14. Fourteen

“Summer! Wait!”

Alex catches up with me as I reach the door of my hotel room, and I freeze on the spot, wondering if there’s even the slightest chance that he might not notice me standing here, key card raised.

But of course he does.

“If you’re here to gloat, save it,” I tell him without turning around. “I’m not in the mood.”

This statement would probably qualify as the understatement of the century. I’m so flustered by my recent public humiliation that it takes three attempts for me to get my key card into the slot, and even then, the stupid thing refuses to work.

“Here, let me try.”

Alex reaches over my shoulder and takes the card out of my hand, flipping it the right way up before sliding it back into the door, which immediately clicks open.

“Thanks,” I mutter, attempting to slip through it before he can say anything else. In a move that neatly sums up my entire life to date, though, the strap of my bag gets caught in the door handle, and I go pinging backwards into Alex’s solid chest, a small sob of frustration escaping my lips as I go.

“Summer,” Alex says again. “Could you just stand still for a second so I can talk to you without you trying to break something?”

“I don’t want to talk,” I tell him, crossing my arms defensively over my chest as I turn to face him at last. “Because I know you’re going to take the piss out of me for what just happened, and I’m really not in the mood, okay?”

Alex frowns. He’s wearing a slim-fitting black shirt tonight, with black jeans, and his green eyes look very bright in his tanned face.

Trust him to have a golden tan after two days, while I’ve just got a few extra freckles and a nose like Rudolph.

“I don’t want to gloat,” he says quietly. “Really.”

I wait for the sarcastic comment which is surely about to follow this, but it doesn’t come. Instead, he just reaches up and rubs the stubble on his chin thoughtfully, as if he’s working out what to say.

“I missed you at dinner tonight,” he says.

“Oh. Right.”

I pause again, to give him time to deliver whatever punchline he has in mind here, but he just keeps looking down at me with those poet’s eyes of his, until it starts to feel uncomfortable.

“Are you joking?” I ask suspiciously. “Because, like I said, I’m not—”

“No,” he insists, his eyes widening to emphasize his innocence. “I really did miss you. It was quite dull, really, being able to eat my food rather than wear it.”

And there it is.

“Cool,” I say shortly, turning back to the door, which has slammed shut behind me and automatically locked itself, forcing me to start all over again with the key card.

“So, how did you get on with Whatsisface?” says Alex casually, as I try to remember which way up it goes. “Did you manage to catch up with him?”

I freeze again, torn between the need to be alone with my humiliation, and the equally pressing need to talk to someone about Jamie and the kiss-that-wasn’t-really-a-kiss.

“Yeah, I did,” I tell him, trying to match his casual tone. “We had dinner together, actually. That’s why you didn’t see me in the restaurant.”

There’s a short beat of silence.

“That’s great,” says Alex, sounding relieved.

I look over my shoulder suspiciously.

“Great? I thought you didn’t approve of me going after him? I think the word was ‘ridiculous’?”

“No,” he says, seriously. “It was risking your job I thought was ridiculous. I mean, your boss could be waiting to sack you as soon as you get back, for all you know. I thought running off after Whatsisface like that was just … well, it was very you, let’s put it that way.”

“His name’s Jamie,” I tell him stiffly. “As you well know. And, for your information, he didn’t think any of it was ridiculous. He thought me coming here was a brilliant idea.”

“Really? You told him you dropped everything to come here and find him? And he said it was ‘brilliant’? Wow.”

Alex rubs his chin again. This time, I’m positive he’s doing it to hide the smirk I can see on his lips.

God, he’s unbearable.

“I didn’t say that exactly,” I reply. “Even if I had, though, he wouldn’t have laughed at me. He’s not like you. He’s your polar opposite, in fact.”

An expression I can’t quite read flits briefly across Alex’s face.

“Right,” he says quietly. “Well, I’m happy for you, Summer. Really. Look, it’s been a long day; I think I’ll turn in. Goodnight.”

Without waiting for an answer, he goes to his own door — which is right next to mine — and pulls an expensive-looking wallet out of his pocket, from which he produces his key card.

“Wait!” I hear myself say as he slots it into the door, getting it right on the first attempt, which is no less than I’d expect from him.

He looks over at me with a ‘what now?’ expression.

“Weird question,” I begin, “And trust me when I tell you, I wish there was someone else I could ask. But have you ever… have you ever kissed one of your female friends on the lips? Platonically, I mean? Like, it genuinely didn’t mean anything; you were just saying goodnight, say?”

Alex’s eyes go immediately to my lips.

“Are you asking me to kiss you goodnight?” he asks, his voice slightly hoarse.

“What? No!” I jump back as if I’ve been scalded. “God, no,” I add, giving a theatrical shudder, just for good measure. “It’s a hypothetical question. I just wondered if that’s something guys do, is all?”

Alex stares at me as if I’ve lost my mind.

“No, Summer,” he says in a ‘stating the obvious’ tone. “No, I’ve never kissed a female friend on the lips. And I obviously can’t speak for all ‘guys’, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that no, that’s not what we do.”

“Okay, cool. Thanks.”

“Is that what he did, then? Whatshisface kissed you?”

“Yes. No. Maybe. Look, I’m not sure, okay? It was just the faintest brush on the lips. I’m not sure whether it even counts.”

Alex clears his throat awkwardly.

“It counts, Summer,” he says. “Trust me: it counts.”

I go back to the key card, my on-stage humiliation all but forgotten as I wrestle with the competing emotions that rise up inside me at the knowledge that Jamie’s mouth didn’t just get lost on the way to my cheek, and that his disappointingly ordinary kiss might now lead to more disappointingly ordinary kisses.

Or maybe he was just nervous? Guys must get nervous too when they kiss someone for the first time, right?

I glance round at Alex, so I can run this one by him too, but his room door is closed, and he’s presumably already behind it; probably getting into his coffin, or whatever it is he does in the evenings.

Oh well.

At least he didn’t say anything about my attempt at singing. I suppose that’s something to be grateful for.

Inside the hotel room, I go straight to my bedside table, where the diary is waiting for me, and pick it up, along with the pen that’s lying next to it.

1. Kiss Jamie Reynolds from next door.

2. Overcome fear of flying so I can get out of Margate and travel the world.

3. Sing somewhere other than in the shower. Become famous for this.

4. See Taylor Swift in concert.

5. Become cool. (This should maybe be number 1, seeing as everything else kind of depends on it?)

6. Maybe ride a motorcycle? That seems like something a cool girl might do?

7. Meet the love of my life.

8. Jump out of an airplane. Climb a mountain.

9. Some other stuff TBC. (That means ‘to be confirmed’, by the way.)

10. Just totally change my life, basically.

My pen hovers over number 5 for a moment.

Become cool.

How will I know when I’m cool, though?

I tap the pen against my teeth, thoughtfully. I’ve always thought the ‘coolest’ people I know are the ones who aren’t actually trying to be cool. They just are cool. It’s something innate to them that can’t really be imitated, and which they probably don’t even know they have.

Does that mean I could be cool too, then, and not know it? Like the heroine in a romance novel, say, who’s just, like, SO beautiful, but doesn’t realize until the hero tells her?

I think again about the strange, croaky sound that came out of my mouth when I tried to sing.

I think we can safely say I’m not quite there yet with the ‘cool’ thing.

Before I put the diary back down, I flip idly through the pages, selecting an entry at random to read:

Last night I decided to record myself singing, just for a laugh, and it was the weirdest thing ever, because, when I listened back to the recording, it didn’t sound like me AT ALL. Or it didn’t sound like I do in my head, anyway. Like, in my head, I don’t have a voice that high. Then again I don’t have freckles or one giant eyebrow in my head, either. In my head I’m not even 16 years old: I’m at least eighteen, and I sing in a band, while also starring in movies. And I look a little bit like Amy Adams, only younger, obviously.

So, I guess what I’m wondering now is whether it’s just me that this is happening to, or whether everyone has a secret person in their own heads? Take Chloe, for instance. Is the Chloe I know the same Chloe that gets into bed at night and dreams about whatever people who aren’t me dream about? (And actually, while we’re on the subject, what DO people who aren’t me dream about? Because I really want to know?)

I mean, if anyone has a secret self tucked away in their head, it would be Chloe. The Chloe who sits next to me in school and is going to come to see Taylor with me if she ever comes to Margate on tour definitely isn’t the same Chloe who laughed at me when I said I was going to be famous; or who said I’d be really pretty if I just had eyelashes? (And I DO have eyelashes; you just can’t see them because they’re so pale.) I just don’t think that was a very nice thing to say. I’m still growing into myself, like Mum always says. It doesn’t mean I won’t one day make something of my life. And I will. I know I will. To the rest of the world, I’m like a TV set stuck on one channel that I can’t seem to flick past. The wrong channel. And I’m stuck being the Wrong Summer. But I can change that, I know it. It just might take me a little longer than other people, that’s all.

Anyway. Jamie walked Chloe and I home from school today — it really feels like we’re starting to become friends now — and once we’d dropped Chloe off at her house, we sat on the wall outside mine chatting for ages: mostly about music, but about other stuff too. He’s SO nice. I just feel like he really GETS me, you know? And I was going to ask him if he has a secret self inside his head, too, but then he started talking about this band he’s going to see soon, and it didn’t seem like the right time. I will, though. And I bet he won’t laugh at me like Chloe would, because he’ll get it. Because he’s like me. And that’s how I know we’re destined to end up together.

I put the diary down on my pillow, thinking about the photo Alex took of me earlier today, and how it didn’t feel like me, either, at first — a bit like when you hear a recording of your own voice, and you don’t sound anything like you do in your head. And I guess that photo threw me for a second, in the same way the recording did, back when I was 16. It was a bit like Alex had somehow managed to see the ‘secret’ Summer my 16-year-old self kept incoherently banging on about, and captured her on film.

Maybe that’s why it made me so uncomfortable?

And maybe that means I haven’t actually ‘grown into myself’ at all?

I got one thing right in that long-ago diary entry, though: I can still make something of my life. I can still figure out which Summer is the real one — and get everyone else to see her, too. I’m in the process of doing it, in fact, with this trip.

It’s just taking me a little longer than other people.

That’s all.