“Two.”
“Seth? Three, I suppose?”
“Make it four.”
“Four?”
“Hey. Stand at the bottom of The Nose of El Cap and look up before you judge me.”
“Right,” Henry said. “Whatever.”
August raised the window blinds to better see Yosemite. To wish it good-bye.
“Henry,” August said. “Why didn’t you tell me we were going out again next summer? And every summer after that?”
“Thought it went without saying, August. What did you think we’d do? Go off and leave you home and have fun without you?”
“Pretty much. Yeah. I thought this was going to be my last summer out in the world.”
That stayed in the air for a moment while Henry whisked eggs in a bowl. August could already smell the sausage cooking. Hear the links sizzle.
“How was it different?” Henry asked after a time. “Thinking this was the last summer, I mean. How did it change the trip for you? Were you sad?”
August thought a moment. Resisted the temptation to answer off the top of his head.
“Sometimes. But mostly I just kept reminding myself to burn every moment into my memory. I just tried to be sure I was always there. That I didn’t miss anything. I kept thinking, ‘Enjoy this. Don’t let a moment of it go by unenjoyed. Or unmemorized. Or unappreciated.’ ”
“Then I’m glad you didn’t know,” Henry said. “Because that’s the way to do a summer anyway.”
“You’re right,” August said, completely releasing the idea that he wished he had known. Watching it lift away. Feeling lighter and cleaner without it. “I think I’ll do it that way every summer.”
“We should all do it that way every summer,” Henry said.
“I’m in for that,” Seth said.
It was promise enough to last August through the long year ahead, and he knew it.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Catherine Ryan Hyde is the author of twenty-four published and forthcoming books. Her newest releases are Where We Belong, Walk Me Home, Subway Dancer and Other Stories, When You Were Older, Don’t Let Me Go, When I Found You, Second Hand Heart, The Long, Steep Path: Everyday Inspiration from the Author of Pay It Forward, and Always Chloe and Other Stories. Forthcoming is a new edition of Pay It Forward, edited for middle-grade readers.
Other newer novels include Jumpstart the World, Becoming Chloe, Love in the Present Tense, The Year of My Miraculous Reappearance, Chasing Windmills, The Day I Killed James, and Diary of a Witness. She is coauthor with publishing industry blogger Anne R. Allen of How to Be a Writer in the E-Age . . . And Keep Your E-Sanity.
Both Becoming Chloe and Jumpstart the World were included on the American Library Association’s Rainbow List. Jumpstart the World was chosen as a finalist for two Lambda Literary Awards and was honored with a first- and second-place Rainbow Award in two categories. Love in the Present Tense enjoyed bestseller status in the UK, where it broke the top ten, spent five weeks as a national bestseller, was reviewed by a major TV book club, and shortlisted for a Best Read of the Year Award at the British Book Awards. When I Found You spent two weeks dominating the US Kindle charts in the top three.
Older works include Earthquake Weather and Other Stories, and the novels Funerals for Horses, Pay It Forward, Electric God, and Walter’s Purple Heart. These backlist titles were rereleased digitally in October of 2012.
Pay It Forward was adapted into a major motion picture starring Kevin Spacey and Helen Hunt, chosen by the ALA for its Best Books for Young Adults list, and translated into more than twenty-three languages for distribution in over thirty countries. The mass-market paperback was released in October 2000 by Pocket Books and quickly became a national bestseller. It is still in print and was rereleased in a trade paperback edition in April of 2010.
More than fifty of her short stories have been published in the Antioch Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, the Virginia Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, the Sun, and many other journals, and in the anthologies Santa Barbara Stories and California Shorts and the bestselling anthology Dog Is My Co-Pilot. Her stories have been honored in the Raymond Carver Short Story Contest and the Tobias Wolff Award, and nominated for The Best American Short Stories, the O. Henry Award, and The Pushcart Prize. Three have been cited in The Best American Short Stories.
She is founder and former president (2000–2009) of the Pay It Forward Foundation. As a professional public speaker, she has addressed the National Conference on Education, twice spoken at Cornell University, met with AmeriCorps members at the White House, and shared a dais with Bill Clinton.
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