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Overview
Angeline “Angie” Morrow always thought high school romances were just silly infatuations that come and go. She certainly never thought she would fall in love. But when she’s asked out on her first date by the school basketball star, Jack Duluth, their connection is beyond any childish crush.
Suddenly, Angie and Jack are filling their summer with stolen moments and romantic nights. But fall is coming—Angie is going off to college in Chicago, while Jack is planning to move to Oklahoma to help with the family bakery—and they must figure out if their love is forever, or just a summer they’ll never forget.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781665953603 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers |
| Publication date: | 05/07/2024 |
| Edition description: | Reissue |
| Pages: | 352 |
| Sales rank: | 1,036,890 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.90(d) |
| Age Range: | 12 - 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
June
I don’t know just why I’m telling you all this. Maybe you’ll think I’m being silly. But I’m not, really, because this is important. You see, it was different! It wasn’t just because it was Jack and I either—it was something much more than that. It wasn’t as it’s written in magazine stories or as in morning radio serials where the boy’s family always tease him about liking a girl and he gets embarrassed and stutters. And it wasn’t silly, like sometimes, when girls sit in school and write a fellow’s name all over the margin of their papers. I never even wrote Jack’s name at all till I sent him a postcard that weekend I went up to Minaqua. And it wasn’t puppy love or infatuation or love at first sight or anything that people always talk about and laugh. Maybe you don’t know just what I mean. I can’t really explain it—it’s so hard to put in words but—well, it was just something I’d never felt before. Something I’d never even known. People can’t tell you about things like that, you have to find them out for yourself. That’s why it is so important. It was something I’ll always remember because I just couldn’t forget—it’s a thing like that.
It happened this way. At the very beginning of the summer I met Jack—right after graduation. He had gone to the public high school and I went to the Academy just outside of town which is for girls only. I had heard of him often because he played guard on the high school basketball team and he sometimes dated Jane Rady who sat next to me in history class. That night (the night when things first began) I drove down to the post office with my father to mail a letter and because it was rather late Dad pulled up in front of McKnight’s drugstore and said, “I’ll just stop here and keep the motor running while you run in and get a stamp.” McKnight’s is where all the fellows and girls in Fond du Lac get together and I really would rather not have gone in alone—especially on a Friday night when most girls have dates—but I didn’t want to tell my father that.
I remember just how it was. I was standing by the drug counter waiting for the clerk. The sides of the booths in McKnight’s are rather high and in one, near the back, I could just see the top of someone’s head with a short crew cut sticking up. He must have been having a Coke, for he tore the wrapping off the end of his straws and blew in them so that the paper covering shot over the side of the booth. Then he stood up to see where it had landed. It was Jack. He looked over at me, smiled, and then sat down again.
Of course I didn’t know him yet, he just smiled to be friendly, but I waited for a few minutes looking at magazines in the rack near the front door, hoping he might stand up again or walk up to the soda fountain or something, but he didn’t. So I just left. “You certainly took long enough,” my father said gruffly, “I might have been arrested for parking double like this.”
The next night my sister Lorraine came in from Chicago on the 2:40 a.m. train. She has been going to college for two years and wears her hair long, almost to her shoulders, and puts her lipstick on with a brush. We drove to meet her, Dad and I. It was raining a little then and the lights from the station shone on the wet bricks. The two-wheeled baggage carts were standing in a line, their long handles tipped up into the air. We waited while the train came out of the darkness, feeling its way with the long, yellow headlight beam. When it stopped, a man jumped out and ran into the station with a package under his arm. A conductor swung onto the platform and stood waving a lantern while the train waited, the engine panting out steam from between its wheels. Dad and I walked along, peering up at the windows. A boy at one of them woke up and waved to me sleepily.
Then we saw Lorraine half stumble down the steps with two suitcases and a black wool ram under her arm. “I fell asleep and almost forgot to get off,” she said. Her hair was mussed up and her cheek was all crisscrossed red where she had been leaning on the rough upholstery. “One of the girls had this goat in her room and didn’t want to pack it so I brought it home for Kitty. (Kitty is my sister who is ten but still likes toys.) You’ve got to hold it up straight or the rubber horns fall out.” Lorraine laughed. “I’m glad I’m home—this should be a good summer, don’t you think, Angie?” Dad kissed her gingerly—because of so much lipstick—and I took one bag to the car and he took the other and we went home.
That was Saturday. Monday was the day summer vacation really began.
It was just after nine o’clock and I was in the garden picking small round radishes and pulling the new green onions for dinner at noon. I remember it was a warm day with a blue and white sky. The garden was still wet with last night’s rain and the black earth was steaming in the sun, while between my toes the ground was soft and squishy—I had taken off my shoes and left them on the garden path so they wouldn’t get caked with mud—and I remember thinking how much fun it would be to go barefoot all the time. The little tomato plants were laid flat against the ground from last night’s downfall and there were puddles like blue glass in the hollows. A breeze, soft with a damp, fishy smell, blew in from Lake Winnebago about three blocks away. I was so busy thinking about the weather, the warm sun, and the sleek little onions that I didn’t even hear Jack come up the back sidewalk.
“Any baked goods today?” he called.
“I don’t know,” I answered, turning. “You’d better ring the back doorbell and ask my mother.” I sidled over a little and stood in the thick quack grass beside the garden path. I don’t like to have people see me in my bare feet.
“Why don’t you ask her for me?” he called. “You know her better than I do.” I stood still for a moment hoping he wouldn’t notice my feet. “Come on, hurry,” he said. “I don’t care if you haven’t any shoes on.”
Now, it wasn’t that I was shy or anything, but it’s awkward when a boy has on a clean shirt and his hair combed and your hands are all muddy and you’re in your bare feet. I tried to wipe off the mud on the quack grass before I went down the garden path.
“What were you doing,” he asked, “picking radishes?” (I still had the bunch of radishes in my hand.) “That’s kind of silly, isn’t it?” he added laughing. “It’s just my salesman’s personality coming out—anything to start a conversation. Twice already this morning I caught myself saying to customers, ‘What’s it going to do—rain?’ I’ve got to be careful not to get into a rut.” He laughed again and I laughed too. It was such a warm, bright morning.
We talked together for a while and I told him I didn’t know he worked for a bakery, and he said he hadn’t until school let out and that he was going to drive one of the trucks for his father during the summer, and when I remarked that I didn’t even know his father owned a bakery, he said, “You don’t know much about me at all, do you?”
“I know your name,” I answered.
“What?” he asked
“Jack Duluth. I remember reading it in the paper when you made that long shot from the center of the floor in the basketball game with Oshkosh this winter.”
“Good for you—just another one of my fans.” He laughed. “What’s your name—as if I didn’t find out after I saw you in McKnight’s the other night. Angie Morrow, short for Angeline, isn’t it?”
I was glad he had asked about me, but for some reason it was embarrassing and I tried to change the subject. “I remember when you used to go with Jane Rady,” I ventured. “She used to sit next to me in history class. She talked about you a lot. She told me about the time you drove to the city dump—”
“Forget it,” Jack said sharply. “Forget all about it, see. All that is down the drain by now.” For a moment I thought he was angry. “Go ask your mother if she needs any bread or doughnuts or anything, will you?”
He sat down on the cement doorstep and I opened the door to go inside. All of a sudden he turned and said slowly, with a thought in his voice, “Say, Angie, you don’t go steady or anything, do you?”
My heart jumped a little. “No, I don’t,” I answered and then added quickly, “My mother doesn’t like me to go out much.” It wouldn’t do to say that I wasn’t often asked, either. I waited a moment. “Do you, Jack?”
He laughed. “Of course not. None of the fellows I go around with do. Silly to tie yourself down to one girl. But, say, seeing you don’t—how about going sailboating with me tonight? Me and Swede Vincent have got a little boat we bought last fall. Do you know Swede? He’s a good guy. He’ll come with us and sail it and you and I can just—ah—well, just sit. How about it?”
I didn’t know, I told him. I would have to ask my mother first.
“Go ask her now,” he urged, “when you ask her if she needs any bread. I’ll wait.”
“Oh, I can’t do that!” I could hear my mother upstairs running the vacuum cleaner noisily over the rugs and I remembered I hadn’t tidied up my bedroom yet. “Now’s not such a good time to ask but I’ll tell you by one o’clock,” I promised, trying not to be too eager. “I’ll try to fix it and if you’ll call me then I can let you know.”
“I’ll call you at one then and let’s skip the bakery goods for today. Please try to go,” he added. “No girl has ever been out in our boat before so you’ll be the first one. Something kind of special.”
That was the first time I ever really talked to Jack. When I went back into the garden to get my shoes I noticed how the little tomato plants seemed to be straightening in the sun. And there were small paper-thin blossoms on the new pea plants.
Table of Contents
ContentsJUNE
JULY
AUGUST