To my mother who always ran up and down and the memory of my father
Chapter One Summer Homework It was the best of times it was the worst of times That’s the first sentence of a book my father started to read aloud to me last year We didn’t get very far because he had to go on a concert tour and then when he came home we forgot to continue reading But the sentence stuck in my head and it certainly was the right description of June 25 It was the last day of school The weather was hot and sticky which suddenly reminded me of some of the bad things that come along with summer My shorts and T-shirt were clinging uncomfortably and it was only 8:45 in the morning Imagine how 5
I’d feel before the day was over after sitting in class It was good that school was ending for the summer because no one could pay attention to a teacher in that kind of heat All the kids kept raising their hands to get a drink of water at the fountain down the hall The water was only lukewarm and not at all satisfying It was a good temperature for a shampoo Yet only ten minutes after a drink you wanted to try again Maybe this time the water would be cold It never was I was glad that vacation time had come around at last and at the same time I wasn’t All my friends actually I have only two really good ones were going to be away all summer and I was staying home My friend Julie was going off to summer camp for the whole vacation She went to camp last year too and so she already knew what to expect She’d a whole group of 6
camp friends and even a whole vocabulary of camp terms For the past month all she had spoken about were sleep-outs cookouts cookouts bunks etc My other friend was Esther and until the day before I’d thought that the two of us were going to have a lot of fun this summer We had planned all sorts of things and I was really looking for ward to vacation But the night before she had texted me She was all excited Her par ents had suddenly rented a cottage at the beach and now she was going to be away for the entire summer She was so thrilled that she forgot to be angry that she would be sharing a room with her little sister and she forgot all about the picnics in the park and the other things that we had planned to do together Maybe you can come for a weekend she texted That really didn’t console me at all 7
