Free The Hidden Summer by Gin Phillips Page A

and a box of raisins. I had to limit my food supplies to things that didn’t need to be refrigerated and that Mom wouldn’t miss from the pantry.
    I fill one corner with a few other supplies: mosquito spray, roach spray, Band-Aids, soap. A plastic bowl, an iron skillet, a plate, and a fork. A bathing suit and a change of clothes, just in case.
    Lydia sticks her head inside Marvin as I’m folding my extra T-shirt.
    “An underground city built by monkeys,” she says.
    “A pirate ship with chests full of gold,” I answer.
    We’ve been doing this all morning—seeing who can come up with the strangest, most impossible things we might find today. Of course, it’s more likely that we’ll find nothing but weeds and maybe another pond or two. Or snakes. I’m still watching for snakes.
    “How could a ship get on a golf course?” asks Lydia.
    “I don’t know,” I say, “but that’s why it’d be such a great hiding place. No one would think to look.”
    We head straight toward the center of Lodema. We head past Marvin and the putt-putt course, and if we look over our shoulders we see a dinosaur and a rocket ship and a volcano behind us, and, past that, the city skyline. After ten or fifteen minutes of walking, we can’t see much of anything but the tall grass up past our waists and pine trees all around us. We stumble across a concrete path—an old golf cart path, I guess—and after that the walking gets easier.
    “It doesn’t look like the monkeys are going to happen,” I say, wiping the sweat off my forehead. My hair is sticking to me, pieces of grass are sticking to me, and I think some gnats might be sticking to me.
    “Maybe an enchanted castle where everyone inside has been asleep for a hundred years,” says Lydia. “Like Sleeping Beauty.”
    “Or maybe . . .”
    “Don’t even start about the snakes again,” she says.
    We plod on, taking swigs of water as we go. When we first see the castle, I think Lydia was right about Sleeping Beauty. We come around a bend in the path and instead of just treetops and sky, we see the top of a stone building. It’s falling apart, with big gaps and holes in the roof and walls, but on one side there’s definitely a turret like in fairy tales.
    “If there’s a princess in there, I’m not kissing her,” I say.
    “Come on!” says Lydia, and she starts running through the grass. I’m so close behind her that the grass she stomps down slaps back against my thighs. It’s dry and scratchy against my skin, but it makes a whispering sound as we run like it has a secret to tell us.
    Once we get closer to the stone building, we can tell there’s not a sleeping princess inside. For one thing, it’s too small to be a real castle. It’s barely bigger than the kitchen of our apartment. But mainly what rules out the princess idea is a faded blue and white sign that says C ONCESSIONS hanging over a boarded up window. I suppose it’s blocking the open space where people used to sell drinks and snacks. I’ve heard that before Lodema was a golf course, it was a big park with a merry-go-round and paddleboats and maybe a Ferris wheel. I never really believed it, but the concession stand makes me wonder. I’ve never heard of a concession stand on a golf course.
    The bottom of the concession castle seems pretty solid, but the farther up it goes, the more stones are missing. Sky and trees show through the holes. Kudzu has crept into the cracks, and pink buttercups are growing along the walls. Even though we know it’s just a place where people bought Cokes and popcorn, it still feels like some forgotten enchanted hiding place. Maybe not a place where kings and queens lived, but a place where you might find a talking bear or a family of gnomes.
    “Can we get in?” I ask.
    Lydia shrugs and starts around the left side of the building. “Don’t know,” she says. “I’ll go this way, and you look on the other side.”
    I check around the left side, and I only see a small