Fifteenth Summer (26 page)

She looked at Josh, then me.

“You definitely seem to have everyone’s stamp of approval,” Allison observed. She nodded at Melissa, who was grinning at us like a doting aunt.

“Yeah, there’s no feud or anything,” I said. “It’s just, well, I live in California, and Josh is here. I head home in less than a week.”

“Ah.” Allison nodded. “Well, that’s where writing really comes in handy. And an imagination. And an open mind.”

Josh and I looked at each other. I didn’t know
exactly
what
Allison was talking about, but I had a feeling I should file it away. For later.

Allison adjusted her (vintage!) cat-eye glasses as she peered at the specials board.

“Do you want a piece of pie?” I said, twisting in my seat to see what flavors were left on the board.

“No, I’m looking at that paragraph there at the bottom,” Allison said. She read it out loud, which made it sound kind of . . . cool!

“ ‘B. wondered if this was the moment of her destruction. Thayer had discovered the one chink in her armor. Since she was technically an arachnid, that was no mean feat. But he didn’t have to be so smug about it! What Thayer didn’t know was that B. had almost a dozen lives to spare, and she was tiring of this one anyway.’ ”

“It’s a serial,” I said with a shrug. “If you haven’t read the rest of it . . .”

“It’s your basic hellhound arrives in a small town, gets a job as a waitress, wreaks havoc, and smites the regulars sort of story,” Josh provided for her.

Allison looked impressed.

“You’ve got a voice,” she told me. “You’ve definitely got a voice. Let me ask you this. If you could never write another word . . .”

She paused, waiting for me to fill in the blank.

“Um, I’m having trouble picturing that scenario,” I said. “I really don’t know what I’d do!”

“Yup.” Allison nodded at Josh and picked up her pimento
cheese sandwich. “She’s a writer. Oh, she’s got it bad.”

I felt both proud and terrified as Allison pronounced this about me, like it was a diagnosis. Was it even possible that
I
could someday be like
her
?

I twisted in my seat and took another look at the little passage I’d written about B., the hellhound in an apron.

It was just a paragraph.

But maybe it really was, as Allison said, more than that. It was my voice and no one else’s. It was my imagination.

It was, perhaps, the start of something I’d never dared to dream about.

B
ut first there had to be an ending.

I tried not to dwell on the days ticking away. If anything, the fact that I was leaving very,
very
soon made every minute I had with Josh that much better. I forced myself to enjoy every kiss, every call, every lazy morning lolling together in a boat or on the beach with a cooler full of sodas and a book.

Had it been my fourteenth summer, I’m not sure I would have been able to keep smiling and savoring like that. But this summer I knew not to waste the time we had. I knew to celebrate but not cling. I think that knowledge was another gift I got from Granly, one that hadn’t come in a box.

And besides, saying good-bye to Josh might not be good-bye forever. My parents, after shipping home several boxes of letters, photos, and other Granly relics, had decided to keep the cottage.

“At least while Hannah’s in school in Chicago,” Dad told us, giving Hannah a squeeze. “It’ll give us an excuse to come visit her more often!”

“Oh, great,” Hannah mock-moaned.

I didn’t ask if we would come back to Bluepointe next summer. I didn’t want to plan for that or think that far ahead. Because if it didn’t happen . . .

Whatever
happened with Josh, I realized, wouldn’t change the singular miracle that was this summer—the summer I fell in love for the first time. The summer I learned to live without Granly. And the summer when (maybe, just maybe) I first looked in the mirror and saw a writer looking back.

It was even the summer that I started to feel a glimmer of affection for my red curls. After all, I found out on my last night with Josh, it was the hair that had first hooked him.

We’d decided to make our last date a non-date, since that’s what we did best. We packed a picnic and took an endless walk on the beach, holding hands and talking—talking fast, as if we could fit it all in. Of course that was impossible. I couldn’t imagine an end to the things Josh and I wanted to talk about.

We kept sneaking looks at each other’s faces—memorizing.

And of course we kissed. We lay in the sand between tufts of dune grass, the sun pulling away inch by inch, as if drawing a blanket of shadows over us.

It was here that Josh wrapped a handful of my hair around his fingers and groaned.

“I remember the first time I saw this hair of yours,” he said.
“It’s one of the reasons I acted so freaked out. I’d never seen anything so beautiful.”

I started to reach for my automatic I-hate-my-hair response, but then I stopped myself. Because I didn’t. Not anymore. How could I hate Granly’s legacy? How could I hate something that Josh adored?

“That’s why I wanted you to buy this book,” Josh said. He reached into the bag that contained our romantic picnic dinner, which we hadn’t had the appetite to eat yet. The book he pulled out was wrapped in classic Dog Ear style—plain brown paper with a whimsical tuft of bright ribbons and a stamped image of E.B. with his tongue lolling out.

I opened the wrapper to find
Beyond the Beneath
, the book with the mysterious red-headed mermaid on the cover.

“Oh, I
wanted
this,” I breathed, thanking him with a long kiss.

“The whole time we were talking that first day, all I could think about was this book,” Josh said. “And that you
had
to read it.”

“And then I rejected it,” I said with a horrified laugh.

“You were so stubborn,” Josh said.

“I was also broke!” I reminded him, kissing the corner of his mouth. “Now, thanks to you, I’m less so.”

“Broke or stubborn?” Josh asked.

“Both,” I said. I ran my fingers through his hair, loving how every-which-way it was now that it had grown out some.

“You know, I’ve saved up enough tip money to get myself a new e-reader,” I said.

“Are you going to?” Josh asked. He ran a fingertip over my collarbone, making me shiver.

I shook my head.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “You know, I really like bookstores. Well, one in particular.”

Josh smiled—a little wanly.

“It’s not going to be the same without you, Chelsea,” he said.

“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?” I asked.

He nodded as he leaned in to kiss me again. And again and again. I only pulled away when I just had to get one more word in. Two tears spilled down my cheeks, but I smiled through them.

“I won’t ever be the same either,” I told Josh.

It was true. Josh was my first love. Even if I never saw him again, that—he—would always be a part of me.

Many thanks . . .

To Jennifer Klonsky for another whirlwind summer.

To all the friends who shared the south shore of Lake Michigan with me, particularly the Berkelhamer family and “the BC.”

To Little Shop of Stories in Decatur, Georgia—the bookstore that inspired Dog Ear.

To my parents, for all the child care and cheerleading.

To my sweet daughters, for understanding when mom is fiction-addled.

And most of all to Paul. Thank you for being there with me every step of the way and for clearing the way for me to write.

Want more

sweet summer romance?

Here’s an excerpt from

Sixteenth Summer,

also by Michelle Dalton.

T
he first time you lay eyes on someone who is going to become
someone
to you—
your
someone—you’re supposed to feel the earth shift beneath your feet, right? Sparks will course through your fingertips and there’ll definitely be fireworks. There are
always
fireworks.

But it doesn’t really happen that way. It’s messier than that—and much better.

Trust me, I know. I know how it feels to have a
someone.

To be in love.

But the day after my sophomore year ended, I didn’t know
anything.
At least, that’s the way it feels now.

Let me clarify that. It’s not like I was a complete numbskull. I’d just gotten a report card full of A’s. And one B-minus. (What can I say. Geometry is my sworn enemy.)

And I knew just about everything there was to know about Dune Island. That’s the little sliver of sand, sea oats, and sno-cones off the coast of Georgia where I’ve lived for my entire sixteen-year existence.

I knew, for instance, where to get the spiciest low-country boil (The Swamp) and the sweetest oysters (Fiddlehead). Finding the most life-changing ice-cream cone was an easy one. You went to The Scoop, which just happened to be owned by my parents.

While the “shoobees” who invaded the island every summer tiptoed around our famously delicate dunes (in their spotless, still-sporting-the-price-tag rubber shoes), I knew how to pick my way through the long, fuzzy grass without crushing a single blade.

And I definitely knew every boy in my high school. Most of us had known one another since we were all at the Little Sea Turtle Play School on the north end of the island. Which is to say, I’d seen most of them cry, throw up blue modeling clay, or stick Cheetos up their noses.

It’s hard to fall for a guy once you’ve seen him with a nostril full of snack food, even if he was only three at the time.

And here’s one other thing I knew as I pedaled my bike to the beach on that first night of my sixteenth summer. Or at least, I
thought
I knew. I knew exactly what to expect of the season. It was going to be just like the summer before it, and the summer before that.

I’d spend my mornings on the North Peninsula, where tourists rarely venture. Probably because the sole retail establishment there is Angelo’s BeachMart. Angelo’s looks so salt-torn and shacky, you’d never know they make these incredible gourmet po’boys at a counter in the back. It’s also about the only place on Dune Island where you
can’t
find any fudge or commemorative T-shirts.

Then I’d ride my bike south to the boardwalk and spend my afternoon coning up ice cream and shaving ice for sno-cones at The Scoop.

Every night after dinner, Sam, Caroline, and I would call around to find out where everyone was hanging that night. We’d
all land at the beach, the deck behind The Swamp, Angelo’s parking lot, or one of the other hideouts we’d claimed over the years.

Home by eleven.

Rinse salt water out of hair.

Repeat.

This was why I was trying hard not to yawn as I pedaled down Highway 80. I was headed for the bonfire on the South Shore.

That’s right, the
annual
bonfire that kicked off the Dune Island summer, year after year after year.

One thing that kept me alert was the caravan of summer people driving their groaning vans and SUVs just a little too weavily down the highway. I don’t know if it was the blazing, so-gorgeous-it-hurt sunset that was distracting them or my gold beach cruiser with the giant bundle of sticks bungeed to the basket. Either way, I was relieved when I swooped off the road and onto the boardwalk.

I tapped my kickstand down and had just started to unhook my pack of firewood when I heard Caroline’s throaty voice coming at me from down the boardwalk. I turned with a smile.

But when I saw that Caroline was with Sam—and they were holding hands—I couldn’t help but feel shocked for a moment.

In the next instant, of course, I remembered—this was our new normal. Sam and Caroline were no longer just my best friends. They were each other’s soul mate.

As of two Saturdays earlier, that was.

I don’t know why I was still weirded out by the fact that Sam and Caroline had gotten together that night. Or why I cringed
whenever they gazed into each other’s eyes or held hands. (Thankfully, I hadn’t seen them kissing. Yet.)

Because the Sam-and-Caroline thing? It was really no surprise at all. There’d always been this
thing
between them ever since Sam moved to the island at age eight and settled into my and Caroline’s friendship as easily as a scoop of ice cream nests in a cone.

We even joked about it. When Sam made fun of Caroline’s raspy voice and she teased him about his gangly height; when she goosed him in the ribs and he pulled her long, white-blond ponytail, I’d roll my eyes and say, “Guys! Get a room.”

Both of them would recoil in horror.

“Oh gross, Anna!” Caroline would say, sputtering and laughing all at once.

Inevitably, Sam would respond with another ponytail tug, Caroline would retaliate with a tickle, and the whole song and dance of denial would start all over again.

But now it had actually happened. Sam and Caroline had become a Couple. And I was realizing that I’d kind of
liked
the denial.