The Secret Year Read Online Free Page A

her backyard. Her family was having a barbecue, and her relatives were all over the place, but she pulled me into the dark shed and undid my belt. The place smelled of lawnmower gas and mildew, but we didn’t care. We knocked spiderwebs off a lawn-chair cushion and did it right there. It wasn’t like I fought her off, but she definitely made the first move. I never would’ve have tried to jump her in the middle of her family picnic.
    Jackie blew a gasket when it got back to her that I’d told Nick about that day. She didn’t talk to me for a week. And she was right that I should’ve kept my mouth shut; I wasn’t as good at keeping secrets back then as I became later. But it was true that she liked sex as much as I did, so I assumed it was true for Julia, too. Especially when I remembered the way she’d kissed me at the river.
    Anyway, the Monday after I first saw Julia at the bridge, I didn’t think she would come walking up to me at school, and she didn’t. I figured she’d probably never talk to me again. I wasn’t expecting to find a note in my locker: “Meet me at the bridge tonight, 9:30.”
    I wondered if it could be a joke. Or a setup: I’d go down to the bridge and find Austin Chadwick and his friends waiting to knock my teeth out. But somehow I knew it was real, even though I didn’t see her at school all day. It was like we’d gotten tuned to each other from just one meeting. And at nine-thirty, I went down to the river.
    That night she wore regular clothes, jeans and a white shirt. No more black satin. She was sitting on the hood of her car, waiting for me. I walked up to her.
    “So you are real,” she said. “I thought I must’ve dreamed Friday night.”
    “How did you know which locker was mine?”
    “I work in the office on my study period, for extra credit. I can look up anybody’s locker.” She grinned. “Morrissey, Colten, 238A.”
    “Congratulations.”
    She moved over to let me sit down, but I hesitated. I could imagine myself scratching that showroom-fresh finish. Then she said, “Get up here,” so I did.
    “I’m not planning to swim tonight,” she said. “But you go ahead if you want to.”
    “No swimming? I guess you only wear your black dress for that.”
    “Except when I wear my silver dress, with the tiara.”
    “You don’t really
have
a tiara, do you?”
    She laughed. “No, do you?”
    “Only five or six.”
    I let silence fall between us and lie there. It wasn’t completely quiet; I could hear crickets and the lapping of the river against the shore. I wanted to touch her but felt like I didn’t have the right.
    “That’s amazing,” she said at last.
    “What?”
    “That you can stand silence. Austin can’t take much quiet. Neither can any of my other friends. It’s like they’re afraid to have time to think.”
    I liked the way we slid from laughing to serious, from talking to quiet and back again. I could’ve sat there all night with her, letting things flow that way. But something made me push, made me ask, “So why did you want me to come down here?”
    “I—” She closed her mouth and thought for a minute. “I wanted to see you again.”
    “Where’s Austin?”
    She winced. “Don’t ask me about Austin, okay?”
    “Then what the hell are we doing here?”
    “Well . . . I’m open to suggestions.”
    I didn’t like her smirk when she said that. It wasn’t that I minded her flirting with me. I just didn’t believe that I could be with her tonight without some catch, some price tag. I thought of the way fish get hooked, the metal biting into their mouths, drawing blood.
    “God, Colt!” She laughed. “You should see your face. Don’t you trust me?”
    “Why should I?”
    She put her hand on the front of my shirt, leaned toward me. I could’ve pulled away but I didn’t. I met her halfway for the kiss and it was as good as it had been the other night. Maybe better. “Remember this?” she whispered.
    “Yeah, I remember. So you