Amy Doan - The Summer List

Laura and Casey were once inseperable...

Coming of age in California, Laura felt connected to her best friend in every way: as they floated on their backs in the sunlit lake, as they dreamed about the future under starry skies, and as they teamed up for the wild scavenger hunts in their small lakeside town. Until one summer night, when a shocking betrayal sent Laura running through the pines, down the dock, and into a new life, leaving Casey and a first love in her wake.

But the past is impossible to escape, and now, after seventeen years away, Laura is pulled home and into a reunion with Casey she can’t resist—one last scavenger hunt. With a twist: this time, the list of clues leads to the settings of their most cherished summer memories. From glistening Jade Cove to the vintage skating rink, each step they take becomes a bittersweet reminder of the friendship they once shared. But just as the game brings Laura and Casey back together, the clues unravel a stunning secret that threatens to tear them apart...

Mesmerizing and unforgettable, Amy Mason Doan’s The Summer List is about losing and recapturing the person who understands you best—and the unbreakable bonds of girlhood.

The Summer List

Amy Mason Doan

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

Copyright © Amy Mason Doan 2018

Amy Mason Doan asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © June 2018 ISBN: 9781474083713

For Mike and Miranda

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Preface

1 Mermaid in the Mailbox

2 Ariel and Pocahontas

3 Alexandra the Great

4 The Machine

5 Bartles & Jaymes

6 Messy

7 The Boy Behind the Counter

8

9 Raptor Rock

10 Critical and Confusing

11 Yes, No, Wow

12 Things That Don’t Belong

13

14 Velocity

15 Stepping Stones

16 Dreaming Shepherd Books

17 Vanity

18 Sorry

19

20 More than Fun

21 Honor System

22 June Names That Tune

23 Band-Aids

24 Liquid Hiding Place

25 Gamemaster

26

27 Women’s Retreat

28 Whistle While You Work

29 The Moon and Stars

30 Doctor Mona’s Hot Springs and Holistic Spa

31

32 Another Tiny Surprise

33 Biggest Little City in the World

34 Rainbow of Glass

35

36 Sacred Institutions

37 Counting Down

38 Lost and Found

39 Again

40

41 A Pirate

42

43 Eighteen

44 Skipping Stones

45 Extreme

46

47 Fog

48

49 Weathr-All

50

51 Treasure

52 The Visitor

53 The Prize

epilogue

acknowledgments

Reader’s Guide

Discussion Questions

About the Publisher

California

July

27th day of camp

The others were mad at her again.

They clustered behind her on the sand, watching as she stepped onto the wet ledge of rocks.

“What is she doing?”

“What are you doing?”

Ignoring them, she picked her way across tide pools, careful not to hurt the creatures underfoot—quivering purple anemones that retracted under her shadow, barnacles like blisters of stone.

All she wanted was a few minutes away from them. A few minutes alone to breathe in the cold wind off the ocean before the van delivered them back to the airless cabins, the dark chapel.

There were only ten minutes left in the game, and it would take her almost that long to make her way back across the slippery outcropping. If they didn’t return in time it’d be another mark against her.

She spotted something tangled in kelp, lodged between two flat rocks near the drop-off. So close to the surf. As if it had been carried across the ocean and snugged there, at the jagged edge of the world, just for her.

Stepping closer, she crouched, then flattened herself onto her belly. Her shirt and jeans drenched, her elbow scraped, she reached out but got only a rubbery handful of kelp.

She shut her eyes. If she looked down at the sea she would fall in like the doomed man on the keep-off sign behind her, a stick figure tumbling into scalloped waves.

Salt spray stinging her face, she fumbled through the squelching mass of kelp. Until her fingers found what they wanted and it gave, escaping its wet nest with a gentle sucking sound.

She knelt on the wet rocks as she examined her prize, brushing away green muck. The driftwood was longer than her hand, curved into a C . One end was pointier than the other, and in the center the wood splintered and cracked. But imperfect as it was, the resemblance was unmistakable, miraculous: a crescent moon.

Cur-di-lune, he’d said. I grew up in a town called Curdilune.

A strange, pretty name.

He’d drawn it for her in the dusty ground behind the craft cabin that morning. His calloused finger had sketched rectangles for the buildings. Houses and a church, shops and a park, nestled together against the inner curve of a crescent-shaped lake.

Curdilune. Cur is heart in French, he’d explained. Lune is moon. So it means Heart of the Moon. Then, with a light touch on her wrist—You miss home, too?

The others had walked by then, before she could answer, and he’d erased his little map, swirling his palm over the shapes in the dirt so quickly she knew it was their secret.

If she ran back to her team now, her find might help them win—a piece of driftwood was Item 7 on the list stuffed into her back pocket.

She glanced over at them and slid the wet treasure down her pocket, untucking her shirt to hide it. She’d give it to him instead.

It was a thank-you, an offering, an invitation. A cry for help after the long, bewildering summer.

1

Mermaid in the Mailbox

June 2016

The invitation came on a Saturday.

I was taking Jett for a walk, and she was frantic with anticipation, nails skittering on the lobby’s tile floor, black fur spiking up so she looked more like a little dragon than a Lab.