Page 123 of Rebel Summer

My lips twitched ever so slightly. “Did somebody read the chapters again?”

“Quit stalling.”

“I don’t know.”

His eyes shot up. “Did you not read the chapters?”

I hadn’t. My brain had been too occupied with other things.

“Not yet.”

He leaned toward me. “Because it has all the inside information.”

The bell rang so I grabbed my backpack and stood up to go. “You’re right. That is annoying.”

“Exactly. Have a nice life, Books.”

News of our escapade had spread like wildfire, at least according to the dozens of text messages from this morning that I had yet to read on my phone. I left the judge’s office with a surprising (given the lack of sleep) spring in my step. Beau was nowhere to be found, and I became almost positive Dax had taken him on the ferry with him. He had some apologizing to do, and I was willing to bet the two boys had pulled off on a lonely stretch of road to break the car in.

The island looked different now that I was staying.

The sunshine and ninety-degree weather at ten in the morning? Cheery.

The sweat dripping down my neck? Charming.

The fact that I could still listen to Dax knock on my wall a tune that was now imprinted on my heart? Divine.

Seeing my dad sitting on the front steps of my duplex in his expensive running shorts and t-shirt? Nerve-wracking.

And then, strangely exhilarating.

There had been so much truth I’d had to face the past few weeks that now I actually craved it. So much inside of me sat simmering below the surface, begging to be freed. There was a power in giving feelings a voice. And I had a lot to say.

He stood at my approach. His hair looked matted at the edges, like he’d been sweaty before it dried in the breeze.

“I tried calling you,” my dad called out.

“I haven’t checked my messages,” I said, stopping a few feet away from him.

“I imagine it’s difficult to check messages when you’re in jail.”

Shrugging, I said, “Beau didn’t take our phones away. And it was just the holding cell. Not jail.”

By the look on my dad’s face, he didn’t appreciate my spelling out the difference.

“I’m not even going to give voice to the stupidity of what I heard went down last night.” His jaw clenched as his arms folded across his body. “I just want to know what the judge said.”

“He told me I could finish out my community service hours in Tennessee if I wanted.”

Relief poured over his face.

“I told him I was staying.”

His eyes darted back up to mine. “What? Why would you?—”

“Because I’m staying.”

“No. You’re not.”

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