Last Summer at Mars Hill Read Online Free Page A

could only be his mother, and the Pissants, and two teenage couples, long blonde hair and sunburned, reeking of marijuana and summer money.
    The teenagers went to Martin, lured perhaps by his tie-dyed caftan, neatly pressed and swirling down to his Birkenstock-clad feet.
    “Boat trash,” hissed Jason, arching a nearly invisible white-blond eyebrow as they passed. “I saw them in Camden, getting off a yacht the size of the fire station. God, they make me sick.”
    Moony tightened her smile. Catch her admitting to envy of people like that. She swiveled on her chair, looking outside to see if there were any newcomers making their way to the chapel through the cool summer night. “I think this is gonna be it,” she said. She glanced wistfully at the few crumpled bills nesting in an old oatmeal tin. “Maybe we should, like, advertise or something. It’s been so slow this summer.”
    Jason only grunted, adjusting his bow tie and glaring at the rich kids, now deep in conference with his father. The Pissants had fallen to Diana, who with her chignon of blonde hair and gold-buttoned little black dress could have been one of their neighbors. That left the lobsterman and his aged mother.
    They stood in the middle of the big room, looking not exactly uneasy or lost, but as though they were waiting for someone to usher them to their proper seats. And as though she read their minds (but wasn’t that her job?), Mrs. Grose swept up suddenly from her corner of the chapel, a warm South Wind composed of yards of very old rayon fabric, Jean Naté After-Bath, and arms large and round and powdered as wheaten loaves.
    “Mr. Spruce ,” she cried, extravagantly trilling her rrr’s and opening those arms like a stage gypsy. “You have come—”
    “Why, yes,” the lobsterman answered, embarrassed but also grateful. “I, uh—I brought my mother, Mrs. Grose. She says she remembers you.”
    “I do,” said Mrs. Spruce. Moony twisted to watch, curious. She had always wondered about Mrs. Grose. She claimed to be a true clairvoyant. She had predicted things—nothing very useful, though. What the weather would be like the weekend of Moony’s Junior Prom (rainy), but not whether she would be asked to go, or by whom. The day Jason would receive a letter from Harvard (Tuesday, the fifth of April), but not whether he’d be accepted there (he was not). It aggravated Moony like so much at Mars Hill. What was the use of being a psychic if you could never come up with anything really useful?
    But then there was the story about Harry Houdini. Mrs. Grose loved to tell it, how when she was still living in Chicago this short guy came one day and she gave him a message from his mother and he tried to make her out to be a fraud. It was a stupid story, except for one thing. If it really had happened, it would make Mrs. Grose about ninety or a hundred years old. And she didn’t look a day over sixty.
    Now Mrs. Grose was cooing over a woman who really did look to be about ninety. Mrs. Spruce peered up at her through rheumy eyes, shaking her head and saying in a whispery voice, “I can’t believe it’s you. I was just a girl, but you don’t look any different at all…”
    “Oh, flattery, flattery!” Mrs. Grose laughed and rubbed her nose with a Kleenex. “What can we tell you tonight, Mrs. Spruce?”
    Moony turned away. It was too weird. She watched Martin entertaining the four golden children, then felt Jason coming up behind her: the way some people claim they can tell a cat is in the room, by some subtle disturbance of air and dust. A cat is there. Jason is there.
    “They’re all going to Harvard. I can’t believe it,” he said, mere disgust curdled into utter loathing. “And that one, the blond on the end—”
    “They’re all blond, Jason,” said Moony. “ You’re blond.”
    “I am an albino ,” Jason said with dignity. “Check him out, the Nazi Youth with the Pearl Jam T-shirt. He’s a legacy, absolutely. SAT scores of 1060,