My First Love and Other Disasters by Francine Pascal Read Free Book Online

I think she’s very pretty, with greenish eyes set wide apart, and a real short straight nose, not pug. There’s nothing special about her mouth, except that when she smiles she does show very white straight teeth. What I like best is her hair. It’s dark, dark brown and naturally curly, and now, in the sun, with all the curls flying loose, it has a red sparkle. Not that I have any chance to admire it, not with two kids getting unhappier by the minute pulling wagons. DeeDee breaks first.
    â€œIt’s too heavy,” she wails from about twenty feet back.
    â€œVictoria,” Cynthia calls to me without stopping, “please take some of DeeDee’s things and see if you can fit them in your wagon.”
    My wagon is already the fullest, jammed with all the heavy things. I couldn’t squeeze in another toothpick. I fix it so that DeeDee walks alongside me and I pull my wagon with one hand and help DeeDee with the other. I’ve heard a lot about Fire Island, but this is the first time I’ve ever been here. It’s not at all what I expected. We’re in a town called Ocean Beach, and it’s fairly well built up, no apartments or hotels, but lots of small wooden houses all close together. There are no sidewalks, only narrow boardwalks and lots of trees and bushes lining the sides.
    I love it here already.
    â€œDeeDee, please don’t sit in the wagon,” I say. “I can’t pull you and all the stuff. My arms are breaking.” Not only isn’t DeeDee helping me pull her wagon but now she wants to ride in it. I have to ask her again nicely please not to. “My arms are breaking. C’mon, DeeDee, please.”
    â€œI’m tired . . . and itchy.” She pouts. I can see she’s going to start crying any second, and I don’t want to start anything the first day, so I let her climb on top of the pile of stuff in her wagon. Just when I feel that I can’t go another inch, I see Cynthia turn through a creaky old wagon-wheelgate about ten houses up. DeeDee jumps off the wagon and runs ahead.
    Somehow I drag myself and the two wagons up to the house and collapse on the front steps. I love the place. It’s the cutest one on the street, all white shingles with red trimming and geraniums in every single window box. It looks like a dollhouse.
    â€œVictoria, why don’t you start carrying in some of the stuff while I make us all some nice cold lemonade,” Cynthia says. She leaves her wagon in front of the house and disappears through the front door. The minute she’s gone, DeeDee and David shoot off toward the back of the wagons. Nothing to do but start unloading all this junk. Ugh.
    â€œWhere should I put these things, Cynthia?” I ask, my arms loaded with clothes.
    â€œDavid will show you,” she calls from what must be the kitchen.
    I go back outside and start calling David, but he’s nowhere around so I go back into the house to tell Cynthia. I find her sitting in the kitchen drinking lemonade.
    â€œI can’t find David,” I tell her.
    She looks annoyed right away and asks me did I try the backyard. I say I didn’t, but I called loud and he would have heard me if he was anywhere around.
    â€œYou can’t let them just wander off by themselves,”she says to me, getting up and going toward the backyard. She sticks her head out of the screen door and calls the kids, and, my luck, they answer right away.
    I can see she thinks I didn’t look or something.
    â€œI guess they were probably hiding on me.” And I smile to show her that it’s okay, but she looks like maybe she’s wondering if she didn’t make a monstrous mistake with me.
    â€œWhen Victoria calls you, you come, hear?” she tells them.
    â€œWe didn’t hear anybody calling,” David says, shaking his head in all innocence, and DeeDee sees what he’s doing and starts to shake her head too.
    â€œI even went