“Thank you,” he says, beaming with pride. So many people just see him as a jock, but this side, the artist side, is his real passion.
“All the amazingness of the store is due to Anita. I just do what she tells me to.”
My mother smiles at our cousin. “I knew I left it in good hands.”
“How was your trip? Tell us everything,” Anita says. “Especially about LA. Did you see any celebrities?”
“LA was fun—beautiful and overwhelming. The rest of the trip was the same! I’ll tell you more about it all when I’ve had a good night’s sleep and time to process it all.” She squeezes my hand. “I just wanted to stop by and see you and check my mail and office before crashing at home.”
“You just wanted to come to work.” I glance at Anita and shake my head, but Mom has already left the shop area to walk down to the back hall to her office.
I follow her and see her studying the massive amounts of letters in the cubbie system. “You have a lot of fans.”
“This tour was different than the others. A lot of passion for this case and hearing my story. People want to share what happened to them too, which I understand and I support, but after a while it gets overwhelming.”
“I can only imagine.”
She touches the smaller but substantial stack of weird letters. “I see I’ve got some haters, too.”
I laugh. “Haters? What are you, a thirteen-year-old girl?”
“What else would you call them?” She picks up a stack of bills and sorts through them quickly.
“Lunatics. Psychos. Desperate, lonely weirdos.” She gives me a hard, annoyed look. “If it helps, the good out-weighs the bad.”
“It comes with the job, Summer. You know that, and add in serial killers and a true crime angle and everything gets a little weirder.”
“I just want you to be safe.”
“I am. I promise. I’ll look them over and any that stand out I’ll forward to my agent, okay?”
Now that she’s looked over her bills, seen the store still standing, and assessed her fan mail, I can see the exhaustion finally taking over. “Come on, Mom, let me get you back home. I’ll drive.”
She smiles at me. “I know it’s only been a few months since I saw you at Easter, but you’ve really grown up.”
“No thanks to these guys around here. They have me surfing, eating ice cream and going to skate parks. If I keep hanging around them, I’ll never grow up.”
She walks around the desk and wraps her arm around my shoulder. “Don’t be in a rush—my adolescence was cut short by Gaskins. It’s one of my biggest regrets.”
“I’ll try.” Which is easier said than done. Life and decisions and relationships and everything else loom ahead. I want to talk to her about Vanderbilt, but it was the dream for so long. Would I be cutting my options off by changing tracks? I guess that’s her point though, vacation is for taking a break from the big stuff. She stopped coming to Ocean Beach after Gaskins’ attack. I didn’t need to stress about the big stuff. Not now—all of that will be waiting in the future.
With my mothersafely at home and the party under control, I agree to go with the boys to one of their out-of-the-way local joints to hang out. The last time we did something like this, Mason followed me and all hell broke loose. There’s no reason to worry about a repeat of that, but these townie outings make me a little uneasy. Mostly because I’m completely out of my comfort zone.
The scent of fried seafood hits me the instant I get out of Nick’s truck. The boys wait for me in the parking lot, Anita and Bobby are here, too. Maggie and Ivy are coming later.
“So what’s so special about this place?” I ask. The sign on the door says “Dusty’s Den.”
“It’s a landmark,” Nick says, taking my hand. “When we all got our fake IDs, this is the first place we went.”
“I need an ID?” I’m only nineteen.
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small laminated card. I take the card and see a recent photo taken of me and a list of false details. “You made this?”
He shrugs. “We have our sources.”
It’s the little things like this thatdomake me feel like one of them; it’s the little things that bring me one step closer to feeling like this is my home, these are my people.
Anita helped pick my outfit. “Sexy, but casual,” she said, back at the trailer. We’d barely both fit into it with her giant belly. “You definitely don’t want to look like you’re trying too hard—the other locals will notice. But you do want to look hot for the guys.”
