Lovestruck Summer Melissa Walker (top 100 books to read .TXT) 📖

I search for Art Girls Gone Bad, Rainbow Forks, and Blue Solar System and listen to a few tracks, adding the ones that I really like to my iPod. And then, just before I go to bed, I down- load Elvis’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love,”just to compliment the Cornfl ower Blue version that I heard last night. I fall asleep with that song in my ears.

102 Chapter 11 I ’m half awake, dreaming of coffee. More spe- cifically, the smell of coffee. And Russ’s voice. Humming. I must have listened to that Elvis song one too many times last night. I slowly open my eyes and pull the one still-in-place earbud out of my ear. “Daa-daa-daaa . . . da-da-da-daaa-daaa . . .”I still hear that nonsensical tune. I sit up, grouchy. It feels early, but when I look at the clock I see it’s eleven A.M. There’s more noise from the kitchen. “Penny?”I call out. She must have left a couple of hours ago for that sorority-bonding thing. Unless it’s raining. I lean over the couch to peek out the deck doors. Nope. Sunny and hot. Surprise. “Priscilla, are you fi nally up?”Russ walks into the living room—my bedroom—with a

103 steaming cup of coffee. I scramble to make sure my legs are covered. I’m a T-shirt-and-underwear girl at bedtime. “What are you doing here?!”I say, mustering as much indignation as I can for a just-waking moment. “I fi nished my paper,”he says. “I turned it in this morning, and I am offi cially a rising senior. I’m in the mood to celebrate.”“Do frat boys always celebrate by scaring sleeping girls?”I ask. “Wait. Don’t answer that.”“Be nice if you want your coffee,”he says, pulling the mug away from me. “Okay,”I say, reaching out for it. “Thank you.”I’ve never been a huge coffee person, but I have to admit it smells really good this morning. Russ hands me the mug and sits down in the corner chair. “So, Priscilla,”he says. “What are we doing today?”I take a sip of the coffee—it is good—and look up at him. I’m contemplating shutting him down and saying that we are not doing anything, but the truth is that I don’t have plans. And I’m bored. “It’s your town,”I challenge. “You tell me.”

104 “Barton Springs,”he says. And before I can ask him what that means, he jumps up and heads out the door. “Get on your bathing suit!”he shouts just before the door closes. I carefully put down my coffee mug and wait for his overenthusiastic butt to return. In the meantime, I grab my jean shorts and put them on with the oversized Sixty3 concert tee that I like to wear to bed. Two minutes later, Russ is back. “Didn’t you hear me?”he asks. “Barton Springs—let’s go!”“First of all,”I say, picking up my coffee mug for another sip, “I have no idea what ‘Barton Springs’means. And second, I didn’t bring a bathing suit.”I’m not the poolside type—and I burn really easily. “Borrow one from Penny,”he says, unde- terred. “You will love this spot. It’s an old natu- ral spring and it’s constantly sixty-eight degrees, so it feels warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Plus, you get to lie out on a hill of mowed grass instead of sand. Somehow I don’t think you’re a sandy-beach girl.”“You got that right,”I say, not moving.

105 “Come on, Priscilla!”he says, leaning down and resting his head on the back of the couch sideways to give me puppy-dog eyes. “It’ll be fun. You can bring your iPod and tune me out if you want.”I smile. Swimming in cool water does sound nice. I haven’t dealt with this much heat since summer camp fi ve years ago, when I was a coun- selor in training at a sailing camp on the Neuse River in North Carolina. We had an insane heat wave and everyone had to sleep with, like, four fans pointed at them just to endure it. The only relief was swimming in the pondlike pool—it was packed every day. But that water did feel good. There’s something about splashing around on hundred-degree days. “Give me three minutes,”I say, standing and heading upstairs to Penny’s room. Miss Tiara eyes me suspiciously as I poke through my cousin’s drawers. I fi nd six—yes, six—teensy bikinis, but nothing with a remotely reasonable amount of coverage. I choose an orange-and-white polka-dot suit with a ruffl e around the bottom. It’s the one with the most fabric. When I put it on, Miss Tiara growls.

106 “I don’t have another option, picky priss!”I whisper at her. I pull on my jean shorts and Sixty3 tee over the suit. This will have to do. I grab a towel from the bathroom and meet Russ downstairs, making sure to pick up my iPod. I offer to drive but he just looks at my yellow Festiva in the parking lot and laughs. “Let’s take the truck,”he says. “If you want to waste gas . . .”I say, annoyed. “I’m all for saving face by losing gas,”he says, opening the passenger-side door for me. “If anyone I know is at the Springs, I cannot be seen climbing out of that clown car.”I step into the truck and feel the hot and squishy vinyl seat, so I put down my towel to sit on. I don’t need my thighs to get stuck in their own sweat. Russ shuts the door behind me. I give him a hmph and roll down the truck window. I wish one of our cars, at least, had AC. By the time we get to Barton Springs, I’m drip- ping with sweat and I realize that in the rush to fi nd a slightly modest bathing suit, I forgot to protect my pasty white skin.

Lovestruck Summer

107 “Do you have any sunblock?”I ask Russ as we pull into a parking spot. He hops out and grabs a giant canvas bag from the back bed. On top of his towel is a bottle