Read Online That Summer by Sarah Dessen - Free Book Online

pretty soon she was breezing in the back door with them. Sumner imitated her accent and she and Ashley traded clothes and I hung around the edges of rooms watching them, listening to their voices through the house. Sumner would always look up and see me and call out, “Miss Haven, stop hiding and show yourself,” and Ashley would put an arm around me and tease Sumner about two-timing her with me. Laurel Adams would toss her long honey-blond hair and just say “Lawwwwd” the way she always did when she had nothing better to contribute. The weather turned colder and colder and my mother packed up all my summer clothes, shaking the sand of Virginia Beach from my shorts and tank tops before whisking them off to the attic until Memorial Day.
    Halloween came and Sumner carved a jack-o’-lantern that was supposed to look like Ashley but turned to mush. Ashley’s had one of Sumner’s awful ties hanging off of it and dangling over the porch rail. Ashley went as Cleopatra, Sumner as a mad scientist, and Laurel Adams as Marilyn Monroe in a peroxide wig and a dress that I could tell my mother thought was entirely too tight. They took me around the neighborhood, house to house, and ate my candy; I felt like I was really doing something, being somebody, with them all around me. Afterwards they dropped me off at home and Ashley kissed my forehead, which she never did, and then they were gone, puttering down the street with the light catching the blond in Laurel’s wig and turning it silver, I sat up and watched my father scare the hell out of all the trick,or,treaters with his monster mask until everyone had gone home and I got sent to bed and ate candy in the dark. I was just dropping off to sleep when I heard them outside.
    First the car coming up the street and pulling into the driveway, and then Ashley’s voice, harsh. “I don’t care, Sumner. Just go, okay?”
    “How can you do this?” He sounded strange, not like himself. I sat up in bed.
    “It’s done.” A car door slammed. “Leave me alone.”
    “You can’t just walk off like that, Ash.” His voice was bumpy, breathless, like he was moving around the yard after her. “At least let’s talk about it.”
    “I’m not talking.” Her feet were stomping up the front steps. “Let it go, Sumner. Just forget it.”
    “‘Forget it.’ Shit, I can’t forget it, Ashley. This isn’t something you can just wipe away like that.”
    “Sumner, leave me alone.” I could hear her fumbling with the key. “Just go. Please. Just go.”
    A pause, long enough for her to have gotten in the house, but she was still out there. Then, “Come on.” It was Sumner.
    “Go away, Sumner.” Now her voice broke, a sob muffling the end of the words. “Go away.”
    The door opened, then shut just as quickly, and I heard her feet coming up the stairs and the door to her room shutting with a click. Silence. I got up and went to my window. Sumner was in front of the house, running his hands through his hair and staring up at Ashley’s room. He stood there a long time in his costume, lab coat and stethoscope, no longer looking like a mad scientist but like one who was deeply perplexed about something, or lost. I pressed my palm against my window, thinking he might see, but if he did he never let on. Instead he turned to the VW and walked the short distance of grass to the driveway, taking his time. He started the engine and noise filled the air, his theme music humming as he pulled out, paused at the end of the driveway, and finally drove away. I got back into bed and stared at my ceiling, knowing he wouldn’t be back. I’d heard Ashley dump boys before on the front porch and I knew that tone, that finality in her voice. By the next morning he’d be gone from conversation, wiped from our collective memories. There would be somebody new—soon, probably within the week. My sister, chameleonlike, would change her voice or hair overnight to match the mannerisms of whoever was next.