It's Not Summer without You Read Online Free Page A

will be all right. Maybe letting myself forget how good it used to be will make things easier.
    But when I slept that night, I dreamed of Susannah and the summer house, and even in my sleep I knew exactly how good it used to be. How right it was. And no matter what you do or how hard you try, you can’t stop yourself from dreaming.



chapter four
jeremiah
    Seeing your dad cry really messes with your mind. Maybe not for some people. Maybe some people have dads who are cool with crying and are in touch with their emotions. Not my dad. He’s not a crier, and he for sure never encouraged us to cry either. But at the hospital, and then at the funeral home, he cried like a lost little kid.
    My mom died early in the morning. Everything happened so fast, it took me a minute to catch up and realize it was all really happening. It doesn’t hit you right away. But later that night, the first night without her, it was just me and Conrad at the house. The first time we’d been alone in days.
    The house was so quiet. Our dad was at the funeral home with Laurel. The relatives were at a hotel. It was just me and Con. All day, people had been in and out of the house, and now it was just us.
    We were sitting at the kitchen table. People had sent over all kinds of stuff. Fruit baskets, sandwich platters, a coffee cake. A big tin of butter cookies from Costco.
    I tore off a chunk of the coffee cake and stuffed it into my mouth. It was dry. I tore off another chunk and ate that too. “You want some?” I asked Conrad.
    “Nah,” he said. He was drinking milk. I wondered it if was old. I couldn’t remember the last time anybody had been to the store.
    “What’s happening tomorrow?” I asked. “Is everyone coming over here?”
    Conrad shrugged. “Probably,” he said. He had a milk mustache.
    That was all we said to each other. He went upstairs to his room, and I cleaned up the kitchen. And then I was tired, and I went up too. I thought about going to Conrad’s room, because even though we weren’t saying anything, it was better when we were together, less lonely. I stood in the hallway for a second, about to knock, and then I heard him crying. Choked sobs. I didn’t go inside. I left him alone. I knew that’s the way he would want it. I went to my own room and I got into bed. I cried too.



chapter five
    I wore my old glasses to the funeral, the ones with the red plastic frames. They were like putting on a too-tight coat from a long time ago. They made me dizzy, but I didn’t care. Susannah always liked me in those glasses. She said I looked like the smartest girl in the room, the kind of girl who was going somewhere and knew exactly how she was going to get there. I wore my hair halfway up, because that was the way she liked it. She said it showed my face off.
    It felt like the right thing to do, to look the way she liked me best. Even though I knew she only said those things to make me feel better, they still felt true. I believed everything Susannah said. I even believed her when she said she’d never leave. I think we all did, even my mother. We were all surprised when it happened, and even when it became inevitable, a fact, we never really believed it. It seemed impossible. Not our Susannah, not Beck. You always hear about people getting better, beating the odds. I was sure Susannah would be one of them. Even if it was only a one in a million chance. She was one in a million.
    Things got bad fast. So bad that my mother was shuttling between Susannah’s house in Boston and ours, every other weekend at first and then more frequently. She had to take a leave of absence from work. She had a room at Susannah’s house.
    The call came early in the morning. It was still dark out. It was bad news, of course; bad news is the only kind that really can’t wait. As soon as I heard the phone ring, even in my sleep, I knew. Susannah was gone. I lay there in my bed, waiting for my mother to come and tell me. I could hear her moving