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    Summer Alone: The Summer Series, #1
    Summer Alone: The Summer Series, #1
    Summer Alone: The Summer Series, #1
    Ebook83 pages1 hour

    Summer Alone: The Summer Series, #1

    By Amy Sparling

    5/5

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    About this ebook

    From the best selling author of Summer Unplugged, comes a new series set in the same world.

    Becca's senior year of high school is approaching and she's tired of being the dorky best friend. Determined to reinvent herself with help from Bayleigh, she plans to spend the summer breaking out of her shell. When Bayleigh gets grounded and sent away for three months, Becca's plans come crashing down before they've even started.

    Now Becca is alone and can't even talk to Bayleigh on the phone. Not wanting to miss out on the summer before senior year, she takes a job at the local indoor BMX track. The job is fun, her boss is laid back, and the place is packed with hot guys. One of them just might have a crush on her. This may be a summer without her best friend, but it doesn't mean she'll have to spend the summer alone.

    Part 1 of a 4 part novella series.

    Summer Alone

    Summer Together

    Summer Apart

    Summer Forever

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAmy Sparling
    Release dateAug 15, 2017
    ISBN9781386167242
    Summer Alone: The Summer Series, #1
    Author

    Amy Sparling

    Amy Sparling is the bestselling author of books for teens and the teens at heart. She lives on the coast of Texas with her family, her spoiled rotten pets, and a huge pile of books. She graduated with a degree in English and has worked at a bookstore, coffee shop, and a fashion boutique. Her fashion skills aren't the best, but luckily she turned her love of coffee and books into a writing career that means she can work in her pajamas. Her favorite things are coffee, book boyfriends, and Netflix binges.  She's always loved reading books from R. L. Stine's Fear Street series, to The Baby Sitter's Club series by Ann, Martin, and of course, Twilight. She started writing her own books in 2010 and now publishes several books a year. 

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      Book preview

      Summer Alone - Amy Sparling

      CHAPTER ONE

      It’s the first day of summer and I’m sitting in my bedroom, still wearing pajamas. It’s pretty much where I can be found any time I’m not in school. If there’s one thing to know about me, it’s the one thing everyone knows about me: My name is Becca Sosa and I am a loser. Or in the words of Trey Sheppard at the senior’s party last week, I am a lame-o dork-o.

      I hate insults like that. The ones that are said behind your back, directed to other people as you walk by. The insults you weren’t prepared to hear because the people who say them—Trey Sheppard—are usually nice to your face. It’s one thing to call someone an asshole if they are being an asshole; that’s a trait you have control over, something you can choose to be or not to be. Like when my best friend Bayleigh accidentally dropped a piece of popcorn and it fell on her little brother’s head and he got all confused about it. Then she kept tossing popcorn at him all night, just to mess with him. I told her she was a jerk for doing it. That’s an insult that was deserved, even though she thought it was hilarious.

      But lame-o dork-o? I didn’t set out to become the lamest, dorkiest person in the city of Lawson. It’s not like I was intentional about it. Besides, I’m normal. I’m not dorky. I don’t wear thick-rimmed glasses with tape holding them together, or suspenders or orthodontic headgear or something like that. That’s why those are the worst insults. Being made fun of for something that’s just…just you.

      The sad thing is that I didn’t realize there were people who thought of me that way. Sure, when your best friend is crazy beautiful and wild in the best way and makes friends everywhere, you kind of expect to be known as the less popular one out of the two of you. But I guess I hadn’t realized how low I actually was on the popularity totem pole.

      Bayleigh has always been more popular and more outgoing than me. She’s had boyfriends since we were in sixth grade, back when having a boyfriend meant holding hands before and after school and telling everyone you had kissed when really you hadn’t.

      But even with the drastic differences in our personalities and likability factor at school, Bayleigh has always stuck by me. We met at a daycare when we were four years old, during a time when my stay at home mother had temporarily gotten a job to help pay for Grandma’s nursing home. Bayleigh and I were instant best friends, according to our mothers, and even though I only had to go to that daycare for four months, our moms exchanged phone numbers and we stayed best friends with play dates and sleepovers. I really owe a lot to Bayleigh. She’s the world’s greatest best friend.

      Hell, if it wasn’t for Bayleigh extending her party invites to me, then I’d never go anywhere. I’d be stuck in my bedroom one hundred percent of the time instead of just…ninety-nine percent of the time. Not that my room is an awful place to be or anything. I love my bedroom. It’s small, but it’s me.

      The wall behind my bed is painted hot pink, the kind of pink that says summer and girly painted toenails and little string bikinis. It’s rich and bold and I love it. The other three walls of my room are painted black, but they haven’t always been that way.

      Last year, Mom had flown to Oregon to attend the funeral of her second cousin who none of us had met before, leaving Dad and me alone. Dad had dragged me to the hardware store with him while he stocked up on all the supplies needed to fix random things in the house. It was supposed to be a surprise for Mom, him fixing all of the stuff she’d been complaining about for months. This was one of the only times my dad, a police officer, was off work.

      When I saw two gallons of black paint had been marked down to five bucks each, I instantly knew that my solid pink bedroom needed this black paint in its life. It needed the depth and dramatic color of darkness to make the pink really pop. I love my dad, so, so much. And I would never try to take advantage of him…but he makes it so easy. Since he works a ridiculous schedule, he inevitably buys stuff for Mom and me on his off days to try and make up for all the lost family time.

      So when I stuck out my bottom lip and pointed to the clearance paint cans and said, Please, Dad pleaseeeee? He caved. He bought the paint and the supplies we needed and he spent the entire weekend painting my room with me. In the end, we thought it looked amazing. Like something straight out of a fancy house decorating magazine.

      Mom absolutely hated it. She said dark walls were for people with dark hearts and too many tattoos and why on earth would her precious daughter want to ruin her bedroom like that? It was such a mom reaction. I’m pretty sure I won’t be tempted to ink my body after painting my room. I’m the girl who cried when I got my ears pierced. My mom is great, but she’s kind of a complete worry wart. She doesn’t let me go anywhere without calling to check in once an hour, sometimes half an hour, and she frets about every single thing I do. She hated my room colors because she had thought I was turning into some weirdo who would start vandalizing cars and selling drugs after school or something.

      Now I’m starting to hate my room as well. Not the colors, or the various crafting projects I’ve made to decorate my room—I’m kind of a Pinterest addict—but the being in the room. I am seventeen years old and next year I will be a senior at Lawson High School. I think it’s well past the time for me to break out of my shell, get out of my room and find out who I am supposed to be under the thick layer of awkward and lame that’s filled my personality all these years.

      I can be cool. And fun. Well, I could try to be those things.

      My shoulders straighten as I sit on the edge of

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