Predictably, if disappointingly, my parents ignore the Fourth of July just as they ignore most other holidays as of late. Thankfully, the Ashburns never leave me out, and they never leave Felix out either.
As Jamie and I play volleyball with many of our classmates and the children of our parents' coworkers, our unique shorthand helps us communicate. We finish the last set with a beautiful pass-set-hit, leaving the grown adults on the other side of the net annoyed.
"They talk at the same time," Jamie's mother says fondly, "about all different things."
"And they always know what the other is talking about," Jamie's father sums up, turning over several burgers on the grill.
Felix looks up from The Prisoner of Azkaban. "They're like the voices in your head," he says, picking the book back up.
"The Voices," Greg Ashburn states, raising his beer in greeting as we help ourselves to the vegetables laid out near the grill.
"The whats?" Jamie asks, licking Ranch off her fingers.
"I think that's our new nickname," I answer, biting into a cherry tomato, letting the seeds and juice explode outward. Felix jumps up, frantic to get the tomato seeds off his face and out of his carefully gelled hair; I can't help but laugh at my twin.
"Great, now Ron and Hermione at the Shrieking Shack will always have tomato juice on it," he mutters, returning to Hogwarts. I take off my tank top and denim Daisy Dukes. Spotting Danny Algrim, beautiful Danny Algrim across the pool, I dive in and surface next to him. I want to reach out and hug him, press him next to me, but I resist and instead splash him gently. Regardless of how much I pretend I am at school, I am not immune to how beautiful he looks there, smiling at me.
YOU ARE READING
Forget Green Gables
Teen FictionBeing a high school freshman is hard enough, but what is a girl to do when her own mother has become venomous, her twin brother rockets to the forefront of high school popularity, and no amount of styling products will keep her hair tamed? As she m...
