A Summer to Die Read Online Free PDF

wasn't.

    We both kept smiling very hard, because neither of us wanted the other to be sad.
    "Listen, Meg," he said slowly, folding the list up and putting it on a corner of his desk. "Sometimes when I'm sitting here working on the book, I come to a problem that seems insurmountable. When that happens, I just let it go for a while. I keep it in the back of my mind, but I don't
agonize
over it. Do you know what I mean?"
    I nodded. I'm pretty good at not agonizing.
    "So far," he explained, "all of those problems have resolved themselves. Out of nowhere, all of a sudden, the solutions appear. Now here's what I want you to do." He tapped the folded darkroom list with his finger. "I want you to put this out of your mind for a while, but keep it somewhere in the back where your subconscious will be working on it."
    "Okay," I agreed.
    "And before long, the solution will come. I'm absolutely sure of it. Probably soon, too, because
both
of our subconsciouses will be working."
    I laughed. He was so sure, and I didn't believe it for a minute. "All right," I promised.
    "Or would that be 'subconsciese'? The plural, I mean?"
    "Dad," I said, picking up our empty cups to take
them to the kitchen, "
you're
the English professor."

    Mom was in the kitchen, sitting by the fireplace stitching on her quilt. She was so excited about that quilt, and it
was
pretty, what she had done so far. But Molly and I cringed when we looked at it too closely, I suppose because it was full of memories; let's face it, some memories are better off forgotten, especially when you haven't lived far enough beyond them yet. There was the dress with the butterflies, which Molly always hated, right near the center. Near it was a blue-and-white-striped piece that I didn't want to be reminded of. It was the dress that I wore to my fifth birthday party, the day when I threw up all over the table, just after the cake was served. There was the pink with little white flowers, that I wore to Sunday School on Easter when I was supposed to say a poem to a roomful of people, forgot every word of it, and cried instead, when I was maybe six. There was the blue plaid that Molly wore her first day in junior high, when she didn't realize that every other girl would be wearing jeans. And there was a piece of my old Brownie uniform; I hated Brownies, always spent my dues on candy before I got there, and was scolded every week.
    "What's that white piece with the embroidery?" I asked Mom. She really liked it when Molly and I took an interest in the quilt.
    She turned the quilt around and held it toward the window so that she could see the piece I meant. Then her face got all nostalgic. "Oh," she said affectionately. "That's Molly's first bra."

    "
What?
"
    I hadn't even noticed Molly until she burst out with "
What?
" She was lying on a couch in the corner. (Old houses are neat, in many ways. How many houses have a couch in the kitchen?) Actually, it didn't surprise me that she was there. Molly's had the flu all of February, and she's kind of like a fixture, or a piece of furniture herself now, lying there with a box of Kleenex.
    In a way, it's fun having Molly sick, because she's home all the time, instead of off with her friends after school and on weekends. We've been doing things we hadn't done since we were little, like playing Monopoly. It's fun to play with Molly, silly games like that, because she doesn't take them seriously. I build hotels all over everything, even on stupid old Baltic Avenue, and when she throws the dice and realizes she's going to land where I have hotels, she starts giggling. She moves her piece along, closer and closer, and laughs harder and harder till she gets there, and then sits him down, thump, by the hotel, and just starts counting out all her money. "You got me," she says. "I'm absolutely wiped out!" Then she hands over all her money,
laughing, and says right away, "Let's play again."

    I'm a terrible loser. I go around muttering "It isn't fair" after