Watermelon Summer Read Online Free Page B

my
    trepidation turned into a quick burst of joy.  Jacob had braved
    Hippie Holler to see me!
     
    Before I could analyze my unexpected excitement
    (and the vision of blue eyes that filled my mind), the visitor
    turned toward me and long hair swung around her head.  Not
    Jacob after all.
     
    "You look disappointed, and we haven't
    even been introduced yet!" the girl called across the yard, and Lucy
    came barreling up from behind me to leap onto her shoulders. 
    "I missed you too!" she exclaimed, her attention diverted to rubbing
    the dog's ears and pulling a treat out of her back pocket to toss
    into the air.  Snap went Lucy's jaws, and then my canine
    companion wandered off around the side of the house to eat her snack
    in privacy.
     
    Fatal shyness is one of my worst character flaws,
    and even though my visitor seemed friendly, I would have just as
    soon gone back into the woods and hidden until she went away. 
    But I couldn't bring myself to be that rude, so I put on my best
    smile and offered her an apple instead, out of which she promptly
    took a huge bite.
     
    "These are the best apples for pie!" the girl
    exclaimed around a mouthful of green fruit.  "Well, most people
    don't think so, but if you like your pie in the mushy, British style, Early Transparents
    are the way to go.  What's your favorite apple?"
     
    This turned out to be a trick question since
    every variety I knew—the Delicious duo, Macintosh, Granny Smith—made the girl's nose wrinkle up in distaste.  "Virginia
    Beauty—now there's an
    apple worth eating," she proclaimed, then listed the rest of her top
    ten, every one of which was new to me.  I should have felt
    chastened, but instead I was swept up in the young woman's enthusiasm and
    quickly agreed when she suggested picking black raspberries to go
    with the apples.  "An apple-raspberry pie is even better than
    either by itself," she confided, "and the black raspberries down
    here are the tastiest I've ever eaten."
     
    I didn't realize who I was talking to until we'd
picked our way all around the edges of the raspberry patch, climbing
    down into the creek to pluck the plumpest berries that overhung the
    water.  "I keep meaning to ask Dad if he planted these berries
    or if they're wild," she said, stuffing another morsel into her
    mouth with purple-stained hands.
     
    "Did your father live here back when it was a
    community?" I asked in reply, and the girl stopped picking to look
    straight at me.  She raised one eyebrow (a trick I'd practiced
    for hours, with no luck), then tossed her head back and laughed.
     
    "You really don't know who I am, do you?" she
    replied, and when I shook my head, she wrinkled up her nose as part
    of the happiest grin I've ever seen.  Even though I didn't get
    the joke, I smiled back, and that's when she told me.  "I'm
    Kat!  Your sister!"
     
     

     
    I don't know which gobsmacked me more—that
    Stout Kat was standing before me in the flesh, or that she was my
    sister.  "half-sister," she hastened to add when I just stood
    there in the creek, silently, my mouth probably hanging open and
    minnows pecking at my bare toes.  "We have the same father,"
    she continued.  "Look, are you alright?  Maybe we should
    go sit down."
     
    "So when you lived on the farm....?"  I
    didn't even know what I was asking, but Kat was never one to be
    tongue-tied, so she filled me in.  We'd returned to the porch
    when I couldn't seem to force any words out of my mouth, and Flo had come out of
    hiding to twine around my legs and purr her support. 
    Meanwhile, this stranger was telling me Stout-Kat tales...from the
    first-person point-of-view.
     
    "Before you were born.  Yep, Mom dropped me
    off with our dad because she wanted to go to Burning Man and didn't
    want a kid in tow.  Can't say that I blame her, although I'm
    pretty sure your mom didn't know I existed.  You know there are
    more of us,