Free Beach Blondes: June Dreams, July's Promise, August Magic (Summer) by Katherine Applegate

glass on a small gauge. It read empty. It read less than empty.
    Then Marquez’s engine sputtered and died. Sudden silence, except for the lapping of water against the Jet Skis. A very ominous silence, the silence of vast, open seas.
    “Yep. That’s the gas gauge,” Marquez said. “Mine says empty.”
    “Mine agrees,” Summer said.

10
Lifestyles of the Rich and Sexy
    “Amazing sunset,” Summer said. And it was. High streaky clouds appeared in colors that looked too bright and intense to be real. The sun was a ball of brilliant orange-yellow, just peeking above the horizon, threatening to dive into the Gulf of Mexico at any moment. To the east the sky was already darkening. “Incredible,” Summer said. “I’m glad I got to experience it before I get washed out to sea and end up being eaten by sharks.”
    “Someone is bound to see us,” Marquez said. “I mean, boats pass in and out of the bay all the time.”
    “They do? All the time?”
    “Well, not right now, this minute, but soon. Probably.”
    They had tied the two Jet Skis together by looping the armholes of Summer’s dress over the two sets of handlebars. The dress was getting badly stretched in the process. Now, even if they did make it somehow, she would be arriving at a cool party at a billionaire’s estate dressed as clown girl.
    The water was still warm, unnaturally warm, like bathwater after it sat for ten minutes. The current was definitely drawing them slowly out of the bay, out toward the open Gulf.
    “Maybe we’d better just swim for it,” Marquez suggested.
    “Great. And how do I explain to Diana and my aunt that on my second day here I brilliantly lost two Jet Skis?”
    “Good point,” Marquez allowed. “Your aunt might not be happy about that.”
    “Too bad I have to die this way,” Summer said philosophically. “I was just starting to think I might like it here.”
    “You have a better way to die?’’ Marquez wondered, making conversation.
    “Better would be about eighty years from now.”
    “Yes. Okay.”
    “My parents will be upset,” Summer said. “It took a lot for them to decide to let me come down here.”
    “Oh. So they’re the very protective type, huh? Mine too.”
    “I wouldn’t say they’re over protective or anything,” Summer said, not sure of how much she should tell Marquez. After all, they’d known each other barely half a day, and so far what Marquez had done was help her get a job, only to turn around and lure her to a watery grave. “They lost my little brother already,” Summer said at last. “I mean, I guess he’d be my big brother, but I never think of him that way.”
    “Oh, man, Summer. I’m sorry to hear that,” Marquez said.
    “It was a long time ago. I was still a fetus at the time, so naturally I don’t remember anything about him. He was two years old and disappeared. I’ve seen pictures of him. That’s all.”
    “What do you mean, disappeared?”
    Summer shrugged. She shouldn’t have brought it up. The situation they were in was depressing enough. “He was at day care, playing outside in the yard, and then, suddenly he wasn’t. They never found, you know, a body or anything, but after a long, long time my parents fmally gave up and accepted it. I don’t mean accepted. You know what I mean.”
    “That’s very major, Summer. That’s horrible.” Marquez whistled softly in the dark. “I wouldn’t have thought you were someone with any kind of sadness in your life, you know? You seem so sweet and normal and all.”
    For a while they were both silent, listening to the plop of fish jumping out of the water. It had been a long time since Summer had thought much about the brother she’d never known. When she was younger, the sadness of that one event had hung over every day. It was a sadness that had been there, waiting for her as she was born into the world.
    “Summer, you’re not crying, are you? It’s so dark I can’t really see your face. I hate