Six Feet Over It by Jennifer Longo

Author:Jennifer Longo
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-449-81871-8
Publisher: Random House Children's
Published: 2014-08-25T16:00:00+00:00

Dario dares to drive the actual speed limit all the way back to the graves, lest we get back two seconds past his lunch hour. His hands at nine and three.

I lean my head against the door, and the wind through the truck windows moves my hair off my shoulders and around my face, the ribbons around Kai’s Elanor-wrapped birthday necklace silkily over my hands.

In the morning I sign up for summer school driver’s ed.

twelve

ON THE LAST DAY OF SCHOOL I watch Caroline sloppily make out against her locker with a greasy-haired metal-shop guy with a humongous tongue, all the sexy romance of a dog eating spaghetti. She and Lisa signed each other’s yearbooks in the throng of laughing, happy kids in the quad messing around, throwing tortillas like Frisbees. What a waste of good food. People are starving.

“Hey.” Lisa’s voice is a siren behind me. She yanks me around by my shoulder. “Stare much?”

“Sorry,” I mumble, and move to escape her long reach, but she gets one last shove in; I stumble toward a garbage can, find my footing. Walk fast.

“Run all you want, freak. We know where you live!” Caroline laughs.

As always, Kai is nowhere. Probably already gone, safe at Rivendell with Balin. I empty my locker as fast as I can. I ask the librarian to sign my yearbook, and Mrs. McKinstry, who writes, “Have a lovely summer, don’t read too much ha ha but seriously … don’t.”

Through the tall black Manderleys, the impending three years of high school—the rest of my death-infused life—yawn endless before me, dark, scary, and lonely.

Oh, Emily.

“Leigh!”

A loud whisper. Dario crouches beside the pond.

“Hurry! Come here, quick!” I drop my backpack in a sullen lump. He makes room for me in the tall grass, pulls it gently aside.

“Hi!” Elanor whispers, hidden in the reeds beside him.

“What are you guys—?”

“Shhhh!”

“Look how tiny!”

A late batch of ducklings, black and yellow balls of softest fuzz, big bees with feet. They softly peep, skimming the water, and we are still, watching them zoom around looking for bugs, kicking up tiny arcs of cool pond water, followed closely by their attentive mother.

“It’s going to be a good summer,” Dario declares, stepping back carefully. He helps me to my feet, lifts my pack off the ground, and offers Elanor his other hand. “Right?”

“Yes!” she says.

“You just wait.” He smiles at me. “I can tell.”

The headstones gleam in the afternoon heat.

“Because of your highly tuned perceptivity and insight about summer fun?” I ask.

“Listen,” he says, “if I don’t bring the superior Mexican wisdom to you people, you’ll never make it.”

Wade crests the rise of Serenity Valley on the riding lawn mower, waves, dips back down.

“What are you doing? Are you in the office all summer?” Dario asks pointedly.

I nod.

“Every day?” Elanor says.

“Pretty much.”

“You cannot spend your entire summer vacation selling graves!” Dario barks.

“You’d be surprised.”

“It isn’t good for you.”

“Tell Wade that.”

“You tell him!” he says. “Get out of here, do something fun!”

“Oh, okay.”

“Go somewhere with Elanor!”

“Yeah!” she says. “Let’s!”

“Hey.” Dario suddenly turns to her.

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