Lake Thirteen Read Online Free PDF Page A

for dinner, he’d given me a big hug and whispered in my ear, “You can be as gay as you want, bro, but I hate to disappoint you, man—I’m just not interested.” Then he laughed so loud everyone had turned to look, and I couldn’t help but grin back at him.
    He really was a great guy—but I still felt bad for Annie Bartlett. He was a heartbreaker.
    “You guys want to go ghost hunting?’ Carson Wolfe looked up from the book he was reading— Ghosts of Louisiana: Stories of True Haunting —dog-earing the page and closing it. He pushed his wire-framed glasses back up his stubby nose and grinned. “We could go see if that cemetery is haunted. I bet it is—the town dates back to colonial times. There’s bound to be a ghost or two there, don’t you think?”
    “Shut up already,” his younger sister Rachel said, almost absentmindedly. She didn’t even look up from her own iPad, still launching birds across the screen without missing a beat as she spoke. “Besides, you don’t know if there’s a cemetery here. And even if there is one, I doubt the locals would like us messing around in there at night. In fact, I can guarantee they wouldn’t—it’s disrespectful.” She waved a hand, still not looking up. Rachel was a pretty girl, with flawless white skin, bright blue eyes, and thick, dark curly hair. Like her brother, she’d been chubby when she was younger, and she’d had a rough time with acne for a few years. But she’d blossomed the year before the Sanibel trip. Now she had an amazing figure, with nice legs and curves that wouldn’t quit. Last summer, Logan had made a couple of passes at her, but she’d shot him down cold. “Let’s not forget the great boat-trip disaster of last summer.” She looked up and made a face at her brother. “Besides, cemeteries are kind of creepy. Not to mention, you know, snakes and things.” She gave a delicate, ladylike shudder. “No, thank you.”
    “Don’t be like that, Rachel. If there’s a Cemetery Road, there has to be a cemetery—they wouldn’t call it that if there wasn’t one,” Carson insisted, his blue eyes wide open in excitement behind his thick glasses. “And I bet it’s an old one! Come on, it’ll be fun.” He looked around at the rest of us. “What do you say, guys?”
    “I’m in,” Logan replied, standing up and stretching so that his T-shirt road up over his flat, defined stomach and the trail of light brown hairs leading down from his navel to the waistband of his shorts.
    No surprise there , I thought, trying not to stare at his ripped abs. Logan’s hands brushed against the low wood ceiling when he stretched. In his burnt-orange tank top and black nylon shorts, his legs bouncing in place, he seemed like an electrical wire wrapped up in a muscular teenager’s body. “I’ll see if Mom and Dad will let me take the SUV.” He got up and bounded out of the room before anyone could stop him or say anything.
    The Starks lived in Dallas, in a gated community in a rich suburb. Uncle Jerry was a heart surgeon, and Aunt Nancy was a perfect doctor’s wife, a stay-at-home mom whose family was her number-one priority. She also did a lot of charity work for kids with cancer. The Wolfes, of course, lived in Beverly Hills (“9-0-2-1-0,” as Rachel liked to say with a big bored eye roll), and Uncle David owned a production company with several television shows currently on the air. The Wolfes weren’t filthy rich, but they were pretty well-off. Aunt Lynda didn’t work either—“She shops,” I’d heard my mom once say dismissively when she didn’t think I could hear her.
    Yes, it’s going to be a long boring week, I thought as Logan came bounding back into the room, brandishing the keys with a huge smile on his face. “Come on, let’s go!”
    “You can stay here if you want, Rachel,” Carson said with a sly smile as he stood up. “You don’t have to come with.”
    “Why not?” Rachel yawned and closed the cover of her iPad.