Fifteenth Summer - By Michelle Dalton Page 0,64
chatted, the rest of us drifted away from the kitchen. I went to get my book off my nightstand, and Hannah headed out to the screened porch, dialing her phone. Abbie flopped onto the living room couch and clicked on the TV.
That’s when we were all summoned to the living room by a loud whoop.
“What is it?” I yelled, dashing in, my book still open in my hand.
“Look!” Abbie said, grinning and pointing at the TV screen. “Next up: Till Death Do Us Part?”
“No. Way!” I screamed.
“What happened?” Hannah said, her hand pressed to her phone to block out our noise.
“Lifetime movie!” Abbie and I shouted at her.
“It’s one we’ve never seen, and it’s just starting,” I said, flopping down onto the couch with Abbie. I crossed my fingers, closed my eyes, and chanted, “Please let it star Jennifer Love Hewitt!”
“Either her or Valerie Bertinelli,” my mom chimed in, flopping down next to me.
Hannah murmured into her phone, “I’ll have to call you back, okay? It’s kind of important.” Then she sank onto the floor in front of the couch and said, “I want Meredith Baxter. She does crazy really well. I think her eyes are a little off their track.”
We watched hungrily as the movie started, with melodramatic swells of violins. As the opening credits flashed past in a blocky font that screamed “low-budget” we realized there were no famous B-list actors in the cast. Or even C- or D-list actors. They were total unknowns.
Or maybe Canadians.
That meant the production values were going to be wretched, the acting awful, and the screenplay riddled with melodrama and awkward catchphrases.
“Ooh, it’s going to be so bad!” I squealed, clapping my hands.
“Honey,” my mom called to the kitchen. “Could you make us some popcorn? And is there any wine left from last night?”
“And please tell me we have marshmallows,” Abbie called.
The marshmallows weren’t for eating, of course. They were for tossing at the TV screen during bad lines.
It turned out Till Death Do Us Part? was about bigamy, true love, murder, and reconstructive surgery, not necessarily in that order. I knew we had a winner when wife number one raged at her husband, “John, I supported you through law school so you could study jurisprudence, not mess around with some woman named Prudence!”
When wife number two started lacing John’s scrambled eggs with arsenic, Hannah and I screamed, “Flowers in the Attic!” at the exact same time. We high-fived each other before throwing our last marshmallows at the screen.
We lost Mom when wife number one got killed off. She left with Dad to pick up a pizza for dinner. But my sisters and I stayed until the bitter end, when—duh duh DUH—there was a shocking appearance from wife number THREE.
We turned down the volume during the final credits but couldn’t bear to turn it off.
“Best bad movie ever,” I said, collapsing into the couch cushions and hugging myself. “When are they gonna be back with that pizza? I’m starving! I hope Dad got extra mushrooms.”
Abbie and Hannah glanced at each other over my head and exchanged some secret signals.
“What?” I said. “What have you guys been saying about me now?”
“She’s showing all the signs,” Hannah said to Abbie.
“Of what?” I said, alarmed.
“ ‘Of a force stronger than the law, and more brutal than the laws of nature,’ ” Abbie cried, quoting the movie while shaking her fists at the heavens.
I laughed—until I realized what she meant. Then I swallowed my laughter with a quick gulp.
Hannah gave me a smile that was a little wistful as she said, “Does all food taste incredibly delicious? And does all music seem like it’s really about you?”
“Do you suddenly think Josh is a completely unique name,” Abbie asked, “even though it’s really just another one of those blend-together J-boy names?”
“No it’s not!” I said automatically. “It’s so much better than John or Jim or Jason.”
“See!” Abbie said, pointing at me.
I sank back into the couch, feeling floaty and on the verge of elated. Were my sisters right? Was I in love with Josh? How could I know for sure? It wasn’t like there was some lever inside you that switched from like to love one day with an audible click.
It made me feel a little feverish to think about it, so of course I lobbed the issue back to Hannah.
“Well, what about you?” I said. “What’s going on with Liam?”
“Liam?” Hannah said, blinking rapidly as if she didn’t know who I was talking about.
“Yes, Liam, the boy