Fifteenth Summer - By Michelle Dalton Page 0,44
Abbie and gave her a squeeze.
“Abbie! I love you so much.”
Then all three of us squealed and jumped up and down.
“Chelsea has a boyfriend, Chelsea has a boyfriend,” my sisters chanted while I covered my mouth with my hand and shrieked.
“Chelsea has a boyfriend?”
My dad’s voice brought us down to earth with a thud. He was standing behind us, looking kind of disheveled and pathetic with his grease-stained brown paper bag and a quart of milk.
“Milk, Dad?” Abbie said, eyeing the carton. “What are we, ten?”
Dad got a look on his face that seemed to say, I very much wish you were.
A year ago I might have agreed with him. I was wearing braces then and had just gotten my first underwire bra. Every time I tried to drink coffee, it gave me the shakes and tasted awful. I was pretty much convinced that growing up meant being physically uncomfortable at all times.
But now my teeth were straight, I liked coffee (albeit with so much cream that you could barely call it beige), and I had (maybe?) a boyfriend!
I still liked milk, though, so I sidled up to my dad, gently took the carton from him, and said, “Milk is perfect for cinnamon sugar donuts. Thanks, Daddy.”
He started to smile at me, but then we heard an ominous sound: Zzzzzzzz.
Dad glanced at his fishing rod propped against the dock railing, and shouted, “Girls!”
The pole was bending dangerously over the railing, and the line was zipping into the river so fast, the little handle on the reel thingy was a blur.
“Oops. I guess you got a bite, Dad,” Abbie said.
“You guess?” Dad bellowed. He thrust the food into my hands and rushed over to his rod. “You girls were supposed to keep an eye on it!”
“Chelsea had her eye on something much more interesting,” Hannah explained with a glint in her eye.
“Shut up!” I said cheerfully.
“No, you shut up!” she shot back with a grin.
My dad rolled his eyes as he wrestled with his fishing rod and called out, “A little help here? I need my net and my emergency line and a donut, stat!”
Giggling, we got him everything he needed, and he eventually reeled in his fish. It was huge! Well, big enough that Dad didn’t have to throw it back the way he usually did.
“I am hunter!” Dad said, beating his chest with one hand while he used the other to hold up the poor dead fish. “Hear me roar! And take my picture, somebody!”
“Ohmigod, Dad,” Hannah burst out. “How reactionary can you be?”
Dad faux-scowled at her.
“You know, when we found out you were going to be a girl, everybody congratulated me,” he said. “They said, ‘Oh, daughters and fathers. She’ll think you hung the moon.’ ”
“And I did think you hung the moon,” Hannah shot back, “right up until you killed that fish!”
“Ha-ha!” Dad said. “You’ll thank me at dinnertime.”
In the car on the way home, I texted Emma:
You awake?
YEAH, YOU?
Duh, I’m texting you! And it’s lunchtime out here. How’s the intensive?
INTENSE! I’M DOING THE PAS DE DEUX FROM DON Q.
I have no idea what you just said. Guess what? Have news.
WHAT KIND OF NEWS!?!?!?
The boy kind.
?!?!?!?!?!?!
His name is Josh. We kissed! Last night.
DEETS!!!!!!
He works in a bookstore! He’s so cute.
I stopped typing for a moment. My deets were true, but they only scratched the surface of what I liked about Josh. All the things I really thought of him couldn’t possibly fit in a text. Which was, I thought, a very good thing. I had a big, goofy smile on my face as I typed, How’s Ethan?
GOOD!!!! I THINK . . .
You think?
NO, NO, HE’S GOOD. HE’S JUST, WELL, IT’S NOT LIKE HE’S GOING TO JUST SIT AROUND WAITING FOR ME AFTER MY DAYS AT LAB. HE’S GOT A LIFE TOO.
Deets?
HOW’RE THINGS GOING WITH YOUR FAMILY? IS IT STILL SUPER-SAD?
I frowned at my phone. Could Emma have been more obvious with her subject change? Yeah, a little, but it’s okay. My dad is working through it by killing small animals.
WHAT???
We just went fishing.
OH. GROSS.
Know what’s not gross anymore? Kissing! You were holding out on me.
ARE YOU KIDDING?!? I TOLD YOU EVERYTHING.
Bunhead, I was being sarcastic!
LATE FOR CLASS! LUV U.
I snapped my phone shut and frowned again. The conversation wasn’t nearly as satisfying as it would have been by Emma’s backyard pool with ginormous smoothies.
Then again, I reminded myself, if I was poolside with Emma right now, I wouldn’t be here in Bluepointe. With Josh.
I smiled through the