Total pages in book: 163
Estimated words: 150878 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 754(@200wpm)___ 604(@250wpm)___ 503(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 150878 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 754(@200wpm)___ 604(@250wpm)___ 503(@300wpm)
Emily’s dad was going to go ballistic on her.
Good.
Emily was standing next to the car, leaned toward the shattered windshield, as though, up close, it might not have been as bad as it looked from high above. She wailed again, tears pouring down her cheeks as she hiccupped and blubbered. “He’s going to murder me,” she cried. “Then he’s going to murder me again!”
I felt a small trickle of satisfaction but resisted the smile I felt tugging at one corner of my lips.
“At least it’s just the windshield,” I said. I didn’t know much about cars, but I figured that could be replaced more easily than if the weight had fallen on the hood and dented the paint and the metal. “He might only half murder you.”
Emily threw her head back and wailed again. “I’m supposed to go to a music camp this weekend. I’m already on thin ice because of my grades. He’ll never let me go now. He might as well just murder me!” She let out another high-pitched sob.
God, she was dramatic. My mom called Emily a “little showboat,” even if she smiled when she said it, affection in her voice. I gave her a glassy stare. “You really are a baby, you know that? You’re going to have to tell him what you did and accept the consequences.”
She deserved this. She really did. This was called just deserts.
Emily hung her head and sobbed for a minute, her shoulders shaking. But then with a shuddery breath, she nodded and looked up at me with her big blue eyes, now red-rimmed and glittering with tears. “I’m sorry, Tuck. I was mean. You’re not boring. At least not all the time.” Then she turned and headed slowly to the door, shuffling as she walked like she was heading for the gallows.
two
Tuck
I waited a few minutes, giving Emily time to get ahead of me so I didn’t have to hear her pitiful sobs. When I emerged from the stable, she was already a few hundred feet away, her pale blue dress and yellow hair standing out against the rust-colored dirt. The sky had dimmed since I’d first entered the building, and far beyond, I could see the dancing flames of the bonfire our parents had lit, a regular occurrence on weekend summer nights. Sometimes we’d roast hot dogs or s’mores. And sometimes Mrs. Swanson would bring out the board games. Those were the nights I’d hear the adults laughing and chattering long after I went to bed.
I trudged toward the firelight, the rising and falling sounds of conversation meeting my ears as I drew closer. There was an ice bucket filled with drinks on the edge of the large brick patio, and I grabbed a soda, popping it open and taking a sip. “Tuck. There you are,” my mother said, smiling and waving me over. I glanced at Emily as I passed her, sitting on the edge of the stone wall surrounding the patio, her head bent, eyes darting to where her father stood talking to mine.
She looked completely miserable. I glanced away, barely resisting rolling my eyes. She really was the most dramatic person sometimes. It wasn’t the end of the darn world. The windshield could be fixed, even if her dad was steaming mad, which he would be. So she’d miss music camp this weekend. Oh well. I didn’t feel the least bit bad for her.
My mom grinned as I approached. “Hey, handsome. Where have you been?”
I shrugged. “Just around.”
“Just around,” she repeated, tilting her head as she studied me in that way of hers that made me feel slightly itchy like she could pluck answers from my head whether I’d offered them or not. “Emily’s always over at the house asking about you these days,” she said. “She says you haven’t been hanging out with her and the other kids very much lately. She says you’ve been disappearing.” My hand tightened on the can as my outrage spiked. Not only was she spying on me, but she was also ratting me out to my mom.
“I haven’t been disappearing,” I asserted. I glanced over to where Emily sat, staring gloomily at her shoes. Her small breasts stretched the elastic of her sundress, and I averted my eyes down to her skinned knees, mostly scabbed over. I didn’t tell my mom that Emily had found me and ruined my secret hangout forever, or that she was an annoying drama queen and a snitch as well. And I especially didn’t admit that I’d thought about kissing her more than once, and I intended to keep doing that, but I wanted to think about it when I was away from Emily, not when she was anywhere close by.
“I don’t have much in common with her anymore,” I said. Which was sort of true, and sort of not, but I didn’t know how to describe the strange middle ground where I’d suddenly found myself regarding Emily Swanson.