Forever This Summer
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2021 by Leslie C. Youngblood
Cover art copyright © 2021 by Vashti Harrison. Cover design by Marci Senders.
Cover copyright © 2021 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Youngblood, Leslie C., author.
Title: Forever this summer / Leslie C. Youngblood.
Description: First edition. | New York : Little, Brown and Company, 2021. | Audience: Ages 8–12. | Summary: When eleven-year-old Georgie and her sister Peaches relocate to Bogalusa, Louisiana, with their mother to help their Great Aunt Vie, Georgie becomes involved in the search for the truth about her new friend Markie’s mother.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020036750 | ISBN 9780759555204 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780759555228 (ebook) | ISBN 9780759555211 (ebook other)
Subjects: CYAC: African Americans—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | Family life—Louisiana—Fiction. | Louisiana—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.Y8 Fo 2021 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020036750
ISBNs: 978-0-7595-5520-4 (hardcover), 978-0-7595-5522-8 (ebook)
E3-20210525-JV-NF-ORI
Contents
COVER
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT
DEDICATION
1: BABY
2: THE SUMMER ME
3: WHAT’S YOUR DEAL?
4: AIDING AND ABETTING
5: GEORGIE ON MY MIND
6: MY BAD
7: DRIVING-DRIVING?
8: POLYTETRAFLUOROETHYLENE
9: CAN YOU TIE YOUR SHOE?
10: COURAGE TO SOAR
11: TROUBLE
12: TRIPLE TROUBLE
13: BAT SIGNAL
14: THE CAUSEWAY
15: ME TOO, SUN
16: SUMMER SABOTAGE
17: SLOW DOWN
18: OMW
19: HEEBIE-JEEBIES
20: I’M OUTTA HERE
21: FAKE-YONCÉ
22: DEAR MAYOR OF BOGALUSA
23: I BELIEVE
24: FUTURE ME
25: MARKIE, MAMA, AND ME
26: SPIRIT FARMS
27: IT’S ME
28: IN MY DREAMS
29: CAGED BIRD
30: LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION
31: WE’RE HER MEMORIES
AUTHOR’S NOTE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
To my parents, Winston and Daisy M. Raby, who welcomed me home when I needed it most. I’m forever grateful.
1
BABY
When Mama told me that we were going to Bogalusa, Louisiana, for the summer, I should have said, “Even if dollar bills grew on oak trees there, I’m not leaving Atlanta.” Of course, I hadn’t had the nerve to say that, but it didn’t cost a thing to imagine. Now I’m stuck here. And to be honest, it stinks. Not the people but the factory that runs twenty-four hours a day—the paper mill. The funk smells like that time my best friend, Nikki, left her egg salad sandwich in her locker over a three-day weekend—pew-ew.
“Georgie, did you run that vacuum like I asked you to?” Mama yelled from the top of the stairs. “I’m expecting company a little later.”
“’Bout to do it now, Mama,” I called.
My summer had come to this: daily vacuuming instead of creating dance routines with Nikki—but with no homework to worry about. Freedom.
Mama was upstairs taking salmon croquettes to my great-aunt Vie, who taught Mama to make them while other kids were making mud pies, Mama told me.
Aunt Vie was seventy-six and the main reason why I didn’t pack a bag and start walking all four hundred and thirty-five miles back to Atlanta. She founded our family diner, Sweetings, and ran it for nearly fifty years. I even heard that Aunt Vie knew every customer by name, but now she doesn’t even recognize her sisters—my great-aunt Essie, Grandma Sugar—Mama, or me these days. Mama said I’d been in this house before, but I don’t remember. Even when I squeeze my eyes real tight and concentrate, I can barely recall the time I met Aunt Vie at the family reunion. Aunt Vie didn’t want to forget stuff. It was because of the Alzheimer’s, which is like a big bully that takes stuff that doesn’t belong to them and won’t give it back.
I went to the hall closet and pulled out the vacuum cleaner. The top shelf was stacked with three versions of Scrabble, other board games, and tons of books. I yanked the vacuum out of the closet, and its cord was a tangled mess like a garden hose.
While I worked to straighten it, Mama eased downstairs and eyed me like she’d found me lounging by the pool drinking a slushie, another thing I missed about Atlanta. Well, Snellville, Georgia, actually. Snellville is where Mama, my baby sister, Peaches, and I live with my stepdaddy and fifteen-year-old stepsister, Tangie. Frank couldn’t get the time off work, and Tangie stayed with him. I tried to get out of coming when I realized she wasn’t. No go. Daddy lives in College Park, which is close to downtown Atlanta, with his new wife. “Snellville after Splitsville” is how Nikki summed it up. Even when I say it now, it sorta makes me smile. “Splitsville” sounds better than “divorce.”
While I was thinking about what I was missing in Atlanta, Mama surveyed the living room. It had a green velvet couch with wooden feet. Two cream-colored high-back chairs. And all the lamps had shades as fancy as Aunt Vie’s hats.
“I thought I’d asked you to vacuum earlier.”
“You told me to wait, remember? You didn’t want to wake Aunt Vie.”
She walked over to the curtains and parted them. The sun flooded in. Mama poked her finger in the pot of one of the plants. “Water this one. The rest should be okay.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I took a breath to get my nerve up to ask the question that she’d said no to two times before. “Once I finish, you think I can work at the diner today? Grandma Sugar said there’s a girl who works there named Markie Jean and…”
“She wants you to meet her?”
“Grandma said that we’re about the same age.” Grandma Sugar lived in Atlanta. She arrived in Bogalusa days before we did. For a week or two during each summer, she comes and works at the diner. In the past I’ve heard Mama and Grandma arguing about Mama not letting Peaches and me tag along.
“Your grandma mentioned Markie. I met her briefly. She’s a bit older than you.”
“What does that matter? Tangie’s older, too,” I said.
“Neither of them nor Aunt Essie have time to train you. There’s lots to do there and, right now, you’d be in the way.”
> “But you said—”
“Not the time, G-baby.”
“Georgie, Mama. You said you’d call me Georgie from now on.”
This time her sigh was so deep her hair rippled like one of those inflatable Air Dancers Daddy had advertising a car sale at one of his dealerships. But she managed, “Sorry. Just a lot on my mind. Everyone is getting used to Aunt Vie never running the diner again. Her health declined quicker than we expected.” Mama looked up to the ceiling like it was the sky, then shook her head. “The diner is out today. There’s too much I need help with.”
“I don’t even get to help with Aunt Vie. You do everything.”
Mama rarely let me sit with Aunt Vie when she wasn’t around. Even when Grandma Sugar said she’d stay at the house and let Mama go to the diner, Mama chose to stay.
“Everything you do around here is helping. Maybe you can go up to the diner tomorrow.”
“That’s what you said yesterday. Today is tomorrow,” I said.
“For you, tomorrow is whenever I say it is,” Mama snapped. She was going into Mama mode, and I’d never win. Mama wasn’t listening to Grandma Sugar or my great-aunt Essie. She sure as heck wouldn’t listen to me. I squeezed the handle of the vacuum like it was one of those stress balls the school counselor gave me when I was “adjusting” to our parents’ divorce. I squeezed the handle so tight my knuckles burned. Truth was that I only needed to make the strokes with the vacuum cleaner. The carpet wasn’t dirty. The entire house was spotless.
Mama grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and headed back upstairs. I lugged the vacuum cleaner to the center of the living room and plugged it in. Once it sounded like a herd of cattle were stampeding through, I left the vacuum running and slipped into the kitchen to call the one person who might be able to rescue me.
I ducked in a connecting hallway between the dining room and kitchen. The walls were lined with wallpaper. I ran my fingertips along the floral print and it was tissue soft to the touch. My cell phone felt heavier than usual in my hand while I waited.
“Hey, baby girl,” Daddy said. “How are you?”
“Not that great, Daddy.” Soon as he asked what was wrong, I said, “Mama barely lets me leave the house. I can’t even help out with Aunt Vie. Only thing she wants me to do is stay inside and do chores.” One of Daddy’s sports shows was loud in the background. Someone was going on about LeBron James.
“Is it really that bad, G… Georgie?” I wanted to thank him for calling me Georgie, but I didn’t want to get offtrack.
“It is. I can’t even walk to the store alone. Mama and I were in the one not too far from here and six-year-olds were in there by themselves, Daddy, Peaches’s age. Mama’s overdoing it. Can you please, please talk to her?”
There was a sound like a ticking clock, and I knew Daddy was tapping his pen on his desk as he thought.
“I really don’t want to step in without being there. You know your mama and I have been through a lot to get to—”
“I know. I know, Daddy. ‘A good place.’ I want to be in a good place, too. And this isn’t it.”
Daddy’s seconds of decision felt like hours. The upstairs floor creaked. Mama was on the move. Finally, he said, “I’ll see what I can do, baby. No promises, though.”
“Thank you. Thank you, Daddy.”
The closing credits to SportsCenter echoed, then Daddy started channel surfing, which Mama hated. Frank doesn’t even have a TV in his den. He and Mama spend hours together reading the same paper sometimes.
“Hey—” he said.
“I know… no promises.”
“Long as we’re clear.”
I nodded like he could see me. “How is Peaches?”
Daddy laughed. “She and Milly are cooking breakfast. Think I smell the burned bacon now.”
Peaches didn’t travel with us. She was recovering from meningitis, even though the doctor gave her the “all clear.” Daddy convinced Mama to let Peaches stay with him and Millicent until he traveled to Texas for business. After a few doctor follow-ups and Daddy reminding Mama that Millicent was a nurse, Mama agreed. Daddy might have been teasing about the burned bacon but I doubt it. The last dish Millicent cooked for us was some sort of Tater Tot casserole that I was sure made Peaches nauseous until we found out it was more serious than a stomachache.
“Tell Peaches I’ll talk to her tonight, Daddy. Please call Mama soon. And… and…”
“And what?”
“Don’t let her know I called you?” He was quiet again. “I’m not playing you against each other.”
“What do you call it?”
“She’s stressing. Maybe it’s taking care of Auntie. I don’t know. I don’t want things to get worse.”
Tap. Tap. Tap. “You know what would make things way worse for all of us?”
My shoulders drooped. “What?”
“Your mama and me not being honest. You know how much it took for her to let Peaches stay behind. After all that, you think this is the best way for me to communicate with her?”
“No,” I admitted.
I loved the way Daddy reasoned with me. “I’ll call her, but I’m going to tell her that we talked. Not being honest isn’t the way to get what you want,” Daddy warned. “Got it?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Love you.”
Guilt threatened to suck me into the Hoover. “I love you, too.”
After I vacuumed and put it away, not even bothering to wrap the cord properly around the hooks, I watered the plant, and was on to do the breakfast dishes by hand, even though there was a dishwasher just sitting there taunting me. Then I thought the doorbell rang, but it was Mama’s phone. I could hear it all the way upstairs.
Our science teacher told us that there are over thirty-seven trillion cells in our body. Every one of mine was on edge, wondering if that was Daddy.
“So instead of talking to me, you go and get your daddy involved.” Mama stood in the doorway while I finished up the breakfast dishes.
“I tried to talk to you. You’re not listening to me.”
“Then you try again. What we aren’t going to have is you calling your daddy behind my back,” she said.
“It wasn’t behind your back. He said I could call him anytime. It was one of those times.”
“Georgiana Elizabeth Matthews. You know what I’m talking about. You called him to ‘talk’ to me about you not traipsing up and down these Bogalusa streets?”
“I don’t want to traipse, Mama. You said that I could work at the diner. You said you’d stop treating me like I was a toddler. We’ve been here for more than a week and I’ve done nothing but clean up and sit on the porch.”
“We drove to Covington to go to the movies just the other day.”
“Yeah, just you and me. Fun times.” I wanted to take it back because it really was kinda fun, but not the same fun I’d have with Nikki, or even my stepsister, Tangie, who went to the movies with her boyfriend most of the time. “You supervise my every move. I can’t even sit with Aunt Vie alone. Feels like I’ve been grounded without doing anything wrong.”
I bit my tongue because my voice was going to crack. I was not, no way, going to stand there with my hands in dishwater and bawl like a baby. Mama walked over to the refrigerator and ran her hand along the piece of masking tape that read fridge, then another that said cabinet. Most of the appliances were labeled. The words were used to help Aunt Vie remember. Mama said they weren’t helpful anymore, but no one had the heart to remove them. Mama stared at me as if there was a label on my head, too—BABY.
“Go on up and get dressed. As soon as Auntie’s company comes, we’ll go.”
“I know the way to the diner from here. It’s about five blocks and you make a right at that stop sign.”
“No. It’s a left. That’s Columbia and Fifth. But I said that I’ll take you. Everyone isn’t always friendly when they know you’re not from around here. Don’t ask me how they know, but they do. I don’t want any
problems.”
I took quick breaths until it felt like my insides were twirling around like a cyclone.
“You’ve let me walk farther than that at home,” I said. “And when we used to live in College Park, Nikki and I walked everywhere. I know how to mind my business. Not talk to strangers.”
“Correction, you didn’t walk everywhere. You never have. And that was a neighborhood that you grew up in. People knew you and you knew them. You’ve never been by yourself here before. It’s not all as calm as you see from the porch.”
Tangie and I read all about the history of the town, everything from it once being called Klanstown, USA, to the establishment of a group of men who helped the town fight back, the Deacons for Defense. We even watched a movie about it.
“Tangie and I read all the bad stuff. It was a long time ago, right?”
“Not even all about that. Kids bound to single you out. It was like that when I was a kid when someone wasn’t from around here. You’re not used to that.”
“I’m not a baby. I’ve dealt with bullies before. And I change schools this year. I have a lot of new kids to meet.”
Mama folded her arms. “Okay, okay. You can walk up there by yourself.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“You’re eleven, Georgie. Eleven isn’t thirteen. It isn’t fifteen. And it’s certainly not sixteen. Out of the two of us, I’m the only one who’s been all those ages and then some. Your daddy did make me see that I’m being a bit overprotective. I do trust you when you’re not in my sight, remember that, okay?”
“I will, Mama!”
“You’ll meet a lot of people at the diner—not everyone has your same values or upbringing.”
“Sorta like school. Everyone is different there, too.” She did that stare-into-your-eyes thing that mamas do when they’re deciding if what they said was enough.
“The diner and straight back home. You hear me? Straight back,” she added.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She pulled me in for a hug. I savored it for a moment, but as soon as she released me, I tore up the stairs to go freshen up. I couldn’t wait to get out of the house, alone.