Gentlehands EPB

Chapter One

I wonder what that summer would have been like if I'd never met Skye Pennington. They always seem to have names like that, don't they? Rich, beautiful girls are never named Elsie Pip or Mary Smith. They have these special names and they say them in their particular tones and accents, and my mother was right, I was in over my head or out of my depth, or however she put it. My father said, "She's not our class, Buddy." This conversation the first night I took her out.

I was in the bathroom, pretending to shave. I'm a towhead, like all male Boyles, and at sixteen my beard is not a burden; it's not even a fact.

My mother was just outside, in the hall, pretending to straighten out the linen closet.

Streaker, my five-year-old brother, was around the corner in our bedroom, pretending he could play Yahtzee alone.

My father was using the top of the toilet seat like a chair, while he discussed the matter with me.

"She's not in our class?" I said. "What does that even mean?"

I knew what it meant. It meant we lived year round in Seaville, New York, on a seedy half-acre lot up near the bay, and Skye summer ... read full excerpt from: Gentlehands ebook