Cold in Summer - Hardcover

Barrett, Tracy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805070524 ISBN 13: 9780805070521

Verlag: Henry Holt Books for Young Readers, 2003

Inhaltsangabe

The new girl in town meets a mysterious old-fashioned girl who can't seem to find her way home.

The girl didn't say anything. Her face held no expression.
Ariadne shivered. It was cool in the shade, and her hair was still wet.
"Hello," Ariadne said. No answer. "Um--I was just taking a walk. Is this your property?" Still nothing. She took a step toward the girl and stumbled on a fallen branch. She caught her balance and looked back at the tree, but no one was there.
The girl had vanished.

It's bad enough that Ariadne's family just moved to a tiny boring town in the middle of nowhere. But worst of all is that she's so far away from her best friend. The kids in Dobbin seem nice enough, but none of them really understands how lost and unhappy Ariadne feels.

None, that is, but May Butler. She's an odd, quiet person who wears the strangest old-fashioned clothes and has a spooky habit of appearing and disappearing in the blink of an eye. Despite their differences, there is a bond between the two girls. May, too, knows what it's like to feel lost.

Cold in Summer is a 2004 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Tracy Barrett is the award-winning author of several books for young readers, including the Sherlock Files books,King of Ithaka and Anne of Byzantium. Her books have been named an ALA Best Book for young adults, a Bank Street best children’s book of the year, and a New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age, among other honors. She is a professor of Italian language and civilization at Vanderbilt University and lives with her family in Nashville, Tennessee.

Tracy Barrett is the author of Anna of Byzantium, which received wide critical praise. She is a professor of Italian language and literature at Vanderbilt University. She lives with her family in Nashville, Tennessee.

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Cold in Summer

By Tracy Barrett

Henry Holt and Company

Copyright © 2003 Tracy Barrett
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8050-7052-1

CHAPTER 1

Ariadne flipped over, treading water, and tried to look down through the darkness. Her wet hair flopped over her eyes, and she couldn't spare a hand to push it back. It didn't matter. She couldn't even see her toes. What if she were right over an old barn? Could she cut herself on a thresher or a reaper? She had no idea what threshers and reapers were, but last year her sixth-grade social-studies book had said they were used on farms. They would probably still have sharp edges, even if they were covered with rust by now. The thought made her shudder, and she bent her legs until her treading knees nearly broke the surface.

Hector was facedown a few feet away, his arms wrapped around a boat cushion. His dark hair floated around his head like seaweed, and his back was already starting to turn pink. Ariadne swam over and grabbed a corner of the cushion.

"Hey!" Hector said, and loosened his grip. "You trying to drown me?"

"Let me hold on a second," said Ariadne. "I'm sinking."

"Fresh water is less buoyant than salt water," he said.

"I know, I know — spare me the science lecture," she said. It was annoying to hear her little brother use a word like buoyant. "Up to the Bs already?" She tossed her head to get her hair out of her eyes, and a strand caught in her mouth. She spat it out, grimacing at the muddy taste. "Where's Mom?" she asked.

"Back on shore with Dad." Hector jerked his head in their direction. "Now let go of my cushion. Get your own if you can't dog-paddle that far." Stung, Ariadne let go and swam with her best crawl toward the shore. She looked back to see if Hector was impressed with her form, but he had hugged the cushion to his chest again and was staring down, down into the depths, as though he could see something in the murk below his yellow swim trunks.

Ariadne walked gingerly over the muddy bank. It was bad enough when it squished through her toes, but it was even worse when there was a hard nubbin that could be anything. A beetle. A piece of a beer bottle. Part of a dead animal. She shuddered.

"That mud is so gross," she said when she finally reached the grassy area where her parents were setting out the picnic lunch. The dark green trees, already starting to get fall-brown, looked odd growing so near the water, and it was strange to feel cool grass underfoot instead of hot sand. She took a handful of chips.

"Hey, stop that," her father said. "Wait until everyone gets a shot at the food before you eat it all up, Addy. And if the mud bothers you, wear your water shoes."

"Whoever heard of swimming in shoes?" Ariadne grumbled. "If we were still in Florida, we'd have nice clean sand instead of this goo. And we'd have salt water to keep us afloat. And we'd have Sarah down the street."

"And we'd have a mountain of bills," her mother said, "and we wouldn't have a beautiful lake to go swimming in or lots of new kids to meet once school starts next week. Count your blessings."

I can't count that low, thought Ariadne, but she kept her mouth shut.

"Tell Hector it's lunchtime," her father said, and this time Ariadne put on her water shoes before going down to the edge of the lake.

"Heck!" she called. "Come eat!" And she turned back without waiting to find out if he had heard. If he hadn't, there would be more for her. Lately, she couldn't eat enough at one sitting to keep from feeling starved before the next meal.

But by the sound of splashing behind her, he had heard and was heading in. He caught up with her at the picnic blanket and dried off with one of their Florida beach towels, the one with the blue seahorse on it that had always been his special favorite. He seemed to have forgotten the beach, though, and was talking about the lake. The dirty, brown lake with no surf and no dolphins.

"Did you know that if you hold real still, little fishes come up and nibble you all over?" he asked.

"Yeah, I knew that already," said Ariadne. "It's gross."

"It's not gross, it's cool!" Hector said. "They wiggle around and look like puppies wagging their tails. I wonder what they're eating off your skin?"

"Salt, I suppose," their mother said.

"See?" said Ariadne. "Even the fish know that salt water is better. I wonder who picked them up out of the ocean and dumped them here in this stinky lake."

"Oh, stop complaining," Hector said. "The lake doesn't stink. It smells like a lake is supposed to smell, just like Zephyr smells like a dog is supposed to smell."

"Zephyr stinks," Ariadne said.

"Enough of that, Ariadne Louise," her father broke in. "Quit grousing and say something nice."

Ariadne thought as she chewed and swallowed. "Good deviled eggs," she said finally. "You used the same kind of mayo that we had at home."

Her mother groaned and flopped onto her back on the blanket. "This is home for now, my precious. If the college hadn't offered me a job, we might have wound up in Nebraska, or South Dakota, or someplace even farther from home —" She stopped as Ariadne grinned at her. "All right, you caught me. Even farther from Florida than where we are right now. Tennessee is pretty close, and Sarah's coming for Thanksgiving. That is, if you still want her. You'll probably have tons of new friends by then and won't want to see her."

"Oh, sure," Ariadne said. Not want to see Sarah? Her best friend since preschool, who'd spent the night so many times that she had her own toothbrush and sleeping bag at Ariadne's house? Really.

"You never know," Hector said. "Sarah might have a new best friend by then."

"She will not!" Ariadne said. "Sarah and I will always be best friends, and even if I have to spend the next six years here, we'll be roommates in college and get jobs together after we graduate."

"Oh, really?" her father said. "And where are you planning on going to college?"

"Florida State," said Ariadne, and when the others laughed, she threw her cookie in the mud and stomped off into the bushes. They were so thick that within seconds she was out of sight of the lake and of her family.

Honestly, she thought. If they liked it so much, they could stay. But she wouldn't. She would e-mail Sarah and beg her to ask her parents once more if Ariadne could move in with them, at least for the rest of middle school. They were finally going to be seventh-graders. They'd have lockers and get to take Spanish or German or French and go to the seventh-grade dance at Halloween. And they were going to be in the same homeroom this year, with Mr. McGerr. Just my luck to get the coolest teacher in the school and then have to leave, she thought as she blinked back tears. This stinks.

Why anyone would want to live someplace where they would cover whole towns with water just to make a stupid lake was beyond her. Her father had explained that the dam generated electricity for the entire region and was powered by the water in Cedar Point Lake, but the idea still gave her the creeps. It was like the story her mother had told her about Atlantis, that Greek island-city that sank into the ocean, taking a whole civilization with it. Not that Dobbin, Tennessee, probably had much civilization to lose, but still, a town was under them whenever they went swimming, under the jet-skis — even under those little brown fish. Yuck, there was probably a cemetery under the water too, and who knew what the fish had been dining on before their little mouths nibbled on her?

Ariadne had gone deep...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Henry Holt Books for Young Readers
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2003
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0805070524
• ISBN 13: 9780805070521
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 203
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar