The Lost Summer Read Online Free Page A

which Katie Bell jumped before it had come to a complete stop. When I picked her up to hug her, Katie Bell’s feet literally left the ground. At five eight, I’d long ago surpassed her in height. One of our favorite games was for me to fling her across my back and spin in circles until she begged me to stop under threat of vomiting and we both collapsed to the ground in hysterics.
    â€œWhere have you been?” I demanded.
    Katie Bell jerked her thumb at her four younger brothers spilling out of the truck. “You know how the Bell clan moves.”
    Katie Bell’s full name was actually Katherine Clarke Bell, but everyone, even her own family, called her Katie Bell, as if it were a double name.
    As we hugged again, the second-youngest Bell, Bobby, raced past us, chasing his brother Red. I never understood how “Red” had been saved for the youngest Bell, as every kid in the family, including Katie Bell, had a head of auburn hair and a constellation of freckles just like their mother. I liked to imagine there’d been some kind of family meeting or a drawing of straws.
    â€œHi, Mrs. Bell,” I said politely as Katie Bell’s mom approached. She was a substantial woman in Wrangler jeans and a sleeveless tank top that revealed doughy, white arms.
    Mrs. Bell smiled and pulled me in for a hug, the real eye-popping kind that shows you mean it. “Hi, darlin’.”
    The Bells were country , and it tickled me. Mrs. Bell had always been sweet to me, especially after my parents’ divorce, when she started addressing care packages to “Helena Waite and her friend Katie Bell.” That was just the kind of people the Bells were—sugar and spice.
    They lived on the family farm outside of Knoxville, where they grew soybeans. I’d seen the Bell farm twice, once when my dad brought me along on a business trip to Knoxville, and the second time the year I’d gotten my driver’s license. Katie Bell had been to Nashville too.
    Her parents had let her take the Greyhound when she was fourteen, which had scandalized my mother but awed me.
    â€œKatie Bell, which cabin you say you’re in?” Mr. Bell was huffing and puffing with her trunk. “Hey there, Miss Helena.”
    â€œHi, Mr. Bell.”
    â€œNine, Dad,” Katie Bell grumbled. “Cabin Nine. Again. ’Cause I’m the oldest frikkin’ camper known to man.”
    Katie Bell had a flair for the dramatic and a habit of throwing out unnecessary superlatives. This time, however, she was the oldest camper known to Southpoint, if not the world.
    â€œKatie Bell,” I pleaded, “come on. It’s not that bad. It’ll be kind of fun.”
    She raised an auburn eyebrow and searched my face skeptically. There was no bullshitting Katie Bell. Her stormy blue eyes that she called “gunmetal gray” were disconcerting when they flashed on you unexpectedly. Like they were doing now.
    â€œI still can’t believe it,” she drawled, her lip curling at the inhumanity of it all. “After eight years together, they split up Hels Bells.”
    â€œHel” was what Katie Bell had started calling me the summer I was ten and she was nine, and we thought it was a cool way to say “hell” without ending up there. “Hels Bells” was what we insisted on calling ourselves as a pair. At first it had amused us to no end. Then it was just second nature.
    â€œKatie Bell,” I started, ready to convince her once again that she’d hardly notice the camper-counselor divide, when she interrupted me.
    â€œHel, there he is!” She dug her fingernails into my arm and nodded over my shoulder.
    I didn’t have to turn. I knew who she was talking about, and my face flushed instantly.
    â€œShhh! I know. How hot does he look?” I asked, rhetorically of course.
    Katie Bell gave Ransome a slinky once-over with her eyes, and jokingly gnashed her teeth like a hungry