Next Summer by Hailey Abbott

was polite, and nice that he called when he said he would. Nice meant a lot, especially when Kelsi was used to boys who could never in a million years be called nice.
    Nice was good. She knew that.
    But the truth was, nobody wanted to be nice. No one wanted their kisses to be nice . Everyone wanted fire and passion. Which she didn’t feel with Adam. At all.
    Her cell phone beeped, and she dug it out of her pocket, surprised to see that the battery was low. She seemed to keep forgetting to charge it when she was in Maine. At home, she was neurotic about charging her phone. Ella was forever having to borrow Kelsi’s cell, because Ella, naturally, never remembered to charge her own. But for some reason, once Kelsi hit Maine, she became just as absentminded.
    When she clicked into her inbox and saw the name TIM, she felt a rush of excitement shoot through her.
    EXCELLENT DRIVING RECORD. PASSION FOR SNACKS. HOW CAN U RESIST?
    Kelsi laughed out loud, and then covered her mouth with her hand. She looked around, as if she expected her family to be standing there, witnessing her oddly overexcited reaction to an inanimate object.
    All because of one silly text message from one delusional frat boy.
    “You are losing it,” she told herself, and put Tim out of her mind.
    She listened to her voice mail, and heard Jamie’s spirited voice singsong a hello before her phone shut itself off.
    Stupid battery.
    Kelsi got up and wandered into her bedroom to find her charger. She heard the shower running in the adjoining bathroom, and Ella’s version of singing: tone-deaf and shrill, which was what Kelsi loved about it. She stopped to see if she could figure out what song Ella was mangling, but gave up after Ella sang “baby, baby” off tune several times.
    She found her charger on the dresser and plugged her phone in, and then sat on her bed to wait.
    Her thoughts immediately went back to Tim. Insane Tim. Insane, funny Tim. Insanely hot, funny Tim. The guys she’d known like Tim in high school—the ones at their brother Catholic school, and the ones she’d run into around town—were pretty much complete losers. Not at all funny, unless you thought American Pie was the pinnacle of wit.
    It’s possible Tim’s the exception to the rule, Kelsi thought. Possible, but unlikely. She wished her phone would hurry up and charge, so she could call Jamie back and stop worrying about Tim.
    Impatient, Kelsi looked over at Ella’s bed and saw that she’d left her cell phone lying there. Why wait for her own phone to charge when Ella’s was handy? That was always Ella’s rationale when Kelsi found her chatting away on her phone at home. Fair was fair.
    Kelsi reached over and scooped up Ella’s little flip phone, opening it. Apparently, Ella had one new text message. Without thinking, Kelsi hit ENTER.
    Idiot, she thought to herself.
    And then she realized what she was looking at.
    Ella had a long list of incoming text messages. And every one of them was from Peter.
    Kelsi felt herself go still. Her head felt fuzzy and somehow no longer connected to her body. She was suddenly focused on the phone in her hand as if nothing else in the world existed.
    There are other Peters around, she told herself. But she found herself opening the messages one by one anyway, just to see. To make sure it was some other, unimportant Peter. Some Peter who had never been hers.
    One after the other, the messages begged and pleaded and apologized. He wanted to meet up with her. He knew she was in town because he’d seen her. She had to at least talk to him about last summer. Didn’t she remember how good it was? And so on.
    Kelsi heard a slight sound and realized that it was a whimper, and that it had come from her throat. Which was odd, because she was sure she was screaming.
    And just like that, Kelsi knew something that she must have always known. Something she hadn’t wanted to know then and didn’t want to know now. She remembered it all with such perfect