Ann Brashares - The Last Summer (of You and Me) by Ann Brashares Read Free Book Online

real one. Alice still had the ribbon hanging over the door of her room in the city and a photo of it stuck to her bulletin board.

    � 39 � Ann Brashares

    Riley had the bold design ideas and the ambition. She was a vig orous builder and a naturally gifted engineer. What Alice offered was the patience of execution. She was focused and good at follow ing orders. "Alice never gets bored," Riley had bragged to one of the judges as Alice skim-smoothed a wall for the thousandth time.

    Their winning castle was a cloudlike fantasy, a feat of design. It didn't have the bottom-heavy look that most big sandcastles have. But the greater triumph they built the following year, when Alice was fifteen. The Barnacle Tower was modeled loosely on the Chrys ler Building. It was so tall the girls had to build scaffolding out of sand to construct the top. It had the most gorgeous surface design made out of barnacles, gathered by Riley and painstakingly applied by Alice.

    But here they'd built too close to the sun. So magnificent in size, finish, and beauty, it put the others to shame. The irritable and sun burned judge disqualified them on account of not being residents of Ocean Beach. Instead, he gave first prize to the Pody brothers, who'd built a totally conventional medieval-style fortress. Worst of all, Barnacle Tower was mysteriously destroyed before Ethan arrived with his camera. And so it remained an edifice in memory only--growing thereby larger and more skillfully built with time.

    "I wonder if the Podys will enter," Alice mused as they headed east, along the edge of the surf.

    "They suck," Riley said, galloping lightly along. She would habitually run and circle and weave all around Alice, who tended to walk in a straight line.

    "They don't suck."

    "Yeah, they do."

    � 40 � The Last Summer (of You and Me)

    "Well, they beat us."

    "Unfairly."

    "Jim Brobard sucks."

    "That's true."

    "He's the one who kicked down Barnacle Tower."

    "You don't know it was him."

    "Yes, I do."

    Alice leaned down and picked up a piece of a horseshoe crab's shell and examined it. "Do you want it?" she asked. It was a vestige from past walks when they used to help each other with their col lections. Riley's collection was always easier. Hers included any and all detritus from sea creatures: shells, claws, egg cases, starfish, an occasional bone or tooth. Once she'd found a piece of a shark's jaw and stunk up the whole house with it. Never sentimental, Riley dumped it all at the end of the summer and began collecting anew at the start of the next season. Whereas Alice collected only one kind of thing: smooth, semitransparent stones of a particular pink- orange shade. She looked for them summer after summer, and never dreamed of throwing any of them away.

    "No, thanks." Riley tossed the piece of dark brown shell into the waves.

    They saw the bathing suit�clad crowd as they drew close. There were about a half-dozen castles up for consideration, and the sisters examined each of them through expert eyes.

    "That thing's more cave than castle," Riley remarked about one of them near the middle of the group.

    "That one 's kind of nice. Very classical." Alice pointed to a castle modeled roughly on the Pantheon.

    � 41 � Ann Brashares

    "I think it's about to fall down."

    Alice pointed to an elaborate construction at the outskirts. "The Podys are back, and they've been watching the Lord of the Rings movies again."

    Riley laughed. "Where are they? Which was the one who asked you to go skinny-dipping with him?"

    Alice rolled her eyes. "The younger one." He'd had the nerve to proposition her after the Tower incident, even with his blue rib bon hanging around his neck.

    "Let's keep going." Alice didn't feel like being ogled by the younger Pody. Anyway, the competition still left a slightly bitter taste.

    They walked out onto the jetty, Alice picking her way along the slippery stones and Riley bounding around like a goat. They sat at the end with