Twenty Boy Summer Read Free

tell her.
    "Listen," Matt said. We were out back under the stars again, sneaking out after everyone else had gone to sleep. "You know she needs to hear it from me. I think the best time for me to tell her is when we're in California. It's only a few weeks away, and then I'll have some time alone with her to tell her about everything. It'll give her a chance to let it sink in."
    The thought of keeping something so important, so intense, so unbelievable from my best friend for even one more day almost killed me. Never before in our shared history did I hide so much as a passing crush -- she knew everything. She'd been there for every tragedy, every celebration, every embarassing moment. She'd been with me when I got my neon green braces in fourth grade. With me in seventh grade when I walked out of the school bathroom past the entire lunch line with my skirt tucked into my tights. With me when Jimmy Cross and I kissed during the eighth grade assembly and got hauled off to the principal's office. Birthdays, dreams, fears, laughs, obsessions -- everything. Inside her head, Frankie had the map to my entire life, and I to hers. I hated that my feelings for Matt were uncharted and unmapped like a secret buried treasure.
    But he was Frankie's brother. I trusted him. And when he took my face in his hands and breathed my name across my lips, I knew that I would keep my promise forever.
    Days passed quickly into weeks, Matt and I perpetuating our "just friends" charade as best we could in front of Frankie and our families. So many times during family dinners or casual visits in our adjoining backyards, I wanted to end the charade, to throw my arms around him in front of everyone and just make it known. I censored every look I gave him, every word, every touch, certain that I'd mess up and someone would find out.
    But no one did.
    To our parents and Frankie, we were the same best friends as always, innocent and inseparable. Whenever we could steal a few minutes alone, that's when we became the "other," the charged-up thing that kept me up at night, afraid of falling so fast, afraid of losing, afraid it wouldn't last once Frankie found out. We stole too-short kisses in the front hallway, shared knowing and devious looks across the dinner table when we weren't being watched. We snuck out every night behind the house to watch for shooting stars and whisper about life, about our favorite books, about the meaning of songs and old memories and what would happen after Frankie knew. It wasn't the topics themselves that changed -- we'd talked about all of those things before. But now, there was a new intensity. An urgency to know as much as we could, to fit as much as possible into our final nights before Matt revealed the secret.
    On their last day before the trip, after they'd finished packing, the three of us went back to Custard's for an ice-cream send-off. I ordered the mint chocolate-chip brownie sundae, Frankie got a dipped cone, and Matt got a strawberry shake. Matt and Frankie were buoyant, floating on the anticipation of their upcoming trip, carrying me along in the current of their excitement. I couldn't wait for them to get to Zanzibar, to their summer house, down to the beach where Matt would tell Frankie about us and she'd smile and laugh and hug him and everything would be perfect again.
    "It will be fine, Anna. You'll see," he whispered to me when Frankie went up to the counter for more napkins. "I know we're dragging it out, but she's my little sister -- I can't help it. We just have to look out for her."
    I smiled, envisioning our final kiss before tomorrow's departure, later tonight at our usual meeting place behind the house.
    We split our ice creams three ways again, saving just enough for the ride back home. In the car, Matt turned up the volume on his favorite Grateful Dead CD. Frankie and I sang the melody while he filled in the harmony, his face tight and serious as he concentrated on the words. He drove with one hand on