Summerlost Read Online Free Page B

cracked Leo up hard enough that I could see the braces on his back teeth.
    I smiled too.
    â€œThat’s perfect,” he said. “They’re Hellfarts.”
    We walked past the Summerlost Theater, with its flags waving merrily and its dark-painted wood and white stucco. The wooden stairs outside were worn smooth-grooved with decades of people coming to get lost in lives that were not their own.
    â€œDid you hear?” Leo asked, when he saw me looking. “The theater’s coming down at the end of the summer.”
    â€œWhat?” I said, stunned. Did my mother know? She thought of the theater as part of the town, her childhood.
    â€œThey’re remodeling some of the other buildings, but the theater’s too much hassle, so they’re starting over. They’re tearing it down and building a new one across the street,” Leo said. “Haven’t you noticed?”
    â€œI guess I haven’t been over there yet.”
    â€œI’ll show you after our shift,” Leo said.

11.
    We rode our bikes over to the east on our way home.
    An entire block was missing.
    â€œThere it is,” Leo said. “They’re building the new theater here. It’s going to be part of Iron Creek’s new civic center.”
    I knew what had been there before. A bunch of small, old houses, some of them beautiful. And a doctor’s office, where I’d been once for strep throat over Christmas break. My uncle Nick ran the pharmacy and so if we ever got sick while we were in Iron Creek he’d flavor the antibiotics and also put a treat from the candy counter in the bag with our medicine.
    Now, instead of the houses and the doctor’s office, there was a chain-link fence and construction equipment and workers and some blue Porta Potties lined up in a row. And most of all there was the hole.
    It was huge. It would have been a lot of work. Before they dug the hole, they would have had to tear everything down. Remove all the splintered boards, tear up the lawns, break up the fences, take away the glass, pull up the foundations.
    And then dig, and dig.
    Where did all of it go?
I wondered.
Everything that used to be here?
    â€œBut if they tear the theater down,” I said, “the Summerlost Festival logo won’t make sense. It’s a picture of the theater. And the logo is all over the place. On the bottles, the programs, the
signs
.”
    â€œI bet they’ll keep the logo the same,” Leo said.
    â€œEven if the theater’s gone?”
    â€œIt’s an icon,” he said. “I guess it was around for so long that it doesn’t actually have to be here anymore to have meaning for people.”
    â€œIt’s sad,” I said to Leo.
    â€œI know.”
    Neither of us used our accents so I knew we both meant it.

12.
    It turned out that my mother knew about the theater coming down. She just hadn’t mentioned it to us. I told her about the hole and the Porta Potties, and then about the job. I told her that there was a neighbor kid I could ride to and from the festival with so it would be safe and she wouldn’t even have to worry about that or about dropping me off and picking me up.
    I hadn’t actually run any of that past Leo, but I’d ask him as soon as I got to work for the evening shift.
    â€œMaybe next year,” she said. “Twelve is young to have a job.”
    â€œI’m the same age as the other kids,” I said. “And this is the last year that they’ll have the old theater. Next year it won’t be the same.”
    She thought for a minute, and then nodded. “All right.”

13.
    That night I rode my bike over to the festival and I didn’t forget my sandals. I was in England.
    I’d thought Gary was dumb for saying that, but toward the end of the shift it actually felt like we were.
    On the Greenshow stage, performers danced and sang and hit tambourines that had green and purple ribbons tied to