I Know What You Did Last Summer

With slowly growing horror she stared at the letter, at is one
black sentence that peered up at her from the smudged paper....

It's a dream, she told herself hopefully. I'm not really awake
and standing here in the dining room at all. I'm lying in bed
upstairs, asleep, and this is only a nightmare like the ones I used
to have back in the beginning. I'll close my eyes, and when I open
them I will wake up. It will be gone-the paper will be gone-it will
never have been.

So she closed her eyes, and when she opened them again the paper
was still there in her hand with the short sentence printed on
it-

"I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER."

chapter 1

The note was there, lying beside her plate when she came down to
breakfast. Later, when she thought back, Julie would remember it.
Small. Plain. Her name and address hand-lettered in stark black
print across the front of the envelope.

At the time, however, she had eyes only for the other letter,
long and white and official, which lay beside it. Hurriedly, she
picked this up and paused, glancing across the table at her mother
who had just come in from the kitchen:

"It's come," Julie said.

"Well, aren't you going to open it?" Mrs. James set the
coffeepot down on its hot plate. "You've been waiting for this long
enough. I would think you'd have had it open before you even sat
down."

"I guess I'm scared," Julie admitted. She slipped her forefinger
under the corner of the flap. "Okay. Here goes."

Running her finger the length of the envelope, she drew out the
folded sheet of stationery and smoothed it flat on the table.

"Dear Miss James," she read aloud. "Lam pleased to inform you
that you have been accepted-"

"Oh, honey!" Her mother gave a little gasp of delight "How
wonderful!"

"Accepted!" Julie repeated. "Mom, can you believe it? I'm
accepted! I'm going to Smith!"

Mrs. James came around the table and gave her daughter a warm
hug.

"I'm so proud of you, Julie, and your dad certainly would
be too. If only he could have lived to have known about it, but-oh,
there's no sense in looking backward." Her eyes were suspiciously
bright. "Maybe he does know. I like to think so. And if not, I'm
proud enough for the both of us."

"I can't believe it," Julie said. "I honestly can't. When I took
those tests, I felt as though I was missing so many questions. I
guess I knew more than I thought I did."

"It's your senior year that's made this possible," her mother
said. "I've never seen such a change in anybody as in you this past
year. The way you've buckled down and studied-you've been a
completely different person. And, I'll admit now, it's
worried me a little."

"Worried you?" Julie exclaimed in surprise. "Why, I thought you
always dreamed of my going to the same college you did. Last year
you were on me all the time about being out too much and never
cracking a book and spending half my life on cheerleader
practice."

"I know. It's just that I never expected you to do such an
about-face. I can almost pinpoint the day it happened. It was just
about the time you broke up with Ray."

"Mom, I've told you-" Julie tried to keep her voice light
despite the sudden shock of cold that hit her stomach. "Ray and I
didn't exactly break up. We just decided we were seeing too much of
each other and we'd slow it down for awhile. Then he left home and
took off for the coast, and that took care of that."

"But to give up dating so completely-
⁰

"I haven't," Julie said impatiently. "I still go out some. In
fact, Bud's coming over tonight. That's a date."

"Yes, there's Bud. But that's only been recently and it's not
the same. He's older, more serious about everything. Of course, I'm
happy and proud that you've put in enough work to get accepted by a
good eastern college, but I wish you'd been able to balance it
better. Somehow I have the feeling that you've missed a lot of the
fun of your senior year."

"Well, you can't have it all," Julie said. Her voice sounded
high and sharp, even to her own ears. The cold feeling in her
stomach was spreading higher, up where it touched her heart.

She shoved back her chair and got up.

"I'm going up to my room. I've got to find my history
notes."

"But you haven't eaten yet," Mrs. James exclaimed,
gesturing toward the plate of scrambled eggs and toast, still
untouched on the table.

"I'm sorry," Julie said. "I-I guess I'm-too excited."

She could feel her mother's worried gaze upon her as she left
the table. Even after she was out of eyesight, the worry stayed
with her as she climbed the stairs and went down the hall to her
room.

Mother knows too much, she thought. She has this funny way of
knowing more than you ever tell her.

"I've never seen such a change in anybody," her mother had said.
"I can almost pinpoint the day-
"

But, you can't, Julie told her silently. Not really. And you
mustn't try. Please, Mom, you mustn't ever try. '

She entered her bedroom and shoved the door shut. It closed with
a sharp click, and her mother was left behind, back down in the
breakfast room with the uneaten eggs and the coffeepot. The room
closed protectively around her, a perfect room for a teenage girl
who was pretty and loved and happy with herself, a girl who had
never had a problem.

Her mother had had the room decorated for her a little over a
year ago, on her sixteenth birthday.

"We'll have it done in any color you want," she had said. "You
can choose."

"Pink," Julie had said immediately. It was her favorite color,
the one she wore most often, even though she had red hair.

There was a pink, ruffled blouse in the farthest corner of her
closet, buried behind the other clothes. It had been new that night
last summer. "You look like a tea rose with freckles," Ray had
teased her. It was a beautiful blouse, but she had never worn it
after that night. She would have given it away, if she had not been
afraid that her mother might remember it sometime and ask what had
become of it.

Now she seated herself on the end of her bed, drawing deep, slow
breaths while the cold within her faded and her heart grew
still.

This is dumb, Julie told herself firmly. It's been almost a year
since the thing happened. It's over and done with, and I swore to
myself I'd never think about it again. If I let myself get this
uptight over some innocent little comment of Mom's, I'll wind up
right back where I started, an absolute wreck.

Across from her in the oval mirror over the bureau another
Julie looked back at her, pale and unsmiling. I have changed, she
thought with mild surprise. The girl in the mirror bore little
resemblance to last year's Julie, bubbly, bouncy, sparkplug
of the pep squad, the cheerleader with the smallest size and the
biggest yell. This girl had shadows behind her eyes and a
tightness about the mouth.

You're going to Smith, Julie told herself. Just keep that in
mind, will you? You're getting out of here in only a couple of
months. You won't be going to the University, you'll be going east,
away from this town-and the road-and the picnic ground above it.
You won't be running into Ray's mother at the drugstore. You won't
see Barry on campus or Helen on the TV set. You'll be out- free! A
new place, new people, new things to do and think about, a whole
new set of things to remember.

She was steadied now. Her breathing was slow again and even. She
picked up the letter from Smith, which she had dropped on the bed
beside her, and looked again at her name, neatly typed, on the
official-looking envelope. She would take it to school with her,
she decided; there were people there she could show it to. Not to
the kids especially- there weren't any kids she was that close to
this year-but Mr. Price, her English teacher, would be happy for
her and Mrs. Busby, who taught American Studies.

And tonight when Bud came over she would show it to him. He'd be
impressed, and sorry, maybe, because she would be going away.
Bud had been calling so often recently that it was possible that he
was getting more serious than he should be. It would be good for
him to realize that this relationship wasn't going to turn
into anything, that it was just for now and that in the fall she
would be somewhere else.

There was a rap on the bedroom door.

"Julie?" her mother asked. "Are you keeping track of time,
dear?"

"Yes. No-I guess I wasn't." Julie got up off the bed and opened
the door. "I was just sitting here, gloating over the acceptance.
Honestly, I'd just about given up hoping. It's been so long since I
applied."

"I know," Mrs. James said sympathetically,"And I didn't mean to
take the wind out of your sails by criticizing. I know how hard
you've been working, and I've just been afraid you were overdoing
it. I'm glad that now you can relax and enjoy your
summer."

"I'm glad too," Julie said.

She put her arms around her mother and gave her an impulsive
hug. Her mother's arms came back around her. surprised and
glad.

I ought to hug her more often, Julie thought. I don't deserve to
have somebody like this for a mother. I love her so much, and I'm
really all she has since Daddy died. Now I'll be going away and
she'll be alone, and still she's happy for me.

"Are you sure you'll be okay?" she asked against her mother's
soft cheek. "Can you get along, do you think, with me so far
away?"

"Oh, I think so," Mrs. James said with a catch in her voice
which was supposed to pass for laughter. "I made out all right
before you were born, didn't I? I'll keep busy. I've been thinking
that maybe I'll go back towork full time."

"Would you like that?" Julie asked. Her mother had been a home
economics teacher before her marriage, and since her
husband's death eight years ago, she had been working as a
substitute.

"I think I would. It would be nice to have my own class again.
With you out of the nest there won't be anyone to need me at home,
so it's time to be needed somewhere else."

"I did lose track of time," Julie said apologetically.
"I'd better start running."

Her mother glanced at her watch. "You
are
late. Would
you like me to drive you?"

"That's all right," Julie told her. "I haven't had a tardy slip
all year, so it won't kill me toget one today. And maybe I won't
Mr. Price is a pretty all right guy about things like that."

She gathered up her books and history notes from the bedside
table. Downstairs she paused long enough to rummage in the penny
bowl on the sideboard for lunch money.

•TO see you after school," she said. "Bud's not picking me
up till around eight, so there's no reason we have to eat early.
Are you going out anyplace?"

"I don't have any plans," Mrs. James said. "Wait a minute,
honey. You didn't get your letter."

"Yes, I did. It's here in my notebook."

"No-I mean the other one." Her mother leaned across the table to
pick up the second envelope, half-concealed by the edge of the egg
plate. "There were two pieces of mail for you this morning. Not
that this could possibly be as exciting as the first one."

"It's the size of a party invitation, though I can't think who
would be inviting me to a party." Julie took the small envelope
from her mother's hand. "That's funny-big block printing and no
return address."

She tore the envelope open and removed a folded sheet of lined
paper.

"Who is it from?" her mother called back over her shoulder, as
she carried the breakfast dishes into the kitchen. "Anybody I've
ever heard of?"

"No," Julie said. "Nobody you know."

With slowly growing horror she stared at the letter, at
the one black sentence that peered up at her from the smudged
paper.

I'm going to be sick, she thought

Her legs felt weak, and she reached out and caught hold of the
edge of the table to steady herself.

It's a dream, she told herself hopefully. I'm not really awake
and standing here in the dining room at all. I'm lying in bed
upstairs, asleep, and this is only a nightmare like the ones I used
to have back in the beginning. I'll close my eyes, and when I open
them I will wake up. It will be gone-the paper will be gone-it will
never have been.

So she closed her eyes, and when she opened them again the paper
was still there in her hand with the short sentence printed on
it-

"I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER."