OCR Text |
Show Young Adult Novel Approx. 48,000 words ENCOUNTER "Stephanie!" JD yelled back at the house. "Get your stuff out here!" He drew himself up to his full six feet two--impressive for a high school senior--then let his shoulders settle into slouch position again. Gloomily, he faced the mound of camping gear piled by the Volkswagen. He remembered how his dad threw it all together in the back of the pickup, pulling a tarp over the grubsacks and sleeping bags, then surveying the whole with an eye practiced in compromise. "That'll do." It was his old man's philosophy. JD found himself smiling. "It'll do. It'll work. Good enough," JD had other ideas for himself. But he wasn't sure taking his sister along to the Gorge was one of them. At the last minute when his buddy Chic couldn't go, she'd begged him to take her. God, how she'd begged! His sister Stephanie could get him to do anything that came into her head. "Coming!" she yelled from the upstairs window. Sooner than he expected Stephanie was standing beside him, loaded down with her faded red parka, a duffel bag, and an oversized Snoopy pillow. "Steph, you're not taking that . . . that security blanket," he lifted the pillow out of her arms and plopped it on top of the trunk in disgust. |