Fifteenth Summer - By Michelle Dalton Page 0,45

rest of the drive.

When we got home, Mom was in the vegetable garden. She was decked out in a floppy hat and gloves the color of Pepto-Bismol. She was shoveling with such force that she was out of breath, red-faced, and sweaty.

“What are you doing?” I asked. There was a big pile of dead plants and weeds next to her.

“I just couldn’t stand this mess of a garden anymore,” my mom said. “Something needed to be done!”

“What are you going to do with it?” I wondered.

“I don’t know . . .” Mom trailed off, gazing at the big patch of bare earth as if she were seeing for the first time what she’d done. “I hadn’t gotten that far.”

She waved as Abbie and my dad carried our big cooler around the house to the back.

“How was the fishing?” Mom asked as she pulled off her gloves and tossed them to the grass.

“Check it out!” my dad said, flipping open the cooler and pulling out his big fish. It looked dull and stiff and very, very dead.

My mom clapped a hand over her mouth, and her eyes immediately welled up.

“Rachel—” my dad said in a What did I do? voice.

My mom shook her head and waved him off.

“I’m fine,” she said. “I was just a little surprised, that’s all.”

“Aren’t you excited to have fresh fish for dinner?” Dad asked a little wanly.

“Of course!” Mom said. Her voice was doing that perky thing, but it was choked up, too. “Listen, I’m tired after all this digging. I’m just going to take a little nap.”

She almost ran to the house, and by the time we followed her in, Granly’s bedroom door was closed.

My dad heaved a big sigh, then tapped on the bedroom door and went inside.

The three of us wandered into the living room. I peeked into the cabinets in the hutch. The jewelry boxes, board games, and photo albums were right where they’d always been—untouched.

Abbie gave her head a little shake and whispered to us, “Beach?”

“Let me get my stuff,” Hannah whispered. “I’ve got some reading to do.”

“I’ll get some food,” I said.

I went to the kitchen hoping I could find something that wasn’t a baked good with a hole in it. As I fished some peaches out of the fruit bowl, I noticed that my mom had left her laptop open on the kitchen table.

I’d barely looked at a computer since we’d arrived. How funny that, other than texting with Emma and a couple other friends, I’d barely wondered what was going on at home. Maybe the long drive out here had made my “real” home feel far away and unreal. Or maybe it was the fact that when you’re in a place like Bluepointe, it’s kind of hard to believe a place like LA even exists.

Or maybe it was because I’d been preoccupied with a certain boy . . . .

It was partly guilt that made me log in to Facebook to see if I’d missed any big news. But there wasn’t anything that caught my eye.

I took a big bite of peach and clicked on my messages. I scrolled quickly through them, until I got to the last e-mail. It had just arrived a few minutes earlier.

When I saw who it was from, I let out a little shriek.

It was from Josh Black, of Bluepointe, Michigan, born February fourth, the same year as me.

The message said: Kai’s long, shiny locks reminded Nicole of the black keys she’d so loathed during her years of piano lessons. But now she was just itching to touch them.

I clapped my hand over my mouth so my family couldn’t hear me laughing.

I rushed to my room and snatched my copy of Coconut Dreams off my nightstand. Abbie was just snapping the strap of her swimsuit’s halter top into place.

“Aren’t you gonna change?” she said.

“Go on without me,” I said, waving her away. “I’ll meet you down there.”

“O-kay,” she said slowly. “Let me guess—your J-boy?”

I felt a twinge of guilt. I knew what it felt like to be the odd girl out, when everybody else seemed to be in a constant state of swooniness.

“Is that . . . is that okay?” I asked.

“Whatever,” Abbie said, fishing her goggles out of her beach bag. “I’m doing my two miles, so I don’t have time to hang on the beach anyway.”

“Yeah, but . . .”

“Chelsea,” Abbie said. She smiled at me. “It’s fine. I mean it. He seems really sweet.”

I smiled, hugged Coconut Dreams to my