"Elizabeth Hand - Last Summer on Mars Hill" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hand Elizabeth)

pretty much normal. It was only in June that they headed north to Maine, to
the
tiny spiritualist community where they had summered for as long as Moony could
remember. And even though she could have stayed in Kamensic with Ariel's
friends
the Loomises, at the last minute (and due in large part to Jason's urging, and
threats if she abandoned him there] she decided to go with her mother to Mars
Hill. Later, whenever she thought how close she'd come to not going, it made
her
feel sick: as though she'd missed a flight and later found out the plane had
crashed.

Because much as she loved it, Moony had always been a little ashamed of Mars
Hill. It was such a dinky place, plopped in the middle of nowhere on the rocky
Maine coast -- tiny shingle-style Carpenter Gothic cottages, all tumbled into
disrepair, their elaborate trim rotting and strong with spider-webs; poppies
and
lupines and tiger lilies sprawling bravely atop clumps of chickweed and
dandelions of truly monstrous size; even the sign by the pier so faded you
almost couldn't read the earnest lettering:

MARS HILL SPIRITUALIST COMMUNITY FOUNDED 1883

"Why doesn't your father take somebody's violet aura and repaint the damn sign
with it?" she'd exploded once to Jason.

Jason looked surprised. "I kind of like it like that," he said, shaking the
hair
from his face and tossing a sea urchin at the silvered board. "It looks like
it
was put up by our Founding Mothers." But for years Moony almost couldn't stand
to even look at the sign, it embarrassed her so much.

It was Jason who helped herget over that. They'd met when they were both
twelve.
It was the summer that Ariel started the workshop in Creative Psychokinesis,
the
first summer that Jason and his father had stayed at Mars Hill.

"Hey," Jason had said, too loudly, when they found themselves left alone while
the adults swapped wine coolers and introductions at the summer's first
barbecue. They were the only kids in sight. There were no other families and
few
conventionally married couples at Mars Hill. The community had been the cause
of
more than one custody battle that had ended with wistful children sent to
spend
the summer with a more respectable parent in Boston or Manhattan or Bar
Harbor.
"That lady there with my father --"