Read Online The Brightest Stars of Summer by Leila Howland - Free Book Online

things they wanted to do (swim, sail, eat ice cream), until they realized that it was almost midnight, which of course reminded them of the midnight snack that was waiting for them.
    They crept downstairs so as not to wake anyone. But Aunt Sunny must’ve known they were going to visit the fridge, because she had left a light on in the kitchen. They poured tall glasses of cold milk and ate the chilled brownies in silence as the kitchen clock ticked and a single night bird chirped somewhere in the blue-black sky on the other side of the windows. When they were finished, they found themselves deliciously exhausted. They debated brushing their teeth, decided against it, and stumbled into their beds and drifted off to sleep.
    Now the smell of coffee and the sounds of Aunt Sunny making breakfast rose up from the kitchen. Marigold was surprised that she was the first one awake. She was usually a late riser. Lily was curled up in her bed with Benny the bunny in her arms. Zinnie was stretched out on top of her covers with a smile on her face. Marigold guessed that she was dreaming of ice cream. Since privacy was rare in Pruet, where she shared a room with her sisters, Marigold pulled her iPad out from under her bed and opened her digital diary.
    She reviewed the list she’d written on the plane, thought for a moment, and wrote:
    Today I’ll find a new thing to love instead of acting. Marigold paused. How was she supposed to do this? She thought about other activities she’d tried. She’d been on the swim team at one point. She didn’t exactly love it, but maybe if she practiced more, she could learn to. After all, the Cuties were all on the swim team. She wrote that maybe she would go for a long swim at the town beach today.
    She also wrote about how she would try to see Peter as soon as possible. A smile spread across her lips as she typed his name. It was going to be fun to see him again, and because he was an ordinary boy, she’d probably become more ordinary just by spending time with him.
    She realized that writing in the diary gave her a feeling similar to that of sharing something with a friend. Maybe if she kept writing in her diary, she wouldn’t miss Pilar so much. A diary is like a friend that will never betray you, she wrote.
    Even though she was hungry for one of Aunt Sunny’s breakfasts, she kept writing. She decided that in addition to practicing swimming and looking for Peter, she would wear ordinary clothes today. She went into her dresser drawer and picked out a plain green T-shirt and shorts. Because Aunt Sunny had no full-length mirror in the house, Marigold used her iPad to snap a selfie. Her haircut looked really cute with the T-shirt’s unusual neckline, which she hadbarely noticed before. In fact, this T-shirt looked way better on her with short hair than it had when she’d had long hair.
    She took it off and chose a simple blue dress to try on instead. Marigold had plucked the dress off the sale rack at Target. It was so marked down that it had cost less than the toilet paper Mom was buying that day! When she’d tried it on at home, she’d realized it fit weirdly at the waist and was a little too long to be really flattering, but somehow they’d never returned it. Now she slipped it over her head and took another selfie, hoping that she had finally found the outfit that would make her as ordinary as possible. But she must’ve grown an inch since the last time she’d tried the dress on, because now it fit her well. She would even go so far as to say that it looked good on her.
    She returned to her diary to consider her problem. How was she going to look ordinary when her outfits were all so cute? She peered over at Zinnie and typed: Good thing Zinnie is here. She doesn’t care about clothes at all!
    Marigold started to open Zinnie’s drawer but stopped herself. She always made such a big deal about Zinnie not looking through her stuff or