Read Online Five Summers by Una LaMarche - Free Book Online Page B

plane
wasn’t
circling the airport. Maybe she was already there. Jo lost her focus as the cab door opened.
    Before Maddie, Jo had never really had a best friend. Being an only child, she had gotten used to playing by herself. Her dad loved to tell people the story of the first day he dropped Jo off at preschool and watched her walk confidently to the toy bin while the other kids wailed miserably around her. By the time the other parents had extricated themselves from their children’s anxious grasps, Jo had built a Lincoln Log fort, complete with perimeter security. It wasn’t that she
couldn’t
make friends—she always got along with her classmates and even had the occasional sleepover with other girls from the peewee soccer league or, later, the Hunter High School varsity volleyball squad. But it wasn’t until she met Maddie, Skylar, and Emma that Jo started to understand what all the fuss was about. She wasn’t just drifting anymore, rounding out tables of odd-numbered people in the cafeteria. She had her own tribe, like on
Survivor
(except without all the starvation and backstabbing).
    But it was hard to learn how to be someone’s best friend—let alone three people’s—and Jo felt ill-equipped. She didn’t have a psychologist mother like Emma’s or a touchy-feely family like Skylar’s or a no-holds-barred emotional temperament like Maddie’s. It was hard for Jo to talk about her feelings or care about how she looked or gossip about boys the way her friends did. She always felt like she couldn’t quite keep up in friendship, the way other people couldn’t keep pace with her on long-distance runs. But she’d never stopped trying—at least, not until the rest of them had.
    Jo was used to feeling left behind. After all, she’d said good-bye to them summer after summer, knowing she wasn’t leaving camp grounds for two long, lonely weeks until her mother picked her up on Labor Day. So when the calls, e-mails, and letters dwindled after their last year together at Nedoba (it had been hardest to see the letters stop, those thick manila envelopes with the North Carolina return address, made out to “Ms. Josephine Putnam,” or “Jolene F. Putnam, Esquire,” jokes Jo’s mom never got and in fact seemed annoyed by), the withdrawal didn’t feel good, but it also didn’t feel new. It was just the way things had always been. And at camp, at least, she still had Skylar, even if their relationship had mostly devolved into odd couple bickering without the other two to balance them out.
    As she stared at the taxi, though, Jo realized she wasn’t willing to settle for the status quo any longer. Once Maddie stepped out, once they were all back together, she had to do everything in her power to keep them from ever falling apart again.
    But she’d gotten herself worked up for nothing. Maddie wasn’t in the cab. Instead, a slight brunette hopped out and hurried noisily across the gravel, pulling a gigantic suitcase behind her. Jo let out a deep, shaky breath.
    “Sorry I’m late!” the girl panted, waving excitedly to some people on the Green. “Did you call me yet?” Jo studied the girl’s face and frowned. She’d been able to identify almost everyone by sight, except for some of the older twentysomethings and a few guys who had grown facial hair. This person
looked
awfully familiar, but Jo couldn’t place her. “Uh, I don’t think so . . .” She looked down at her clipboard, trying to stall. The girl dropped her suitcase dramatically and opened her mouth in shock.
    “
Jo Putnam
!” she cried in disbelief. “It’s
me
.
Sunny
.” Mark Slotkin did a hilarious double take, and Jo tried not to laugh.
    “Sunny!” Jo said, “Of course! Sorry, the . . . sun must have been in my eyes.” In reality, she could see fine—she just hadn’t been able to see Sunny’s old nose, which had been shaved down to a ski-jump shadow of its former self. Sunny skipped over to sit with Aileen Abrams, Kerry