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 ^{(it's beta!)}

Reilly sits in the bath tub, the summer heat spilling through the tiny open window above the toilet. It seems to be perpetual summer at the boarding house. She can't remember snow, just rain storms over and over again. But she is fully dressed and the bathtub is bone dry. She is reading a large book. Large book, small print, and she's holding it delicately between her thumb and fore-finger with one knee pulled up to her chest and the spine of the book resting there. She is breathing slowly, rocking one foot back and forth. She thinks for a minute about Joshua, and the kindness with which he had smiled at her last night when she rang him up. He's been stopping in more frequently, each time the conversation grows a little longer and his smile a little wider. Reilly laughs remembering that she told the boys that she and Joshua had met at a show instead of at the hardware store where she works.

She is still thinking about Joshua and his badly dyed hair when she hears heavy footfalls on the stairs. Jackson peeks his head in the door and smiles at her. He thinks she's adorable with her hair piled high on her head to cool her neck on the slick, white porcelain and her eyes peering at him over the top of her book.

"Reading in the bathtub?" He quirks an eyebrow and shakes his head.

"mmmhhmmm," Reilly replies, closing the book with her finger still marking her page. "It's the coolest room in the house." outside the cicadas are chirping up a storm as the sun begins to set in dangerously neon colors. Jackson glances at the changing light out the window and back at Reilly. He's thinking of moths circling the lights above the vanity while Reilly still reads and the boys gather downstairs to gather everything they need for the bar-b-que. He knows that they're having shish kebobs, half vegetarian and half not. Jackson marvels at the idea that Reilly is the one running this whole house at the age of 21, with all male tenants at that.

"Dinner soon." He murmurs, now lost in a long trail of thoughts.

"OK." She opens her book again, but doesn't comprehend a single word. Instead she's imagining Joshua throwing pebbles at her window at two a.m. Jackson is walking down the hall, imagining Reilly happy with someone else. And outside in the yard the boys are laughing, lighting the grill and starting dinner. Mikey's garden is transcendent, alive and violently abloom in a riot of colors. As the sun sinks further the streetlights and the garden lights flicker on. Upstairs Reilly reads, fully clothed in the dry bathtub with the sounds of music and laughter spilling up from outside. She is dreaming, like F. Scott Fitzgerald, of impossible and improbable things. In her head she is the hero and everything turns out right.