Fifteenth Summer - By Michelle Dalton Page 0,10

drift over to the YA section. Refreshingly, it was placed smack-dab in the middle of the store, instead of tucked into some shadowy corner in the back. I rounded the aqua bookcase, almost licking my lips in anticipation of all the pretty book jackets arrayed on the shelves like candy.

I stopped short when I saw that somebody else was in the aisle.

Not just any somebody. A boy. A boy so tall and long-limbed that his slouch against the bookshelf make him look like the letter C. A boy with fair skin, and a perfect nose and neatly shorn brown hair.

A very cute boy.

He was squinting at the cover of a paperback, but when I took a few steps down the aisle, he looked up at me. I saw a flash in his eyes. They were brown—the exact same brown of my favorite velvet chair at Granly’s cottage. They had long lashes and thick brows the same wet-sand color as his buzz-cut hair.

The pretty brown eyes glanced back at his book for a moment, then quickly snapped right back to me. Now they were widened in an expression that seemed a little stunned.

This, of course, caused me to catch my breath and spin around to face the bookshelf.

That was a double take, I thought. It was definitely a real-live double take! For . . . me? For me!

A feeling of both giddiness and panic bubbled inside me. Hoping my face wasn’t turning bright red, I bent toward the bookshelf and pretended to search for a particular title. Meanwhile, I could feel the boy staring at me.

My hand floated up to my ponytail, which felt like it had frizzed into a giant puffball in the heat. I twirled a lock of hair nervously around my finger.

He was still looking, I could tell.

For maybe the first time in my life, I wished I were a stereotypical redhead, all sassy and impulsive. I’d swing myself around and stare right back at him. My dark blue eyes would crackle impishly, and my smile would be twisty and mischievous, just like the redheads I’d read about in books but had never actually met in real life.

Of course, even those redheads might have hesitated if they’d just emerged from a three-day road trip, plus a crying jag, with barely a glance in the mirror. My sleeveless red-checked shirt, which had surely been cutely crisp and picnicky when it was first made in the 1970s, was now faded and wrinkly and had a permanent ballpoint pen stain near one of the buttons. The Revlon Red polish on my toenails was chipped, and for all I knew I had a raspberry limeade drip on my face.

I skimmed my fingertips across my chin, feeling for stickiness. Then I tapped at the corners of my mouth to make sure there were no raspberry remnants there.

Since I seemed to be drip-free, I shot the boy a sidelong glance.

He was still looking at me.

And now he was saying something to me.

“There’s nothing on your face, you know,” the boy said in a low, somewhat raspy voice.

It took a second for me to realize what he’d said and what it meant. Clearly my attempt at a subtle chin check had been anything but subtle.

“What?” I blurted.

“It looked like you were wondering if you had something on your face,” he said. “Maybe mayonnaise. You know, from the coffee shop? I just thought I’d let you know, there’s not.”

“Oh,” I said. “Um, thanks. I wasn’t at the coffee shop.”

“Oh, okay,” he said.

We looked at each other blankly for a moment before I blurted, “Besides, I’m not so into mayo. I’m more of a mustard girl.”

I cringed. What was that? Please tell me I’m not talking to this boy about condiments!

But the boy nodded as if this were a perfectly normal thing to say to a cute person of the opposite sex. Who knew? Maybe it was. Maybe I should ask him what kind of stuff he put on his ham sandwiches.

Then I imagined those words coming out of my mouth, and I clamped my lips shut to make certain that they didn’t.

The boy returned to his book, which gave me the chance to stare at him. He looked so different from most of the boys I knew. They were always swinging their hair out of their eyes with swoops of their heads, something that I hadn’t realized I found annoying until just now. This boy’s hair was sleek and neat and allowed a view of his