Fifteenth Summer - By Michelle Dalton Page 0,12

snort.

“Sounds deep,” the boy said, prompting me to read on.

“ ‘Nicole is super-mad about it. What about hanging out at the mall with her friends? What about her job at the frozen yogurt shop? She’ll miss all the parties and all the fun, which is just what Nicole’s parents want! At first Camp Coconut is awful—early wake-up calls, catch-your-own-fish breakfasts, a monsoon—’ ”

“A monsoon!” the boy and I blurted out together.

“Okay, safe to say that’s a stretch,” I said with a giggle.

“ ‘But then,’ ” I read on, “ ‘everything changes. Nicole meets a local boy named Kai. Their summer love blooms like a coconut flower, but like the tide, Nicole knows it can never last.’ ”

This was the part where I was supposed to groan and make a joke about two bad similes in one sentence.

But instead my throat seemed to close up as I realized something—

I was reading to my new crush from a summer romance novel. It was about as subtle as my sticky-chin check.

Okay, I told myself. I tried to take a deep breath without appearing to take a deep breath. Maybe he’s not making the connection. He’s a boy, and lots of boys are clueless. Or maybe he isn’t clueless but he just doesn’t associate me with a summer romance at all.

How could I figure out which one it was? And how could I also find out his name, his age, and whether he’d been on Team Peeta or Team Gale? (Either one was fine, as long as he’d never been on Team Edward or Team Jacob.)

When you were in a bookstore, those were perfectly legitimate things to ask, right? So why was I still speechless?

We were just verging on an awkward silence when Stella’s voice rang out from the front of the store.

“Josh, honey? You back there?”

The boy looked up at the ceiling and sighed quietly before calling out, “Yeah?”

I felt that little flutter in my stomach again.

His name is Josh.

Then the boy spoke again. “What is it, Mom?”

This time my eyebrows shot up.

His name is Josh and his parents own the bookstore of my dreams.

It seemed so perfect that I couldn’t help but grin. My smile was unguarded, uncomplicated, and delighted. I did not have this sort of smile very often. It felt a lot like the smile that had been on Josh’s face a moment ago.

Luckily, Josh was listening to his mother and not looking at me while I grinned like a big goofball. I only half-heard the question she asked him—something I didn’t understand about a packing slip and a ship date.

Whatever it was, it seemed to bring Josh back to the serious worker-bee place he’d been before we’d started talking.

“It’s in the office file cabinet, third drawer down in the back,” Josh called. Then he added, in a mumble, “Where it was the last time you asked.”

He stared at the X-Acto knife in his hand for a moment. I could tell he wasn’t seeing it, though. His eyes were foggy and distant, and they were definitely not too happy.

Then he seemed to remember I was there and looked at me. He pointed at the book in my hand.

“So, are you buying that or not?” he asked gruffly. He was suddenly impatient to get rid of me so he could get back to his book destruction.

And just as suddenly my rescue of Coconut Dreams didn’t seem cute, clever, and boy-impressing. It was silly, a waste of Josh’s apparently very valuable time.

I wondered if I’d been mistaken about his double take. And maybe we hadn’t just had an amazingly easy and fun conversation about his cart full of doomed books. Maybe I’d imagined all that, and in fact I was just another annoying customer at Josh’s annoying summer job.

So now what was I supposed to do? Put the book back and skulk away? If I did, I’d have to sidle past Josh in the narrow aisle. Twice. It’d be much quicker to just make a dash for the front desk.

So I nodded at Josh.

“I’ll take the book,” I said quietly.

“Fine,” he said, looking stony. “I’ll ring it up for you.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “Your mom can do it.”

Josh shrugged—looking a little sulky—and turned back to his cart.

I headed back up the aisle toward the front desk. Just before I emerged from the stacks, I heard the awful sound—rrriiiiip—of another book cover getting slashed.

I couldn’t meet Stella’s eyes as I handed her Coconut Dreams.

“Well!” she said brightly. I nodded sympathetically. What else could