My Almost Epic Summer Read Online Free PDF Page B

inclined, and that plus his temper is a lethal combo. Mom says I need to learn how to give Roy a chance, but how can I when he is such a ferocious composite of literary villains—Captain Bligh’s weather-beaten face, Captain Queeg’s beady eyes and Colonel Pyncheon’s iron will, to name a few.
    I can’t imagine that my father was in any way similar to Roy, but I’ll never know. Dad fell off a ladder and died of a broken neck when I was four. My memories of him are pretty vague, and are based mostly on times when he carried me—the giddy, sway-backed perspective from up on his shoulders or the safer hip-straddle, my nose buried in the cottony smell of his T-shirt. Aside from being my best mode of transportation, David Morse left me almost no impression, though I guess in the big picture, it’s better not to remember too much, since then there’s less to miss.
    After dinner, Mom and Roy exchange the deck chairs for the bedroom, leaving me a sink full of dirty dishes. Tidying the kitchen is always my job, but tonight it seems unfair, not only since I didn’t get any steak but because our dishwasher broke last month, so I have to clean everything by hand.
    Plus the air conditioner has decided to take the day off. I shove open the kitchen window.
    What is it about the thin, slappy noise of water that makes a person feel so alone?
    From the far back of the house, Mom laughs. I close my eyes and imagine Los Angeles, and how one day I will live in the middle of my life instead of wedged off to the side of it. In L.A., I’ll have my own exactly right friends—not a confusing, jittery Roy in the bunch.
    Suddenly I picture the lifeguard girl standing on a tropical green lawn, wearing a cherry red sundress, holding a chocolate martini and looking so L.A. perfect, so absolutely and flawlessly lifted out of my sunshine-splattered future that it seems to be a sign that my future can start whenever I want it to, if I want it badly enough. And right then, I feel it, aha, yes! I need to become friends with this girl as soon as I can! Yes! Of course I do!
    No matter what she might have to say about it.

I Make the Acquaintance of Starla
     
     
     
    THE NEXT MORNING, Judith tells me she’ll be taking Lainie to work.
    “You won’t be bored without me, will you, Irene?” Lainie asks, clambering into the car once Judith pulls up to the house to drop me off. “You can use my bed for a nap if you get tired.”
    “Thanks, Lainie. You know I’d never nap on the job.” I say this very loud so Judith hears.
    As soon as they’re gone and Evan and I have made ourselves bug-eyed from morning television, he asks, “If we go to Larkin’s today, you think the hot lifeguard’ll be there?”
    “Probably.”
    Evan drops off the recliner and attempts a few push-ups. When he stands, his face is all crazy red. “How old do I look for my age? Do I look older than going-on-twelve?”
    “Honestly?”
    He frowns. “I guess.”
    “No, but you’re a significant percentage cuter than Zaps.”
    This seems good enough for him. And so we’re out the door ten minutes later, although nine of them are spent dealing with an upchucking Poundcake.
    “Mom says he has separation anxiety,” Evan informs me. “She says dogs are smarter than people, and they know when you’re planning to leave.”
    “How’s that smarter than people?”
    Evan ignores me and rubs Poundcake under his slobbering chin. “Good boy,” he says. “We’ll be back soon. You just hang in there, guy.”
    The lifeguard girl is sitting in her chair like she’d never left it, except that today she is wearing a yellow racer-back swim-suit. Mom has always told me that yellow is “my” color, but seeing the lifeguard girl looking so perfect, I decide I’ll never get near yellow again. It also makes me slightly grouchy with Mom, as if she’s been duping me.
    Thankfully today I’m wearing my best summer outfit, which is a composite of Whitney’s greatest hits cast-offs. Over