Free That Summer by Sarah Dessen Page B

hour at Little Feet, no big deal but enough to get me by. It would have been nice to have an extra bit, but whenever I felt tempted I thought of my mother’s face and said no. The tether, stretching beyond my mother and out of the house, was always attached and I was ever mindful of where my obligations lay.
    I stood in the driveway as my father pulled away hitting the horn twice, that happy beep-beep! as he turned out of sight. I started up the walk towards the door, Ashley’s voice now audible without the rumbling of my father’s car.
    “Lewis, that’s not the point. The point is that you didn’t do anything to stop it.” I recognized the tone, the clipped ends of each word, like speaking right into a wall. “I just didn’t think you’d ever act that way. I assumed you’d defend me.”
    “Honey, I don’t think it was as bad as you’re making it out to be. They were only giving their opinion. They didn’t mean it to be some kind of attack.”
    “Well, Lewis, if you can’t even see why it was so upsetting to me, then I guess I can’t expect you to understand why it bothers me that you didn’t take the action that I thought, as my fiance, you would take.”
    A silence, with just the cicadas chirping and the TV from our next-door neighbors, the Bensons, playing the theme song from “Bewitched.” I kept walking until I was out of sight on the porch, then took off my shoes and sat on the steps.
    “Well,” Ashley said with the sort of finality she used whenever we fought and she was getting ready to stalk out of the room, “I guess we just can’t discuss this anymore. This is a side of you I didn’t know before tonight, Lewis.”
    “Ashley, for God’s sake.” I sat up. “I understand you weren’t in the mood for their input, but they’re my family, flawed or not, and I’m not going to sit here and trash them to make you feel better. I’m just not.” It sounded like Lewis was growing a spine, finally, right there in the Chevette.
    I expected lightning to flash, stars to fall from the sky, the earth to shake and rumble at its core, but instead I heard only the slam of the car door and Ashley saying, “Then there is nothing left to discuss. I don’t want to be with you right now, Lewis. I don’t know when, actually, I’ll want to be with you again.”
    “Ashley.” And there it was, just as she was coming up the walk, the plaintive whine: Lewis lost his new bravado and returned to his old self. But it was too late. Ashley was In A Mood and he’d have to ride it out, like it or not, like the rest of us always did.
    She came stomping up the steps, saw me, and stopped just long enough to shoot me a look. She was wearing the holy dress, and in the porch light she seemed to be almost glowing. She kicked her shoes to the far end of the porch and climbed into the swing, making quite a racket as the chains clanked before settling into a nice, smooth to and fro. Lewis was still out in the driveway, waiting in the car.
    “What happened?” I asked after a few solid minutes of her heavy sighs overlaying the occasional yap of the Weavers’ dog from across the street, a fat little sausage of a dog that had a bark like a duck. There was something wrong with it, some kind of vocal problem. My father had called it Duckdog, upsetting Mrs. Weaver, who liked to dress it in sweaters, galoshes when it rained.
    Ashley leaned further back in the swing and waited awhile before answering, like she wasn’t sure it was worth the trouble. “They hate me,” she said simply. “They all ganged up on me when we started talking about the caterer and they all hate me.”
    The Chevette started up now, softly, and I wondered if Lewis was actually going to leave. I’d imagined him sitting all night in the driveway, sleeping upright rather than leaving angry. But there he was, pulling into the street with one last long pause in front of the house before driving off.
    “I’m sure they don’t hate you,” I said, sounding