Postcards From Last Summer Read Free Page A

yummy meals cooked up by the Love family’s housekeeper, Nessie. It bugged me to miss out on all these summer goodies, but were poolside perks worth sucking up to the Queen of Mean? I had to think not.
    â€œWhat am I saying?” Darcy let out a bitter laugh. “Now that you’re a full-figure gal, you probably don’t even have a boyfriend. Certainly not the hillbilly surfer you always moon over.”
    â€œShut up,” I said, wishing I’d never told her about my feelings for Bear, one of my older brother’s surfer friends. I wrung out the hem of my stretched-out surf shirt, wishing I could wring Darcy’s skinny neck. Did she know that Bear was within hearing range in the water behind me, surfing less than a hundred yards away?
    Just minutes ago, I’d been on my board, bobbing in the water beside him while I waited for Darcy to arrive. We’d been talking about repairs on his VW camper, and he’d told me about some of the surfing competitions he’d entered over the winter. Bear wanted to give up his part-time jobs and surf for a living but didn’t have enough sponsors to do that yet.
    â€œIf I had to pick, I’d say the Pipeline tops everything,” he said, all the guys in the lineup listening with a far-off glaze. Skeeter and John Fogarty, Napolean and my brother Steve—they all had jobs now. Skeeter and John even had wives with kids on the way. The guys were mired in commitmentland—all except Bear. Most of us had never even been to Hawaii, let alone surfed the Pipeline.
    â€œI hear the reef is deadly there,” Skeeter said.
    â€œScary awesome,” Bear answered, swiping a handful of salt water over his board. “You gotta die a few times before you come alive. You need to have nine lives.”
    I found my eyes following the line of his board to his sturdy legs, his Hawaiian-print Jams, and up to the Billabong shirt stretched over his shoulders and rounded muscles.
    â€œIs it worth it?” I asked. “Surfing the Pipeline?”
    â€œDefinitely,” he said, his blue eyes flashing, killing me.
    That’s one death, I thought, feigning interest in a piece of bobbing seaweed. With rare dimples, glimmering blue eyes framed by impossibly dark lashes, and dark hair buzzed short, Bear was heartthrob material. His chipped front teeth gave him a look I thought of as “gritty,” though my friends labeled it hillbilly. Still, he was my secret crush, which was an exercise in futility, since it was one of those unwritten rules that a good guy does not go after his best friend’s little sister.
    Now I swallow hard, wishing that Darcy didn’t own any personal information about me. Stupid me, I had spilled my guts over the years. She could be a walking Lindsay encyclopedia.
    â€œYou know what?” I said, my voice a little too high pitched to call calm. “I’m sorry I got involved, okay? Next time your boyfriend passes out in the surf from partying his brains out, I’ll just let them call the cops.”
    â€œYou wouldn’t. You . . . you’d better not. The next time, why don’t you just keep your fat ass out of my business, okay? The lifeguards can call me directly. If there even is a next time.”
    â€œOh, there will be.” I knew Kevin’s addiction wasn’t drying up anytime soon. “You can bet your perfect highlights on it.”
    â€œStop that!” she hissed. “Just stop. You never liked him, and I’m not going to stand here and let you tear him down. So just stop it!” She kicked at the sand, sending fine grains spewing onto my legs.
    â€œOr what?” I put my hands on my well-padded hips. “What are you gonna do, Darcy? Push me off the jetty?”
    Strike three—hit on Darcy’s weak spot, the one event in her life that still made her awaken in the middle of the night in a cold sweat and a case of the guilts.
    Furious, she held her hand out in