***



Day 1

It’s raining.

Later

Still raining. Mom and Dad escape to town to get groceries for our stay, but before she leaves, Mom tells me to look on the bright side. It might be raining, but I can explore our cottage. I’m still kind of miffed about last night and mentally Silencio her. Or myself. That spell is really unclear.

Our cottage is bright pink, with these frilly curtains and enormous roses on the wallpaper. The place is TOO pink, actually. Pink rugs on the hard wood floors, pink cushions on the furniture, pink-lined dishes in the drying rack by the sink. Brad says he feels trapped in a bottle of Pepto Bismal. I say it reminds me of Umbridge’s office, minus the kittens.

Apparently, all the cottages have flower names, and I bet they’re just as monochromatic as ours, although I can’t even see them in the torrential downpour.

Obviously, ours is the Rose Cottage.

Brad must not know who Umbridge is. He grunts at me in his caveman monosyllable tongue and starts to fiddle with the television. It's one of those old ones with knobs on the front and enormous rabbit ears. All he gets is static, but it’s British static, at least.

Mom left breakfast on the table. I sprain my wrist trying to saw off a slice of bread from the rock hard loaf, which I have to eat plain because we don’t have butter yet and the jelly is orange. Are colors crazy here or have my eyeballs exploded back into my head? The world is bright pink and my jelly is orange.

Plus the bread tastes like a towel.

I wander back into the living room where Brad is laying on the floor, sprawled all out on one of the tiny pink rugs. He says, “Sorry.”

“What?” But really… for WHICH thing? Being a Neanderthal, being annoying, or telling me that the best thing about Harry Potter is that Emma Watson is hot? As if that’s a GOOD THING.

Hermione isn’t supposed to be HOT. IDIOT. His sole purpose in life is to say things that cause me minor heart attacks on an hourly basis, I’m sure.

Brad rattles a game box at me. “Want to play Sorry? I found some board games.”

“I would rather stick acid pops up my nose.”

“Whatever. If you find one, I’m first in line to help,” he tosses the game back into the cabinet.

Good thing Mom and Dad show up then, because my screaming at him would have disturbed the neighbors.

“It stopped raining,” Mom announces. She lines up a bunch of paper bags on the counter as Dad brings them inside.

“Sweet.” And like that, Brad disappears.

He’s smarter than he looks. Mom shoves groceries into my hands, making me help her put everything away until the bags are empty. All that food looks much more appetizing than the towel-bread.

When we finish, Mom suggests I go outside. To play. TO PLAY. As if 14-year-olds still PLAY.

I don’t have my bathing suit on yet, but I head toward the water, figuring that's the most likely place to find anyone around here. There’s a path leading from the stone steps of Rose Cottage down toward the lake where it joins other paths. They all come together at this long dock that extends out into the water. Even though it’s only been a few minutes since the rain stopped, the dock is already full of people.

It looks so much like summer to me. There are kids hanging off a rope swing and splashing around in the water. A few families have kayaks and canoes they are slinging off the end of the dock. I even see Brad chatting up a group of pretty girls. He has somehow lost his shirt.

Merlin, just knock them over the head and drag them home already, Arm Pit.

The cottages feel ancient, but the wood on the dock is new. So new, actually, that it smells like fresh-cut wood and feels sticky to my bare feet. I circle the small groups clustered on the dock and just keep walking. I want to get to the end, which is so far out in the lake that I bet you feel surrounded by water. A little Ally island, you know?

A girl with red hair brushes past me. Ginger. They call it ginger here, right? Like ginger ale and gingersnaps and my mom’s fantastic ginger chicken, all of which are brown. But the girl has Weasley-red hair, and so I mouth the word as I look at her. Ginger.

Just past her, I see him standing on the end of the dock. Him. Stepping straight out of every fantasy I’ve had since I first read Philospher’s Stone. Him. HIM.

Harry Potter is on my vacation.