My Cousin in the Summer

Chapter 11

"Leaha, why don't you go swimming outside with the boys?"

Because Hunter was there, that's why.

"I need to read, Grammy."

Grammy sighed and she plucked my book from my hands. I frowned slightly and looked at her.

"Outside," she said, putting my bookmark where I left off.

"Do I have to swim? I mean, can I go out there for some sun? I need a tan, I'm like an albino human."

"Then you should go swimming if you're an albino human."

"I'm a rare species of human, I can't get chlorine in my magical rare pores."

Grammy rolled her eyes and I smiled cheekily.

"What if," I said, "I read outside? You want me to go outside right? Then, this is perfect! It's a win-win for everybody."

"I said swimming, Leaha, swimming."

I pouted, "but I wanna read. It expands my rare albino human mind."

"Ugh," she heaved an annoyed sigh, "why are you being difficult?"

I smiled, "because I want to read."

Grammy shook her head, her short, curly, dark brown hair not even moving from it's place. How it stayed like that was a mystery to me.

"Leaha," she began, "if I let you read outside, will you be quiet about being an albino human and that your magical pores can't have chlorine?"

"Will you let me read outside whenever you want me to get into the pool?"

"Fine."

"Okay!" I jumped up from the couch before getting my book from Grammy's hand and put on my flip flops before heading downstairs and outside onto the deck.

Where the pool is, surrounding the deck, is a forest. When I was younger, me and my cousins would go out into the forest and 'scavenge' for random things. A gated fence that stopped the forest from continuing was our stopping point, considering that it marked private property. Although that was the only fence that was for private property, Grammy made us set markers to help us remember where the houses' acres stopped and went onto the neighbors' part of the forest.

There was one mystery though, that even after all of my years exploring the forest, I was still deathly curious about. On the far left side of the trees, there was a huge thick group of bushes and a ton of surrounding oak. A broken path of stone, which was slightly hidden by the plants, sat there and if you followed it you would find a small house.

An abandoned house.

My cousins and I made the mistake of trying to follow the path one day. Grammy caught us, and we were all shocked to see that she was furious. We didn't understand why she would be so mad at us, from our thinking, we had done nothing wrong. But yet, she banned us from the forest forever, and if she heard that we had even a measly hair cross into the woods, she'd skin us. Literally.

Since then, not even one of my cousins has mentioned the house to Grammy's face. We had all reluctantly let it drop, and soon, Pa bought us a basketball hoop so we could occupy our time with that instead of the forest.

"Leaha!" I heard Patrick call from the pool, "are you gonna swim?"

I switched my gaze from the forest to my cousin and shook my head. "No. I'm going to read."

"Why? You read too much."

"I don't feel like swimming, Patrick," I said shortly and went over to the lounging deck chairs, which were very close to the brown wood fence.