Autumn's Wish Read Free Page B

kids. We used to say we’d do that every summer until we were eighty, but Jenna already told me this was probably her last time. If she’s going to run in college, she’ll have to spend next summer getting in shape.
    I think I handled the news well. I told her that would make her the first of my friends to abandon me next year, and for an entire week I had all the kids in our cabin refer to her only as Judas.
    Point is, even though Eddy and I talked on the phone while I was away, I didn’t see her all summer. Then when I got back I had to catch up with all my friends and cram in all the reading and assignments I’d ignored during vacation, and
then
I got busy with school, and now I’m a whole week in and I haven’t seen Eddy at all…so I was planning to visit her soon anyway. Now I’m just motivated to do it right away.
    I pound on my brother’s blissfully closed door. “Erick! I’m running out for a sec! We’ll order pizza when I get back!”
    I half hear him shout something about “too many carbs,” but I’m already heading for the garage. In a happier world I’d call J.J. for a ride. Instead I have no choice but to ride my bike three miles through the thick humidity and heat. By the time I get to Century Acres, my cutoff shorts and filmy tank are sweat-stuck to my body, and my hair clings like droopy orange noodles to my face and neck. I’m also wheezing a little. It’s a good look for me, especially since there’s a decent chance that my all-time pop-star idol, weirdly now-kinda-sorta-sometimes friend, and oh-my-God-I-for-real-
kissed-
him bae Kyler Leeds could be inside.
    The second I open the door, a
whoosh
of arctic-level air-conditioning freezes me solid, and my ears are assaulted by overly amplified classical piano music: the pre-dinner entertainment for the residents. I can see the pianist. He doesn’t look much older than me, and I’m sure this is his good deed for the day, but he’s not enjoying it. His forehead is a mess of sweat and he keeps glancing nervously at two little old women who won’t stop heckling him. Their matching plush chairs are pivoted toward the pianist, so I can only see them from the side.
    “Boo!” cries a tiny white-haired woman in a purple terry cloth tracksuit.
    “You’re no musician!” adds an equally tiny woman with thinning jet-black hair. “Play something good!”
    “We want another song!” calls the first woman, and she climbs onto her seat and punches a fist in the air as she makes it a chant. “We want a-no-ther song! We want a-no-ther song!”
    I sigh. This is my grandmother Eddy and her best friend, Zelda Rubenstein. I dart over to them and mouth “I’m sorry” to the piano player as I grab their attention.
    “Hi, guys!”
    “Autumn!” they cry in unison, and immediately forget about the piano player. Eddy throws her arms around my neck for a hug. It’s a little strange because even standing on the chair, she’s barely taller than me, and she’s so light I feel like I’m hugging a child who I should pick up and set safely down on the floor.
    “Oh, I missed you this summer,
querida
!” she coos, cupping my face in her hands. They’re strong against my cheeks, and I remember she made her living as a potter for years when she raised my dad in Cuba.
    “Hey!” calls Zelda. “Bring that
punim
down here too. I want in.”
    I have no idea which part of me is my
punim,
so I just bend down and lean toward her. She also grabs my face, but her hands feel like thin papery gloves. She pulls me close for a kiss that lands uncomfortably close to my lips, and I can feel the big red splotch left by her lipstick.
    “Don’t manhandle her, Zelda,” Eddy says as Zelda wipes the mark off my face. “She’s
my
nieta.
”
    “Well she’ll be mine, too, once she marries my Kyler,” Zelda counters.
    “Sí, sí,”
Eddy admits, “but I still say we have the reception down here. I don’t trust the people in New York. They put things in the