Dogtag Summer by Elizabeth Partridge

Author:Elizabeth Partridge
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Childrens
Published: 2011-09-09T04:00:00+00:00

The next morning I was up and dressed before Mom got out of bed. I could hear her showering while I ate a piece of toast with peanut butter and strawberry jam.

I was finished by the time she made it to the kitchen, blinking in the light. “Ready,” I said.

“Coffee first,” she said.

In another half an hour we were on Highway One, headed down the coast. It was one of those clear days where you could see for miles out across the Pacific Ocean, to the line where the water met the sky. All over the ocean were small whitecaps, blown up by a wind.

I made myself stay right here, in the car, next to my mother, instead of flying out across the water and imagining myself over there. Mom was quiet, her hands lightly turning the steering wheel as we snaked around the curves of the cliffs.

I kept sneaking glances at her. I wanted to tell her about the box, let her know the ghosts were after me as well as Dad. I wanted to tell her I’d let them out but I had no idea how to get them back in. I wanted to lean my head on her shoulder, and have her brush my hair back from my face and tell me everything would be okay.

“Penny for your thoughts,” she said.

“They’re worth a nickel,” I said automatically. It was an old game we used to play when I was little. I’d stand near her, waiting, till she noticed me and then I’d tell her whatever was wrong: a girl teased me on the playground, or I had a headache, or I needed help with a book report. But this wasn’t anything she could fix. Suddenly anger slammed down around the longing.

I shrugged and looked out the window. “Nothing,” I said.

“Nothing?” she said.

“Nothing, nothing, nothing,” I said to the whitecaps and the dark blue line of the horizon.

We turned onto Russian River Road and headed east, then south on 101. After a few minutes we came to the exit for Santa Rosa, but instead of turning off, Mom drove right past it.

“Where’re we going?” I asked.

“To the city.”

“Really?” Mom and Dad never went all the way to San Francisco. “Do you know how to get there?” I asked.

Mom laughed, breaking the tension that had hovered between us. “Your dad and I used to live there,” she said.

This was news to me. They often talked about how glad they were to live up the coast, in a little town, instead of in the crowded, busy Bay Area.

“When?” I asked.

“Before you,” she said. “We met when I was going to college and your dad was living in the city. He worked in a gas station, and wrote poems at night. I met him at a poetry reading at a bookstore.”

Dad? A poet?

I wasn’t sure what to say to keep my mom talking.

But I didn’t have to ask, she just kept going.

“He said he was like a cowboy poet—you know, those

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