Combustible

Description

It's that summer between the end of high school and the start of something else. Dean Stockton and Curt Hutton are best friends, and more often than not you can find them rowing on the Rogue River at dawn.

Together they experience something they will never be able to describe adequately. But then they won't really need to. Not to each other. It's that moment of swing when rowers find the rhythm and everything falls into place. The shell seems to lift right out of the water.

Enter Isabelle Smiley. She's beautiful yet insecure, knowing yet innocent, and crazy about Curt in a way that no girl has ever been crazy about Dean. She wants Curt to choose a college closer to home than the one he and Dean have selected-and she can be persuasive.

"I'd never be able to hold out against a girl like Smiley," Dean admits.

"Don't say that," Curt replies. "I told her she'd have to convince you, too."

Everyone is conflicted in this story of friendship, lust, and life-changing choices. Only one thing seems certain to all of them: If Smiley strikes a match, Dean will catch fire.