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

their feet dangling, mist hung like a net over their shoulders, wind and water indistinct.

    Later, on the walk home, Riley leaned down and picked up a stone. "Alice, look." She washed it off in the surf and held it up to the sun, her fingers glinting water.

    "Oh." Riley put it in her hands and Alice studied it.

    "Perfect, right?"

    Alice nodded excitedly. "It could be the best one."

    It was a see-through stone of the most perfect pale orange-pink color, almost exactly in the shape of a heart. A rare addition to Alice's collection.

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    The Talent for Being a Child

    A lice's babysitting charges went unexpectedly off-island the

    following Tuesday. She should have swept the sand out of the house or mailed the things her mother had left on the desk, but instead she bought a bacon-and-egg sandwich at the market and wandered up to the beach. She finished her sandwich sitting on top of the stairs at the dune, so that Riley wouldn't give her a hard time about eating on the beach. The sister of Riley had to be above reproach.

    Sitting there, Alice had a wide and quiet view of things. She saw the squad gathered Baywatch-style in their red bathing suits, listen ing to weather reports and other lifeguard-related briefings. There was always a solemnity to these proceedings, which tickled Alice a little and was probably the reason she hadn't become a lifeguard. That and her inability to do the devilish butterfly kick.

    � 43 � Ann Brashares

    She finished her greasy sandwich and hunched down to wash her hands and face in the foot wash. The shower would have worked better, but it was broken. It had been broken for so long that it might have been fixed, but Alice wouldn't know because she never tried it anymore.

    She didn't walk down to the sand as she had planned but settled again on the top step, her chin in her hand. Maybe it was because Paul was back, but the world had shifted and everything looked as if it were a bit farther away.

    Riley was standing in the center of the group, and Alice saw that she was small. Alice knew her sister was small--at least four inches shorter than she--but she didn't usually see it.

    Her mother said Riley turned out small in a tall family because of a disease she'd had when she was a toddler. Alice couldn't remember the name of it, but she knew that Riley had nearly died. She also knew that her mother got pregnant with Alice not too long after. Her mother also blamed the disease for Riley's dyslexia. She always called it that: "Riley's dyslexia," as though it belonged to her, like a sweater or a pet. Her mother was oddly protective of her genes, it seemed to Alice. Maybe it was just another way to keep the tally straight between her and Ethan.

    Alice always felt proud of her sister because she was tough and nervy. She never showed girly weaknesses like cellulite or crushes. She never laughed if she didn't think something was funny. (Alice did do that.) She wasn't afraid of the water. She never lingered on injustices committed against her.

    Alice felt proud of her today also, but from this wide angle, she felt herself slipping toward sad. Riley used to be the youngest

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

    lifeguard in Fire Island history, and now she was possibly the oldest. Few twenty-four-year-olds could afford to take entire summers at the beach anymore. These other guards were flirting and preening, Alice saw, and Riley was not part of that. These new guards did not appear to be there for the same reasons Riley was there. Did Riley used to fit in better? Or was Alice usually too close to see?

    She felt protective of her sister, she realized, and it made for an uncomfortable reversal.

    Some people had gifts that made them great at being kids. Riley had those gifts. She was fearless, and she was fair. She was effort lessly expert at skateboarding, sailing, running fast, coaxing a fish off of any line. She was the pitcher on the winning corkball team for seven years