Summer After Summer

“Here we are.” He pulled up behind Misty’s house. “Are you okay?”

“Yep. Jaz, I’ll call you. Thanks, Charlie,” she said before she dashed toward her back door.

Charlie turned to me, a serious expression on his face. “Is your daddy gonna meet us with one of those bad-cop looks?”

“Not if we’re lucky,” I said with fervor.

“Lord, you’re enough to give a guy gray hair.” He punctuated his assertion by rubbing the top of my head.

“Do you remember the time in the fourth grade when Hooter Thompson knocked me off the jungle gym and you gave him a black eye?” I’d wanted to ask that question for years. It was the defining moment, the moment I knew for certain that I was head over heels in love with Charlie, and my feelings hadn’t changed much in the intervening time.

He glanced at me and laughed. He was no doubt wondering why I’d brought up an event that occurred years before. “I remember. I was grounded for a week when the principal called my dad. Why are you asking?”

“No reason.”

Charlie hesitated, looking as if he was about to press the issue and then decided against it. “Okay,” he said before he started the car.

On the drive to my house, our conversation was strangely stilted. I was contemplating how he was always there for me and how much I loved being around him. He was probably thinking I was a major-league nitwit.

Charlie parked beside our guesthouse. “Let’s stroll down to the dock so you can tell me what happened. If I’m about to have another Hooter Thompson experience, I’d like to be prepared.”

He was out of the car and around to the passenger side before I could get my butt in gear.

“Come on, Sunshine. You’ve got some ’splaining to do.” He put his arm around me and for a brief moment I imagined what it would be like if we were a couple.

That would be my idea of heaven; too bad Charlie didn’t feel the same way.

A couple of days later, I was in the middle of one of my favorite fantasies when the star attraction pulled his boat up to the dock.

“Hey, Sunshine, you want to take a spin?”

Of course I did. I’d go to the moon with this guy.

I was halfway in the boat before I bothered to answer. “Sure. Where are we off to?”

He reached into the cooler and brought out an icy Coke. “I’m starving so I thought we’d head down to Slim Jim’s for a burger.”

“Good.” Slim’s had the best French fries north of the Rio Grande. It was the best of all possible worlds; I could enjoy something fattening and also spend a couple of hours with Charlie.

“Where’s Bunny?” Why did I have to ask that?

“I don’t know. I have a feeling there’s something going on, but she’s not talking to me about it.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really.” He paused, then grinned. “I guess you could say things are pretty dicey with us right now.”

Chapter 5

Our gang managed to dodge the bullet—sort of.

Daddy kept giving me the “look.” I knew he knew what we’d been up to; fortunately he couldn’t prove it.

Too bad! This was my last opportunity to be a carefree kid and I intended to take advantage of every minute. Yeah, I realized we were being childish, but our tiny bit of hell-raising was our version of asserting our independence.

Summer in Meadow Lake had always had a magical quality—it was sun and fun at its best. And July was truly our summer, a time and place that could never be replicated.

It’d been almost two weeks since our skinny-dipping escapade. I cringed at the thought of what would’ve happened if the patrolman had caught us butt naked. Darn it, I was not about to let Bunny talk me into another debacle. And if I believed that, I was delusional. She was charismatic, mischievous and irresistible to mere mortals.

That’s how she managed to snag me for our next escapade. I protested, a little, but it was to no avail. We were heading off to toilet-paper Mr. Hargrove’s house, and that antic was guaranteed to land us in a pile of trouble. Not only was he our high-school principal, he was also one of the grumpiest guys in town.

“I certainly hope you bought that stuff at different stores,” I whispered as I jumped into Bunny’s car. The backseat was filled with rolls of toilet paper.

“Even better, I raided the janitor’s closet at Daddy’s factory. They’ll never be able to trace it to us,” she assured me as we rolled quietly down the road. Our covert mission required maximum darkness—read the middle of the night—so we all had to sneak out. I felt like a cat burglar in reverse as I crept out of my house and met Bunny down the road.

I was afraid Mary Alice would chicken out, but there she was, standing on the corner with Misty.

“Good grief,” Misty exclaimed, batting the toilet paper out of the way. “Where did you get this junk?”

“I liberated it.”

“You stole it,” Mary Alice squeaked.

“No, you ninny. I’ll eventually inherit Daddy’s business, so in essence I own everything in that building. Toilet paper and all.”

Even I realized that was a bit of a stretch. But who was I to criticize? I was in the process of giving Daddy gray hair. Thank goodness Bucky was working as a camp counselor. Brother dearest was the biggest tattletale in the world, and Daddy really didn’t need to hear about this stunt.

We cruised past the Hargroves’ house several times before we came up with a definitive game plan. We didn’t have a ladder—which was probably just as well—so we’d have to make do with papering the bushes.

Total silence was a necessity for successfully completing our mission, and pulling that off would require a miracle. When Mary Alice got in a bind she turned into a giggle box. That wasn’t good when you were committing a misdemeanor. Misdemeanor or felony, it wouldn’t make a whit of difference to Daddy—breaking the law was breaking the law.

The alley was dark, the town was silent, and other than the odd insomniac and the night clerk at the 7-Eleven, we were the only people up and out. Mary Alice gave another maniacal giggle, managing to wake a dog in the process.

“Stop that,” Bunny hissed as she crept into our potential victim’s yard. “I have an idea. We can do this tree.” She indicated a small mimosa. “Jazzy, since you’re so tall, Misty can get on your shoulders and she can throw the toilet paper at least halfway up the tree.”

That stopped me in my tracks. “What’s this ‘we,’ kemo sabe? Looks to me like Misty and I will be doing all the work.”

Bunny waved her hand in the air. Sometimes that girl really annoyed me.

“Come on, let’s do it.” Misty dragged me through the hedge and headed straight to our target—a poor, innocent tree.

“Kneel down and I’ll get on. Then you can stand up,” she instructed me.

“Sure, I bench-press a hundred and ten pounds all the time!”

“Come on, don’t be a spoilsport,” Bunny said. “I’m too short to do this and so is Mary Alice. We have to finish up and get out of here.” She had a roll of toilet paper in each hand.

It was nice of her to remind me I was the only Amazon in a bevy of petites. Uh-huh!