Charm & Strange by Stephanie Kuehn Read Free Book Online Page A

that double-parked and shimmered in the New England heat. I didn’t like it, which was weird. The visitors bothered me even though I was a tourist, too.
    Once we were out of the downtown maze of streets, my eyes stayed glued to the ground. Something in the stone slabs beneath my feet glittered and sparkled like diamonds. It felt like walking on the surface of a distant planet. Foreign. Unknowable. We entered the wrought-iron gates of the old town cemetery. Keith cleared his throat. I looked up and there they were. The girls. All three of them.
    They lounged on beach towels in the prickly grass, amid chipped slate headstones and faded American flags. Keith smoothed out his shirt and walked straight up to Charlotte (she went by Charlie) and declared: “You’ve changed.”
    She didn’t squeal the way girls at home did when they sat in groups and Keith talked to them. Instead, Charlie crossed her legs and arched her back. Long red hair pooled over one shoulder. I thought she looked mean, vixen sly, but Keith wouldn’t take his eyes off her.
    “You’re right,” she said finally. “I have.”
    “Why didn’t you write back when I e-mailed you?”
    She leaned to one side and shot me a quizzical look. “How old is he?”
    Keith twisted around. I sat a few feet away on a stone bench with my arms folded. The last thing I wanted to do was sit and listen to them talk all day. What I did want was to play tennis, but it was Sunday. I couldn’t go until tomorrow.
    Keith turned back to Charlie. “He’s ten.”
    “He looks older.”
    I smiled. This was a common misconception because of my height. People sometimes thought I was twelve or thirteen. I’d even been called a brute.
    Keith just shrugged and pushed his bangs from his eyes. Charlie held out her hand and wiggled her fingers until he pulled her to standing. Her shorts were very short, and she had the longest legs I’d ever seen on a girl, like a loping giraffe. The dry grass left imprints across the backs of her thighs like pound signs.
    The youngest sister, Phoebe, abandoned her towel and crawled toward me on all fours like a bad dog.
    “Drew, Drew, Drew,” she cooed. “You don’t remember me, do you?”
    I made a face. Um, no, I didn’t. As far as I knew, we’d never met, and if we had, I prayed for those memories to stay erased.
    Phoebe laughed. An ugly sound. In fact, she was kind of an ugly girl. Too-white skin, too-skinny body, with scabs all over her arms and legs. Bug bites, I guessed, but it looked like she was falling apart. Her hair glinted red like Charlie’s but held none of the prettiness. Plus, she wore it pulled back in a ponytail, and a big chunk was missing from the left side. She caught me gawking.
    “I fell asleep with gum in my mouth,” she explained.
    “Oh.”
    “You like to swim?” She had a yellow suit on beneath a pair of cutoff overalls.
    “Sure.”
    “We can go to Walden Pond if you want. Tons of kids go there.” She made a vague gesture in what I thought was a southward direction.
    “Okay,” I said. A pond? Actually I’d never been in anything but a pool. The idea of not knowing how deep the water was unsettled me. But a pond? It couldn’t be that big, could it?
    “My dad can bring his canoe out,” Phoebe said.
    I frowned. All I knew about my uncle Kirby, I’d picked up from my grandmother. Apparently, he was a disappointment.
    “I don’t like boats,” I told Phoebe.
    “Why not?”
    My face burned. Boats were like cars. Intolerable. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
    “What grade are you in?” she asked.
    “Fifth.”
    “I’m going to the middle school next year. I can’t wait.”
    “Oh,” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
    She shrugged, leaned over, and whispered in my ear, “Do you know why you’re here?” The sickly sweet wafts of her grape soda filled my nostrils.
    “Where?”
    “Here. This summer. In Concord. You’ve never come before. Only Keith.”
    “My parents