Free My Life Next Door by Huntley Fitzpatrick

too deep with Flip. Spending the whole summer with him…Maybe not smart.”
    “I like Flip,” I say.
    “Yeah, I like Flip too,” she says shortly, “but I only want to like Flip till the end of August. He’s going to college in Florida. I’m headed to Vermont.”
    “Planes, trains, automobiles…” I suggest.
    “I hate that messy long-distance stuff, Samantha. Plus, then you wonder whether he’s got some girl on campus that you don’t know about and you’re making a fool of yourself.”
    “Have some trust, Trace. Flip seems pretty devoted.”
    She sighs. “I know. He brought me a magazine and a Froz-Fruit at the beach the other day. It was so sweet. That was when I realized I might be getting in too deep.”
    Ooops.
    “Can’t you just see how it all goes?”
    Tracy’s smile is rueful. “I seem to remember that when you were dating Charley you had some sort of timetable for every move you’d let him make.”
    “Charley needed a timetable or he’d have tried for sex in his dad’s Prius in our driveway before our first date.”
    She chuckles. “He was a total hound. But great dimples. Did you ever actually sleep with him?”
    “No. Never.” How can she forget? I’m kind of hurt. I remember every detail of Tracy’s love life, including that traumatic summer two years ago when she dated three brothers, breaking two of their hearts and getting hers thoroughly broken by the third.
    Flip honks from the driveway, something Mom would generally deplore but somehow puts up with from him.
    “Help! I’m late—gotta go! Love you!” Tracy tramples down the stairs, loud as a herd of elephants in tap shoes. I’ve never understood how my petite, slender sister can make so much noise on the stairs. She throws her arms around Mom, squeezes her a second, dashes to the door, and shouts, “Coming, Flip! I’m worth waiting for, I promise!”
    “I know, babydoll!” Flip calls back.
    Tracy runs back to me, kisses my cheek noisily, pulls back. “Are you sure about the white shirts?”
    “Yes. Go!” I say, and with a twirl of skirt and a slam of the door, she’s gone.

    “Soooo, there’s an SAT test prep at Stony Bay High this August,” Nan says as we walk to the B&T. We stopped at Doane’s and she’s slurping her cookies-and-cream milkshake while I crunch the ice of my lime rickey.
    “Be still my heart. It’s summer, Nan.” I tip my face up to the sun, take a deep breath of the warm air. Low tide. The sun-warm scent of the river.
    “I know,” she says. “But it’s just one morning. I had the stomach flu when we took them last time, and I only got nineteen hundred. That’s just not good enough. Not for Columbia.”
    “Can’t you take it online?” I like school and I love Nan, but I’d just as soon not think about GPAs and test scores until after Labor Day.
    “It’s not the same. This is proctored and everything. The conditions are exactly like the actual test. We could do it together. It would be fun.”
    I smile at her, reaching over to snag her milkshake for a taste. “This is your idea of fun? Couldn’t we just swim in shark-infested waters instead?”
    “Please. You know I get totally freaked out about these things. It would help to practice under real circumstances. And I always feel better knowing you’re there. I’ll even pay your fee. Pleeease, Samantha?”
    I mutter that I’ll think about it. We’ve reached the B&T, where we have to fill out paperwork before we start work. And there’s another thing I want to do too.
    I’m sweating slightly as I knock on the door of Mr. Lennox’s office, peering around guiltily.
    “Do come in!” Mr. Lennox calls. He looks surprised when I poke my head in.
    “Well, hello, Ms. Reed. You do know your first day isn’t until next week.”
    I enter the office and think, as always, that they should get Mr. Lennox a smaller desk. He’s not a tall man, and it looks as if the massive slab of carved oak is swallowing him whole.
    “I know,” I say,