Summer Rental Read Online Free Page B

hair, and toned down her makeup.
    And for what? Despite her best efforts, Maryn found herself frozen out of the cliques and circles in her new school. So when Wesley Bates, the cute, dumb jock who was her chemistry lab partner, asked her out for the third Saturday in a row, Maryn had finally agreed to go, even though she’d heard through the school grapevine that Wesley was supposedly dating a girl named Janelle Rivenbark.
    One date. She’d gone out with Wes exactly once, but to Janelle Rivenbark and her coven, that had been more than enough to seal her fate. The next Monday, she’d found hate notes stuffed into her locker. Every night, therewere crank phone calls and hang ups. Bags of flaming dog poop were left on her doorstep, her mother’s car was egged, her aunt’s yard festooned with toilet paper on a weekly basis.

    “Screw ’em,” her mother advised, and finally, Maryn had come to the same conclusion. From that point on, Maryn made her own rules. She was never without at least one boyfriend and wasn’t shy about stealing a boy, especially if his previous girlfriend was friends with Janelle Rivenbark.
    All the while, her mama and Aunt Patsy cheered her on, living vicariously through her romantic conquests. No matter how late she came in on a Friday or Saturday night, her mother waited up, eager to rehash the night’s events.
    Thinking of her mother now made Maryn wince. When had they last talked—three, four months ago? Maryn’s eyelids drooped, then fluttered. She had to get off the road. She hit the button to open her window, let in some fresh air. Nags Head, she decided. She would stop in Nags Head. It was far enough away from New Jersey. Far enough away from him.

 
    4
    Ty Bazemore went around to the back of the house and tried the doorknob. Good. It was locked. God knows, there was nothing really valuable in the house, but it was better to make sure about stuff like this.
    He unlocked the door and stepped inside the kitchen. “Christ!” he muttered, looking around. The place was a disaster. Dirty pots and pans were piled in a sink full of sludgy gray water. Every dish in the house seemed to be piled on the countertop. The trash can in the corner was overflowing with empty beer cans and wine bottles, and there was a distinct fishy smell.
    He peered down into a pot that had been left on the stove top. Yup. It was full of shrimp peels, and it had been there a day or two. He picked up the pot and went to dump it out, and for the first time, noticed the slurping sound his flip-flops were making on the linoleum floor.
    He looked down and lifted his right heel slightly. The flip-flop stuck to the floor.
    “Fuckin’ college punks,” he said aloud.
    He should have known better. The e-mail address for their reservation had been [email protected]. The VRBO and Craigslist ads clearly stated that rental of the house was restricted to adults. But Cooter and company had paid for a week in advance, and the American Express card they’d paid with had gone through with no problem. He’d had a bad feeling about it from the start, but, hey, thirty-four hundred dollars was nothing to sneeze at, not these days.

    So when the caravan of cars had pulled into the driveway—first a stripped-down Jeep, then two pickup trucks and a lime green VW bug convertible carrying four half-drunk chicks—he’d made up his mind to ignore them. He’d watched with a sinking heart, though, as sixteen college kids piled into the house. And that was just the first night.
    The ad specifically stated that the house slept a maximum of ten people—which wasn’t totally accurate, since two of those people would have to be willing to bed down on the butt-sprung living room sleeper sofa he’d picked up off a curb back in March.
    With a sigh, Ty went out to the back porch and dragged in the big-wheeled garbage can. He grabbed his janitor’s bucket and mop and the battered Food Lion grocery cart some other little college pricks had left