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Автор Дженни Хан
We'll Always Have Summer
On Wednesday nights when I was little, my mom and I would watch old musicals. It was our thing.
Sometimes my dad or Steven would wander in, but it was pretty much always my mother and me on the couch with a blanket and a bowl of sweet and salty popcorn, every Wednesday. We watched The Music Man, West Side Story, Meet Me in St. Louis, all of which I liked. But I loved none of them the way I loved Bye Bye Birdie. Of all the musicals, Bye Bye Birdie was my number one favorite. I watched it again and again, as many times as my mother could stand. Like Kim MacAfee before me, I wanted to wear mascara and lipstick and heels and have that
“happy grownup female feeling,” I wanted to hear boys whistle and know it was for me. I wanted to be just like Kim, because she got all of those things.
And after, when it was bedtime, I would sing,
“We love you, Conrad, oh yes we do. We love you, Conrad, and we’ll be true” into the bathroom mirror with a mouth full of toothpaste. I would sing my eight-nine-ten-year-old heart out. But I wasn’t singing to Conrad Birdie. I was singing to my Conrad.
Conrad Beck Fisher, the boy of my pre-teen dreams.
I’ve only ever loved two boys—both of them with the last name Fisher. Conrad was first, and I loved him in a way that you can really only do the first time around. It’s the kind of love that doesn’t know better and doesn’t want to—it’s dizzy and foolish and fierce.
That kind of love is really a one-time-only thing.
And then there was Jeremiah. When I looked at Jeremiah, I saw past, present, and future. He didn’t just know the girl I used to be. He knew the right-now me, and he loved me anyway.
My two great loves. I think I always knew I would be Belly Fisher one day.
I just didn’t know it was going to happen like this.Chapter One
When it’s finals week and you’ve been studying for five hours straight, you need three things to get you through the night. The biggest Slurpee you can find, half cherry, half Coke. Pajama pants, the kind that have been washed so many times, they are tissue-paper thin. And finally, dance breaks. Lots of dance breaks. When your eyes start to close and all you want is your bed, dance breaks will get you through.
It was four in the morning, and I was studying for the last final of my freshman year at Finch University. I was camped out in my dorm library with my new best friend, Anika Johnson, and my old best friend, Taylor Jewel.
Summer vacation was so close, I could almost taste it. Just five more days. I’d been counting down since April.
“Quiz me,” Taylor commanded, her voice scratchy.
I opened my notebook to a random page. “Define anima versus animus. ”
Taylor chewed on her lower lip. “Give me a hint. ”
“Umm … think Latin,” I said.
“I didn’t take Latin! Is there going to be Latin on this exam?”
“No, I was just trying to give you a hint. Because in Latin boys names end in -us and girls names end in -a, and anima is feminine archetype and animus is masculine archetype. Get it?”
She let out a big sigh. “No. I’m probably going to fail. ”
