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

in a row. She was the first kid up on a surfboard. She was even good at indoor things, like card tricks and video games. She didn't believe in hierarchies--not even mothers. She was the one kid every other kid wanted to befriend, and she never used her power for ill.

    Riley led them to the creation of worlds--ancient burial grounds, unseen reefs, valleys, mountains, treasures under the sea, and the things that lurked under the boardwalks too vicious to dis cuss, except when they occasionally turned nice.

    Riley made it seem like they were all gods of their world, but Alice knew that Riley was really the god. She just gave them turns sometimes.

    So great was Riley's imagination that she did not bother with the distinction between what was real and what wasn't. The older the other kids got, the more they wanted to keep track of that, but Riley never cared.

    � 45 � Ann Brashares

    Alice remembered the first season Riley pitched the corkball team to victory. They were playing the Ocean Beach team in the tourna ment finals. It was the ninth inning, they were up by one, and Ocean Beach had their best hitter, a strutting character named Brian some thing, on deck. Mr. Peterson, Alex's dad and Riley's coach at the time, took Riley aside and told her to walk the guy--just roll the ball four times in a row and get on to the next batter, he'd said. Riley got a fierce look and struck Brian out in three pitches to end the game. They carried Riley off the field in victory. After that, Ethan took over as coach and led them to many victorious seasons until the team disbanded years later. Ethan never told Riley to walk anybody.

    Alice remembered the two trophies Riley got at the awards cer emony that night. When they were going to bed, Riley came into Alice's room with the bigger one, the MVP trophy, and handed it to Alice. "You can have this one," she'd said. Alice was thrilled with it and added it to her shelf, towering as it did over her small cluster of participation trophies. She remembered the feeling of incipient transformation.

    But the transformation did not occur, and as the days passed, the gigantic trophy seemed to mock Alice's other meaningless trophies on her shelf. Early the next summer, Alice snuck it back into Riley's room and deposited it in the middle of Riley's groaning shelf. She didn't say anything to Riley about it, and she wasn't sure if Riley noticed that it had been returned. As generous as her sister was, Alice understood that Riley couldn't share the thing that mattered.

    As they all grew up, the qualities that defined success changed. Girly-girls had been customarily shunned by the central group,

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

    but the summer after eighth grade they got their moment. The boys turned their attention to the girls who grew breasts and wore lip gloss.

    And as they all got older still, academic prowess started to matter--who was applying to what college, and then who got in. And after that, their old friends started to think and talk most urgently about prestigious jobs and money.

    It seemed wrong to Alice that the child-gifts became trivial-- hobbies at the most. It seemed wrong that what made Riley a superstar among them had so little currency anymore and that she was so distant from the things that did matter.

    Alice exalted the gifts that her sister possessed. She worshipped Riley, and Riley remained a benevolent and uncorrupted idol, always looking out for Alice, no matter how far down she had to reach. And Paul, in his way, looked out for her, too. In return, Alice put her energy and her meager talents into doing whatever Riley and Paul did, loving what they loved, disavowing what they hated. She tried her best.

    Alice felt disloyal to Riley when she began to realize, much later, that her natural talents, her ability to communicate and observe, her caution, her empathy, her love of knitting, suited her better to the grown-up world.

    And then there was Paul. He not