Fifteenth Summer - By Michelle Dalton Page 0,17

me know, okay?” she said.

I nodded as, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Josh’s gaze drop to the ground. He ate his frozen custard in giant, hurried bites until his mom wandered off to chat with someone else. Then he took a few steps toward me.

“You should,” he said seriously.

“I should . . . what?” I asked him. I wondered how this was going to go. Was he going to be flirty Josh or surly Josh?

“You should come back to Dog Ear,” he said.

I raised my eyebrows. That definitely didn’t sound surly.

“I finished the remainders,” Josh went on. “I promise, all the books are safe for the next few months. And . . .”

Now Josh looked a little embarrassed. “I can also promise you the staffers will be more polite.”

“Oh,” I said. “That sounds sort of like an apology.”

“It sort of is,” Josh replied.

Which might have been sweet in a different tone of voice. But Josh said it in such a somber, almost curt way, I didn’t know quite how to take it. Was this just him doing the right thing, clearing his conscience? Or did he want me to come back to Dog Ear . . . to see him?

I didn’t know what to say. What’s more, my melting tower of frozen custard was beginning to tilt dangerously in my cone. And my family was not two feet behind me. I knew it wouldn’t be long before they emerged from their custard hazes and noticed me talking to a boy. That would mean awkward introductions, followed by a sisterly interrogation for which I would have absolutely no answers.

What could I tell them? This is Josh. We totally hit it off this afternoon. And then we didn’t. And now I don’t know what’s going on, except that I still find him painfully cute.

It would have made no sense to any of them. It barely made sense to me!

So I simply said to Josh, “Well, I guess I’ll see you then.”

As I turned back to my family, I realized I’d said pretty much the same thing when I’d left Josh at Dog Ear that afternoon. Of course, I’d been completely lying then.

Now? I hoped what I said would actually come true.

I barely tasted the rest of my frozen custard. In fact, I threw my cone away when it was only half-eaten. This was unheard of.

But, of course, everything was different this summer.

My parents hammered that point home as we walked back to the car, doing our best to wipe our sticky hands with flimsy paper napkins.

“Your dad and I have decided that we’re going to move into Granly’s room,” my mom announced. “Hannah, you can have our old room so that you can have a quiet place to study. Abbie and Chelsea, we can split up the bunk beds for you if you want.”

“But—” Abbie began. It was pure reflex for her to protest the injustice of Hannah getting her own room. But then it all must have sunk in, because Abbie clapped her mouth shut.

Mom and Dad were moving into Granly’s room—her empty room.

It made sense. After all, the house was small and it was silly to leave an entire bedroom empty all summer.

But it was also incredibly depressing.

After we’d loaded ourselves soberly into the car, I pressed my knuckles to my lips.

Part of me wondered, why had we even bothered with this first-night outing? All our Bluepointe rituals were shattered now that the person at their center was gone.

But another (guilty) part of me was glad that we’d gone and I’d gotten another glimpse of Josh.

After we got home, I flopped into the rocker on the front porch. I didn’t want to go in and watch my parents move their stuff into Granly’s room. Instead I rocked slowly while the crickets sawed away outside the window screens. After a few minutes I picked up my purse from the floor where I’d tossed it and fished out my wrinkled memo pad and a pen.

What if? What if Granly was still here? What if I hadn’t run to town this afternoon? What if the library had been open? That whole “butterfly causing a tsunami with one beat of its wings” thing has always made me crazy. It makes it seem like there’s an either/or between everything—your grandmother living or dying. A summer spent in humongous Los Angeles or a tiny town in Michigan.

Why can’t you have both sides of the either/or? If my grandma was here, maybe I