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

tiny, blue, star-shaped fl owers. “They’re forget-me-nots,”he says. And I can see him blushing. “Subtle, Russ.”I laugh and he reaches down to pick me up and spin me around, which is my new favorite move ever. I don’t think anyone else will ever do it as well as he does. “So are we gonna have the breakup talk now?”I ask. “Because I don’t really want to voice it, you know? Can’t we just say good-bye and not know what it means?”

264 “I’m not giving up,”says Russ. “I’ve got too much to lose.”I smile at him indulgently. I know college will be a whole new world, just like this summer. I can’t promise him anything. “Priscilla,”he starts, using his Elvis voice so things don’t get too mushy. “I’m a practical guy. And I have a practical plan.”“Oh, really?”I ask. “What’s that?”He reaches back into his bag and hands me a card. On the front are two crudely drawn shapes—one in blue that is small and long, one in orange that’s rounder and much bigger. There’s a green X in between them. “Hieroglyphics?”I ask. “States!”he says, pointing at the smaller, longer one. “That’s North Carolina.”“Um . . . okay,”I say. “And this one is . . .”“Texas!”“Aha,”I say. “So this is you and me . . .”“Right,”he says. “South by Southwest.”I open the card and read the inside: Meet me in Austin, by the Walters stage. Love, Russ

Lovestruck Summer

265 “I don’t get it,”I say, wishing I did. “The music festival next spring!”he shouts. “I know what South by Southwest is!”I say, getting annoyed. He can still frustrate me faster than any guy I’ve ever met. But I’m smiling too. “What does it mean?”I ask. “No obligations,”he says. “But if you can’t get me out of your mind, and if I can’t get you out of mine, here’s where and when our next date will happen.”I look down at the card again, and it starts to make sense. In a completely impractical way, but also in a romantic one. “I’ll be there,”I say, not knowing whether I’ll be able to keep my word, but knowing that I mean it in this moment, and that’s all that matters. And then, we hear a collective “Ooooohhh”rising from the lawn. I look up and see a stream of black bats flowing out from under the Congress Avenue Bridge. Their fast-beating wings make a sound like a rhythm section, and they’re so close together that it looks like the golden-pink horizon is being covered in black velvet. Russ grabs my hand and we run back to join Penny,

266 Jade, and Chrissy. The fi ve of us stand together, Penny holding Miss Tiara, as the bats blanket the sky, covering Austin with the magic of an unexpected journey.

Thanks to my grandparents, Don and Priscilla “Tay”Day, who taught me to love “old”music and danced like a dream. And to my blog readers on www.melissacwalker.com, who thought of the Best. Band. Names. Ever. You guys rock. Acknowledgments

Credits Typography by Andrea Vandergrift Cover art ©2009 by Sasha Illingworth Cover design by Andrea Vandergrift

Copyright LOVESTRUCK SUMMER. Copyright ©2009 by Melissa Walker. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader April 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-185886-4 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Australia Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia Canada HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. New Zealand HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited Auckland, New Zealand United Kingdom HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 77-85 Fulham Palace Road London, W6 8JB, UK United States HarperCollins Publishers Inc. 10 East 53rd Street About the Publisher HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd. 25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321) http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au 55 Avenue Road, Suite 2900 Toronto, ON, M5R, 3L2, Canada http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca P.O. Box 1 New York, NY 10022 http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com http://www.harpercollins.co.nz http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.uk

Table of Contents

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6