Fifteenth Summer - By Michelle Dalton Page 0,59

in it until I found Someone New, an Allison Katzinger novel that I was rereading after finding my own left-behind copy on Granly’s bookshelf.

“You brought a book?” Josh squawked.

“Of course,” I said, blinking at him. “What, you don’t have one?”

“Do you just bring a book with you everywhere you go?” Josh said. He looked like he was trying to decide if this was maddening or cute.

“Um, pretty much, yeah,” I said. “I mean, if I still had my e-reader, I might not have brought it onto a boat. Then again, I probably would have. That’s kind of why I don’t have an e-reader anymore.”

I sighed, remembering my little electronic tablet fondly.

“Anyway, I thought you wanted me to relax,” I said, giving his leg a nudge with bare toes.

“That is what I said, isn’t it?” Josh said. He angled the oars so they backchurned the water, slowing the boat down. He kept on working the oars until we’d pretty much stopped.

Then he grinned at me.

“Wouldn’t want you to get seasick.”

“Oh, really?” I said. “Well, fine!”

I tossed my book back into my bag, pulled myself up, and plopped down on the seat next to him. Grabbing the oar out of his right hand, I said, “Teach me to row.”

“Yeah?” Josh said, squinting at me.

“Yeah! You make it sound so magical. I want to try it.”

“Okay,” Josh instructed, “flatten your oar while you’re pulling back, then turn it just as you hit the water, like you’re scooping ice cream. I’ll count, and you go with that rhythm, okay?”

I nodded.

But every time Josh brought his paddle forward, mine seemed to go backward. And vice versa.

And then somehow I was paddling twice as fast as he was, but when he sped up, I slowed down.

The upshot was that our rowboat was spinning around in circles, and I was laughing so hard, I couldn’t row anymore.

“I hate to say this,” Josh gasped between laughs, “but I think you have no future as a coxswain.”

“Now do I get to read my book?” I joked. I stood up to turn around so I could settle back into my nice waterproof nest.

But the boat was still twirling a bit. So Josh, trying to be helpful, dug an oar into the water to stop it.

Which tossed me off balance, and well, you can guess what happened next.

Splash!

It took Josh about two seconds to jump in after me.

“Are you okay?” he cried.

My feet found the bottom of the pond, and I stood up. The water only reached my shoulders.

“I think I’ll make it!” I replied, laughing as I wiped water off my face. “I’m not even ruining any clothes.”

I reached down and peeled my soaked cover-up over my head and tossed it into the boat.

“But thanks for coming to my rescue,” I said, giving Josh a light kiss on the lips.

“Anytime,” Josh said, giving me a bigger kiss in return.

I turned to float on my back. My fingertips grazed his torso as I fluttered my hand to keep myself balanced.

“It’s so peaceful in here,” I said. “So different from the big lake. I could stay out here forever.”

Josh said something, but with my ears underwater, it was garbled. I splashed myself back to a standing position.

“What was that?” I asked.

Josh looked down at the water for a moment, pensive, “I said ‘I wish you would.’ ”

My easy smirk faded.

“When do you leave again?” Josh asked.

Automatically I waved my hand—a Not for forever gesture. Because that’s how this summer had seemed for so long—like an endless stretch of days, each longer and hotter and lazier than the last. The ending felt so distant, I’d stopped believing it would ever arrive.

But now that Josh had asked me to think in terms of the calendar, my eyes widened.

“We leave the third week of August,” I said. “We’ve got to give Hannah time to get home and pack and fly back out for school in September.”

Josh looked down at the water. Our hands flittered back and forth beneath the surface, keeping us upright.

“That’s about a month away,” he said.

“A month,” I said. My voice sounded craggy suddenly.

“Well, that’s better than weeks,” Josh said, and I could tell he was adding brightness to his words, the way my mom perked up faded fabric in her quilt by edging it with sunshine-yellow thread.

“Much better than days,” I added.

It didn’t feel quite real that these rowboat, beach, and blueberry days . . . were going to end. That my life was going to go back to slamming locker