Fifteenth Summer

Choosing my outfit for the Allison Katzinger party required major strategy. I knew that she was super-stylish from the pictures she sometimes posted on her blog. She always wore big colorful jewelry and cute little dresses. She had a huge collection of funky glasses, not to mention rotating choices of hair colors.

I didn’t want to just look pretty when I met one of my favorite authors. I wanted to look memorable.

(Well, to say I’d be meeting Allison Katzinger was a stretch. What I’d really be doing was waiting in line for half an hour before I got to stand in front of her for ten seconds. She’d read my name off a sticky note and inscribe my book before giving me a quick smile. Then Isobel or Stella would usher me away so the next person in line could have his or her ten seconds. But still, even ten seconds with Allison Katzinger called for a killer outfit.)

The other problem was that for six hours before Allison’s party, I’d be at Mel & Mel’s, slinging supper. So my outfit also needed to be mayonnaise-proof.

That was why I might have gone a little overboard with the patterns. Nothing would show up on a tropically flowered skirt with gray, yellow, and purple in it, right? To tone the skirt down, I went with a simple gray tank top, but then that needed jazzing up, so I threw on one of Granly’s chunky costume necklaces and stuck some glinty chopsticks into my bun.

And then I felt so overdone that I wanted to change completely, but it was too late.

Luckily, I didn’t have time to be nervous/excited about the party, because we were slammed at Mel & Mel’s. I hustled for two hours straight, serving a group of office workers who’d come in after playing in some goofy kickball tournament.

I was just rushing a giant order of artichoke dip to the kick-ballers when Ginny swept over and lifted my tray out of my hands.

“I’ll take that, hon!” she said. “You’re on break.”

“Break?” I squawked. “What are you talking about?”

Melissa scooched up next to me, untied my apron, and looped it around her own waist.

“We’re covering for you, Chels,” she said. “No arguments. Josh has it all arranged.”

She nodded at the coffee shop door. I spun around and saw Josh peeking through the glass. As always, I felt my face light up at the sight of him.

“Josh!” I said as he opened the door. “What’s going on? I’m going to see you in just a few hours at the par—”

I choked on my next word. Because walking in behind Josh was Allison Katzinger!

She looked much smaller than I’d imagined. She was wearing a fabulous silky wrap dress and a chunky necklace just like mine. Her hair was a warm blond, and her glasses frames were red.

As soon as she walked into the coffee shop, with these long, purposeful strides and a big wide-mouthed grin, I 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 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 it had grown out some.

“You know, I’ve saved up enough tip money to get myself a new e-reader,” I said.

“Are you going to?” Josh asked. He ran a fingertip over my collarbone, making me shiver.

I shook my head.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “You know, I really like bookstores. Well, one in particular.”

Josh smiled—a little wanly.

“It’s not going to be the same without you, Chelsea,” he said.

“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?” I asked.

He nodded as he leaned in to kiss me again. And again and again. I only pulled away when I just had to get one more word in. Two tears spilled down my cheeks, but I smiled through them.

“I won’t ever be the same either,” I told Josh.

It was true. Josh was my first love. Even if I never saw him again, that—he—would always be a part of me.