The Bookworm Next Door
Alicia J. Chumney
Copyright © 2016 by Alicia J. Chumney All rights reserved.
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover Design: Alicia J. Chumney
Editors: Alicia Chumney, Laura Vance, Chastity Wofford
1. Young Adult 2. Young Adult Romance
First Edition
Kindle Edition
To my friends and Beta Readers
Without you there would be no book.
Author’s Note:
The Bookworm Next Door was previously released as a short novel with five short stories. In combining the stories into an omnibus edition I realized there was more to the story that needed to be included.
This is the entire high school story.
Prologue
Freshmen Year
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Sophomore Year
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Junior Year
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
Senior Year
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
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Three
Chapter Sixty-Four
Chapter Sixty-Five
Chapter Sixty-Six
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Chapter Seventy
Chapter Seventy-One
Chapter Seventy-Two
Chapter Seventy-Three
Chapter Seventy-Four
The Summer After Graduation
Chapter Seventy-Five
Chapter Seventy-Six
Chapter Seventy-Seven
Chapter Seventy-Eight
Chapter Seventy-Nine
Chapter Eighty
Chapter Eighty-One
Chapter Eighty-Two
Acknowledgements
Reader’s Discussion Guide
Book References in The Bookworm Next Door
Prologue
Age Eight
Shaking her head furiously, Delilah Davis slowly backed away from the Carver boy. David was holding tightly onto some freshly dug up worms that were going to be used for the fishing trip he would be taking shortly with his father. The threat of dirty, squiggling worms ending up in her hair seemed very, very real.
"Get away from me with those!" she screeched loudly, trying to figure out where she could run and hide. Was any place safe from muddy neighbor boys?
"No!" David toothlessly grinned as the grubby, slimy worms wiggling helplessly in his fists. "Come here. I want a hug!"
Delilah screamed as she took off running, "No! Boys have cooties!"
The eight-year-old next-door neighbors took off running around their yards, David always maintaining a five foot distance away from Delilah. He wasn’t actually, physically going to do anything with the worms; that would mean having to collect new ones and possibly not being allowed to go on the treasured fishing trip with his father in ten minutes. It was just too much fun to chase after Delilah. She was squeamish about everything.
"David William Carver!" his mother yelled out just as Delilah started to cry. "Get over here with those worms."
Delilah ran to safety behind Mrs. Carver, still crying while clutching at her library book. "He was going to put those worms in my hair!"
"Yes, dear, he was going to do something with those worms. David was going to go fishing with his father and brothers. David, put the worms away. Your father has a last minute meeting that he has to go to today." Mrs. Carver hated having to be the person to break the bad news to her youngest son. Turning towards the little girl trembling behind her, she wiped away a tear, intentionally missing the disappointed look on her youngest son's face.
Age 12
David leaned against the tree that stood in the middle of the Davis and Carver property line. Above him was the joint tree house project that the eldest Davis girl, Samantha, and his eldest brother, John, had begged their fathers to let them build. They did an amazingly good job for nine year olds, granted Mr. Davis had helped them build most of it.
His dad never was around long enough to help out even if he provided most of the lumber and other supplies for their project. He had brought them glass panes for the windows on the day he had missed helping with the walls because of a client dinner.
Looking up, he was tempted to climb up and hide out where nobody would think to find him. The deciding factor was when he heard a door slam shut and he hurried up the wooden ladder. He did not want anybody to see him crying; there was nothing less manly than sobbing over a father he only saw on occasion.
"David?" Delilah called out. She could have sworn she saw him only a minute before when she was looking out her bedroom window. "David, where are you?" Giving up she went to search his backyard for her friend.
He was not ready to see her and talk about this, even if she was his best friend although she was a girl and a bookworm.
She still had her father.
A fresh wave of tears flooded over him as he remembered his mother's words. “Heart attack” and “death” were hard concepts to grasp for a middle school student; at least they were for David. Nothing even close to this had ever happened to him before and it left him uncertain about how to react. His brother John was doing things around the house that their mother needed done. Peter had punched through the wall in his bedroom and was currently working on patching it up. Neither brother was certain about what to say to their youngest sibling and left him to his self.
"I thought I saw you back here," Delilah softly whispered when she climbed the ladder into the tree house. Without a
nother word, she hugged his back, laying her head down on his shoulder. Being there was the best thing she could have done for him.
Freshmen Year
Chapter One
It’s a truth, universally acknowledged, that a girl with a reading habit must be in want of a book. It didn’t matter what the book was; Nancy Drew, The Babysitter’s Club, and Sarah Dessen’s books could almost always be found at the local library. A book was a book and her mother’s recommendations carried weight.
It had always been that way for Delilah Davis ever since she sat at her mother’s feet listening to the soothing tones of Veronica Davis’ favorite book being read aloud.
Samantha Elizabeth “Lizzie” would be stretched out on the nearby bay window seat in the room claimed for a library. She might have been staring outside, but her thoughts were with the yearly read story. It was better than pondering what her first year at college was going to be like.
Charlotte Francine would be lying across the overstuffed chair across from their mother’s favorite spot. Nobody really knew what was going on in her mind, but Veronica had her suspicions. Charlotte had been extremely quiet and secretive lately. It was entirely possible that her middle daughter was aware of what was happening between her parents.
Delilah Jane, the youngest of the sisters, leaned against her mother’s chair and absorbed the words that filled the room. She longed for a romance like that, even though she suspected that she’d end up with the boy next door. That’s one of the major clichés in the young adult books she read.
Putting down the book for a moment, Veronica looked at her children. Samantha would be okay. She always managed to bounce back. It was Delilah whom she was worried about. Delilah would be a mess when she finally left.
Maybe she should tell them after all, even though Walter had demanded she not tell them why she was leaving. Would he ever tell their children that she had left them because she had found somebody else?
Did her own husband even realize just how much her discontent had grown? Would he care or would he toss out those dreaded words again? Marriage Counseling. As if another round with that judgmental therapist would do them any good. People had affairs; that didn’t mean it was her fault that her marriage was falling apart. That was what Veronica Davis kept telling herself.
No. She would finish Pride and Prejudice, have one last chat with her girls, and then disappear with Reginald Blackburn after they had fallen asleep.
Chapter Two
“Okay,” Amanda advised her, “you have to pick your best friend carefully. She has to be willing to do your every bidding and..,” Amanda emphasized, “she has to have a cute older brother.”
“Why is that important?” At fourteen, Aimee wasn't as boy-crazy as her sister and mother would have liked.
Smiling indulgently at her little sister, she stated, “Because you never know when the best friend’s brother cliché will happen.”
Confused, Aimee had a difficult time figuring out why her family wanted her chasing after boys. Most of her friends’ parents would have loved it if their daughters weren't looking at the opposite sex with hormone tinted glasses.
Although, when she thought about it, most of her friends were slowly drifting away without giving her any reasons. Several times somebody had told her that they couldn’t spend any more time with her. They’d say that their parents had said that Aimee and her family were bad influences. All that remained from her circle of friends was Will Cooper and Kelly Johnson.
Kelly did have an older brother, but Aimee had trouble deciding if he was cute or not. She wasn’t interested in things like that quite yet.
“Now, we need to deal with your hair and makeup,” Amanda announced, picking her bag off of the floor where she'd hidden it. “You need to learn how to do these things properly.”
“I'd rather go play softball with Kelly. We were going to practice so that we would make the team.” Aimee’s battered glove called for her from her closet where it had been hidden ever since her mother had told her that there would be no softball that summer.
“No! No softball. You'll go watch games. You'll be a cheerleader; I can even get you on the JV squad if we practice enough before tryouts in two weeks. Under no circumstances will you continue playing softball.”
Later that night Aimee called Kelly to tell her Amanda’s decree. The other girl whispered, “There's no way my mom will let me try out to be a cheerleader.”
“And I really want to play softball,” Aimee whispered back. “There has to be some way where I can do both.”
Over the next thirty minutes they plotted and planned. It was the first, and definitely not the last, plotting session that the girls would have over the next four years.
Chapter Three
There was one item that Delilah was incapable of letting go of. Two, if a person counted as a thing. But lately even David Carver wasn’t acting quite as charming and friendly as he normally acted.
Before High School, she called it, thinking that something as important as the beginning of the end, or the beginning of something new, deserved capital letters.
Before High School she had her mother.
Before High School she had her best friend.
Before High School she was more than just a bookworm obsessed with Pride and Prejudice, its variations, and unofficial sequels.
He was completely out of his element. The closest he could think to compare this situation to was when his father died three years before. Delilah was at his side letting him cry and supplying him with chocolate chip cookies for a week.
David didn’t have a clue about how to be there for his friend when her mother disappeared and her parents were getting a divorce. His mother’s unhelpful advice was to be there for her, but all Delilah wanted to do was read that stupid book her mother had left behind.
They had promised each other that things would be different this year. No more hiding behind books and in treehouses. They would make other friends. They would go to parties and leave their mark on their high school class.
He didn’t take into account how Veronica Davis’ selfish disappearing act would affect her youngest daughter.
"Delilah, Delilah, Delilah," David's taunting voice echoed in the single room of the treehouse. Naturally he knew where to find her. "Are you reading that book again?" Shaking his head, he attempted to snatch the book away. "There are better books that you can read besides this silly romance." Successful in his efforts to take the book away from her, he started to teasingly read aloud from the first page. "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." He then started laughing, loudly. Even he noticed the slightly manic tone in his laughter. Stress and uncertainty were beginning to take a toll on him.
Sitting silently in her spot, she knew that he would give up eventually - he always did when it came to teasing her - and then he’d return the book. If she refused to fight back then he would get bored and go on to find his next target. Hopefully it would be one of the boys that were making fun of her at school. She desperately wished that he would give Will Cooper a black eye for saying that she was not pretty enough for her mother to stay.
"What does that mean anyway?" David finally asked, handing the book back in the same condition that he had taken it. The scrap piece of paper being used as a bookmark was still in the place that Delilah had hurriedly stuck it.
"It's sarcasm. Austen is setting up her introduction of the story and of the mother. Mrs. Bennet starts the plot going by her insistence that Mr. Bennet meet Mr. Bingley. She wants her daughters well provided for before her husband dies." Delilah looked down, "At least that is how I understand it."
David, balancing himself on the tree house’s open window ledge, shook his head while stating, "I don't understand how you can even understand that."
"I did grow up in a family who was raised on Austen.” She chuckled, “It was a joke that Samantha was teethed on a copy of Northanger Abbey.”
Suddenly Delilah’s face turned distant as she remembered watching her mother add things in a memory box for Samantha. The chewed up book had already been in the chest.
"Well," he started, swinging his leg back and forth as he tried to look impressive, "I wasn't and I'm never going to read that book." Her growing distance frustrated David and he’d try anything to get Delilah’s mind back to the present.
"Then it is your loss,” was all Delilah said before leaving the treehouse.
Groaning, David thumped his head against the wooden wall. He’d hoped that he could tease her out of her melancholy, but wasn’t concerned until that moment that he could chase her even further away.
He was running out of ideas about how to get his best friend back.
Chapter Four
Nothing was going according to plan.
This was supposed to be their year. The year that they tackled together. Instead he felt as if he was floundering about while his lifeline was floating around with her head in a book. He wasn’t completely certain which book it was, but he’d bet it was another Austen novel. Normally he’d have an idea, but it had been days since he’d caught more than a glance of Delilah. It felt like forever.
It was different from when his father died. David had rarely even seen the man outside of the random vacation and during dinner meals. He’d forever remember cancelled fishing trips and Mr. Walter helping them with technical projects instead of his other father.
It was troubling that the next door neighbor had to help them with making volcanos and building tree houses. It left David wondering what he was lacking that his own father would rather be on the phone taking business calls instead of spending time with his son.
It was this uncertainly about everything that made it flattering that some of the more popular freshmen were paying attention to him. Certainly he was conflicted by the difference in how Will Cooper was treating Delilah and the attention he gave him. He was torn between hitting the bully and inviting him over to shoot hoops in the driveway.
The Bookworm Next Door: The Expanded and Revised Edition Page 1
