The Summer of Us by Cecilia Vinesse

Author:Cecilia Vinesse
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published: 2018-06-05T04:00:00+00:00

18

Rae

Wednesday, July 6

PRAGUE

Ta-da!” Clara raised her arms with a flourish.

Rae examined the map on her phone. “And what exactly are we looking at?”

“The Astronomical Clock!” Clara paused. “This is the Astronomical Clock, right?”

She was asking Aubrey, but Aubrey didn’t hear—she was watching tour groups walk across the square. It was the same square Rae and Clara had stood in the night before, but it looked different now. Brighter. Filled with vendors hawking sun hats and people filming videos with their cell phones. A break-dance troupe performed where, last night, the band had played. Rae tried to clear it all away, to let memories of the evening before flood back in—darkness and light, music and silence. She tried to feel like it was all here again.

“Rae?” Clara said. “Does that look like the right clock to you?”

“Yeah, I think so.” Rae’s arm was right beside Clara’s—the backs of their hands brushing together. The daylight and the crowds seemed to evaporate completely as Rae remembered Clara’s hands moving lightly to her sides, the press of her bright-pink lips.

“We should get closer,” Aubrey said suddenly. “It’s about to strike noon.”

Rae was pulled from her thoughts. “What happens at noon?”

But Aubrey was already heading over to where a crowd had started to gather. Built into the side of an old tower were two enormous clock faces stacked one above the other with a tiny gold sun rotating around one of them.

Rae and Clara caught up to Aubrey, and the three of them stood in a row, Rae peeking at Aubrey out of the corner of her eye. She was still wearing the T-shirt she’d had on the night before, and her ponytail was a mess. It was nearly one AM when Rae and Clara had found her at the bar and led her back to the hostel, and it was nearly four AM when she finally agreed to try to get some sleep. Before then, she’d told them a little about the fight she’d had with Jonah. She told them what he’d said about Leah and about New York. But she didn’t mention anything about him leaving. Or why she’d ended up at that bar.

Honestly, it pissed Rae off a little. She kept wondering what would have happened if Aubrey had never called. If she and Clara had stayed in the shadows of those buildings a little bit longer, arms around each other, breathing each other in.

The hour chimed, and Rae shaded her eyes and lifted her head. A mechanical skeleton emerged from inside the clock and pulled a cord to make a bell ring.

“Well,” she said. “This is some pretty weird shit.”

Aubrey made a small noise that might have been a laugh. (Rae decided to believe it was a laugh.) Mechanical figures moved across the clock in a procession. Saints and apostles, their faces contorted in anguish. Tourists clicked their cameras. And then the bells stopped chiming; the crowd dispersed.

“Damn,” Rae said. “I’m so unbelievably glad we don’t live in medieval times.”

They headed

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