Between the Boys (The Basin Lake Series Book 1)

by Stephanie Vercier

  BETWEEN THE BOYS

  Book One of The Basin Lake Series

  Stephanie Vercier

  Contents

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Between the Boys

  A Basin Lake Novel

  Copyright © 2016 by Stephanie Vercier

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For my beautiful Mother

  CHAPTER ONE

  PAIGE

  Seattle , Washington — Eight Years Ago — February

  I sat next to my mom in the front pew of the church we went to every Easter, but it’s wasn’t Easter. There was a priest talking at the lectern, but I couldn’t remember much of what he’d said exactly. I was focused on something else, the same thing I’d been looking at since the funeral for my daddy started, the small shiny box at the church altar. There wasn’t a big casket like you see in the movies, just that little box that a man as big as my daddy couldn’t possibly fit into.

  “Is Daddy really dead?” I said to Mom in a hushed tone, knowing I shouldn’t have been talking while the priest was but feeling the urge to ask anyway.

  I thought Mom was going to ignore me, but she bent her face down toward mine and said in a sharp whisper, “You know that he is, Paige.” She cried as she said it and had cried more in the last two weeks than I’d ever seen her cry in my entire life. “Why would you even ask something like that?” she added.

  “I don’t know.”

  Mom wounded me with her words, more than I’d already been wounded, making the question sound stupid when I’d held on to a small piece of hope that it was perfectly logical. If the priest hadn’t been lifting his hands up toward heaven and delivering his final prayers, Mom would probably have very kindly reminded me that I was nearly ten years old and should have known better. She would have called attention to the fact I’d nodded and said I understood what cremation was when she’d explained it to me and my two younger sisters.

  But it was still hard for me to believe that even though my daddy was sick for a really long time and not able to eat on his own or go to the bathroom by himself, that he could really be dead. He was so full of life, and I used to sit on his lap and go for rides with him on his electric wheelchair. He might have been weak, but he was bigger than me, and even if they’d burned him up, which is what Mom said cremation was, would there really be that little of him left?

  “Daddy’s in heaven,” Claire, my little sister, told me with conviction once the service had ended and we’d entered the reception hall across from the church. Claire always liked to be right.

  “That’s true,” Mom said. “He’s in heaven, and we’ll all see him again, but not for a really, really long time.”

  I wanted to ask her more questions, about heaven and why we had to wait so long to see Daddy, but I decided that it wasn’t the right time.

  “Come with me,” Grandma Gertrude said, taking my hand and pulling me along with her. “Let’s go get something to eat, okay?”

  Aunt Jess, Daddy’s younger sister, took Claire and my other sister, Kate, while I easily followed Grandma and let her pile my plate high with macaroni & potato salads, Jell-O and miniature sandwiches. We all eventually sat at the same long table Mom was at. But we were a little further away so that Daddy’s parents and a bunch of people I might have only seen on Christmas Eve—or not at all—could sit close to her. Grandma said they were distant cousins and aunts and friends and colleagues of Daddy’s.

  “Death brings people out of the woodwork,” she said, and though I didn’t completely understand that phrase, I was glad to be sitting with her, away from the people who surrounded Mom and were making her cry even more than before.

  “Did your Mom tell you you’ll all be moving, honey?” Grandma sipped on her coffee while she nibbled on whatever remnants of food were left in her mouth.

  “From home?” I’d just taken a big bite of potato salad, even though I wasn’t very hungry. I’m sure Grandma got an eyeful when I opened my mouth to speak, so I chewed and tried to decide what she meant exactly. Home for me was in North Seattle in a house that was built before even Daddy was born. There was a swing set out back, and my best friend, Emma Chambers, lived right next door. A few years ago, when Daddy got really sick, we had doors widened and ramps built. There was a man named Carl and sometimes a lady named Marjorie that came to take care of Dad when Mom was at the high school teaching. His hospital bed was still in my parents’ bedroom, and I’d smelled the sheets a dozen times since he’d died even though Mom had already washed them.

  “Yes, dear,” Grandma said with a kind smile. “Your mom has decided to move back to the town she was born in, the town you visit me at every Christmas.”

  I swallowed all of my potato salad. “Basin Lake?” It was a cute town surrounded by farms and desert and of course a lake. We’d drive over the mountains and through the farms and deserts of Eastern Washington to get there on Christmas Day and during the summer for a week, sometimes even two. But we didn’t go last year because Daddy was really sick. Basin Lake was Grandma’s town—it wasn’t home.

  “That’s right, dear,” Grandma said. “You all are going to move in with me until your mom can get a teaching job and a new house. You’re going to get to do all kinds of new things and meet all sorts of new people.”

  She tried to make it sound better than it really was. That’s what adults do. And I wanted to tell her that she was wrong about all of it because I loved my house, and I loved living next to Emma Chambers, having a swing set in the backyard and my elementary school only a block away. But I didn’t argue with Grandma because I knew what she said was true. I believed it because unbelievable things happened. My Daddy was dead, and they somehow put him in a tiny little box.

  EVAN

  Basin Lake, Washington — Eight Years Ago — March

  I sat up straight and tall in my fourth g
rade chair-and-desk combo when the girl who’d entered our classroom ten minutes ago was again on her feet and walking toward the chalkboard. She’d been sitting in the same row as me, three desks over, for those first ten minutes after school started with a sort of frightened look on her face. I’d been trying to get up the nerve to say something to her or to at least get Garrett, my best friend, to get her attention since he was sitting closer. But before I could do any of that, Mrs. Portman had looked directly at the new girl and asked, in her usual sing-song voice, “Won’t you come up and introduce yourself to the class, Paige?”

  Paige.

  I’d never actually heard of anyone with that name before, and it intrigued my ten-year-old brain. It wasn’t just her name though. As she stood up in front of our class, in front of kids that I’ve grown up with since pre-school, I thought she was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen in person. Not just beautiful, but different. It wasn’t just the blue streak—it was her light, creamy skin and wide, bright blue eyes that I could see even from four rows back. It was the way she was dressed, wearing some kind of jean jacket in an army camouflage pattern and black leggings like the kind my little sister sometimes wore under her dresses. Add to that the black military style boots and I couldn’t take my eyes away from her.

  “Where do you think she’s from?” Garrett whispered to me while Mrs. Portman droned on about how exciting it was to have a new student, especially when the school year was practically over.

  I shrugged, not wanting to miss the moment Paige would start talking.

  Paige. Again, I let the name bounce around in my head, liking it more each time I repeated it to myself.

  “My name is Paige Kessel,” she began softly, looking mostly toward the floor. “I’m from Seattle and I have two younger sisters—”

  “Could you speak a little louder?” Mrs. Portman interrupted, and Britt Morgan laughed from two rows up. If Britt was a guy, I’d have waited until recess and punched her for that.

  “I’m from Seattle,” Paige said louder, looking up briefly, a look Garrett would call deer in headlights. She scanned the room quickly, locking eyes with me for a brief moment before settling them back to the floor.

  My face heated, and I hoped Garrett didn’t see.

  “I have two little sisters,” she said in a more amplified voice—even her voice was amazing, not squeaky or high or annoying sounding like some of the girls. “And I live here with my Mom and Grandma.” She took in a deep breath and then exhaled. “Thanks.”

  Before Mrs. Portman could push her to say more, to discuss interests and hobbies, Paige scurried back to her seat, and I turned to smile at her, but her face was already down, tinged red and staring at the desk.

  While Mrs. Portman told us all to applaud Paige—I did, but some others didn’t—I started to wonder what happened to Paige’s dad since she didn’t mention him. Was it that she didn’t like him and just didn’t want to talk about him? I could understand that—it’s how I felt about my dad.

  We went through math, science and social studies before lunch, which was eaten in our classroom because we didn’t have an actual cafeteria. Garrett usually scarfed down whatever homemade stuff his mom packed for him while I’d learned long ago how to slap some peanut butter and jelly on some bread for me and my little sister. It’s not that my own mom didn’t give us money for school lunches—she did, probably too much money that we used for other stuff—but it’s just that I liked the idea of people thinking she had the time, like Garrett’s mom did, to pack every food item up separately.

  As much time as I put into making my lunch look like Garrett’s, I’d be as eager as he was to finish it because the sooner you did, the more time you had for recess. But today I was stalling, keeping my eyes on Paige as she slowly ate an apple, so tucked into herself that it was like she’d built a mini force-field around her desk. Nobody really talked to her, and I’m not sure why. Maybe the girls were jealous and the guys just indifferent. Even Garrett was more interested in talking to me about a fishing trip he was going on with his dad this weekend than he was about the new girl who’d been dropped into our lives.

  Garrett went on about fishing lures and how they’d camp along the edge of this lake in Idaho they were going to. If it were any other day, I’d have probably been annoyed because I had no father-and-son trips with my dad—he was always busy running one of the banks in our small town or going on business trips to Arizona or North Carolina. When he’d get back, he’d always complain about what a hick town we lived in and how he couldn’t wait to get out of it. He never mentioned the rest of us going with him.

  But Garrett’s great relationship with his dad and the horrible one with mine took a backseat to Paige who I kept glancing at, who I kept willing to look up so I could say hi and introduce myself without looking like an idiot. But she didn’t look up, and once I finally realized I was just going to have to tell Garrett to save his story for later and go over there, she got up, tossed her half eaten apple in the trash and went outside.

  PAIGE

  There were four girls that hated me. It was my first day of fourth grade at Roosevelt Elementary School in Basin Lake, and as soon as I’d escaped my new classroom after lunch and gone out to recess, they cornered me and said my black leggings and camo jean jacket were dumb. They thought the blue streak in my blonde hair that had faded since Mom dyed it for me in November was the stupidest thing they’d ever seen. Nobody at Daddy’s funeral said it was stupid. Aunt Jess said it was “daring.”

  I tried to win them over by saying that I could get my mom to dye their hair with red or purple streaks if they didn’t like blue, but then they just laughed and said that perhaps I was “mentally retarded.”

  “You shouldn’t say that word,” I said, getting mad because Emma had a cousin who had Down’s syndrome, and “retarded” wasn’t a nice thing to say.

  The biggest one just repeated the word half a dozen times and laughed some more.

  Now they’d done it.

  Whatever fear and shyness I’d felt on my first day, I was now hit with a burst of bravery. With hands on my hips, I told them they could learn a few things from me. For starters, they could stop calling people names because it was rude and undignified—Mom loved that word. And second, I let them know that the flared jeans and plaid blouses they all had on were so last season. Third, I told them they should look in a mirror and realize they’re all just a bunch of followers because they all had bangs and two of them had their hair pulled up into ponytails, and they pretty much looked like clones of each other.

  I was very satisfied with myself, and I waited for them to applaud my wisdom, promise to change their ways, and become my first friends in Basin Lake.

  And so I was completely unprepared when the biggest one—the other girls called her Britt—came at me like she was going to hit me. Nobody had ever tried to hit me before in my life, and so I flinched and stepped back. This made Britt and her three friends laugh, and then Britt called me a coward.

  The word more than the threat of violence stabbed at me like a knife, and I started to cry. I knew I wasn’t a coward. Even Mom and Grandma Gertrude told me I was so brave because, after we’d gotten home from the funeral and reception, I’d told Claire and Kate everything was going to be okay, even if I still hadn’t been able to wrap my head around the little box my Daddy was in or the fact that we were leaving the house we all loved.

  Britt laughed again like me crying was the funniest thing she’d ever seen. I started to look around for an adult because I was kind of scared. And that’s when I saw them.

  Two tall boys were walking toward me, and I figured one of them was probably Britt’s boyfriend—I bet they even held hands and kissed. They’d probably stick up for Britt and call me even worse names. And then I’d really be screwed.

  “Stop being a bitch,” the dark-haired one said to Britt, sticking his finger in her face.

  My eyes went wide.

  He was defending me.

 
The blond-haired boy said, “Don’t cuss, Evan,” to his friend, but he acted as a defender as well, facing down the girls with his arms crossed over his chest.

  “You’re so mean, Evan!” Britt looked stricken, like she could crumble into a million pieces, and I thought she might have even started to cry. Before turning and running off, she stomped on Evan’s foot… hard.

  “Damn!” Evan pulled his foot back and gritted his teeth.

  “You should listen to Garrett,” one of the other girls said before she turned away, “and stop talking with a potty mouth!”

  The two girls that were left quickly changed their tune and offered me polite smiles. It was confusing since they had both stood idly back and laughed while Britt called me “mentally retarded.” But they were being nice now, and I figured out why pretty quick. One let her gaze float toward Evan, the other to Garrett. They wanted these two boys who rescued me to think they didn’t have anything to do with cornering me. They wanted to impress Evan and Garrett because they were cute, cuter than any boy I’d seen back at my old elementary school.

  “I thought you were better than that,” Garrett, the blond boy, said to the two remaining girls.

  And as if it was now contagious, the dark-haired girl started to cry. The other girl, the blonde one, shook her head wildly like Garrett didn’t know her at all. Then they quietly turned and sulked away together.

  The dark-haired boy, Evan, seemed to have recovered from getting his foot smashed and put his hand out. “Evan Mattson,” he said. “You’re in our class, and your name is Paige, right?”