Page 42 of Until Next Summer

Scout comes up to us with a stick in her mouth, and I look away from Luke, hoping he didn’t notice me staring.

“No, Scout, I’m sorry,” Luke says quietly to her, then to me: “She loves playing fetch, but running isn’t good for her hips. All she can manage are slow walks.”

But she keeps pleading with those liquid brown eyes, and Luke eventually sighs and takes the stick.

“Just a little,” he says, and tosses it a few feet away. Scoutlumbers after it, then trots back to Luke, the stick in her mouth again, her tail wagging proudly.

We continue walking, and every so often, Luke tosses the stick for Scout.

“How’s the writing going?” I ask.

I’ve seen him when I’ve walked by his cabin—usually out on the porch with his laptop, scowling like he wants to reach through the screen and strangle someone.

He grimaces. “Not great.”

“Really? How come?”

“My publisher is going to drop me after this book,” he says. He throws the stick again for Scout. “Even if it does well, which I’m sure it won’t, because they aren’t going to put any money into advertising it. Sometimes it feels like there’s no point in finishing. I thought about trying to get out of the contract, but this may be the last book I ever get paid to write, so I don’t want to just give up.”

I’m taken aback—not only by what he said, which explains his gloomy attitude and desperate need for solitude this summer, but because this is the most I’ve heard him speak since he arrived.

“That’s…wow. A lot.”

He gives a short, grim laugh. “Yeah.”

“Why would your publisher drop you? I had the impression you were, like, this super-successful big-time author. I remember Nathaniel and Lola being so proud when they heard about your book deal.”

He shrugs. “I did get a good-sized deal, yeah. Five hundred grand total, for the three books.”

“Damn,” I say, impressed. It’s a sum of money I can hardly imagine.

“Except my first book bombed. Only sold around ten thousand copies.”

“Ten thousand seems like a lot to me,” I say.

“It would’ve been okay if they’d given me fifty thousand or something, but those numbers didn’t come close to justifying the advance, not to mention what they spent on publicity and marketing. Because of that, they didn’t advertise the second book at all. It did even worse—sold less than a thousand copies.”

I go silent. Even though I know nothing about publishing, it’s clear that isn’t good.

Scout returns with the stick, but this time Luke doesn’t toss it. Instead, he takes a leash from his pocket and attaches it to her collar—we’re getting closer to camp, and I’m guessing this is because I made such a big deal about not letting her bother the other campers.

“Anyway,” he says, “now I’m stuck writing the third book in a series no one cares about, knowing my career is ending. I’m struggling to get any words down, and what I do manage to write is just…blah. It’s due after Labor Day, and every day feels like it brings me one step closer to my execution.” He shakes his head. “Sorry, I’m being melodramatic. Most writers never get published, right? I’m glad I got a shot at it, at least.”

“We have something in common, then,” I say. “For both of us, this is our last summer doing what we love. Your last summer writing. My last here at camp. And it’s not melodramatic. It does feel like walking to an execution. I know I’m not going to actually die—”

“But an essential part of you will,” he finishes.

He holds my gaze, and something passes between us. A sense of solidarity. Like we see and understand each other.

“At least you got half a million bucks out of it, right?” I say.

His mouth twists in a sour frown. “Well, I lost most of the money.”

I try to contain my shock. How do you lose that much? Does he have a gambling problem or something?

Beside me, his entire body has gone rigid, his jaw clamped tight, the line between his eyebrows so deep it looks carved from stone. Better not to ask for details.

“I’m sorry,” I say instead, weakly.

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