Fifteenth Summer - By Michelle Dalton Page 0,3

followed by an MD-PhD. Then she was going to get the CDC to send her to some third world country where she’d cure malaria. Simple, right?

It didn’t seem fair that, in addition to being ridiculously smart, Hannah was just as pretty as Abbie. She had the same coloring and same long willowy limbs, though her skin was less tan, her figure softer, and her shiny hair chopped into a chin-length bob.

Whenever anybody saw the three of us together, they assumed I was some distant cousin, because my skin was freckled and anything but golden, and my hair was red. Bright red. It was also very thick and very curly, just like my grandmother’s. Until I was born, she was the only member of the family who had this crazy hair . . . .

As I thought about this now, with endless, flat Iowa skimming by outside the car window, I inhaled sharply. Something had just occurred to me for the first time.

Now I was the only one in the family with this crazy red hair.

My grandmother had a stroke early one morning in January.

I’d just woken up and had been walking down the hall to the bathroom. My dad had blocked my way to tell me the news.

“Granly’s in a coma, sweetie,” he told me. His eyes were red-rimmed, and his face looked pale and clammy beneath his early-morning scruff. “Her friend, Mrs. Berke, went to the cottage after she didn’t show up for their breakfast date. You know Granly never locks the door. Mrs. Berke found her still in bed and called 911.”

There was no sit-down, no soften-the-blow discussion about the circle of life. Dad just blurted it out.

I stared at him, completely baffled.

Through the open door of my parents’ bedroom, I could see my mom frantically packing a suitcase. Hannah was in the bathroom, issuing updates: “Mom, I’m packing your toothbrush and your moisturizer, okay?”

And Abbie was curled up in my parents’ bed, hugging a pillow.

“But she’s gonna be okay, right?” Abbie cried. “She’ll wake up, right?”

So that was why my poor dad had broken the news to me so bluntly. He’d already had to tell Hannah and Abbie.

My brain refused to register what had happened. The only thing I remember thinking at that moment was that I really had to pee.

After that I remember thinking I should call Granly to clear up this ridiculous rumor.

“I’m fine, Chelsea,” she’d say with a laugh. “You know Mrs. Berke. She’s an alarmist. She’s the one who always used to wake her husband up in the middle of the night because she was sure that he was dead. And of course, he never was. Well, except for that last time . . .”

Then she’d laugh wickedly, and I’d say, “Granly!” and pretend to be shocked.

But of course that phone call never happened.

After Mrs. Berke called the ambulance, Granly was taken from Bluepointe to South Bend, Indiana, which was the closest city with a big hospital. My mom took the first flight out and spent an entire day and night at Granly’s bedside, holding her hand. Then Granly’s doctor told my mom that Granly wasn’t going to wake up. My mom had followed Granly’s living will and allowed her to die, which she did “peacefully” two days later.

Through it all, none of it felt real to me. Granly’s number was still in my phone. I still had e-mails from her in my inbox. She was in at least half of the Silver family portraits that hung on our dining room wall. And in all those photos she was surrounded by the still-living. The irony was, she looked more alive than any of us in the pictures. She always seemed to be laughing, while the rest of us merely smiled.

Depending on the year the photo was taken, Granly’s hair was either closely cropped or sproinging out wildly, but it was always the exact same glinting-penny red as mine. That’s because when I was little, Granly snipped a lock of my hair and took it to her hairdresser.

“Nobody could get the color right until you came along,” she told me after one of her triumphant trips to her salon. “Now I have the same hair I had when I was a girl. You should save some of your hair for you to use when you’re old and gray like me. Red hair is really difficult, Chels.”

“It is difficult,” I agreed with a sigh. Of course, I’d meant it in a different way. I hated