Fifteenth Summer - By Michelle Dalton Page 0,78

realized she was bigger than she seemed in her pictures too. Personality just radiated off her.

She hustled right up to me and gave me a hug.

Allison Katzinger. Hugged. Me!

“Hi!” I blurted. “Um, hi! Wow, it’s really nice to meet you.”

I gave Josh a hurried What the heck is going on? look, so he explained, “Allison is here for a late lunch.”

“Oh, sure,” I said, nodding quickly. “Okay. Let me get you a menu.”

“No,” Josh said. “A late lunch . . . with you. And me. And my mom’s going to join us soon. She’s just finishing up some work at the store.”

I gaped at him.

“There are so many awesome things in that sentence, I don’t even know which to respond to first,” I breathed.

“Well, let’s choose lunch, shall we?” Allison said. She rubbed her hands together hungrily. “I hear you’ve got a lot of mayonnaise here. I’m Southern, so I speak mayo fluently. Lay it on me.”

I laughed loudly—because Allison was funny, but also because I was crazy nervous. I smoothed back my hair and adjusted my skirt as Melissa led us ceremoniously to the best four-top in the house.

“You look fabulous,” Josh whispered into my ear as I sat down.

I shot him a grateful look.

Then I stared across the table at Allison Katzinger and wondered what I could possibly think of to say to her.

Luckily, she had that covered.

“So,” she said, after ordering a pimento cheese sandwich and a sweet iced tea from Melissa, “Josh tells me you’re a writer.”

“I am not!” I gasped. “I mean, I jot stuff down here and there.”

“What else is writing but a lot of jotting?” Allison said. “With a narrative arc and subplots and lots of dialogue and drama and . . . I’m exhausted just thinking about it. Why do I do this again?”

“Because of people like me?” I suggested. “Who love to read your books?”

Allison grinned and nodded.

“That’s definitely the happy by-product, yes,” she said. “But believe it or not, I don’t think about you readers when I’m writing. I write because, well, I have no choice. The stories are in me, and I have to get them down. Just like I have to read myself to sleep every night.”

“I do too!” I said. “I’m always falling asleep with the reading light on.”

“I hear ya!” Allison said in her twangy Southern accent. “LED bulbs. That’s the solution.”

Then she asked, “What are you reading now?”

“Well . . .” I was little embarrassed because it seemed so fawning. “You! I’m rereading Apples and Oranges. I love it.”

“Oh, so you like the star-crossed lovers thing?” Allison said. “Is that you two?”

She looked at Josh, then me.

“You definitely seem to have everyone’s stamp of approval,” Allison observed. She nodded at Melissa, who was grinning at us like a doting aunt.

“Yeah, there’s no feud or anything,” I said. “It’s just, well, I live in California, and Josh is here. I head home in less than a week.”

“Ah.” Allison nodded. “Well, that’s where writing really comes in handy. And an imagination. And an open mind.”

Josh and I looked at each other. I didn’t know exactly what Allison was talking about, but I had a feeling I should file it away. For later.

Allison adjusted her (vintage!) cat-eye glasses as she peered at the specials board.

“Do you want a piece of pie?” I said, twisting in my seat to see what flavors were left on the board.

“No, I’m looking at that paragraph there at the bottom,” Allison said. She read it out loud, which made it sound kind of . . . cool!

“ ‘B. wondered if this was the moment of her destruction. Thayer had discovered the one chink in her armor. Since she was technically an arachnid, that was no mean feat. But he didn’t have to be so smug about it! What Thayer didn’t know was that B. had almost a dozen lives to spare, and she was tiring of this one anyway.’ ”

“It’s a serial,” I said with a shrug. “If you haven’t read the rest of it . . .”

“It’s your basic hellhound arrives in a small town, gets a job as a waitress, wreaks havoc, and smites the regulars sort of story,” Josh provided for her.

Allison looked impressed.

“You’ve got a voice,” she told me. “You’ve definitely got a voice. Let me ask you this. If you could never write another word . . .”

She paused, waiting for me to fill in the blank.

“Um, I’m having trouble picturing that scenario,” I said. “I really don’t