The Secret Year Read Online Free

night.”
    “Then what do you think I’m doing? Meeting my fellow secret agents? Passing them my latest surveillance notes?”
    She laughed and scooped up a handful of black water. “It’s like liquid ebony,” she said, and it ran through her fingers. “There was this dance tonight up at the country club. Austin got drunk. He thinks it’s fun to spend five hours hanging over a toilet bowl.” She shook her wet hand, spraying me with drops of the river. “I mean, God, when he gets drunk I can’t even
talk
to him! He can’t follow a conversation. He can’t kiss without slobbering.”
    “Austin the Teenage Alcoholic,” I said. “It would make a great TV movie.”
    “Ohhh, listen to that sarcasm. You don’t like him.”
    “Why should I like him?”
    She shrugged. “You’re right. There’s no reason you should.” She turned away from me, and the breeze caught her hair. “Anyway, it’s not like I’ve never been drunk myself. But there’s a difference between a little buzz and all-out drooling sloppy.”
    “Don’t worry,” I said. “If he needs it, I’m sure his daddy will buy him a new liver.”
    She turned back around. I thought maybe I’d gone too far with that one, and she’d slap me or something, but she grinned instead. “You think he’s got everything, don’t you?”
    That one didn’t even need an answer.
    “Colt,” she said, teasing, scolding. “If you’re lucky, you should
know
you’re lucky.”
    That was exactly how I’d always felt about the people who lived on Black Mountain. But I’d never put it into words before, or heard anyone else put it into words. “You talking about Austin?”
    “I’m talking about you.”
    “Me?”
    “You don’t believe it? You need me to tell you how?” She stepped closer to me. “I could go with the obvious, tell you how someone sleeping on the street would be glad to live in your house. Or how a ninety-year-old with a walker would love to be seventeen like you.”
    “Sixteen,” I interrupted. I wanted to choke myself as soon as I said it. It wasn’t even exactly true; at that point I was still a couple of weeks shy of sixteen. Why did I have to remind her I was younger than she was?
    “Whatever. But I won’t even go that basic. I can tell you how you’re luckier than Austin Chadwick.”
    “This ought to be good.”
    She took another couple of steps toward me, close enough now that I could smell her shampoo, a soapy peach scent that I got to know very well later. She counted on her fingers. They were long and white, with perfectly curved nails. I wanted to touch them, but I didn’t. “One, you’re smarter than Austin. Two, you’re probably
not
an alcoholic. Three, you’re better looking than he is. Four, you’ve got the balls to wade out into the Willis River with me.”
    “That’s some list.”
    She laughed low in her throat and took one more step, and now I could feel the heat coming off her skin. “You still think Austin has it better than you? You’d rather be sprawled out on the floor of the country club men’s room than here with me?”
    “Not especially.”
    That’s when she kissed me.
    I’d had a girlfriend the year before—Jackie—my first real girlfriend. She’d moved away over the summer. We’d done everything together, but the first time I kissed Julia, I felt like I hadn’t done anything. Julia’s mouth was hot and the river was cold and her satin dress was so smooth it didn’t even seem to be there.
    “Five,” she said, breathing hard, “you’re a much better kisser than Austin.”

chapter 4
    I didn’t really believe all that stuff Julia had said about me being better at kissing than Austin. I figured she was just mad at him, and horny, and I happened to be there, so what the hell.
    Nick once argued with the rest of us guys about whether girls get horny the way guys do. Nick said they didn’t. I said they did. To prove my point, I told him about the time Jackie dragged me into the toolshed in