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Back The First and The Last
Chapters (25)
  1. The First and The Last
  2. 1. One
  3. 2. Two
  4. 3. Three
  5. 4. Four
  6. 5. Five
  7. 6. Six
  8. 7. Seven
  9. AFTERWARD
  10. 9. Nine
  11. 10. Ten
  12. 11. Eleven
  13. 12. Twelve
  14. 13. Thirteen
  15. 14. Fourteen
  16. 15. Fifteen
  17. 16. Sixteen
  18. 17. Seventeen
  19. 18. Eighteen
  20. 19. Nineteen
  21. 20. Twenty
  22. 21. Twenty One
  23. AFTERWORD
  24. ABOUT THE FIRST AND THE LAST
  25. A LITTLE ABOUT ME

Despite how impossible she was, or maybe because of it, most days I thought that although Jules was my first and best friend, there was a chance Mrs. O’Malley was my friend too. She was a friend, but not like a friend like Jules. She was the kind of friend that kept me on my toes. She was sweet as pie one minute, and the next she’d be all but sweeping me off her porch. Sometimes she annoyed me and sometimes she confused me, but I never stayed away from her place for very long. I couldn’t. She was too interesting. She had too many good stories and if she wasn’t telling stories, she had this faraway look about her that made me so curious I could hardly stand it.

When she looked like that, my mother always said, “Leave her be, Sully. Mrs. O’Malley is a wise woman. She needs time on her own to be with her thoughts.”

I never managed to work out exactly what it meant to be a wise woman and despite my best efforts, none of the adults were inclined to enlighten me. Best I could tell, it explained why Mrs. O’Malley just knew things. Sometimes she knew things she had no business knowing. Like, how she knew when Jules had been in trouble at school before we even walked up the drag, or how she’d start battening down the hatches days before a storm warning was issued.

Whatever the case, she was the most interesting adult I’d ever met by far. Like all adult wolves, she was notoriously cagey, but out of all the adults in the pack, my money was on her to be the one to slip up at some point and tell me something really, really interesting.

2. Two

2

Turns out I was wrong to look forward to the summer vacation. Dead wrong. Before Jules and I managed to settle into a nice routine of sleeping in late and finding ways to annoy everyone around us, Jules was packed up by his parents and was loaded into their minivan along with most of their possessions. There was no warning at all. All I got was a breathless Jules knocking on our door early one morning at the end of the first week of the vacation.

“We’re heading southwest for the summer. We’re doing it. We’re finally going to see August.”