The Modern Version of Tuck Everlasting

Prologue

The month of August had always been a sort of starting line to the long school year.

The three months before August are a promise of heat and adventure and sleep-overs and the three after it are full of holidays and relieving cold weather.

But August just kind of sits there, uninvited, unsure what to do.

Whether it should be sunny or cold.

It let's us all sit in the sun with no breeze and no humidity.

Silence adds to the sleepiness of the month because birds haven't returned in some places.

Why would they?

The crickets don't sing.

What do they have to sing about?

Sometimes at night I can hear thunder and if I look hard enough out the window I'll see lightning, but no rain.

Not a drizzle.

Not a drop.

All in all, August is the kind of thing I wish didn't happen.

But then September would take it's place so I guess it's just better to dump it on August and just trudge our way through it.

But that year was different.

Early in the morning April Tuck pulled her truck out of the drive-way and drove out to town to go see her sons.

At lunchtime I, Wendy Foster who lived in a foster home (go figure), got fed up with people and thought long and hard about running away again.

That evening a person came to our door and asked us if we homed some random kid. We didn't so he left.

These three things shouldn't have been connected, but life and fate do have a funny way of doing things they shouldn't don't they?