Summer's Song: Pine Point, Book 1 by Allie Boniface Read Free Book Online Page B

handed over a plastic cup. “Well, I’m glad you’re here now, anyway.”
    Summer sipped from the cup and gagged. “God, what is this?”
    “Some punch Cat made. Why? Is it bad?”
    She grimaced. “It’s awful.”
    “Thanks a lot.” A deep male voice spoke behind her.
    She turned and stared. “Catfish?”
    A tall twenty-five-year-old with white-blond hair identical to Rachael’s grinned at her. “Hey, Summer. Welcome back.” He paused and the playful light in his eyes dimmed. “I’m sorry about your dad.”
    She continued to gape at Rachael’s little brother. “What happened to you?”
    Cat’s expression changed to puzzlement. “What do you mean?”
    She waved a hand. “You’re so…tall. When did you get all grown up?” When she left Pine Point, Catfish Hunter had been a cocky ninth-grader with acne and a bad haircut. Now he stood on the porch step below her, a man who’d grown about six inches and filled out.
    He laughed. “Sprouted up in college.”
    “You look good.” Summer shaded her eyes and remembered something else. “Do you go by Nathan now?”
    Cat made a face. “Nah. I’ll always be Cat. Nickname’s too hard to break.”
    Rachael stole her brother’s baseball cap and mashed it down on her head. “Besides, he still smells like a catfish. Don’t you ever wear deodorant?”
    Cat grabbed for the hat but his sister dashed inside the screen door and vanished. He shrugged. “Some things never change, huh?”
    “I guess not.”
    He stood there a moment longer. “You’re not staying long, are you? Here in Pine Point?”
    Summer shook her head. “It’s not my—I don’t—” How did she answer? She wanted to ask how he could stay here after everything that had happened, but she supposed Donnie’s classmates had survived better than his eighteen-year-old sister with a father who didn’t want her around as a reminder.
    Cat loped down the porch steps. “Coming to the lake?”
    “Later.” She waved and watched him disappear behind the oak trees, still amazed at the boy who had shed his awkward teenage skin for the shell of an adult. He wears it well . Still, he hadn’t had much choice. When you lost your best friend at barely thirteen, the rough adolescent years that followed hardened you up a bit. Calloused you. Made you old before you really wanted to be.
    Summer climbed the steps and let herself into the house. Inside the foyer sat the same smiling gnome doorstop. The same fruit-patterned wallpaper peeled in the corners of the kitchen. If she tried hard enough, she could almost smell the chicken casserole that Mrs. Hunter used to cook every Friday night. Summer leaned against the breakfast bar. Suddenly, she was twelve years old again, sleeping over at her best friend’s house, playing hide-and-seek in the woods, sharing a tub of ice cream with Rachael and talking about boys in the dark, musty attic. “Where is everyone?”
    Rachael sat at the dining room table munching on potato chips. “Mom dragged Dad to a quilt show over in Silver Valley. Everyone else is down at the lake.”
    “Oh.” Summer exchanged Cat’s punch for a diet soda.
    “So what’s it look like? From the inside, I mean.” Rachael asked.
    “What?”
    “The McCready house. Your house.”
    “Oh, God. I don’t know. It’s a mess.” She thought of the crumbling stairs, the broken windows, the cemetery gate visible from the second story.
    Rachael straightened her brother’s cap and propped her chin in one hand. “Remember when we used to go by there after school and dare each other to look in the windows?”
    “Sure.” Two skinny, knobby-kneed girls darted into Summer’s memory.
    “We never did, right?”
    “Nope. We always chickened out.”
    “And now you own the place.”
    “So?”
    Rachael shook her head. “You finally get to look in the windows. Get over your fears.”
    Anxiety dimmed the edges of her peripheral vision, and Summer’s face flushed. She didn’t answer.
    “Summer