The Girl in the Love Song (Lost Boys 1)

“Hey, wait!” I said, stopping him. “I didn’t ask your last name. Is it a first name? Ted? John…? Oh! Is your name Miller Henry?”

He smirked. “It’s Stratton.”

“Mine is McNamara. Nice to meet you, Miller Stratton.”

He smiled but turned his head away before I could see all of it.

“Happy Birthday, Violet.”

Oh my God, Diary, that was nuts!!! I just snuck a boy in my room! We talked and ate and laughed, and I feel like I’ve known him forever. I don’t know how else to explain it. Like when I met Shiloh, and we were friends right away. Miller’s not like any other boy at school, who makes dumb sex jokes and plays video games all day. He’s deep. No, that sounds cheesy. He has depth.

His grouchiness doesn’t bother me either, and he didn’t mind—too much—that I asked a million questions. Even so, he’s still kind of a mystery. Like it could take years to get to know all of him, I think. He wouldn’t tell me where he lived. I get the feeling he and his mom are poor since he was so hungry, and his clothes are in bad shape. But all the houses around here are huge. He can’t have walked very far to get here.

I invited him back tomorrow. I hope he comes. I want to give him some more food without making it look like he’s my charity case. But mostly, I want to talk to him more. I want to get to know him and let him get to know me. I mean, how often does that happen? Getting to know a brand-new person…that’s kind of like opening a birthday present.

Speaking of which, I now have two friends.

Happy Birthday to me!

ii

Miller came back that night and the night after that, and for the next two months solid, as the summer came closer to its end. My first friend, Shil

oh, lived with her Grandma but spent every summer in Louisiana visiting relatives, so Miller slipped into her vacancy perfectly.

We hung out in my room at night, eating snacks—Miller was always hungry. I studied and he wrote in an old, bent notebook. He never showed me what he was writing, and I never snooped. But once I caught a flash of a page and saw what looked like poetry.

Most days, we walked to downtown, or we went to the Boardwalk and played video games in the arcade before walking along the beach. Other times, Miller was busy doing odd jobs around town to make money to help his mom. He said she worked at the diner on 5th but he never brought me over there to meet her.

I introduced him to my parents, and by my secret request, Dad hired Miller to do yard work once a week, even though we already had a gardener.

“He paid me fifty bucks,” Miller had told me later after his first day on the job. He glared at me accusingly. “That’s too much.”

“We have a huge lawn,” I’d replied innocently.

He wanted to argue but I think he needed the money more.

One late August night, Miller sat with a notebook on his knees, scribbling at something while I studied.

I shut my algebra workbook and took my glasses off to rub my eyes. “Done. One less class I have to worry about in high school.”

“You’re going to be like that old show, Doogie Howser,” Miller said, finishing off the ham and cheese sandwich I’d made him. “You’ll be in college when you’re sixteen.”

“Nah. I’m not that good.”

“You’re damn smart, Vi,” he said.

That was another thing. He started calling me Vi. Which I sort of loved.

“Are you ever going to tell me what you’re writing?” I asked.

“My college master’s thesis.” He tucked the notebook in his backpack. “Thought I’d get a jump on it.”

“Ha ha.” I shrugged my shoulders up and down and stretched my legs in front of me. “I’m nervous.”

“Why?”

“You’re meeting Shiloh tomorrow.”