and a five-minute ride from Twin Pines Resort, Ichiro’s house resembled a castle of cement and glass in the woods. Mrs. Miyazaki had a senior management job at the resort, but she had recently accepted a new job in Japan. Ichiro’s parents were both from Tokyo and they had long seemed eager for an excuse to return home. Jacob knew Ichiro was dreading moving in September by the way he refused to look at the sold sign on the front lawn every time they passed it.

  Jacob left his bike behind and headed for the front door.

  “Hey, Jake, hold up,” Ichiro said. “We’re not going inside.” Without further explanation he turned and walked to a wooded path. Curious, Jacob followed.

  The forest floor was covered by a blanket of brown pine needles that crackled underfoot. The twisty path was like a narrow artery choked on both sides by dense green foliage. The air vibrated with the buzz of insects. Jacob swatted a mosquito on his neck, leaving a small smear of blood on his skin, and stepped over a tree root. The path opened into a clearing. In the middle stood a fairly large wooden shed with two doors, sealed by a silver padlock.

  “You want to take Old Kablooey out on the lake for a paddle?” Jacob asked, guessing why Ichiro had led him to the shed where Mr. Miyazaki’s canoe was stored. It was a beat-up blue canoe that had seen better days. Ichiro’s father had dubbed it Old Bluey. The first time he heard it, Jacob thought Mr. Miyazaki had said Old Kablooey and the accidental new name was so fitting that it stuck.

  “Yes and no,” Ichiro said cryptically. “I have something to show you.” He pulled a key out of his pocket, unlocked the doors and swung them open. A little light fell into the shed. They stepped inside. The air was thick and musty. Slowly, Jacob’s eyes adjusted to the darkness.

  Every shelf, every corner, every nook and cranny was packed with stuff. Gardening stuff, home repair stuff and, best of all, fun stuff: lawn darts and horseshoes and croquet mallets, inflatable rafts and beach balls and water guns. And in the middle of the floor was Old Kablooey. Jacob thought that was odd because they had suspended it from the ceiling rafters the last time they had gone canoeing, just a few days before.

  And then he saw something that made him forget everything else. It was hanging in Old Kablooey’s spot. A gorgeous, brand-new red canoe. Jacob walked over to it and ran his hand along the starboard gunwale. The craft was sleek, expertly made and could seat four with room to spare.

  “Happy Independence Day!” Ichiro said, spreading his arms and grinning widely.

  “We’re not American,” Jacob pointed out dryly.

  “True, but let’s not let that stop us from celebrating. My dad bought it yesterday.”

  “But you’re moving in, like, two months.”

  “Yeah,” Ichiro said. “He knows I’m not happy about it. I guess he feels bad. Mom was pretty angry when he brought it home, but we can probably sell it for some decent cash before we move, so she agreed to let me keep it.”

  Jacob allowed his eyes to continue feasting on the red canoe and whistled. “This is so much nicer than Old Kablooey.” He looked at the sad, battered blue canoe as if it were a pitiful living thing and added, “No offence.”

  Ichiro laughed. “I haven’t put it in the water yet. I thought I’d wait for you.”

  Jacob answered by flipping a bucket upside down and stepping on it to unlatch one of the cords that strung the canoe to the roof. Ichiro took care of the other side. The canoe was surprisingly light. They lowered it to the ground and tossed a couple of paddles and life jackets in its hull.

  The boys carried it by the handholds down the hill to the edge of the lake and slid it into the water. The red paint cast a crimson reflection like a bloodstain around the canoe. They put on their life jackets, climbed in and sat in silence for a moment, relishing the gentle rocking of the boat and the sound of waves lapping against its sides.

  “Where to?” Ichiro asked.

  “Anywhere,” Jacob said. That was the beauty of it. Thanks to its horrible condition, they had been too afraid to take Old Kablooey far from Ichiro’s house. This new canoe equalled freedom. They could go anywhere. It was the beginning of summer vacation, they had no responsibilities and it didn’t matter where they went or what they did. Fun was guaranteed.

  “Aye, aye,” Ichiro said. “Scarlet Sails is setting out f
or adventure. Destination: unknown.”

  “You named the canoe Scarlet Sails?”

  “I did.”

  “Even though canoes don’t have sails?”

  “I never said it was a good name.”

  “What are you, three years old?”

  “Hey, man, I’m not the only one who gives stuff lame names. I know you called your teddy bear Mr. Jingles.”

  “Yeah,” Jacob said, “when I was three.”

  “But you still sleep with Mr. Jingles, don’t you?”

  Jacob chose to ignore that comment and directed the conversation back to Scarlet Sails. “Well, it could’ve been worse. You could’ve named the canoe Emerald Engine. Or Purple Propeller.”

  “Don’t be dumb. I might not be a boat expert, but I know colours.”

  Jacob laughed and dipped his paddle into the water with a satisfying splash. They pushed off the shore and cut into Passage Lake. Their strokes fell into a rhythm and they picked up speed quickly. The golden sun beat warmly on their backs as they passed million-dollar summer homes. Some were owned by movie stars and pro athletes who vacationed in Muskoka, but most were owned by wealthy business people. A speedboat rumbled past, pulling a water skier who waved at the boys. They waved back.

  Time dipped and dived with their paddles, leading around bends, past bays, through creeks, taking them deeper into Passage Lake and farther from home. A multitude of small rocky islands dotted the water, some home to cottages, some too small to fit more than a tent.

  Ichiro pulled his paddle out of the water and Jacob followed his lead. They hadn’t taken a break for a long time and his muscles burned. It was a good feeling.

  “Would you rather fight one hundred duck-sized horses,” Ichiro asked, “or one horse-sized duck?”

  “What?” Jacob shook his head and wondered if he’d heard his friend correctly.

  “It’s a very simple question,” Ichiro said with mock restraint. “One hundred duck-sized horses or one horse-sized duck. Who would you rather fight? You know, to the death?”