Free In the River Darkness by Marlene Röder Page B

earrings. My heart was pounding in my chest. “You have thousands of freckles,” I finally said.
    That was the wrong thing to say! Mia’s face, still warm from the exertion of throwing, began to set in its old, familiar, closed expression. Like water freezing over. It made me cold to see it happening.
    “If you can’t get one in now, you’re totally blind,” I said quickly to counter it, squeezing my eyes shut and opening my mouth as absurdly wide as a wide-mouthed frog.
    Then I felt Mia very gently place a cherry on my tongue. The full sweetness exploded in my mouth.
    The ground was no longer firm. The wind rustled in the leaves of the cherry tree. Everything around us was in swaying motion, as if the two of us were alone on a green ship.
Like somewhere on the high seas,
I thought.
It must feel exactly like this.
    Shadows of leaves trembled on her face. Oh, God, I wanted to kiss her.
    And then, I had no idea how it came about, but I did it. I kissed Mia!
    Immediately, I felt her body stiffen.
    Oh, no, I had misread the signs!
You blew it, Alex, you idiot!
    I wanted to pull back from her and frantically wracked my pathetic brain for apologies, when I noticed it. Her tongue tentatively nudged me, made the acquaintance of mine. She tasted like cherries, a little bit like chocolate, and buried underneath that, very faintly, of Mia.
    I always closed my eyes when I was kissing. But when I opened them again, I noticed that she was observing me with a fixed gaze, sizing me up, somehow.
    “My heart isn’t a stone,” she said in a serious tone.
    “No,” I whispered, confused by the odd expression on her face. Only much later would I realize that her words had been a warning.
    Mia exhaled deeply and relaxed. Her breath caressed my skin warmly like a fleeting touch. Yes, it felt like music. It felt like summer.
    “Kiss me again, Alex,” she whispered.

Chapter 9
Jay
    The bedsheets Grandma had attached to the clothesline with clothespins fluttered in the wind like white clouds. I captured their crackling on my voice recorder before they could fly away into the summer skies again.
    But there was some kind of annoying muttering in the background. I peered past the sheets toward the river, where Grandma and Papa had nothing better to do than ruin my recording.
    “And what do you want to do now, Eric?” Grandma’s voice bored into my father’s back as he sat on the dock and played hide-and-seek with the old pike.
    “About what?” Papa grumbled back. But I heard in his voice that he knew exactly what she was talking about.
    Grandma put her hands on her hips. “About the pictures, of course! We talked about it already last year, that it can’t go on this way. . . . Alexander is almost grown up now!”
    She slammed him into the ground with her words. I saw how Papa shrank into himself on his camping stool. He probably would have been glad to trade places with Old George, the pike, right then.
    “But Alex is always so happy. Those pictures are important to him!” he protested.
    “It was a mistake from the very beginning to agree to this whole thing. I thought it would make it easier for the boys. But instead, everything has just gotten more complicated.” Grandma muttered something like, “When something like that gets to be a habit. . . . I told you right off: a lie is a lie and can only bring unhappiness.”
    “All right, I’ll call her and explain it to her,” Papa finally said with a sigh. “There won’t be any more photos coming.”
    I didn’t completely understand what they were talking about, but I knew one thing for sure: it would be a sad birthday for my brother.
    Papa’s line jerked, and he quickly started to reel it in. He clearly thought the conversation was over.
    It was just as obvious that Grandma didn’t think so. “Good, then that’s settled,” she said, but made no move to leave.
    My father grimly worked his fishing rod. Hanging from the bait at the end of the line flapped not Old George,