Grit by Gillian French

Author:Gillian French
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-03-16T04:00:00+00:00

SIXTEEN

MAGS WATCHES ME at breakfast. I say, “What?” hoping if I sound pissy enough, she’ll stop. She wants answers. I’m not giving any.

I wonder if all the lying I’ve done for Nell has changed my looks somehow, made me older, harder. I definitely don’t feel the same as I did sophomore year, before everything happened. I remember hearing a song once that said something like, I wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then. Wish to God it worked that way, for Nell and me both.

“Is Nell okay?” Mags stares me down.

Mom’s upstairs getting ready for work, and I want to kill this before she comes down. “Yeah. Of course.”

“Are you sure? Seems like something’s off.”

“She’s fine. When is she ever not fine?” Because I make sure of it. Mags thinks she takes care of everything, but really, it’s me. See how good a job I’m doing?

I got a look under Nell’s surface last night, and what I saw made me heartsick. I really thought she’d get over it. I figured she just needed some time, a new school year, to take her mind off everything. I should’ve known Nell would be different. She feels things too hard.

The day is whisper-still and dripping with humidity. Thunderstorm weather. We need a big one to roll in and break it wide open. Since I can’t put my anger away—Elise tore the lid off yesterday—I use it as fuel to rake against Shea. He doesn’t have as many followers today, probably because some of them decided it’s no contest.

“Are you even on the board anymore?” Shea calls over at one point while we’re both topping off boxes and stacking new ones.

“Guess you don’t know how to read.”

“It’s tough when the writing’s waaay down at the bottom.”

“Fun-ny. I haven’t had so many laughs since the Fourth.”

The other guys in earshot go “Ohhh.” That one hit home, but I won’t check to see how he took it, won’t waste the seconds. “You loved it,” he calls back.

“Oh, yeah. All three inches of it.”

The guys bust up laughing, can’t believe I said it. I grab my rake and walk back down the row. Not my fault if he doesn’t know better than to mess with me today. I hear him slam a box down, then another, hard enough to crack the plastic.

Thunder rumbles around four thirty. Storms love the Penobscot, come booming across the river with enough power to rattle our windows. We’re packing up our gear when the first crooked finger of lightning touches down over the water. Duke and Mr. Wardwell get the last load secured to the truck while Mrs. Wardwell crabs at them to hurry as she folds her chair and magazines.

Nell reaches us, the wind whipping her hair free of her handkerchief. Thunder booms overhead, followed by a flash up on the hill that makes everybody flinch.

“Holy crap.” Two drops of rain spatter the lenses of Mags’s glasses. “That hit close.”

We’re leaving the field when we hear shouting. A couple people run down the hill toward us, yelling and gesturing back at the cabins.

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