Текст книги "My Life Next Door"

Автор книги: Huntley Fitzpatrick

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Nan opens the door when I knock, house phone to her ear. She smiles, then puts her index finger to her lips, jerking her chin toward the living room as she says into the phone, “Well, you are my first choice, so I really want to get a jump on the application.”

I always have the same feeling when I walk through the Masons’ front door. There are happy-faced Hummel figurines all over the place, and little wall plaques with Irish blessings on them, and doilies sprinkled on top of all the armchairs and even the television. When you go to the bathroom, the toilet paper is hidden underneath the puffy pink crocheted hoopskirt of a blank-eyed doll.

No books in the bookshelves, just more figurines and photographs of Nan and Tim, very twinnish, in their early years. I study them for the millionth time as Nan spells out her address. Baby Nan and Tim dressed as Santa and Mrs. Claus. Toddler Nan and Tim, fluffy-haired and round-eyed, as chicks for Easter. Preschool Nan and Tim in a dirndl and lederhosen. The pictures stop abruptly when they turn about eight. If I remember correctly, they were dressed as Uncle Sam and Betsy Ross for the Fourth of July that year, and Tim bit the photographer.

In the pictures they look much more alike than they do now. They’re both redheaded and freckled. But, because life is unfair, Nan’s hair is a pale, washed-out strawberry blond, and she has freckles everywhere and blond eyelashes. Tim’s got only a few stipples of freckles across his nose, and his brows and lashes are dark, while his hair is a deep russet. He’d be a knockout, if he weren’t always so out of it.

“I’m on hold with Columbia—getting my application,” Nan whispers. “I’m glad you came by. I’ve been totally sidetracked.”

“I called your cell but got Tim, and he wouldn’t look for you.”

“That’s where it is! God. He’s used up all his minutes and now he’s after mine. I’m going to kill him.”

“Couldn’t you just go to Columbia’s website and order the application?” I whisper, even though I know the answer. Nan’s hopeless with her computer—she keeps so many windows open at the same time and never shuts them—her laptop’s constantly crashing.

“My laptop’s in surgery with Macho Mitch again.” Mitch is the incredibly good-looking, if vaguely sinister, computer repair guy who makes house calls on Nan’s PC. Nan thinks he looks like Steve McQueen, her idol. I think he looks sulky and annoyed because he’s constantly fixing the same problems.

“Thanks—yes, and when will this be sent out?” Nan says into the phone just as Tim wanders into the room, hair sticking up in all directions, wearing a ratty pair of tartan flannel pj bottoms and an Ellery Prep Lacrosse T-shirt. He doesn’t look at us, just roams over to the Hummel Noah’s Ark display on the window seat and rearranges the figures in obscene combinations.

He’s just finished putting Mrs. Noah and a camel into a compromising and anatomically difficult position when Nan hangs up.

“I kept meaning to call you,” she says. “When do you start lifeguarding? I’ll be at the gift shop starting next week.”

“Me too.”

Tim yawns loudly, scratches his chest, and places a couple of monkeys and a rhino in an unlikely threesome. I can smell him from where I sit—weed and beer.

“You could at least say hi to Samantha, Timmy.”

“Heyyyyy kid. I feel as if we spoke only a few brief moments ago. Oh, that’s right. We did. Sorry.

Don’t know where the fuck my manners are. They haven’t been the same since they shrunk at the dry cleaner. Want some?” He pulls a vial of Visine from his back pocket and offers it to me.

“Thanks, no, I’m trying to cut down,” I say. Tim’s gray eyes are in need of the Visine. I hate it, watching someone smart and perceptive spend all their time getting blurry and stupid. He collapses on his back on the couch with a groan, draping one hand over his eyes. It’s hard to remember what he was like before he started auditioning for Betty Ford.

When we were little, our families spent a lot of summer weekends together at Stony Bay Beach. Back then, I was actually closer to Tim than Nan. Nan and Tracy would read and sunbathe, dabble their toes in the water, but Tim was never afraid to wade out and pull me with him into the biggest waves. He was also the one who discovered the riptide in the creek, the one that zoomed you down and whipped you out to sea.

“So, babe—gettin’ any these days?” He wiggles his eyebrows at me from his supine position. “Charley was going nuts because you wouldn’t go for his nuts, if ya know what I mean.”

“Hilarious, Timmy. You can stop talking now,” Nan says.

“No, really—it’s a good thing you broke up with Charley, Samantha. He was an asshole. I’m not friends with him anymore either because, strangely enough, he thought I was the asshole.”

“Hard to imagine,” Nan says. “Timmy—just go to bed. Mommy will be home soon and she’s not going to keep buying that you took too much Benadryl because of your allergies. She knows you don’t have allergies.”

“I do so,” Tim says loudly, all out-of-proportion indignant. He pulls a joint out of the front pocket of his shirt and waves it at her triumphantly. “I’m allergic to weeds.” Then he bursts out laughing. Nan and I exchange a look. Tim is usually stoned and drunk. But there’s a nervous, jacked-up energy about him now that hints at harder stuff.

“Let’s get out of here,” I say. “Walk downtown.”

She nods. “How about Doane’s? I need some chocolate malt ice cream.” She grabs her purse from a puffy flowered chair and leans over, giving Tim, who is still chuckling, a shake. “Go upstairs,” she says.

“Now. Before you fall asleep.”

“I’m not gonna fall asleep, sis. I’m just restin’ my eyes,” Tim mumbles.

Nan nudges his shoulder again. As she moves away, he grabs her purse so she jerks to a stop.

“Nano. Sis. Nan, kid, I need something,” he says urgently, his face all desperate.

She raises a pale eyebrow at him.

“A shitload of jelly beans from Doane’s, okay? But no green ones. They scare me.” Chapter Seven

On the porch, I grab Nan’s hand, squeeze it.

“I know!” she says. “It’s so much worse since he got kicked out of Ellery. He spends all day like this, and God knows what he does at night. My parents are completely and totally without a clue. Mommy buys all his lies—‘Oh, that’s catnip in that bag, Ma. Oh, those pills? Aspirin. That white stuff? Just salt.’ Then she busts him for swearing—by making him put money in the swear box. He just swipes more from my purse. And Daddy? Well.” She shrugs.

Mrs. Mason is the most relentlessly cheerful person I’ve ever met. All her sentences begin with exclamations: So! My! Well! Goodness! By contrast, Mr. Mason rarely says anything at all. When we were little, I had this windup toy, a plastic chick from an Easter basket—and I thought of him sort of like that. He remained virtually unmoving in a plaid armchair from the moment he got home till dinner, then resumed his position after dinner until bedtime, wound up only long enough to get to and from work and to and from the table.

“He’s even got Tim’s pot plant in with his own plants, giving it Miracle-Gro. What kind of man was young in the eighties and doesn’t recognize marijuana?” She’s laughing, but her voice has a hysterical note. “It’s like Tim’s drowning and they’re worried about the color of his swimsuit.”

“And you can’t tell them?” I ask, not for the first or second or hundredth time. Although who am I to talk? I didn’t exactly ’fess up to Mom about Tim either.

Nan laughs but doesn’t really answer. “This morning when I came down to breakfast, Daddy was saying maybe Tim needed military school to make a man out of him. Or a stint in the army. Can you imagine? You just know he’d be that soldier who got his superior officers so angry they’d stick him in some horrible underground cave and forget he existed. Or ticked off the campus bully and got himself beaten to death. Or got into trouble with some drill sergeant’s wife and then shot in the back by her enraged husband.”

“Good thing you haven’t spent much time worrying about the possibilities,” I say.

Nan loops an arm around my shoulder. “I’ve missed you, Samantha. I’m sorry. I’ve been all caught up in Daniel—going to his graduation parties—just staying away from home, really.”

“What’s going on there?” I can tell she’s dying to get into it, get away from the Tim drama.

“Daniel.…” She sighs. “Maybe I should stick to crushing on Macho Mitch and Steve McQueen. I can’t figure out what’s going on with him. He’s all tense and wigged out about going to MIT, but you know how brilliant he is—and school doesn’t start for three months anyway. I mean, it’s June. Can’t he just relax?”

“Right.” I nudge her with my shoulder. “Because you know all about that, girl who orders college catalogs the millisecond after junior year ends.”

“That’s why he and I are a perfect match, right?” she says with a little grimace. A breeze comes up as we turn down Main Street, shaking the leaves in the maples that line the road so they make a soft, sighing sound. The air smells lush and green, briny from the sound. As we near the Dark and Stormy, the local dive bar/hamburger joint, two figures emerge from the door, blinking a little in the bright sun. Clay. And a very pretty brunette woman in a designer suit. I stop, my attention caught, as he gives her a big smile, then leans forward to kiss her. On the lips. With a little back-rubbing thrown in.

I’d expected to see more of Clay Tucker, but not like this.

“What is it, Samantha?” Nan asks, pulling at my arm.

What’s going on? It wasn’t a French kiss, but it was definitely not a she’s-my-sister kiss.

“That’s my mom’s new boyfriend.” Now Clay squeezes the woman’s shoulder and winks, still smiling.

“Your mom has a boyfriend? You’re kidding. When did that happen?” The woman laughs and brushes Clay’s sleeve.

Nan glances at me, wincing.

“I don’t know when they met. It seems sort of serious. I mean, it looked like it. On my mom’s end.” Now the brunette, whom I notice is at least a decade younger than Mom, opens up a briefcase and hands Clay a manila folder. He tilts his head at her in a you’re-the-best way.

“Is he married, do you know?” Nan asks in a hushed voice. It suddenly occurs to me that we’re standing still on the sidewalk, quite obviously staring. Just then, Clay looks over and sights us. He waves at me, seemingly unabashed. If you cheat on my mother, I think, then let the thought trail off, because, in all honesty, what’ll I do?

“She’s probably just a friend,” Nan offers, unconvincingly. “C’mon, let’s get that ice cream.” I give Clay one last look, hopefully conveying imminent harm to treasured body parts if he’s cheating on my mom. Then I follow Nan. What else can I do?

I try to erase Clay from my mind, at least until I can get home and think. Nan doesn’t bring it up again, thank God.

I’m relieved when we get to Doane’s. It’s in this little salt box building near the pier, which divides the mouth of the river from the ocean. Doane’s was the penny candy store back when there was such a thing as penny candy. Now its big draw is Vargas, the candy-corn-pecking chicken—a moth-eaten fake chicken with real feathers for which you have to pay a quarter to activate his frantic OCD pecking of ancient candy corn. For some reason, this is a big tourist draw, along with Doane’s soft ice cream, taffy, and good view of the lighthouse.

Nan scrounges through her wallet. “Samantha! I had twenty dollars. Now I’ve got nothing! I’m going to kill my brother.”

“Doesn’t matter,” I tell her, leafing a few bills from my pocket.

“I’ll pay you back,” Nan tells me, taking the cash.

“It’s no problem, Nanny. So, you want the ice cream?”

“Eventually. So anyway, Daniel took me to New Haven to see a movie last night. I thought we had a great time, but he’s only texted once today and all he said was ‘LVYA’ instead of spelling it all the way out. What do you think that means?”

Daniel’s always been inscrutable to me. He’s the kind of smart that makes you feel stupid.

“Maybe he was in a hurry?”

“With me? If you’re going to take time, shouldn’t it be with your girlfriend?” Nan’s filling her plastic bag with root beer barrels and gummy bears and chocolate-covered malt balls. Sugar rush retail therapy.

I don’t know quite what to say. Finally, without looking at her, I just blurt out what I’ve thought for a while. “Daniel seems like he always makes you nervous. Is that okay?” Nan’s now contemplating Vargas, who seems to be in the midst of an epileptic fit. He’s no longer pecking the candy corn, just kind of throbbing back and forth. “I wouldn’t know,” she says finally.

“Daniel’s my first real boyfriend. You had Charley and Michael. And even Taylor Oliveira back in eighth grade.”

“Taylor doesn’t count. We kissed once.”

“And he told everyone you’d gone all the way!” Nan says, as if this proves her point.

“Right, I’d forgotten that. What a prince. He was the love of my life, it’s true. How was the movie with Daniel?”

Vargas twitches more and more slowly, then shudders to a stop. “The movie?” Nan says vaguely. “Oh, right– The Sorrow and the Pity. Well, it was fine—for a three-hour black-and-white movie about Nazis, but then afterward we went to this coffeehouse and there were some Yale grad students there. Daniel suddenly got completely pretentious and started using words like ‘tautological’ and ‘subtext.’” I laugh. Although it was Daniel’s brains that drew Nan, his pompous streak is a recurring theme.

“I finally had to haul him out to the car and get him kissing me so he’d stop talking.” Before the word “kissing” is out of her mouth, I’m picturing Jase Garrett’s lips. Nice lips. Full lower lip, but not pouty or sulky. I turn to look at Nan. She’s bent over the jelly beans, her fine strawberry hair tucked behind one ear, a ragged fingernail in her mouth. Her nose is a little sunburned, peeling, her freckles darker than they were last week. I open my mouth to tell her I met this boy but can’t quite say the words. Even Nan never knew I watched the Garretts. It isn’t exactly that I kept it from her. I just never brought it up. Besides… I met this boy? That story could go anywhere. Or nowhere at all. I turn back to the candy.

“What do you think?” Nan asks. “Do we get Tim his jelly beans? You’re the one with the cash.”

“Yes, let’s get ’em. But only the scary green ones.”

Nan closes the top of her bag with a loud crumple. “Samantha? What are we going to do about him?” I scoop a clattering cascade of green apple Jelly Bellys into the white paper bag and remember when we were seven. I got stung by a jellyfish. Tim cried because his mother, and mine, wouldn’t let him pee on my leg, which he’d heard was an antidote to the sting. “But Ma, I have the power to save her!” he’d sobbed. That was a joke between us for years: Don’t forget I have the power to save you! Now he can’t even seem to save himself.

“Beyond hoping these are magic beans,” I say, “I have no idea.” Chapter Eight

The next afternoon, I’m kicking off my work shoes on our porch, preparing to go in to change, when I hear Mrs. Garrett. “Samantha! Samantha, could you come here for a second?” She’s standing at the end of our driveway, holding Patsy. George is next to her, in only boxers. Farther up the driveway, Harry’s lurking behind a wagon with one of those nozzles that attach to a garden hose in his hand, evidently playing sniper.

As I get up close, I see that she’s again breast-feeding Patsy. She gives me her wide-open smile, and says, “Oh Samantha…I was just wondering. Jase was telling me how great you were with George…and I wondered if you ever—” She stops suddenly, looking more closely at me, her eyes widening.

I look down. Oh. The uniform. “It’s my work outfit. My boss designed it.” I don’t know why I always add this, except to establish that otherwise there’s no way in hell I’d be caught dead in a blue miniskirt and a middy shirt.

“A man, I assume,” Mrs. Garrett says dryly.

I nod.

“Naturally. Anyway…” She begins talking in a rush. “I wondered if you might ever be interested in doing some babysitting? Jase didn’t want me to ask you. He was afraid you’d think that he lured unsuspecting girls into our house so that I could exploit them for my own needs. Like some desperate mom version of white slavery.”

I laugh. “I didn’t think that.”

“Of course you wouldn’t.” She grins at me again. “I know everyone must believe I do that, ask every girl I see if they baby sit, but I don’t. Very few people are good with George straight off, and Jase said you got him right away. I can use the older children, of course, but I hate making them feel as though I expect it. Alice, for example, always acts as though it’s a huge burden.” She’s talking fast, as though she’s nervous. “Jase never minds, but his job at the hardware store and his training take most of his time, so he’s gone a lot, except one afternoon a week, and of course part of the weekend. Anyway, I only need a few hours here and there.”

“It would be fine,” I say. “I don’t have much experience, but I learn fast, and I’d be happy to babysit.” As long as you don’t tell my mother.

Mrs. Garrett gives me a grateful look, then pulls Patsy off one breast and, after reaching up to unsnap something, moves her to the other. Patsy wails in protest. Mrs. Garrett rolls her eyes. “She only likes one side,” she confides. “Very uncomfortable.”

I nod again, though I have no idea why that would be. Thanks to my mother’s comprehensive “your body is changing” talk, I’m clear on sex and pregnancy, but still hazy on the nursing end. Thank God.

At this point, George interjects. “Did you know that if you drop a penny off the top of the Empire State Building, you could kill someone?”

“I did know. But that never happens,” I say quickly. “Because people on the observation deck are really, really careful. And there’s a big plastic wall.”

Mrs. Garrett shakes her head. “Jase is right. You’re a natural.” I feel a glow of pleasure that Jase thought I did anything well.

“Anyway,” she continues. “Could you do one or maybe two times a week—in the afternoon, if that works with your summer job?”

I agree, tell her my schedule, even before she offers me more than I make at Breakfast Ahoy. Then she asks, again looking a little self-conscious, if I would mind starting today.

“Of course not. Just let me change.”

“Don’t change.” George reaches out to touch my skirt with a grubby finger. “I like that. You look like Sailor Supergirl.”

“More like Sailor Barbie, I’m afraid, George. I have to change because I worked in this all morning and it smells like eggs and bacon.”

“I like eggs and bacon,” George tells me. “But”—his face clouds—“do you know that bacon is”—tears leap to his eyes—“Wilbur?”

Mrs. Garrett sits down next to him immediately. “George, we’ve been through this. Remember? Wilbur did not get made into bacon.”

“That’s right.” I bend down too as wetness overflows George’s lashes. “Charlotte the spider saved him. He lived a long and happy life—with Charlotte’s daughters, um, Nelly and Urania and—”

“Joy,” Mrs. Garrett concludes. “You, Samantha, are a keeper. I hope you don’t shoplift.” I start to cough. “No. Never.”

“Then is bacon Babe, Mom? Is it Babe?”

“No, no, Babe’s still herding sheep. Bacon is not Babe. Bacon is only made from really mean pigs, George.” Mrs. Garrett strokes his hair, then brushes his tears away.

“Bad pigs,” I clarify.

“There are bad pigs?” George looks nervous. Oops.

“Well, pigs with, um, no soul.” That doesn’t sound good either. I cast around for a good explanation.

“Like the animals that don’t talk in Narnia.” Dumb. George is four. Would he know Narnia yet? He’s still at Curious George. Edited.

But understanding lights his face. “Oh. That’s okay then. ’Cause I really like bacon.” When I return, George is already standing in the inflatable pool while Harry sprays water into it. Mrs.

Garrett efficiently removes Patsy’s diaper, pulling on some sort of puffy plastic pants with little suns all over them.

“You haven’t really met Harry. Harry, this is Jase’s friend Samantha, who’s going to be watching you for a while.”

How did I get to be Jase’s friend? I’ve talked to him twice. Wow, is Mrs. Garrett ever different frommy mother.

Harry, who’s got green eyes but fairly straight dark brown hair and lots of freckles, looks at me challengingly. “Can you do a back dive?”

“Um. Yes.”

“Will you teach me? Right now?”

Mrs. Garrett interrupts. “Harry, we discussed this. Samantha can’t take you in the big pool because she has to keep her eye on the little ones.”

Harry’s lower lip juts out. “She could put Patsy in the BabyBjörn like you do and go in the water. She could hold George’s hand. He can swim pretty good with his swimmies.” Mrs. Garrett glances at me apologetically. “My children expect everyone to multitask to an extreme degree. Harry, no. It’s this pool or nothing.”

“But I can swim now. I can swim really good. And she knows how to back dive. She could teach me to back dive.” While wearing the baby and holding George’s hand? I’d need to be Sailor Supergirl.

“No,” Mrs. Garrett repeats firmly. Then, to me: “A will of iron. Just keep saying no. Eventually he’ll move on.” She takes me back into the house, shows me where the diapers are, tells me to help myself to anything in the refrigerator, gives me her cell phone number, points out the list of emergency numbers, cautions me not to bring up the subject of tornadoes in front of George, hops into her van, and drives off.

Leaving me with Patsy, who’s trying to pull up my shirt, George, who wants me to know that you should never touch a blue-ringed octopus, and Harry, who looks like he wants to kill me.

Actually, it doesn’t go that badly.

I’ve mostly avoided babysitting. It’s not that I don’t like kids, but I hate the uncertain hours of it. I’ve never wanted to deal with parents arriving late and apologetic, or that awkward drive home with some dad trying to make small talk. But the Garrett kids are pretty easy. I take them over to our house so I can get our garden sprinkler, which is this complicated standing copper twirling thing. Harry, fortunately, thinks it’s amazing, and he and George spend an hour and a half playing in it, then jumping back into the baby pool while Patsy sits in my lap, gnawing my thumb with her gums and drooling on my hand.

I’ve finished doing the snack thing and am herding the kids back out to the pool when the motorcycle pulls in.

I turn with a tingle of anticipation, but it’s not Jase. It’s Joel who gets off the motorcycle, leans against it, and does that whole slow-appreciative-scan-of-your-entire-body thing. Which I get quite enough of at Breakfast Ahoy. “George. Harry. Who’ve you brought home?” Joel says. He is good-looking, but a little too much on the and-well-he-knows-it end of the scale.

“This is Sailor Supergirl,” George says. “She knows all about black holes.”

“And back dives,” Harry adds.

“But you can’t have her because she’s going to marry Jase,” George concludes.

Wonderful.

Joel looks surprised, as well he might. “You’re a friend of Jase’s?”

“Well, not really, I mean, we just met. I’m here to babysit.”

“But she went to his room,” George adds.

Joel raises an eyebrow at me.

Again with the full-body blush. All too apparent in a bikini. “I’m just the babysitter.” George grabs me around the waist, kissing my belly button. “No. You’re Sailor Supergirl.”

“So where did you come from?” Joel folds his arms, slanting back against the motorcycle.

George and Harry run back into the copper sprinkler. I’m holding Patsy on one hip, but she keeps trying to pull off my bikini top.

“Move her to the other side,” Joel suggests, without batting an eyelash.

“Oh. Right.” Patsy, the baby with the one-breast preference.

“You were saying?” Joel’s still leaning lazily back against the motorcycle.

“Next door. I came from next door.”

“You’re Tracy Reed’s sister?

Of course. Naturally he would not have overlooked Tracy. While I’m blond, Tracy is A Blonde. That is, I’m straw and sort of honey-colored with freckles from Dad, while Tracy’s tow-headed with pale skin.

She, unfairly, looks like she’s never seen the sun, although she spends most of her summers on the beach.

“Yup.” Then, suddenly, I wonder if my sister too has secretly interacted with the Garretts. But Joel isn’t blond, Tracy’s chief boyfriend requirement, right up there with a good backhand, so probably not.

Just to be sure, I ask, “Do you play tennis?”

Joel looks unfazed by this non sequitur, no doubt used to flustered girls making no sense.

“Badly.” He reaches out for Patsy, who’s apparently decided at this point that any breast will do. Her little fingers keep returning determinedly to my top.

“Yeah, the leather jacket probably slows down your return volley.” I hand him the baby.

He gives a mock salute. “Sailor Supergirl and smartass. Nice.” Just then a Jeep pulls into the driveway, very fast. Alice slams out, reaching back to disentangle her purse strap from the gearshift and yank the purse to her. Her hair at the moment is electric blue, pulled into a side ponytail. She’s wearing a black halter top and very short shorts.

“You knew the score, Cleve,” she snaps at the driver of the car. “You knew where you stood.” She straightens, stalking over to the kitchen door and slamming it behind her. Unlike her brothers, she’s small, but that does nothing to deflect from her unmistakable air of authority.

Cleve, a mild-looking guy in a Hawaiian-print bathing suit and a PacSun shirt, does not look as though he’d known the score. He slumps behind the wheel.

Joel hands Patsy back to me and goes over to the car. “Bummer, man,” he says to Cleve, who tips his head in acknowledgment but says nothing.

I return to the sprinkler and sit down. George plunks down next to me. “Did you know that a bird-eating tarantula is as big as your hand?”

“Jase doesn’t have one of those, does he?”

George gives me his sunniest smile. “No. He useta have a reg’lar tarantula named Agnes, but she”—his voice drops mournfully—“died.”

“I’m sure she’s in tarantula heaven now,” I assure him hastily, shuddering to think what that might look like.

Mrs. Garrett’s van pulls in behind the motorcycle, disgorging what I assume are Duff and Andy, both red-faced and windblown. Judging by their life jackets, they’ve been at sailing camp.

George and Harry, my loyal fans, rave to their mother about my accomplishments, while Patsy immediately bursts into tears, points an accusing finger at her mother, and wails, “Boob.”

“It was her first word.” Mrs. Garrett takes her from me, heedless of Patsy’s damp swimsuit. “There’s one for the baby book.”

Chapter Nine

With Mom and Tracy both out, the house is so quiet at night that I can count the sounds. The whir-clunk of ice dropping from the ice machine into the freezer bin. The shift of the central air from one speed to another. Then a noise I don’t expect as I’m lying in my room at about ten o’clock that night, wondering if I should say anything to Mom about that woman with Clay. It’s this rhythmic bang, bang, bang sound outside, below my window. I open it, climb out, looking down to find Jase, hammer in hand, nailing something to the trellis. He looks up, nail between his teeth, and waves.

I’m happy to see him, but this is a bit odd.

“Whatcha doing?”

“You have a loose board here.” He takes the nail out of his mouth, positions it on the trellis, and begins hammering again. “It didn’t seem safe.”

“For me or you?”

“You tell me.” He gives a final knock to the nail, puts the hammer down on the grass, and, in seconds, has climbed up the trellis and is sitting next to me. “I hear you’ve been engulfed by my family. Sorry about that.”

“It’s fine.” I sidle back a little. I’m again in my nightgown, which seems a disadvantage.

“They’re the best thing I’ve got, but they can be a little”—he pauses, as though searching for a definition—“overwhelming.”

“I’m not easily overwhelmed.”

Jase gazes at me, those green eyes searching my face. “No. You wouldn’t be, would you?” It strikes me, sitting there, that I can be anyone I want to be with him. Then I notice something move on his shoulder.

“What’s that?”

Jase turns his head to the side. “Oh, you mean Herbie?” He reaches up and pulls a squirrel—a rabbit—

something furry—off his shoulder.

“Herbie?”

“Sugar glider.” He extends his hand, now containing a fuzzy thing that looks like a flying squirrel, with a big black stripe down its back and black-shadowed eyes.

I stroke its head uncertainly.

“He loves that. Very tactile.” Jase moves his other hand over so Herbie’s cradled in between two palms. His hands are rough and capable. So much about Jase Garrett seems like a man, not a boy.

“Are you…like…Dr. Doolittle or something?”

“I just like animals. Do you?”

“Well, yeah. But I don’t have a zoo in my room.”

He peers over my shoulder, in my window, then nods. “No, you sure don’t. What a clean room. Is it always like that?”

I feel defensive, and then defensive about feeling defensive. “Generally. Sometimes I—”

“Go a little crazy and don’t hang up your bathrobe?” he suggests.

“It’s been known to happen.” He’s sitting so close, I can feel his breath on my cheek. My stomach flip-flops again.

“I hear you’re a superhero.”

“Yup. A few hours with your family and now I have supernatural powers.”

“And you’ll need ’em.” He leans back, resting Herbie on his stomach, then slanting onto his elbows.

“Plus, you do back dives.”

“I do. Swim team.”

Jase nods slowly, looking at me. Everything he does seems so thought-out and purposeful. I’m used to boys just sort of hurling themselves through life, I guess. Charley, who was basically all about hoping for sex, and Michael, at the mercy of his moods, either elated or in deep despair. “Want to go for a swim?” Jase finally asks.

“Now?”

“Now. In our pool. It’s so hot.”

The air is muggy and earthy, almost thick. Let’s see. Swimming. At night. With a boy. Who’s virtually a stranger. And a Garrett. It’s dizzying how many of my mother’s rules this is breaking.

Seventeen years of lectures and discussions and reminders: “Think about how it looks, Samantha. Not just how it feels. Make smart choices. Always consider consequences.” Less than seventeen seconds to say: