Autorentext

Aaron Starmer is the author of more than a dozen novels for young readers, including Night Swimming, A Million Views, Spontaneous, The Only Ones, and the Locker 37 series. He lives in Vermont with his wife and two children.

Klappentext

*From the author of Spontaneous comes a '90s mixtape of a young adult novel that delivers a summer romance with an unearthly twist. Perfect for fans of The Gravity of Us*.

“Starmer’s eerie love story is spooky, sad, and sweetly funny—a highly original ’90s retro mixtape of a book that will have you wishing you could go night swimming with Sarah and Trevor, until chills go down your spine and you realize what a very, very bad idea that would be.”—E. Lockhart, author of We Were Liars and Genuine Fraud**

One final swim of the summer. Let’s make it last all night…

Summer, 1994. Trevor can barely wrap his mind around the fact that he and his friends have graduated high school. And yet there’s no rush to get to college. He’s determined to live one night at a time. Riding shotgun from party to party, windows down, music up, his focus is entirely on his crush, the enigmatic girl in the driver’s seat. Will things ever go anywhere with Sarah?

Maybe? Because Sarah has proposed a mission: They’re going to swim all the pools in town. Before long, they’re sneaking into backyards every night, splashing, floating, and loving every minute of it. But it’s still not enough for Trevor. He yearns for Sarah, despite her college boyfriend, despite her “not yet”s, despite the way she keeps pulling away the moment it starts to feel truly magical.

Things finally change when they learn about a natural pool hidden deep in the woods. It seems like just another spot to check off their summer bucket list. But once they get there, they realize that this place has a curious hold on them, and something very strange is happening…

Leseprobe
As I watch you sleep, I sing to myself, soft and mournful, a calming melody that laps against the shores of my addled mind. I doubt you can hear it, but it’s our song, the one you sing to me. The lyrics mean so much more than you might realize.

I thought I knew you, but I can’t judge you. I thought you knew me, but underneath I’m, well, not laughing ­but . . . different?

The lyrics don’t tell the whole story, obviously.

What it ­deserves—​­what I ­deserve—​­isn’t a quiet night. Not anymore. I thought I did, but I know now that it only makes the noise in my head grow louder.

This is my choice. My journey. Only mine. I’m heading back alone.

Nightswimming

They were floating. It didn’t feel the least bit like real life. Twelve ­years—​­thirteen, counting kindergarten. An eternity, now in the rearview.

Trevor’s hand was out the car window, a dolphin swimming away from Sutton High through the muggy June air. Sarah was driving, as always. And as always, she was driving the Toyota Tercel, a family car passed down two years ago when her older sister, Janine, departed to Tufts. Janine had called it the Silver Bullet, but Sarah referred to it as the Rat. A demotion on account of rust and dents and stains? Perhaps. It was a loving name, though. The Rat was a survivor. It had seen Sarah through so much. Long detours in the farmlands after her multiple breakups with Mike. Road trips to Rochester and Vermont to see Phish. Predawn journeys to basketball practice and late-​­night commutes home from the job at Wegmans. And of course, the drives to school.

To school and from school, every weekday for the last two years. For the final six months of senior year, Trevor joined her, proudly sitting shotgun. An assorted list of guest stars rode in the back. Jared, Schultz, and Bev had once been the other regulars. The core. But ever since Bev saved up and got a Civic in March, those three usually rode together. Separately. Like today.

Yes, today it was only Sarah and Trevor. They both preferred it that way, even if they were both hesitant to admit it.

“Wow,” Sarah said as she shook her head in disbelief.

“Wow what?” Trevor asked.

“Just wow. It’s over, huh? That’s it.”

“Yeah. I ­mean . . . yeah.”

What else was there to say? Class of ’94 had made it. Graduation ceremony was still to come, but school was D‑­O‑­N‑­E done. Regents requirements met. AP tests in the books. ­Everything . . . complete. Trevor had prepared for it, talked and thought about it constantly, but now that it was here, he didn’t know what to do.

So, he turned on the stereo. A mix was in the deck, one that Sarah made called Sun / Rain. One side had songs with Sun in their titles. The other side, Rain. It was on the Sun side. The Sun side always got more play.

• When that fat old sun in the sky is ­falling . . .*

  Trevor let the music do the talking for a while, as they passed the fields on Sudbury, all dusty and bulldozed, ready for development. Soon enough construction would start. Houses with pastel paint jobs, flimsy transplanted trees, and in‑­ground pools would erupt from the weeds, though probably not before Trevor would leave for college. When he returned home next summer, however, he’d be coming back to a slightly different world.

  “What time does Schultz’s party start?” Trevor asked.

  “Already started,” Sarah said. “I saw them pouring Zimas into Sprite bottles at lunch, then heading for the parking lot.”

  “Should we go straight there?”

  Sarah reached over to Trevor’s thigh and gave it a ­pat—​­mostly ­fingertips—​­and paused for a moment to look at him before saying, “Yeah, straight there.”

  The driveway was already clogged with cars, so Sarah parked along the road. From the ­knee-​­high grass, she plucked a dandelion that had gone to seed and blew it at Trevor, but the wind stole the fluff before it could hit his face.

  “Boooo,” she said. “I wanted to fuzzify you.”

  “Did you at least make a wish?”

  “Obviously. Now come on.” She grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the backyard. The Schultz house was the last one on a ­dead-​­end road, way out past the water treatment plant, where the neighbors were too far away to complain and the cops never bothered to go. There were a few dozen kids there already, mostly in the yard. On the deck, Andrew Schultz reclined on a ­ratty-​­cushioned chaise lounge.

  For lack of a better word, Andrew was an ­odd-​­looking kid, with a nose that was crooked from being broken more than once (basketball, bike accident) and bulging eyes that bordered on amphibian. But what ­Andrew—​­or Schultz, as he was known to his ­peers—​­lacked in conventional attractiveness, he made up for in charisma. Pictures of him rarely did him favors. Meeting him, however, changed almost everyone’s tune. He was a disarming flirt. The young female teachers at the school knew better than to humor his advances, but they weren’t immune to them. Blushing around Schultz was common. So too was smiling. He was forever welcoming, the consummate host.

  As Trevor and Sarah approached the deck, Schultz raised a red plastic Pizza Hut cup in salute. “My fellow graduates. We did it!”

  “Barely squeaked by, huh?” Sarah said.

  “Don&…