Semua Bab The Summer I Turned Pretty: Bab 1 - Bab 10

We’d been driving for about seven thousand years. Or at least that’s how it felt. My brother, Amir, drove slower than our Granna. I sat next to him in the passenger seat with my feet up on the dashboard. Meanwhile, my mother was passed out in the backseat. Even when she slept, she looked alert, like at any second she could wake up and direct traffic.“Go faster,” I urged Amir, poking him in the shoulder. “Let’s pass that kid on the bike.”Amir shrugged me off. “Never touch the driver,” he said. “And take your dirty feet off my dashboard.”I wiggled my toes back and forth. They looked pretty clean to me. “It’s not your dashboard. It’s gonna be my car soon, you know.”“If you ever get your license,” he scoffed. “People like you shouldn’t even be allowed to drive.”“Hey, look,” I said, pointing out the window. “That guy in a wheelchair just lapped us!”Amir ignored me, and so I started to fiddle with the radio. One of my favorite things about going to the beach was the radio stations. I

The first time I ever had my heart broken was at this house. I was twelve.It was one of those really rare nights when the boys weren't all together-Amir and Malik went on an overnight fishing trip with some boys they'd met at the arcade. Khalil said he didn't feel like going, and of course I wasn't invited, so it was just me and him. Well, not together, but in the same house.I was reading a romance novel in my room with my feet on the wall when Khalil walked by. He stopped and said, "Zarah, what are you doing tonight?"I folded the cover of my book over quickly. Nothing,"I said. I tried to keep my voice even, not too excited or eager. I had left my door open on purpose, hoping he'd stop by."Want to go to the boardwalk with me?" he asked. He sounded casual, almost too casual.This was the moment I had been waiting for. This was it. I was finally old enough. Some part of me knew it too, it was ready. I glanced over at him, just as casual as he'd been. "Maybe. I have been craving a c

Dinner the first night was always the same: a big pot of spicy bouillabaisse that Leila cooked up while she waited for us to arrive. Lots of shrimp and crab legs and squid she knew I loved squid. Even when I was little, I would pick out the squid and save it for last. Leila put the pot in the middle of the table, along with a few crusty loaves of French bread from the bakery nearby. Each of us would get a bowl, and we'd help ourselves to the pot all throughout dinner, dipping the ladle back into the pot. Leila and my mother always had red wine, and us kids had grape Fanta, but on that night there were wineglasses for everyone."I think we're all old enough to partake now, don't you, Freya?" Leila said as we sat down."I don't know about that," my mother began, but then she stopped."Oh, all right. Fine. I'm being provincial, isn't that right, Beck?"Leila laughed and uncorked the bottle. "You? Never," she said, pouring a little wine for each of us. It's a special night. It's the first

After dinner I stayed downstairs on the couch and so did Khalil. He sat there across from me, strumming chords on his guitar with his head bent."So I heard you have a girlfriend," I said. "I heard it's pretty serious.'""My brother has a big mouth." About a month before we'd left for Cousins, Malik had called Amir. They were on the phone for a while, and I hid outside Amir’s bedroom door listening. Amir didn't say a whole lot on his end, but it seemed like a serious conversation. I burst into his room and asked him what they were talking about, and Amir accused me of being a nosy little spy, and then he finally told me that Khalil had a girlfriend."So what's she like?" I didn't look at him when I said this. I was afraid he'd be able to see how much I cared.Khalil cleared his throat. “We broke up," he said. I almost gasped. My heart did a little ping. “Your mom is right, you are a heartbreaker.""I meant it to come out as a joke, but the words rang in my head and in the air like som

I guess Mr. Kareem was good-looking, for a dad. He was better-looking than my father anyway, but he was also vainer than him. I don't know that he was as good-looking as Leila was beautiful, but that might've just been because I loved Leila more than almost anyone, and who could ever measure up to a person like that? Sometimes it's like people are a million times more beautiful to you in your mind. It's like you see them through a special lens- but maybe if it's how you see them, that's how they really are. It's like the whole tree falling in the forest thing.Mr. Kareem gave us kids a twenty anytime we went anywhere. Khalil was always in charge of it. "For ice cream," he'd say. "Buy yourselves something sweet." Something sweet. It was always something sweet. Khalil worshipped him. His dad was his hero. For a long time, anyway. Longer than most people. I think my dad stopped being my hero when I saw him with one of his PhD students after he and my mother separated. She wasn't even pre