The Lost Summer by Kathryn Williams Page A

Aside from being tall, Ransome wasn’t a big guy, but I was fascinated by how his muscles moved like cables under his skin. His body had a solidness that made me very aware I was dancing with a man, not a boy. My heart was battering so loudly against my chest that I wondered if this wasn’t the beat Ransome’s feet were following instead of the music.
    As the final notes of the song drifted from Dr. Spin’s speakers, Ransome lifted my hand above my head and spun me once before dipping me so close to the ground I was afraid he was going to drop me on the green concrete. He didn’t, and managed to raise me back up to standing with a wide grin on his face.
    â€œThanks for the dance,” he said, his arm still around my waist.
    â€œThank you ,” I said coyly. “You’re only twice as bad as you say.” He laughed.
    It seemed like Ransome released my hand teasingly, one finger at a time, not fully letting it slip from his until we’d turned toward the bleachers, where more counselors had gathered.
    I’m sure we walked back to them the normal way, with one foot rising and moving forward to meet the earth, and then the other, but in my mind I was floating two inches above the ground.

Chapter 8
    M y drugstore flip-flops slapped at my heels as I shuffled to the Bath with a beach towel on my arm. The bugle would call for dinner soon, but it didn’t matter. I had the night off.
    An earthy aroma of mildew, covered by the sharp smell of Clorox, wafted from the showers. One shower-head was running, and a cloud of steam rose from behind the curtain. I was surprised when the water stopped and out stepped Katie Bell with a pink towel piled on top of her head and another wrapped under her arms. A bath pouf dangled from her wrist.
    I’d barely seen Katie Bell since the dance on Saturday, and it was already Tuesday. Table seating in the Mess changed every week, so Katie Bell had moved to Table Two, and the Sharks hadn’t been scheduled for swimming yet that week. I was feeling guilty again for the way I’d acted about the photo with her at the dance. Twice I’d been to her cabin looking for her, hoping things would be normal again. But her cabinmates had said she was gone—maybe with Molly and Amanda, or at the barn? They didn’t know, they shrugged. Had I checked the waterfront? Maybe she was trying out one of the new Sunfish sailboats Fred had just bought. But there had been no wind that day. I had the sneaking suspicion that Katie Bell was avoiding me.
    She jumped, startled, when she saw me. The showers were usually empty by this time.
    I laughed. “Hey.”
    â€œHey,” she answered, quickly reassembling her cool attitude.
    â€œWhere have you been?”
    Katie Bell avoided my gaze, looking instead at the lockers behind me, her shower shoes, anywhere but my face.
    â€œI don’t know.” She shrugged, which dislodged her towel. She quickly retucked it. “Around.”
    Something had clearly slipped off the tracks between us, but I didn’t know how to fix it. Apologizing wasn’t the answer I was looking for. I hadn’t done anything. It was just how I’d felt, what I’d thought. How could you apologize for that? Better to just make up for it, I figured. Say something . . .
    â€œI feel like it’s been a while,” I tried.
    Katie Bell’s hip jutted beneath her towel. “Yeah,” she agreed. To anyone else her tone might have sounded bored, maybe tired, but I knew that tone and I knew Katie Bell. I knew that that tone meant Katie Bell was pissed.
    Still, I tried to smooth things over. “Can we hang out soon? I’ll bring the Pixy Stix,” I added.
    Katie Bell’s expression softened a nanometer. A few years earlier we’d discovered we could bribe younger campers to turn over the Pixy Stix they received in their care packages. One summer we’d convinced our entire cabin to write home