Summer Days and Summer Nights Read Online Free Page A

Eli, leaning forward.
    â€œSome lady drowned her kids there.”
    Lila rolled her eyes. “That’s a complete lie.”
    â€œ La Llorona, ” said Eli. “The weeping woman. There’s legends like that all over the place.”
    Great, thought Gracie. We can all start hunting ghosts together.
    She tried to ignore the squirmy feeling in her gut. She’d told herself that she hadn’t wanted to introduce Eli to Mosey and Lila because he was so odd, but now she wasn’t sure. She loved Mosey and Lila, but she always felt a little alone around them, even when they were sitting together at a bonfire or huddled in the back row of the Spotlight watching a matinee. She didn’t want to feel that way around Eli.
    When Mosey and Lila headed back to Greater Spindle, Eli gathered up their plastic baskets on a tray and said, “That was fun.”
    â€œYeah,” Gracie agreed, a bit too enthusiastically.
    â€œLet’s take bikes to Robin Ridge tomorrow.”
    â€œEveryone?”
    The furrow between Eli’s brows appeared. “Well, yeah,” he said. “You and me.”
    Everyone.
    TEETH
    Gracie couldn’t pinpoint the moment Eli dried out, only the moment she noticed. They were lying on the floor of Mosey’s bedroom, rain lashing at the windows.
    She’d gotten her driver’s license that summer, and her mom’s boyfriend didn’t mind loaning Gracie his truck once in a while so she could drive up to Greater Spindle. Gas money was harder to come by. There were better jobs in Greater Spindle, but none that were guaranteed to correspond with Gracie’s mother’s shifts, so Gracie was still working at Youvenirs, since she could get there on her bike.
    It felt like Little Spindle was closing in on her, like she was standing on a shore that got narrower and narrower as the tide came in. People were talking about SATs and college applications and summer internships. Everything seemed to be speeding up, and everyone seemed to be gathering momentum, ready to go shooting off into the future on carefully plotted trajectories, while Gracie was still struggling to get her bearings.
    When Gracie started to get that panicked feeling, she’d find Eli at the Dairy Queen or the library, and they’d go down to the “Hall of Records” and line up all of the Bowie albums, so they could look at his fragile, mysterious face, or they’d listen to Emmett Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas while they tried to decipher all the clues on the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s . She didn’t know what she was going to do when the school year started.
    They’d driven up to Greater Spindle in Eric’s truck without much of a plan, radio up, windows down to save gas on air-conditioning, sweating against the plastic seats, but when the storm had rolled in they’d holed up at Mosey’s to watch movies.
    Lila and Mosey were up on the bed painting their toes and picking songs to play for each other, and Gracie was sprawled out on the carpet with Eli, listening to him read from some boring book about waterways. Gracie wasn’t paying much attention. She was on her stomach, head on her arms, listening to the rain on the roof and the murmur of Eli’s voice, and feeling okay for the first time in a while, as if someone had taken the hot knot of tension she always seemed to be carrying beneath her ribs and dunked it in cool water.
    The thunder had been a near continuous rumble, and the air felt thick and electrical outside. Inside, the air-conditioning had raised goose bumps on Gracie’s arms, but she was too lazy to get up to turn it down, or to ask for a sweater.
    â€œGracie,” Eli said, nudging her shoulder with his bare foot.
    â€œMmm?”
    â€œGracie.” She heard him move around, and when he spoke again, he had his head near hers and was whispering. “That cove you like doesn’t have a name.”
    â€œSo?”
    â€œAll the