Summer Days and Summer Nights Read Free Page A

started.
    â€œYou could have just seen fish,” Eli said as they flipped through a book on North American myths, beneath an umbrella at Rottie’s Red Hot.
    â€œThat would have to be some really big fish.”
    â€œCarp can grow to be over forty pounds.”
    She shook her head. “No. The scales were different.” Like jewels. Like a fan of abalone shells. Like clouds moving over water.
    â€œYou know, every culture has its own set of megafauna. A giant blue crow has been spotted in Brazil.”
    â€œThis wasn’t a blue crow. And ‘megafauna’ sounds like a band.”
    â€œNot a good band.”
    â€œI’d go see them.” Then Gracie shook her head. “Why do you eat that way?”
    Eli paused. “What way?”
    â€œLike you’re going to write an essay about every bite. You’re eating a cheeseburger, not defusing a bomb.”
    But Eli did everything that way—slowly, thoughtfully. He rode his bike that way. He wrote things down in his blue spiral notebook that way. He took what seemed like an hour to pick out something to eat at Rottie’s Red Hot when there were only five things on the menu, which never changed. It was weird, no doubt, and Gracie was glad her friends from school spent most of their summers around Greater Spindle so she didn’t have to try to explain any of it. But there was also something kind of nice about the way Eli took things so seriously, like he really gave everything his full attention.
    They compiled lists of Idgy Pidgy sightings. There had been less than twenty in the town’s history, dating back to the 1920s.
    â€œWe should cross reference them with Loch Ness and Ogopogo sightings,” said Eli. “See if there’s a pattern. Then we can figure out when we should surveil the lake.”
    â€œSurveil,” Gracie said, doodling a sea serpent in the margin of Eli’s list. “Like police. We can set up a perimeter.”
    â€œWhy would we do that?”
    â€œIt’s what they do on cop shows. Set up a perimeter. Lock down the perp.”
    â€œNo TV, remember?” Eli’s parents had a “no screens” policy. He used the computers at the library, but at home it was no Internet, no cell phone, no television. Apparently, they were vegetarians, too, and Eli liked to eat all the meat he could when they left him to his own devices. The closest he got to vegetables was french fries. Gracie sometimes wondered if he was poor in a way that she wasn’t. He never seemed short of money for the arcade or hot pretzels, but he always wore the same clothes and always seemed hungry. People with money didn’t summer in Little Spindle. But people without money didn’t summer at all. Gracie wasn’t really sure she wanted to know. She liked that they didn’t talk about their parents or school.
    Now she picked up Eli’s notebook and asked, “How can we surveil if you don’t know proper police procedure?”
    â€œAll the good detectives are in books.”
    â€œSherlock Holmes?”
    â€œConan Doyle is too dry. I like Raymond Carver, Ross Macdonald, Walter Mosley. I read every paperback they have here, during my noir phase.”
    Gracie drew bubbles coming out of Idgy Pidgy’s nose. “Eli,” she said, without looking at him, “do you actually think I saw something in the lake?”
    â€œPossibly.”
    She pushed on. “Or are you just humoring me so you have someone to hang out with?” It came out meaner than she’d meant it to, maybe because the answer mattered.
    Eli cocked his head to one side, thinking, seeking an honest answer, like he was solving for x . “Maybe a little,” he said at last.
    Gracie nodded. She liked that he hadn’t pretended something different. “I’m okay with that.” She hopped down off the table. “You can be the stodgy veteran with a drinking problem, and I’m the loose