Take Me to the River Read Online Free

ahead and have a great time doing whatever.”
    â€œYou could’ve told me when you called the hotel in Alpine. I mean, I was right there.”
    â€œI know. I’m really sorry about that. I figured that if I filled you in, you would’ve phoned home and that would’ve been the end of it. Don’t you think?”
    â€œProbably so.”
    â€œLook, I’m really sorry. I’ll understand if you scratch and do a U-turn. I can see how annoyed you are.”
    â€œMore like disappointed.”
    â€œI thought the chance might never come again. You know how long we’ve been talking about it. Well, not literally. You know what I mean.”
    â€œYour dad actually left you here for more than a month, alone?”
    â€œHe was away for a month last summer, working in Colorado. It’s not as bad as it sounds.”
    â€œIt’s not?”
    â€œIt’s not easy, but I can handle it. And people in the ghost town look out for each other. Really, I’m sorry. I had this whole image of how it was going to be. I realize how weird this must seem.”
    I was at a loss as I tried to sort out my feelings about his deception. Here’s what made it so difficult: My cousin seemed so sincere and so honest , if that’s the right word.
    One thing Rio was right about—how long we’d been looking forward to this. He might be correct, too, that it was now or never. My mother thought of her brother as flaky enough as it was. Would she be willing to make like this snafu didn’t happen and try again the following summer? Send me all the way back to run the river?
    Maybe not. Well, probably not.
    â€œDon’t beat yourself up,” I told my cousin. “I understand, sort of. What will we do if I stay, besides hang out?”
    â€œWe can paddle Santa Elena Canyon for sure. It’s the closest and shortest of the four canyons. The put-in is only ten miles away. Ariel can drop us off and pick us up. The canyon is real narrow, real deep—an incredible place.”
    â€œLots of rapids?”
    â€œOnly one, called Rock Slide, but it’s a big deal.”
    â€œHow long of a trip is it?”
    â€œJust one day . . . you look disappointed.”
    â€œI guess I am. I mean, we were going to have a week on the river, and that sounded awesome. But, okay, we could paddle Santa Elena Canyon for a day—then what?”
    â€œWe could do a lot of mountain biking . . .”
    â€œI’ll have to sleep on it,” I said. “Sleep on the whole deal.”
    â€œFair enough.”
    On our way out of the Starlight, we collected my stuff off the porch. Rio asked if I wanted to climb to the top of the hill by the water tower and throw fireworks into an eight-hundred-foot-deep mineshaft. The fireworks bouncing off the walls all the way down made for “an insanely spectacular show.”
    I was dead tired and asked for a rain check. I followed Rio across the hillside into the residential part of the ghost town. There weren’t any streetlights but the moon was up. My cousin told me to watch where I stepped; the rattlesnakes were active at night. Lights twinkled here and there from dwellings scattered amid the ruins. I felt like I was sleepwalking in a postapocalyptic world.
    We came to an iron gate in a stone wall. The gate squeaked open to a patio and Rio’s front door. I took note that my mother’s brother and his son didn’t live under a rock after all, though their house was made out of rocks. “Welcome,” Rio said. “Mi casa es su casa . ”

Chapter 5
Kissed by an Assassin
    T HE HOUSE WAS SMALL, with only two bedrooms, a small living room, and a small kitchen/dining room. Rio showed me to my crash-landing site, his father’s bedroom. I made a thorough search for scorpions, even pulling back the sheet. Just in case, I got my camping flashlight out of my stuff and placed it on the nightstand before I turned out the light and