Teaser Tuesday

just kidding about that big post. It needs a little longer to cook. So let's celebrate post 100 with the first bit of INVINCIBLE SUMMER, shall we?

This is pre-notes from editor, so God knows if this will bear any resemblance to the first page in the real thing. But here's what it looks like now.


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Gideon keeps falling down.

He and Claudia slipped outside to the beach before anyone else was ready. They’re greasy and gritty with sand and sea water now—no point in dragging them back inside. None of us feel like making the effort. My mother, who’s a little too old and way too pregnant to run around outside and parent them hands-on like she used to, drifts to the deck to watch them, one hand on her stomach, one on the railing.

My dad looks at Noah and me lingering by the windows. We’re moaning every time we see a particularly good wave roll by and looking at each other—maybe we should go out? Maybe we can? No.

Outside, Claudia is laughing. She always says she’s way too old to play with Gideon. But she still does, at least when we’re here. Here no one is too old. Except Mom and Dad. Claudia and Gideon are the two youngest, so they get shoved together and there is no way to avoid it, even though Claudia’s eleven and Gideon’s barely six.

Dad says, “Aren’t you two going out?”

We can’t. Despite the sand clinging to our feet from the walk from the car and the soaked-in sunscreen smell of this carpet, Noah and I know that it isn’t quite summer. Not yet. Summer can’t start at night, first of all, and it definitely can’t start before we see the SUV roll up outside the Hathaway’s beach house. And until it comes, we’ll wait here. That’s tradition, and Noah and I do not kill tradition.

Noah is eighteen, four years my senior, as long as you’re not talking about emotional age. His nose hooks at the end, just covering where his spiky mustache is coming in. His hand taps a beat on my shoulder.