28 Summers Read Online Free PDF

back, but in the end she had the good sense to return to reading Stephen Crane.
    The second time she spoke to Jake was a few months later, close to Christmas break. It was a Saturday night and Mallory was studying for her American lit final. She decided to call Coop while she was waiting for her popcorn to pop in the microwave in the common area; she’d set the timer for two minutes and ten seconds. If the popcorn burned even a little, the smell lingered for days and everyone in the dorm dreamed up creative ways to retaliate against you.
    “Good evening, Cooper Blessing’s room,” a voice said.
    Mallory smiled; she knew it was Jake. Every time she called Coop, she halfway hoped (okay, all the way hoped) that Jake would answer again. Now he had. Mallory heard laughter and music in the background. A party? It was Saturday night.
    “It’s Mallory,” she said. “Cooper’s sister. Is he…around?”
    “Mallory!” Jake said. “It’s Jake!” His voice was so loud, it was like he was calling out to her across a canyon.
    “Hey!” She thought, Be witty! Should she tell him she was babysitting her popcorn? Definitely not. She was such a nerd! “Is Coop around, Jake?”
    “Nah,” Jake said. “I mean, yeah, he’s here somewhere, but it’s our Christmas cocktail party so he and Stacey are probably making out on the dance floor in the basement.”
    “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize,” Mallory said. “I’m studying for finals and I just needed a break.”
    “Oh yeah?” Jake said. “What final?”
    “Am lit,” Mallory said.
    “That’s me right now,” Jake said. “I. Am. Lit.” He laughed. “That was bad, sorry. American literature?”
    “Yeah,” Mallory said. “I don’t want to keep you from the party. I’ll call Coop tomorrow.”
    “You’re not keeping me from anything,” Jake said. “My date drank a bottle of wine by herself while she was getting ready and she started puking at the pre-party and didn’t make it over here. Good news is I got to take off this damn tartan bow tie.”
    This damn tartan bow tie. He was talking as though she could see him lying back on Cooper’s bed with the top of his tuxedo shirt unbuttoned and a red and green MacGregor bow tie hanging around his neck. Jake must be cute, she thought. He sounded cute.
    “Who are you reading in Am lit?” Jake asked.
    “Um…” Mallory said. She couldn’t believe he wanted to know. She was just a freshman and hadn’t been invited to any Christmas cocktail parties, though if she were at one, even without a date, the last thing she’d want to talk about would be school—even worse, someone else’s school. “The usual? Hawthorne, Emerson, Thoreau, Crane, Twain, and automobiles…”
    Jake laughed. “You’re funny!”
    “Maybe just because you’re lit?” she said.
    He laughed again and then she heard him take a gulp of something. “You know, I’ve had to take all these pre-med bio and chem classes, and it’s only this year that I’ve been able to take something for fun. So I’m in this English class called Art of the Novella, and it’s so great! We’re reading Jim Harrison and Tolstoy and Ethan Canin and Andre Dubus and Philip Roth…”
    “Wow,” Mallory said. She didn’t admit that the only two writers she’d heard of were Tolstoy and Roth and she hadn’t read anything by either one.
    “You know what I’m going to do the second I graduate? I’m going to start reading. I want to become a bookish person. I should have majored in English but my parents insisted on biology so I could get in all the pre-med requirements. My father’s a burn specialist and my mother’s a surgeon.”
    “Are you going to med school, then?”
    “Not next year, maybe not ever. It’s just…my parents were always working when I was growing up and I want a job where I can come home at night and spend time with my kids.”
    He was thinking so far ahead that he seemed like a different category of person from Mallory. She was just