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    The Magic of the Glits: A Tale of Loss, Love, and Lasting Friendship
    The Magic of the Glits: A Tale of Loss, Love, and Lasting Friendship
    The Magic of the Glits: A Tale of Loss, Love, and Lasting Friendship
    Ebook98 pages1 hour

    The Magic of the Glits: A Tale of Loss, Love, and Lasting Friendship

    By C.S. Adler

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    About this ebook

    "A coming-of-age novel with a refreshingly different twist. Heartwarming but never sentimentalized and thoroughly believable."-Cyrisse Jaffee, School Library Journal

    "Adler infuses her first book with sympathy and sharp insights, and she writes with professionalism."-Publishers Weekly

    Twelve-year-old Jeremy is sure his summer at his family's beach cottage is going to be terrible. It's bad enough having a cast on his leg so he can't run on the beach or swim with his friends, but to be stuck taking care of Lynette, a timid, seven-year-old girl, is the ultimate torture.

    Once Lynette arrives, though, Jeremy has to admit that he enjoys the company. She's stuck in a depression after her mother's recent drowning, and she doesn't want to go anywhere near the ocean. To lift Lynette's spirits, Jeremy invents the Glits, magical creatures who grant wishes. Jeremy and Lynette spend their days building elaborate sand castles for the Glits and becoming close friends, but as summer draws to a close, Jeremy worries about what will happen to Lynette when he's no longer at her side.

    A little touch of magic and a dose of "joy fizz" from the Glits just might solve Lynette's problems and restore this sullen girl to her laughing, playful self.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisheriUniverse
    Release dateOct 4, 2007
    ISBN9780595900596
    The Magic of the Glits: A Tale of Loss, Love, and Lasting Friendship
    Author

    C.S. Adler

    New York City native C. S. Adler attended Hunter College High School and Hunter College and holds a master?s degree in education from Russell Sage College. For seven years, she taught English in a middle school in Niskayuna, New York, where she and her husband raised their three sons. Adler currently lives in Tucson, Arizona.

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      Book preview

      The Magic of the Glits - C.S. Adler

      Contents

      1

      2

      3

      4

      5

      6

      7

      8

      9

      10

      11

      12

      With love and gratitude

      To my mother who always believed in me

      My husband who supported me

      My son Ken whose enthusiasm encouraged me

      And my friend Cynthia Mendelsohn who

      gave me the criticism I needed

      1   

      Well, don’t expect me to entertain her, Jeremy said immediately.

      Jeremy, how can you be so selfish? The poor little thing has just lost her mother. We have to be kind.

      You be kind. Jeremy scowled and stomped off on the cast that had already lead-weighted his summer.

      Jeremy! his mother cried at him, her paintbrush an upended exclamation point. I counted on you.

      Well, you had no right to. You invited her, Mother. He slammed the screen door behind him. Why not? She was always after him to close it. Angrily, he stabbed his crutches into the sandy path leading to the dune edge. There he stopped to brood over the softly breathing gray sea below and beyond him. She had no right to ask a twelve-year-old boy to entertain a five-year-old girl—well, seven-year-old this year—but even seven, a baby. Didn’t she know anything? Just because his summer was ruined anyway with the broken leg, and now he couldn’t body-surf or build up his stamina by running on the beach as his gym teacher had suggested, and he couldn’t dig clams with Keith and Kevin or do anything that was fun at all. He gritted his teeth. Baby-sitting was just what he needed to make everything perfect—perfectly rotten.

      He couldn’t even remember Lynette from that short visit two summers ago when she had come with her mother and Dave. All that stuck in his mind was his parents’ surprise that their old friend Dave was getting married, and to a woman who already had a child. Bachelor playboy to father in one jump; it just doesn’t seem possible! his mother kept saying. Why his parents found it funny, Jeremy didn’t understand. Anyway, Lynette’s mother was dead now. Too bad for the kid, but not—definitely not—his problem.

      He reminded himself of that the next day as he ducked Dave’s rabbit punch and said Hi to the kid politely. She didn’t say Hi back. She stood beside Dave, a small, brown-haired waif with a curved-down mouth and eyes hiding behind her grassy thick lashes. It didn’t look to Jeremy as if she’d grown at all since he last saw her snugged in beside her brown and gentle, seal-smooth mother. She and her mother had both been listeners. That hadn’t changed either. Jeremy hated listeners. You never could tell what they were thinking inside their silence.

      You people are wonderful to take her for the summer for me, Dave said to Jeremy’s mother, who smiled blankly in the sunlight and answered, Don’t worry about a thing, Dave. We’ll have her eating again and perky as a chipmunk in no time.

      She misses her mother more than I do, if that’s possible, Dave said. It seems we both need a boost to get us back on our feet. He gave a faded imitation of his old grin. Lynette kept her eyes on her suitcase as if she were deaf. Even the sound of Dave’s car starting didn’t make her look up, though she rubbed impatiently at an eye that maybe was threatening to tear.

      Dumb, just the way adults would figure it, Jeremy thought. She loses her mother, so her stepfather goes off and leaves her too, and they all expect her to feel great. He looked at his mother, who looked worried now that Dave had gone. In an artificially bright voice, his mother chirruped, Lynette, why don’t you change into your bathing suit, and Jeremy can show you where to play on the beach. She smiled encouragement at Lynette and challenged Jeremy to dare object all at the same time. His mother was good at these dual messages. Jeremy figured she was already thinking about how much light was left for her to paint with today. In a minute she’d disappear up into the attic where his father had installed a skylight so that she could work indoors all summer. That would leave Jeremy right where she’d intended to have him—in charge of Lynette.

      Mother, Jeremy said, I have work to do in my room this afternoon. See you later. He swung his crutches in wide arcs of escape and rocked speedily off to his room, shutting the door firmly behind him.

      All afternoon he labeled his shells, gluing them neatly onto weathered clapboard with the labels below each. At dinner Lynette was still hidden behind her curtain of hair. She hasn’t eaten anything, his mother hissed at him in the kitchen where he went to help her do the dishes. And she wouldn’t go to the beach at all. What am I going to do?

      Jeremy shrugged. I don’t know. You shouldn’t of said you’d take care of her.

      How can you be so self-centered? Don’t you care about anybody but yourself?

      He didn’t care. It was like his mother to take on responsibilities and then try to slough them off on somebody else. He had plenty to handle this summer carting around a cast with enough white plaster in it to cover a whole ceiling.

      2   

      The next day it rained. Lynette sat all day curled into a corner of the armchair, staring at the rain-spattered window, her face a blob of misery smooth as a raindrop. On Wednesday when the sun shone, Jeremy struggled into his baggiest bathing trunks. He couldn’t swim or snorkel or run or bodysurf, but he could at least go look at the water. He clomped through the living room and stopped. There sat Lynette with her chin on her arms in the same armchair still staring out the window. The stillness of her got to Jeremy. Without giving it much thought, he said, Hey, come on down to the ocean with me.

      Lynette’s small, blank face turned his way.

      Come on, he said impatiently. I haven’t got all day.

      She straightened up, thinking about it. He frowned. Just a minute, she said and flew upstairs while he waited and cursed himself for being a sucker.

      It was a perfect blue and gold beach day. He tied a plastic bag over his foot to cover the open-toed cast and switched to the crutches specially rigged out with balsa wood pontoons so they would ride on the soft sand. When Lynette came back in her bathing suit, he swung off, shoving his crutches viciously before him at the glistening beige sand. What good was the purling white edge of a blue-green sea when you had a cast that couldn’t get wet? He glanced sideways to see if she was following. The wind flicked back her hair, and he was reminded suddenly of how pretty her mother had been, the small, brown-animal look, like a wood thrush or a chipmunk. He had a secret soft spot for the quiet,

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