The Dead of Summer (2 page)

“See what?” Lindy asked as she flipped her own towel over her shoulders.

“There. In the trees?” I pointed again.

Lindy rolled her eyes at me. “Don’t be a baby, Kennedy. Stop being scared of the woods.” She was forever calling me a baby because I was shorter than her. Never mind the fact I was older.

“I’m not scared of the woods, Lindy,” I grumbled defensively. “I just thought I saw something, that’s all. Must be the heat making me woozy.”

“Which is exactly why we’re going in the backyard,” Lindy reported.

“It’s going to be just as hot. There’s no shade, Lindy. There’s no trees.”

She shot me an exasperated look for sounding smug. “I
know
there’s no trees.” She shielded her eyes and pointed to the far edge of the property. “We could lay under that.”

I squinted my eyes to see where she was pointing. There was only one possible option.

“The hydrangea bush?” I asked. “You want me to lie underneath the hydrangea bush?” The bush was enormous—probably six feet high and just as wide—but still, I had no desire to go crawling under bushes. I gazed longingly at the kitchen window. I could even see Maria in the kitchen with the oven mitts on her hands, ready to extract the gooey goodness from the oven. “Why can’t we just go inside and get a cinnamon bun?”

Lindy tossed her long, silky blonde hair over her left shoulder and appraised my squishy mid-section. “You need a cinnamon bun like you need another thigh.” I blushed and tugged nervously at my shirt. “We’re going under the hydrangea bush. I go under there all the time. It’s like a tree house, except on the ground.” She stomped off in the direction of the bush, fully expecting me to follow her.

I dutifully trailed after her. The whole tree house thing had been a bone of contention with her. Because there were no trees in their backyard, Lindy could not have the tree house she wanted when she was younger and Lindy was used to getting her way. From what I gathered from her daddy’s recollection of the event, Lindy stomped and stormed around and threw a hissy fit. Finally, Mr. Lincoln had a specially made life-sized doll house installed in the backyard for his very spoiled little girl. There were handmade curtains and an actual trundle bed on the “second floor” which was, according to Lindy, just a crawl space and not big enough to actually sleep in anyway. I wouldn’t know because I never saw the dollhouse, as it
tragically burned to the ground the summer before I moved to Novella. Allegedly, Lindy had been pretending her dolls were having a romantic candlelight dinner, yet suspiciously, no candles were found in the ruins. My theory is that the doll’s house had lost its appeal and my best friend had decided to take matters into her own hands. Even at age eight, Lindy would have been challenging, to say the least. When she decided something, nothing changed her mind.

Reaching the bright blue flowered bush, Lindy proudly lifted the branch and swept her hand underneath as if she were inviting me into her living room for tea. Sighing, because I knew this was never going to go my
way, I dropped to the ground and crawled under the bush, pushing the towel beneath my body an attempt to not get dirt all over my knees. Lindy followed, burrowing underneath the bush and then flopping down on her own towel to lie next to me. She flipped onto her back, staring upwards while I was on my stomach, face pressed against the towel, breathing in the moist earth and grass around me.

“What are we gonna do all summer?” she asked me in a bored sort of way.

“I don’t know, Lindy. It’s too hot to think right now,” I murmured as I attempted to close my eyes.
A nap would work right about now. If Lindy would just shut up.
Instead, I started to tune her out as she babbled on about one thing or another. I really hoped there wouldn’t be a quiz later on as I don’t think I heard a word she said, my eyes growing heavier by the minute.

In a few minutes, I began to suspect that I might in fact be allergic to hydrangea bushes. My eyes were tearing up and I had sneezed about fifty-two times, each time resulting in Lindy kicking me squarely in the shin in attempts to shush me.

Lindy had been my best friend for six years, but I still think she was by far the meanest girl in our grade. When we met the first day of fourth grade, I was a shy new kid to the school and Lindy an obnoxious loud mouth; we were the most unlikely of duos. Lindy had spurned our meeting by yanking on the braids that my mother (aka “Smother”) had plaited in my hair earlier that day.

“What the hell is this?” Lindy had said as she chomped on about five pieces of watermelon bubble gum. I could smell her three feet away.

“Braids,” I said, hugging my long chestnut locks close and blinking away tears as I stared at Lindy through my brand new glasses.

Lindy had rolled her eyes and gestured with her hand toward the gaggle of girls leaning against the fence in the school yard, their shiny hair bobbed and cropped closely around their heads, some with wisps of hair gently brushing their shoulders, but not one single girl with a braid or even a ponytail.

“Those are my friends,” Lindy informed me, swishing her own shoulder length, blonde hair across her delicate bare shoulders. “They all listen to everything I say. We’re in fourth grade.”

I nodded, not understanding exactly how this girl wanted me to respond. In my old school, such a girl would be considered popular and wouldn’t even talk to me. In fact, as a nerdy bookworm, I hardly ever spoke to anyone anyway.

“Are you in fourth grade or kindergarten?” she had asked me in a tone I had originally assumed was rude, but over the years have learned, is just Lindy’s way of speaking. I don’t think she could speak soothingly if she lubricated her mouth full of Vaseline—she always talked as if she was swallowing barbed wire.

“Fourth,” I had muttered while staring down at my recently buffed Mary Jane Patent leather shoes.

“Well, as you can see, fourth graders shouldn’t dress like kindergartners. Or wear their hair in braids. That’s what babies do.”

I tugged at my hair self-consciously as Lindy continued to lecture me on what constitutes a fourth grader as opposed to a kindergartner.

“We need to chop that hair off,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone, as if this was gospel, rather than merely a suggestion from a girl that I didn’t even know. “You can come to the bathroom at recess and I’ll cut it off for you.”

I had just bobbed my head up and down obediently. Stupid me, desperate to be loved and accepted by the girl who was obviously the ring leader of the fourth grade cool girls club, followed her to the bathroom that day like a lackey, and allowed her to chop off the gorgeous braids that had taken me my entire nine years on this planet to grow.

Mama cried buckets that day when I got home, breaking my heart.

Yet, to this very day I continued to follow Lindy around like a puppy, not so much because I couldn’t think for myself, but because despite her gruff exterior, she had become my closet and dearest friend.

“Look over there,” Lindy hissed, hot breath warming my already flaming ear.

“Where?” I asked with confusion, whipping my head back and forth and getting branches tangled in my hair.

Lindy reached out and pinched the inside of my thigh. I tried not to squeal in pain and I didn’t do too badly. I managed to only whimper slightly. “Don’t be an idiot,” she said. “He’ll hear you.” The “he” was the only part of the sentence that wasn’t uttered in vicious Lindy-ese.

I knew better than to ask who. Instead, I sat up the best I could and followed Lindy’s gaze to the edge of the property. Seeing that the house was nearly a quarter of a mile from the edge of the wood, one would think that most of the area was free land. In actuality, the Lincolns’ hold on the land only ended right where the trees began. Even though there was no fence erected to announce this fact, most people were aware of it and everyone avoided it entirely. But when I looked between the trees and the edge of the Lincoln landscape, I saw a boy strolling by, without a care in the world.

He was older than Lindy and I were, that much was for sure, but he was definitely shy of being a full-fledged man. He was tall—I’d say almost six foot—and muscular, well proportioned. He had dark brown, almost black hair, which seemed to bounce when he walked, if you could even classify what he was doing as walking. He appeared to float over the earth, his feet not looking like they made a connection with the ground, as if he were an unearthly creature from a different plane. He was tanned and there was definitely something almost exotic about him, as if he had some sort of foreign blood in him. His face was slightly scruffy, giving him an air of indifference. Maybe he was a deeply pensive soul, the kind who wrote poetry. Or maybe he was the type of guy who was most comfortable on the back of a Harley. I just couldn’t tell—he carried an air of mystery.

He wore a dark green T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, his thick biceps on display for all to see. I groaned with audible appreciation. I was, and always will be, a sucker for a nice set of biceps. My sudden noise resulted in another warning kick in the shins from my bush partner.

As if all that were not enough for him to reach godlike status in my eyes, even from my spot on the ground I could see that his face was unblemished, quite unlike my own nearly pockmarked face. As hard as I tried, I could not resist digging the pus out from underneath my skin when a new blistery pimple appeared on my nose or my forehead. My mama would cluck her tongue like a mother hen whenever I would emerge from the bathroom with a fresh, angry telltale sign screaming on my face and mention taking me to see the dermatologist in Newbury. That promise would never materialize because it would require her to actually leave the house and speak to people.

My hand self-consciously snaked up the side of my face to touch the newest crater on my skin as the boy/man trailed past, whistling to himself, swinging what appeared to be a belt back and forth.

He was about ten feet away from the edge of the bush when Lindy hissed at me. “Pull your feet in and don’t move a muscle.” That’s when we heard him speak.

“Colt!” The boy’s voice came out higher than I had anticipated. I was expecting a deep baritone—he was more of an alto.

Colt
? Who the hell was Colt? I gazed up at him, noticing that he was inspecting the bush where we were hiding.

“Colt?” the kid called out again, more like an uncertain question this time. I could almost hear fear in his voice.

“Your feet are still sticking out,” Lindy whispered and pinched my thigh again, in the same spot, really hurting this time. I pulled my feet in more and shoved my balled up fist into my mouth to avoid yelling out in pain.

“Come on. This isn’t funny! Come out!”

Was Colt playing hide and seek? I really hoped not. I didn’t want this kid to peek underneath the bush and see two teenage girls curled up in a ball, spying on him. Despite the fact that this guy was quite the enticing eye candy—Boy Wonder, if you will—I was hoping he would go away.

“Colt!” The boy had cupped his hands around his mouth so that his voice would carry louder. He was so close now that I could feel his words skim over the top of the bush and reverberate loudly in my ear drum.

“Colt!” The boy took a step closer and then the tip of his foot hit the back of my tennis shoe. “What the—” he said as he crouched down by the side of the bush. “Colt?” He lifted the hanging branch and knelt on the ground as I gathered my legs toward my body and struggled to sit up. I found myself face to face with Boy Wonder. My lungs fought to breathe—he was breathtaking in every sense of the word. I could have sworn he had a halo shimmering around his body and angels were singing in the background.

A sly grin played on the corners of his sweet, sweet mouth as he said, “Well you’re certainly not Colt.”

“No, I guess I’m not,” I managed to stammer, eliciting another grin from Boy Wonder. It was contagious and I found myself wanting to smile back, which would definitely be a mistake. My smile wasn’t even remotely as sexy as his—I looked like a deranged jack-o-lantern when I opened my mouth. My front teeth were really crooked as Mama hadn’t taken me to get the braces I so desperately need.

Trying not to look at Boy Wonder’s face, I reached for a branch to pull myself out from underneath the bush. Immediately, he offered me his hand. I was reluctantly to take it, but needed to if I wanted to avoid face planting in the dirt in my struggle to make it to my feet.

As my skin brushed against his, it instantly sent tingles down my arm. I sucked in my breath and allowed him to yank me to my feet. I dropped his hand as soon as I was standing upright.

“Thank you,” I managed to mumble while dusting off my now dirt stained knees.

“Hey, no problem. What are you doing under there?” He asked with that very slight grin again. The grin that said,
I know I’m so hot and I really don’t care if you answer me or not, but rest assured you’re certainly lucky that I’m speaking to you
. I couldn’t help but notice he had a dimple on his left cheek, but not one on his right. The obvious imperfection added to his charm.

“We should be asking you the same thing,” Lindy piped up angrily, shaking the bush as she crawled out and rose to her feet. Oh yeah. Forgot she was there. The entire rest of the world had melted away when Boy Wonder had caught my eye.

Boy Wonder appeared taken aback. “I didn’t realize there was more than one of you in there. What are you guys doing? Throwing a party?” He grinned, but Lindy would not be charmed. Her lips were set in a firm line.

“
We
have every right to be here. This is my backyard, my daddy’s land.” She planted her hands on her bony little hips. “
You
however, are trespassing.”

“I’m really sorry,” Boy Wonder stammered, and he sounded like he might have actually meant it, except for that sly smirk perpetually stuck on his face. “I was walking my dog in the woods and I let him off the leash. He saw a squirrel and took off.” He held up what I had previously thought was a belt, but was actually a dog’s leash.

“Maybe you shouldn’t have taken him off his leash then,” Lindy said with a roll of her eyes.