“Their dog was poisoned?” Ashley’s nose wrinkles in revulsion.
“It was probably an accident.” For some reason, I don’t want to tell her what Jonathan said. Maybe I misheard him.
“Sure.” Ashley laughs dryly. “Just like it was an accident when someone hit their car in the grocery store parking lot.”
“Are you serious?”
“You didn’t know?” Ashley shoots me a sidelong glance as she slows for the corner that will take us to our favorite beach. “My dad had to file the incident report.”
Ashley’s dad is the manager of the Pantry and has a better grasp on local gossip than most. Maybe that’s one of the reasons I’m hesitant to share just how upset Beth was. How Jonathan seemed oddly calm about the whole affair. No, not calm. Accepting. As if he suspected what had happened long before Calvin told him. There’s simply no need to add fuel to this new development—and Ashley’s family is a bit like gasoline. The Pattersons love to talk.
“Why would someone do that?” I’m talking more to myself than to her, but Ashley answers anyway.
“It’s harmless.” She shrugs one shoulder. “The Murphys make things hard for themselves, and then people like to tease.”
“Tease?” I bristle, suddenly chilled in the blast of cold air pumping from the open vents. “Intentionally hitting their car in a parking lot is more like property damage.”
“It was a scratch.”
My anger is a sudden, solid thing, icy and unyielding. But I don’t want to fight with Ashley. Not now, not when I’ve orchestrated this outing, and the countdown to my departure has officially begun. I can feel the future tugging at me as I sit miserably in the front seat of her car. I don’t want this—any of it. Not the bickering or the dead dog or the conspiracy theories that blow around Jericho like the tumbleweeds that occasionally waft through town on sweltering August days. So I swallow my snappy retort and focus instead on the fact that the blacktop beneath our tires is chalky gray and dry.
I could say, I told you so. Not only has the storm passed right over us, it looks as if it never even rained in Munroe. This happens sometimes in our corner of the Midwest. A tornado cuts through a cornfield tearing one stalk from the ground and leaving its neighbor tall and unscathed. It pours on the south side of town, but there’s a mark on the pavement where the rain abruptly ends. Neatly drawn, impossible to miss. Life between normal and a life-changing tempest separated by a hair’s breadth.
“Looks like we’ll catch some sun after all,” I say, bumping Ashley with my elbow as she pulls into the gravel parking lot on the north shore of Lake Munroe. There are other beaches, but this is where the boardwalk starts, where crowds of people stake rainbow-colored umbrellas into the sand and walk barefoot to buy hand-scooped ice cream cones and questionable corn dogs from Sweet Pete’s. The north shore is also where GL Gas has pumps on the water. I can’t help it—I love the way the boats coast toward the two long docks and guys come running out to catch the mooring lines. Sullivan is one of them, and he’s the reason Ashley and I are both here.
He likes me. I’ve known that for a long time now, but Ashley’s my best friend and I would never. Besides, it’s impossible to know if Sullivan’s thinly veiled attraction to me is sincere or if he’s playing some sort of game. His friendship with Jonathan is strange, to say the least, and I’ve never quite been able to determine if I’m a conquest because he’s genuinely interested or if it’s all a ruse to get under my brother’s skin. There are a dozen reasons why Sullivan isn’t right for me, not the least of which is that I suspect he’s a despicable human being.
Ashley, darling thing, is in lust. “He’s here,” she says, squinting toward the docks and shielding her eyes from the sudden blinding sparkle of sun on water. I follow her gaze and, sure enough, he’s standing with one hand on a rusted off-white gas pump that’s taller than he is. Sullivan is handsome, I’ll give him that, in a brooding, slightly reckless way. He’s older than us, two years free and clear of Jericho High, which makes him instantly more appealing than the toddlers we went to school with. Right now I’m trying to dismiss the broad sweep of his bare back, the way his skin is already summer dark and polished. The knowledge that up close, he smells like coconut and lime.
Ashley flashes me a Cheshire grin, all hope and longing, and everything that came before is forgotten. It’s a perfect June day and she’s gorgeous in her cutoffs and gingham top knotted at the waist, poised for a summer fling that may blossom into more. I wish I could say something, that I could warn her away or somehow gently let her know that it’s not going to happen. But Ashley is oblivious to the too-long stares, to the way Sullivan walks past me and brushes a fingertip along the underside of my bare arm. It rattles me every time, and he knows it.