All-Season Edie Read Free Page A

lengthen, until Mom calls me in for supper.
    â€œCome on,” I say to Imaginary Dex, who’s lying on a towel beside me, reading one of her teen magazines.
    â€œFive more minutes,” she says. “I’m taking a popularity quiz. So far I’m nine out of ten.” I walk back up to the cabin alone.
    In the evening, we walk over to the office so that Mom can phone Dexter and Dad can phone Grandpa. Dad says it’s too expensive to call long-distance on the cell phone from here. I look at a rack of tourist brochures while Mom and Dad pass the phone back and forth and the lady who checked us in, who’s older than Mom, prods at a Game Boy with her thumbs. “Fudge,” she says every now and then.
    â€œI know, honey,” Mom is saying. “I know. I know. I know. I know.” She listens for a long minute. “I know, honey,” she says. “Me too.” Then she says to me, “Want to talk to your sister?”
    â€œNo!” I say.
    I swear I can hear Dexter’s little mosquito voice, at the precise same instant, saying, “No!”
    â€œHomesick,” Mom mouths to Dad as she hangs up, making an isn’t-that-cute face.
    â€œAw,” Dad says. Then it’s his turn to dial. “Mom?” he says. Mom—my Mom, not Grandma—looks over my shoulder at the brochure I’m holding. It’s for houseboat rentals on a different lake. “No, it’s great!” Dad says. “It reminds me of that place you used to take me when I was a kid, that fishing camp up past Hundred Mile House, you remember? Kind of sleepy and basic, but in a good way. Edie’s loving it. I wanted to tell Dad about it, to see if he would remember. Oh, he is?”
    Mom looks up from the brochure.
    â€œNo!” Dad says. He sounds extra-hearty, like he’s disappointed and doesn’t want Grandma to know. “No, we’ll call later. He should sleep if he’s tired. Give him our love.” He hangs up.
    â€œGrandma!” I say.
    â€œOh, sorry, sweetie,” Dad says. He’s frowning and tapping his mouth with his fingers. “You can talk next time. Do you think I should have reminded her about Dad’s medications?”
    This last bit is for Mom. “I think she’ll have it under control,” Mom says, linking her arm through Dad’s. I follow them back to the cottage. Dad has his glasses off and is rubbing his forehead again. It’s dark now, and the lights we left on make the cottage look almost as cosy and inviting as a houseboat. That’ll be good to pretend in bed tonight: that we’re in a floating house, rocking gently on deep, dark water, and if the cable breaks we might wake up far from shore and have to figure out how to get back.
    The next day, I decide to do yesterday backward, which means swimming in the morning and boating in the afternoon, with lunch remaining in the middle. Not long after breakfast, I put on my bathing suit and take my towel down to the jetty, and here’s the fat boy, dabbling at the water with his toes.
    â€œWhat’s your name?” the fat boy asks.
    I have to think about how to answer this to avoid teasing. My full name is Edith Jasmine Snow, but the kids at school generally call me Edie-Snow-Peadie, and I don’t want to tell him that. Mom calls me Edith, after my great-grandmother who died, which, let’s face it, is pretty creepy and weird, and, besides, I hate the name Edith. Grandpa always calls me Albert, which is too completely perplexing for words. “How old are ya, Albert?” he’ll yell at me, and I’ll stand dazed, wishing he’d go yell at Dexter for a change or drop dead or something. “Edith is eleven, Grandpa,” Mom will yell in his ear. “Eleven, huh?” he’ll yell. “Sure is old for a dog.” For a while at school they called me Torpedo after I won the underwater-holding-your-breath-swimming contest, and I