Read Online Watermelon Summer by Anna Hess - Free Book Online Page A

woman told me.  "I can give you a lift there if you
    want."
     
    A lift sounded perfect!  And the woman looked safe enough, so I thanked her
    profusely, followed the lady out the door, and then stopped dead in
    my tracks.  There wasn't a car or truck in sight, but there was an ATV pulled up at the pump.
     
    The only thing I knew about ATVs was that they
    tore up one of the parks near where I lived pretty badly, and my mom
    had signed a petition to outlaw them on the trails.  I was 99%
sure the vehicles were illegal on public roads too, and it didn't seem safe to
ride on one without a helmet.  (There were definitely
    no helmets on the ATV.)  But this appeared to be my only way to
    get back into civilization, so I took a deep breath, clambered up
    behind the woman, put my arms loosely around her waist, and we were
    off.
     
     
     

    To my surprise, I not only survived; I also
    enjoyed the ride.  We didn't go very fast, but the speed was
enough to cool the sweat that coated my body, making me feel more human (if
more wind-tossed) by the time we reached our destination.  After
thanking the neighbor (whose name I
    never caught), I slid down off the ATV and headed up a driveway that led
    up to a mobile home.
     
    I could already tell from the short ride between
    gas station and trailer that mobile homes outnumbered traditional
    houses two to one in this part of Kentucky.  Here's where I
    have to admit that I'd never been in a trailer before this day and
    had, in fact, soaked up most of the common prejudices pertaining to
    their inhabitants.  I was especially leery of the long, skinny
    trailers (single-wides, I later learned they were called) that
    dotted many of the hillsides around Greensun.  I can't quite say
    which movie or book I'd seen this in, but I was positive that if I
    came up to a strange single-wide, a rabid dog would leap out at me,
while the trailer's inhabitant (a fat, white guy with no shirt on) would
    greet me at the door with a shotgun.  I was relatively sure the
    trailer in front of me was Jacob's home since his minivan sat in
    the driveway, but who's to say the scary gun-owner didn't live here
    too?
     
    There was no bell.  I knocked timidly on the
    door, then repeated my knock a little louder when no one
    answered.  I was already thinking ahead to how I'd get home if
    Jacob had given up on me and gone elsewhere when the door swung open and revealed Jacob's
    grandmother.
     
    "Hi," I said timidly.  "You don't know me,
    but...."
     
    "You're Jacob's friend, Forsythia!" the woman
    completed my sentence, her whole face breaking into a smile. 
    "He'll be so glad to see you!  I'm Sylvia Walker, his grandmother.  Come on in!"
     
     

     
    Due to my misadventure, I was late, so the family
had started eating without me.  But my plate was still waiting on
the table, and Jacob's smile went a long way toward setting me at
ease.  In the space of a few minutes, I
    went from a trepidacious stranger on the doorstep to part of a
    family every bit as tight (and sometimes annoying) as my own.
     
    "You put the beans on the biscuit," Jacob's
    little brother Davey explained helpfully when I seemed to be at a
    loss about how to construct my meal.
     
    "And you cut the biscuit with your knife," their
grandmother said a bit sternly, but this admonition was for Davey, who
    seemed to think the sopping biscuit was finger food.  From what
I could tell, the boys' Mamaw, although a grandmother in name, wasn't
much older than my own mother, and she definitely filled the maternal
niche rather than the overindulgent-grandmother role I was used
to.  "Don't forget your vegetables," she added, proving that some
statements transcend cultural barriers.
     
    I followed Davey's lead, and soon my mouth was full
of an unusual concoction that was much more flavorful than it looked.  The
slices of yellow tomatoes with red starbursts in the center