Page 40 of A Ballad of Betrayal and Beauty

Her eyes brighten. “Are you still writing songs?”

I nod. “Yeah! Well, trying to.”

“Key, that’s amazing. You’ll have to sing them for me.”

I look around. “What . . . here?”

She rolls her eyes. “No, dummy. Come on.”

She turns and swims toward the ladder. I watch, stuck in place as she climbs out of the water in the tiniest bathing suit I’ve ever seen.

The blue polka dot fabric clings to hips I never noticed before. She stands, glittering in the sunshine as she turns back to me, and while her smile has never failed to draw my attention to her face, I can’t help but stare at her chest hidden under the triangles of her bikini top.

“Are you coming?” she asks.

My throat is dry, but before I can move to follow her, I panic and sink a little deeper in the water. I reach down to the front of my swim trunks and feel a bulge.No no no no. What am I going to do now?

“Key?”

I look up and she stands with her hand on her hip. “Uh,” I start. “Yeah. I just—I forgot something over there. I’ll meet you by the lifeguard tower.”

“Oh, okay!” She smiles easily and disappears into the crowd, her hips swinging.

“Oh man,” I groan. It’s only happened a few times before. What did I do then? Right . . . think of gross things. That’ll do it. But as hard as I try, it’s impossible not to think of Dusty in that bikini. I try not to watch her as she walks across the pool deck, but it’s impossible. She’s hot.

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anyone hotter than her. And, as I glance around, it seems I’m not the only one who thinks so. A dozen men, some even as old as my father, are staring at her like they’ve never seen a girl before. She doesn’t seem to notice as she flips her hair over her shoulder to wring it out, the water dripping down between the polka dot fabric on her chest and glinting off the golden pendant hanging there.

Okay, this isn’t helping.

Whatdoeshelp me is a man in a tiny pair of shorts walking along the pool deck. He’s eating a hot dog and he’s got mustard dripping down his chin. He stops and drags his towel off his shoulder, rubbing it all over and smearing the yellow sauce and hot dog juice into his hairy chest. Taking my opportunity, I swim across to the other ladder and climb up, moving to wrap my towel around my waist, then head for the lifeguard tower.

I find her leaning against it like the statue of a goddess. She’s so much more than hot. She’s pretty.Beautiful. Long gone is the babyish quality of her voice or the roundness in her cheeks. She grew up, and I guess . . . so did I. I just wish we could’ve grown up together.

“Want to get out of here?” she asks me once I join her.

“Where would we go?” What I’m thinking, though, iswhy would anyone want to leave the pool in this heat?

But all thoughts of the pool disappear when she leans forward to whisper in my ear. “It’s a secret.”

Dusty winks at me and my knees nearly buckle. Next thing I know, we’re on our bikes and I’m following her down a street I’ve never been on before. Dusty’s bike is a bit rusty, and it squeaks like crazy when she brakes, but the white shirt she threw over her bikini top has gotten soaked through and nothing else but that seems to matter.

Soon enough, she turns down a narrow, overgrown driveway and for a moment I think she’s taking me to her house, but then she cuts through some dense trees on the right. I slow down, amazed at how she so effortlessly darts down the dirt path through the woods. I’m about to ask her how far till we’re there when the trees part and a small wooden cabin appears before us.

She stops by the front staircase and looks back at me, her red hair dry and wind blown out around her face.

“This is it,” she says, her eyes wild. She looks . . . excited.Happy.

I push off my bike. “Is this your?—?”

“My house?” she answers. “No way. It’s no one’s house. It’s abandoned, but I fixed up the inside. Come on, I want to show you.”

She grabs my hand, and I follow along after her as she opens the creaking door and pulls me inside.Woah. From the outside, it looked like the place was about to fall down, and maybe it still is, but the inside is clean. There’s a sofa with blankets and cushions without a speck of dust on them, a table with candles in the middle that look like they’re only a few hours from being completely burned out. It’s small—one main room, and there’s a wood stove in the corner next to the sofa.

“What do you think?” she asks, staring at me.

“It’s . . . amazing,” I whisper.

She squeals, dropping my hand to clap and bounce on her toes. “I knew you’d like it. I cleaned the place up myself. I even figured out how to get the old generator going out back.”

---