Fifteenth Summer - By Michelle Dalton Page 0,79

know what I’d do!”

“Yup.” Allison nodded at Josh and picked up her pimento cheese sandwich. “She’s a writer. Oh, she’s got it bad.”

I felt both proud and terrified as Allison pronounced this about me, like it was a diagnosis. Was it even possible that I could someday be like her?

I twisted in my seat and took another look at the little passage I’d written about B., the hellhound in an apron.

It was just a paragraph.

But maybe it really was, as Allison said, more than that. It was my voice and no one else’s. It was my imagination.

It was, perhaps, the start of something I’d never dared to dream about.

But first there had to be an ending.

I tried not to dwell on the days ticking away. If anything, the fact that I was leaving very, very soon made every minute I had with Josh that much better. I forced myself to enjoy every kiss, every call, every lazy morning lolling together in a boat or on the beach with a cooler full of sodas and a book.

Had it been my fourteenth summer, I’m not sure I would have been able to keep smiling and savoring like that. But this summer I knew not to waste the time we had. I knew to celebrate but not cling. I think that knowledge was another gift I got from Granly, one that hadn’t come in a box.

And besides, saying good-bye to Josh might not be good-bye forever. My parents, after shipping home several boxes of letters, photos, and other Granly relics, had decided to keep the cottage.

“At least while Hannah’s in school in Chicago,” Dad told us, giving Hannah a squeeze. “It’ll give us an excuse to come visit her more often!”

“Oh, great,” Hannah mock-moaned.

I didn’t ask if we would come back to Bluepointe next summer. I didn’t want to plan for that or think that far ahead. Because if it didn’t happen . . .

Whatever happened with Josh, I realized, wouldn’t change the singular miracle that was this summer—the summer I fell in love for the first time. The summer I learned to live without Granly. And the summer when (maybe, just maybe) I first looked in the mirror and saw a writer looking back.

It was even the summer that I started to feel a glimmer of affection for my red curls. After all, I found out on my last night with Josh, it was the hair that had first hooked him.

We’d decided to make our last date a non-date, since that’s what we did best. We packed a picnic and took an endless walk on the beach, holding hands and talking—talking fast, as if we could fit it all in. Of course that was impossible. I couldn’t imagine an end to the things Josh and I wanted to talk about.

We kept sneaking looks at each other’s faces—memorizing.

And of course we kissed. We lay in the sand between tufts of dune grass, the sun pulling away inch by inch, as if drawing a blanket of shadows over us.

It was here that Josh wrapped a handful of my hair around his fingers and groaned.

“I remember the first time I saw this hair of yours,” he said. “It’s one of the reasons I acted so freaked out. I’d never seen anything so beautiful.”

I started to reach for my automatic I-hate-my-hair response, but then I stopped myself. Because I didn’t. Not anymore. How could I hate Granly’s legacy? How could I hate something that Josh adored?

“That’s why I wanted you to buy this book,” Josh said. He reached into the bag that contained our romantic picnic dinner, which we hadn’t had the appetite to eat yet. The book he pulled out was wrapped in classic Dog Ear style—plain brown paper with a whimsical tuft of bright ribbons and a stamped image of E.B. with his tongue lolling out.

I opened the wrapper to find Beyond the Beneath, the book with the mysterious red-headed mermaid on the cover.

“Oh, I wanted this,” I breathed, thanking him with a long kiss.

“The whole time we were talking that first day, all I could think about was this book,” Josh said. “And that you had to read it.”

“And then I rejected it,” I said with a horrified laugh.

“You were so stubborn,” Josh said.

“I was also broke!” I reminded him, kissing the corner of his mouth. “Now, thanks to you, I’m less so.”

“Broke or stubborn?” Josh asked.

“Both,” I said. I ran my fingers through his hair, loving how every-which-way it was now that