Maine Squeeze Read Free

doesn’t like being left … I guess,” I said.
    â€œWhat does she think? That we’re going to stay home and live with her forever?” Haley started putting books into Richard’s empty bookcase. “I wish she would go to Europe for the summer, instead of your parents.”
    In a way, I almost wished that, too. Now that my parents were actually leaving that afternoon, I was thinking about how much I would miss them.
    There was a knock on the door. “Colleen? Could you come downstairs?” my mother asked.
    â€œIs it time to go?”
    â€œNot yet. But there’s something important we have to discuss before we leave.”
    â€œWhat to do when Starsky and Hutch get upset when they realize that you’re gone?” I asked, referring to our cats. My dad named them after his favorite old television show.
    â€œNo. The house rules,” my mother said.
    Haley and I exchanged a look. What house rules?

Chapter 2
    Haley drove off in the truck, the shocks bouncing along as she backed down the bumpy gravel driveway.
    I saw that my parents had loaded their luggage into the back of the old Volvo wagon. (You almost don’t need a car on the island, really—you could practically walk everywhere you need to. Mostly you just need cars and trucks to haul things. But if you want one when you get to the mainland, you have to keep it somewhere.)
    Dad was sitting on the top porch step, petting Starsky and saying good-bye. Starsky always seemed to know when someone was going away, and then he tried not to let you out of his sight.
    â€œHutch is obviously crushed you’re leaving.” I pointed at Hutch, who was sprawled on top of one of the Adirondack chair cushions, his legs hanging off, about to fall but completely oblivious to the world.
    My family had this ongoing debate about how cats ever got onto the island in the first place. My mother theorized that the original feline residents of the island must have sneaked off a pirate ship in search of a better life. My father always said, “Actually, there was that one cat that took the ferry. No, wait. There had to be two.” He was working on a children’s picture book about a ferry cat and an ex-pirate cat that fell madly in love. As I said, he can be pretty goofy. Naturally, the two cats in his book looked exactly like Starsky and Hutch. Starsky is a gray tortoiseshell tabby with a white tail, and Hutch is a blond marmalade-colored tabby cat. They’re brothers.
    I wondered which one was more like a pirate. Starsky did have a habit of knocking my earrings from the top of my dresser to the floor, so maybe he had more of a yearning for stealing—and wearing—gold. Hutch had a habit of sleeping through everything, major and minor.
    â€œYou know what? Hutch is great. Hutch is cool. I yearn to be as relaxed as he is sometime in my life,” Dad said, and I laughed.
    Mom came outside, carrying a large sheet of hot pink poster board.
    â€œWhat’s that?” I asked.
    â€œThis is your contract,” she said, looking it over. “Just want to make sure I didn’t leave anything out. Honey, do you have a pen?”
    My dad pulled a felt-tip marker out of his pants pocket. I don’t think he’s written with an actual pen in years. He even writes and signs checks with Magic Markers.
    â€œYou know how we talked about setting some ground rules, so we wrote them down to make them official and binding. This is a very big deal, you know. Us leaving you here by yourself. In fact, I’m almost having second thoughts about it.” Mom tapped the marker against the porch railing.
    Second thoughts? She couldn’t. She wouldn’t. Haley had already moved in. And I had the perfect picture of my perfect summer in my head. It definitely did not include Mom and Dad hanging around, crowding in at the corners of the photograph, waving hello.
    â€œMom, we’ve been over this. I’ll be