The week rolled along at a boil. Spencer didn’t remember Colorado having these stretches of scorching temperatures when he was growing up. Sure, there were hot days in the summer when they were kids, but by the time they ran through the sprinkler and ate a Popsicle from the ice cream truck the rain would roll in; in his memory it seemed like half their summer evening baseball games were called on account of mud. Now if they hit the nineties in July, they’d stay there for weeks, and along with everybody else on the Front Range, Spencer checked the Western sky for smoke five times a day. Three summers ago he kicked two packs a day cold turkey after Carter’s mom’s house went up like a pile of dry twigs in the Waldo Canyon fire, and he never cooked so much as a S’more over a birthday candle wi
