Текст книги "My Life Next Door"

Автор книги: Huntley Fitzpatrick

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“I’ll get my suit.”

Five minutes later, I’m standing in our yard beneath my bedroom window, waiting nervously for Jase to return after changing into his trunks. I keep peering toward our driveway, afraid I’ll see a sweep of headlights and it’ll be Clay driving my mother home, finding me standing here in my black tankini, so not where she expects me to be.

But instead, I hear Jase’s quiet voice. “Hey,” he says, walking up my driveway in the dark.

“You don’t still have Herbie, do you?”

“Nah, he’s not a water fan. Come on.” He leads me back down and around my mother’s six-foot barricade, up the Garretts’ driveway to their backyard, and over to the tall green chain-link fence that encircles their pool. “Okay,” he says, “are you a good climber?”

“Why are we climbing over? It’s your pool. Why don’t we just go through the gate?” Jase folds his arms, leaning back against the fence, smiling at me, a flash of white in the dark. “More fun this way. If you’re breaking the rules, it might as well feel like it.” I look suspiciously at him. “You wouldn’t be one of those thrill-seeking-get-the-girl-in-trouble-just-for-kicks types, would you?”

“I would not. Climb over. Need a boost?”

I could use one, but would not admit that. I stick my toes in a hole of the chain link and climb up and over, clinging to the other side before dropping down. Jase is beside me almost immediately. A good climber. Naturally, I think, remembering the trellis.

He snaps on the underwater pool lights. The pool contains several inflatable toys, something Mom’s always lamenting. “Don’t they know you’re supposed to put those away every night or the filter doesn’t work? God knows how unsanitary that pool is.”

But it doesn’t look unsanitary. It’s beautiful, glowing sapphire in the night. I dive right in, swim to the end, come up for air.

“You’re fast,” Jase calls from the middle of the pool. “Race?”

“Are you one of those competitive beat-the-girl-in-a-race-just-to-prove-a-macho-point types?”

“You seem,” Jase observes, “to know a lot of annoying people. I’m just me, Samantha. Race?”

“You’re on.”

I haven’t been on the swim team for a year. Practices started to take too much time away from my homework, and Mom put her foot down. I still swim when I can, though. And I’m still fast. He still wins.

Twice. Then I do, at least once. After that we just paddle around.

Eventually, Jase climbs out, pulls two towels from a big wooden bin, and spreads them on the grass. I collapse onto one, staring up at the night sky. It’s so hot, the humidity pressing down on me like fingers.

He lies down next to me.

To be honest, I keep expecting him to make a pass. Charley Tyler would have been reaching for the top of my swimsuit faster than Patsy. But Jase just folds one arm behind his head, looking up at the sky.

“What’s that one?” he asks, pointing.

“What?”

“You said you were into stargazing. Tell me what that one is?” I squint where his finger is pointing. “Draco.”

“And that?”

“Corona Borealis.”

“And over there?”

“Scorpius.”

“You really are an astrophysicist. What about that one over there?”

“Norma.”

A bark of laughter. “Honestly?”

“You’re the one who had a tarantula named Agnes. Yes, truly.” He rolls onto his side to look at me. “How’d you find out about Agnes?”

“George.”

“Of course. George tells all.”

“I love George,” I say.

Okay, now his face is close to mine. If I were to raise my head and tilt over just a bit…But I will not, because there’s no way I’m going to be the one who does that. I never have been, and I’m not starting now. Instead I just look at Jase, wondering if he’ll lean any nearer. Then I see the sweep of headlights pulling into our circular drive.

I jump up. “I’ve got to get home. I’ve got to get home now.” My voice is high, panicky. My mother always checks my room before she goes to sleep. I run over to the chain fence, bang through the gate, then feel Jase’s hands at my waist, lifting me up so I’m nearly to the top of our tall slippery one, close enough to throw one leg over.

“Easy. You’ll make it. Don’t worry.” His voice is low, soothing. Probably his calm-the-nervous-animal voice.

I drop down on the other side and am running for the trellis.

“Samantha!”

I turn, though I can only see the top of his head over the fence.

“Watch out for the hammer. It’s still on the grass. Thanks for the race.” I nod, give a quick wave, and run.

Chapter Ten

“Samantha! Samantha.” Tracy comes hurtling into my bedroom. “Where’s your navy blue halter top?”

“In my drawer, Trace. Whyever do you ask?” I respond sweetly. Tracy’s packing to leave for Martha’s Vineyard—half an hour before Flip’s picking her up. Typical. She regards it as the right of the first born to co-opt any articles of my clothing she fancies, as long as they’re not actually on my back at the time.

“I’m taking it, okay? Just for the summer—you can have it back in the fall, promise.” She yanks open my bureau drawer, scrabbling through clothes, pulling out not only the blue top but a few white ones.

“Right, because fall is when I’ll really need the halter tops. Put those back.”

“Come on! I need more white shirts—we’ll be playing tons of tennis.”

“I hear they may even have stores on the Vineyard these days.” Tracy rolls her eyes and shoves the shirts back in, whirling to return to her room. Last year she taught tennis at the B&T, and I’m suddenly conscious that it will be weird without her there too, not just at home.

My sister is, for all intents and purposes, already gone.

“I’ll miss you,” I say as she whips dresses off hangers, shoving them helter-skelter into a suitcase of Mom’s, not at all bothered by the prominent GCR monogram.

“I’ll send you postcards.” She opens up a pillowcase, striding into the bathroom. I watch as she sweeps the hair straightener, curling iron, and electric toothbrush off the counter into the sack. “I hope you won’t really miss me, Samantha. It’s the summer before your senior year. Forget Mom. Bust loose. Enjoy life.” She waves her birth control compact at me for emphasis.

Ugh. I so don’t need a visual aid for my sister’s sex life.

Shoving the compact into the pillowcase, she knots the end. Then her shoulders sag, her face suddenly vulnerable. “I’m afraid I’m getting in too deep with Flip. Spending the whole summer with him…Maybe not smart.”

“I like Flip,” I say.

“Yeah, I like Flip too,” she says shortly, “but I only want to like Flip till the end of August. He’s going to college in Florida. I’m headed to Vermont.”

“Planes, trains, automobiles…” I suggest.

“I hate that messy long-distance stuff, Samantha. Plus, then you wonder whether he’s got some girl on campus that you don’t know about and you’re making a fool of yourself.”

“Have some trust, Trace. Flip seems pretty devoted.”

She sighs. “I know. He brought me a magazine and a Froz-Fruit at the beach the other day. It was so sweet. That was when I realized I might be getting in too deep.” Ooops.

“Can’t you just see how it all goes?”

Tracy’s smile is rueful. “I seem to remember that when you were dating Charley you had some sort of timetable for every move you’d let him make.”

“Charley needed a timetable or he’d have tried for sex in his dad’s Prius in our driveway before our first date.”

She chuckles. “He was a total hound. But great dimples. Did you ever actually sleep with him?”

“No. Never.” How can she forget? I’m kind of hurt. I remember every detail of Tracy’s love life, including that traumatic summer two years ago when she dated three brothers, breaking two of their hearts and getting hers thoroughly broken by the third.

Flip honks from the driveway, something Mom would generally deplore but somehow puts up with

from him.

“Help! I’m late—gotta go! Love you!” Tracy tramples down the stairs, loud as a herd of elephants in tap shoes. I’ve never understood how my petite, slender sister can make so much noise on the stairs. She throws her arms around Mom, squeezes her a second, dashes to the door, and shouts, “Coming, Flip! I’m worth waiting for, I promise!”

“I know, babydoll!” Flip calls back.

Tracy runs back to me, kisses my cheek noisily, pulls back. “Are you sure about the white shirts?”

“Yes. Go!” I say, and with a twirl of skirt and a slam of the door, she’s gone.

“Soooo, there’s an SAT test prep at Stony Bay High this August,” Nan says as we walk to the B&T. We stopped at Doane’s and she’s slurping her cookies-and-cream milkshake while I crunch the ice of my lime rickey.

“Be still my heart. It’s summer, Nan.” I tip my face up to the sun, take a deep breath of the warm air.

Low tide. The sun-warm scent of the river.

“I know,” she says. “But it’s just one morning. I had the stomach flu when we took them last time, and I only got nineteen hundred. That’s just not good enough. Not for Columbia.”

“Can’t you take it online?” I like school and I love Nan, but I’d just as soon not think about GPAs and test scores until after Labor Day.

“It’s not the same. This is proctored and everything. The conditions are exactly like the actual test. We could do it together. It would be fun.”

I smile at her, reaching over to snag her milkshake for a taste. “This is your idea of fun? Couldn’t we just swim in shark-infested waters instead?”

“Please. You know I get totally freaked out about these things. It would help to practice under real circumstances. And I always feel better knowing you’re there. I’ll even pay your fee. Pleeease, Samantha?”

I mutter that I’ll think about it. We’ve reached the B&T, where we have to fill out paperwork before we start work. And there’s another thing I want to do too.

I’m sweating slightly as I knock on the door of Mr. Lennox’s office, peering around guiltily.

“Do come in!” Mr. Lennox calls. He looks surprised when I poke my head in.

“Well, hello, Ms. Reed. You do know your first day isn’t until next week.” I enter the office and think, as always, that they should get Mr. Lennox a smaller desk. He’s not a tall man, and it looks as if the massive slab of carved oak is swallowing him whole.

“I know,” I say, sitting down. “Just filling out the paperwork. And I was wondering…I need to…I’m hoping to get back on the swim team this year. So I want to train. I wondered if maybe I could come in an hour early, before the pool opens, and swim in the Olympic pool?” Mr. Lennox leans back in his chair, impassive. “I mean, I can use the ocean and the river, but I need to get my timing down, and it’s easier if I’m sure how far I’m going and how fast.”

He tents his fingers under his nose. “The pool opens at ten a.m.” I try not to let my shoulders slump. Swimming with Jase the other night, competing, even in a casual way, felt so good. I hated giving up swim team. My grades in math and science dipped to B’s midway through fall semester, and so Mom insisted. But maybe if I up my time and try really hard…

Mr. Lennox continues: “On the other hand, your mother is a valuable member of our board of directors…” He moves his fingers away from his face enough to show a tiny smile. “And you yourself have always been a Most Satisfactory Employee. You may make use of the pool—as long as you follow the other rules—shower first, use a bathing cap, and Do Not Let Another soul Know of our Arrangement.”

I jump up. “Thank you, Mr. Lennox. I won’t, I promise. I mean, I’ll do everything you say. Thank you.” Nan’s waiting outside when I emerge. When she sees my smile, she says, “You do realize that this is probably the only time in his entire existence that Lennox has colored outside the lines? I don’t know whether to congratulate him or keep pitying him.”

“I really want this,” I tell her.

“You were always happier when you were swimming,” Nan agrees. “And a little out of shape now, maybe?” she adds casually. “It’ll be good for you.”

I turn to look at her, but she’s already a few steps away, heading back down the hall.

I have the late shift at Breakfast Ahoy the next day, nine to one instead of six to eleven. So I decide to make myself a smoothie while Mom frowns at her phone messages. This is the first time I’ve really seen her in days, and I wonder if now’s the time to tell her about Clay. I decide I will just as she snaps her phone shut and opens the refrigerator door, tapping her open-toed sandal on the floor. Mom always does this in front of the fridge, as though she’s expecting the bowl of strawberries to shout “Eat ME” or the orange juice to jump out and pour itself into a glass.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

This is a favorite technique too, silence so loud someone has to start talking to fill it. I open my mouth again, but to my surprise, it’s Mom who speaks first.

“Sweetheart. I’ve been thinking about you.”

And the way she says it, I just can’t help myself. “About my summer schedule?” I ask, and instantly feel guilty for the sarcasm under my words.

Mom takes a carton of eggs out, stares at it, returns it to the refrigerator.

“That, certainly. This election won’t be easy. It’s not like the first time I ran, when my only opposition was that crazy Libertarian man. I could lose my seat if I don’t work hard. That’s why I’m so grateful for Clay. I need to concentrate, and know you girls are taken care of. Tracy…” More foot tapping. “Clay thinks I shouldn’t worry. Let her go. She’ll be off to college in the fall, after all. But you…How can I explain this in a way you’ll understand?”

“I’m seventeen. I understand everything.” I have another flash of Clay and that woman. How do I bring it up? I lean past her for the strawberries.

Mom reaches out to flick my cheek with a finger. “It’s when you say things like that that I remember how very young you are.” Then her face softens. “I know it’ll be hard for you to get used to Tracy being gone. Me too. It’ll be quiet around here. You understand that I’m going to have to be working hard all summer, don’t you, sweetie?”

I nod. The house already seems still without Tracy’s off-key singing in the shower or her heels hammering down the stairs.

Mom pulls the filtered water out of the refrigerator and pours it into the teakettle. “Clay says I’m bigger than this position. I could be important. I could be something more than the woman with the trust fund who bought her way into power.”

There were a lot of editorials that said exactly that when she won the first time. I read them, winced, and hid the paper, hoping Mom never saw them. But of course she did.

“It’s been so long since anyone has looked at me and really seen me,” she adds suddenly, standing there holding the filtered water. “Your father…well, I thought he did. But then…after him…you get busy and you get older…and nobody really looks your way anymore. You and Tracy…She’s off to college in the fall. That’ll be you in another year. And I think…It’s their turn now? Where did my chance go? It only took Clay a little while to come to terms with the fact that I had teenaged daughters. He sees me, Samantha. I can’t tell you how good that feels.” She turns and looks at me, and I’ve never seen her… glow like this.

How can I say “Uh—Mom—I think he might be seeing someone else too”?

I think of Jase Garrett, how he seems to understand without me having to explain things. Does Mom feel that way with Clay? Please don’t let him be some skeevy womanizer.

“I’m glad, Mom,” I say. I hit BLEND and the kitchen fills with the sound of pulverizing strawberries and ice.

She brushes the hair off my forehead, then sets the filtered water down and hovers near my elbow until I turn off the blender. Then silence.

“You two, you and Tracy,” she finally says to my back, “are the best things that ever happened to me.

Personally. But there’s more to life than personal things. I don’t want you to be the only things that ever happen to me. I want…” Her voice trails off and I turn around to find her looking away, off somewhere I can’t see. Suddenly, I feel afraid for her. As she stands there, her expression dreamy, she seems like a woman—not my mother, the vacuum cleaner queen, who rolls her eyes at the Garretts, at any uncertainty at all. I’ve only met Clay twice, really. He has charm, I guess, but apparently my dad did too. Mom’s always said that bitterly—“Your father had charm”—as though charm were some illicit substance he’d used on her that made her lose her mind.

I clear my throat. “So,” I say, in what I hope is a casual, making-conversation tone, not a probing-for-info one, “how much do you know about Clay Tucker?”

Mom’s eyes snap to me. “Why do you ask, Samantha? How is that your business?” This is why I don’t say things. I stick my spoon into my smoothie, squishing a slice of strawberry against the side. “I just wondered. He seems…”

Like a potential disaster? Younger? Probably not a tactful way to put it. Is there a tactful way to put it?

So I don’t finish my sentence—usually Mom’s technique for getting us to tell all. Incredibly, it works in reverse.

“Well, one thing I do know is that he’s gone a long way for a relatively young man. He advised the RNC during the last campaign, he’s visited G. W. Bush at his Crawford ranch…” Well, ew. Tracy used to tease Mom about the reverent tone she used whenever she spoke the name of our former president: “Mo-om has a cru-ush on the Commander in Chiiee-eef.” I was always too creeped out by it to tease.

“Clay Tucker is a real mover and shaker,” she says now. “I can’t believe he’s taking time for my little campaign.”

I return the strawberries to the fridge, then root around my smoothie with my spoon, looking for more pieces of fruit that escaped the blender. “How’d he wind up in Stony Bay?” Did he bring a wife with him? A hometown honey?

“He bought his parents a summer house on Seashell Island.” Mom opens the refrigerator and moves the strawberries from the second shelf, where I had put them, to the third shelf. “That little island downriver?

He’s been burning himself out, so he came here for a little R and R.” She smiles. “Then he read about my race and couldn’t help wanting to get involved.”

With the campaign? Or with Mom? Maybe he’s some kind of secret agent, looking for ways to discredit her. But that would never work. She hasn’t got any skeletons in the closet.

“Is that okay?” I scoop out a strawberry and gobble it down. “That you’re sort of—dating—and he’s, um, advising you? I thought that was a no-no.”

Mom’s always been incredibly strict about the line between the political and the personal. A few years ago, Tracy forgot to bring money to pay for skates at McKinskey Rink and the guy who ran it, a supporter of Mom’s, said not to worry. Mom marched Tracy right in there the next day and paid full price, even though Trace was skating in off-hours.

Her eyebrows draw together. “We’re consenting adults, Samantha. Unmarried. There are no rules being broken here.” She lifts her chin, folding her arms. “I resent your tone.”

“I—” But she’s already gone to the closet door and pulled out the vacuum cleaner, cranking it up to the soothing roar of a 747.

I occupy myself with my smoothie, wondering how I could have handled that better. Mom practically ran background checks on Charley and Michael, not to mention some of Tracy’s more dubious choices.

But when it’s her…

The vacuum suddenly gives a guttural choking sound and stops dead. Mom shakes it, turns it off, unplugs it, tries again, but nothing.

“Samantha!” she calls. “Do you know anything about this?” which I know from long experience means

“Are you responsible for this?”

“No, Mom. You know I never touch it.”

She shakes it again, accusingly. “It was working fine last night.”

“I didn’t use it, Mom.”

Suddenly she’s yelling. “Then what is wrong with this thing? Of all the times for it to break! Clay’s coming for dinner with some potential campaign donors and the room’s only half-done.” She slams the vacuum cleaner down.

As usual, the living room is pristine. You can’t even tell which side is the one she’s just vacuumed.

“Mom. It’ll be fine. They won’t even notice.”

She kicks the vacuum cleaner, glaring at me. “I’ll notice.” Okay.

“Mom.” I’m used to her temper, but this seems over the top.

Suddenly, abruptly, she unplugs the vacuum cleaner, gathers it up, walks across the room, and throws it out the front door. It lands with a crash on the driveway. I stare at her.

“Don’t you have to be at work, Samantha?”

Chapter Eleven

Then, of course, work is particularly annoying because Charley Tyler and a bunch of the boys from school come in. Charley and I broke up amiably, but this still means lots of leering and “Avast, what do I see through my spyglass?” and jokes of the wanna-climb-my-mainmast variety. Naturally, they’re at one of my tables, table eight, and they keep me running back and forth for water and extra butter and more ketchup, just because they can.

Finally, they get ready to leave. Thank God they overtip. Charley winks at me as they go, working the dimples. “The mainmast offer stands, Sammy-Sam.”

“Get lost, Charley.”

I’m cleaning up their completely trashed table when someone tugs at the waistband of my skirt.

“Kid.”

Tim’s unshaven, his rusty hair rumpled, still wearing the clothes he had on the last time I saw him, flannel pajama bottoms incongruous in the summer heat. Clearly, they haven’t paid a visit to the washing machine.

“Yo, I need some cash, rich girl.”

This stings. Tim knows, or used to know, how much I hate that label, which got tossed at me by the kids on opposing swim teams.

“I’m not going to give you money, Tim.”

“’Cause I’ll ‘just spend it on booze,’ right?” he asks in a high, sarcastic voice, imitating Mom when we passed homeless people on visits to New Haven. “You know that ain’t necessarily so. I might spend it on weed. Or, if you’re generous and I’m lucky, blow. C’mon. Just gimme fifty.” He leans back against the counter, folding his hands and cocking his chin at me.

I stare back. Face-off? Then, unexpected, he lunges for the pocket of my skirt, where I stash my tips.

“This is nothing to you. Don’t know why the fuck you even work, Samantha. Just give me a few bucks.” I pull back, jerking away so abruptly I’m afraid the cheapo fabric of the skirt will tear. “Tim! Come on.

You know I’m not going to.”

He shakes his head at me. “You used to be cool. When did you turn into such a bitch?”

“When you turned into such an asshole.” I brush past him with my tray full of dirty dishes. Tears spring to my eyes. Don’t, I think. But Tim used to know me as well as anyone could.

“Trouble?” Ernesto the cook asks, looking up from the six frying pans he’s got going simultaneously.

Breakfast Ahoy is not a health food restaurant.

“Just some jerk.” I dump the dishes into the bussing bin with a clatter.

“Nothing new there. Damn town full of damn folks with silver spoons up their damn…” Oops. Inadvertently activated Ernesto’s “favorite rant” button. I tune him out, paste on a fierce smile, and go back to deal with Tim, but the flash of a dirty plaid pajama cuff and the slam of the door is the only sign of him. There’s a skim of coins on the table by the door, and a few more on the ground. The rest of my tip is gone.

There was this day a few weeks into seventh grade at Hodges, before Tim got kicked out, when I’d forgotten my lunch money and was looking for Tracy or Nan. Instead I ran into Tim, sitting in the bushes with the worst of the worst of Hodges’ stoner crowd—Tim, who, as far as I knew till then, was as innocent of all that stuff as me and Nan. The hub of the crowd was Drake Marcos, this senior druggie guy who always hung with an equally well-baked posse. Quite the achievement for the college essay.

“Oh, it’s Tracy Reed’s sister. Take a load off, Tracy Reed’s sister. You look tense. You need to re-laaax,” Drake said. The other kids laughed as though he was hysterically funny. I glanced at Tim, who was staring at his feet.

“Walk on the wild side, Tracy Reed’s sister.” Drake waved a bag of—I didn’t even know what—at me.

I made some lame comment about how I had to get to class, which Drake enjoyed riffing on for several seconds with lots of sycophantic chortles from his loyal groupies.

I started to leave, then turned back and called “Come on” to Tim, who was still staring at his loafers.

That was when he finally looked at me. “Fuck off, Samantha.” Chapter Twelve

It takes me a while to shake off Tim’s visit, but things at Breakfast Ahoy come at you fast, and that helps.

Today, however, it’s all bad.

The morning also features a woman who becomes extremely indignant when we can’t allow her cockapoo to sit at the table with her and a man with two extremely cranky toddlers who throw the jam and sugar packets at me, and squirt mustard and ketchup into their napkin dispenser. As I walk home, I check my cell messages, finding one from Mom, still sounding peeved, telling me to clean the house: “Make it immaculate,” she emphasizes. And then “Make yourself scarce, as Clay’s bringing those donors over.” My mother has never asked me to make myself scarce. Is it because I asked about Clay? I walk up the driveway, pondering this, then see the vacuum cleaner, still sprawled like a vagrant.

“Samantha!” Jase calls from around our fence. “You okay? Looks like life was tough today on the bounding main.”

“No sailor jokes, please. Believe me, I’ve heard ’em all.” He walks closer, smiling, shaking his head. Today he’s wearing a white T-shirt that makes him look even tanner. “I bet you have. Seriously, are you all right? You look, uh, disheveled, and that’s rare for you.”

I explain about cleaning the house and making myself scarce. “And,” I say as I kick it, “the vacuum cleaner is broken.”

“I can fix that. Let me get my kit.” He jogs off before I can say anything. I go inside, ditch the sailor garb, and pull on a light blue sundress. I’m pouring lemonade when Jase knocks.

“In the kitchen!”

He comes in, carrying the vacuum cleaner in both arms like an accident victim, his tool kit dangling from one thumb. “Which is the part of your house that isn’t clean?”

“My mother’s kind of particular.”

Jase nods, raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t say anything. He sets the vacuum cleaner down on the tile, opens the toolbox, and cocks his head at it, searching for the right utensil, evidently. I stare at the muscles in his arms and suddenly have such a strong urge to reach out and run my fingers down them that it scares me. Instead, I spray the countertop with disinfectant and attack it with a paper towel. Out damned spot.

He’s got the vacuum cleaner fixed in less than five minutes. The culprit was apparently one of Clay’s cufflinks. I suppress the image of Mom wrestling it off in a frenzy of cougar lust. Then Jase helps me reclean the immaculate downstairs.

“Hard to feel I’m making progress when it was already so perfect,” he says, vacuuming under an armchair cushion as I adjust the already symmetrically aligned throw pillows. “Maybe we should get George and Patsy over here, use some Play-Doh and finger paints and then make brownies, so there’s actually something to clean.”

When we’re done Jase asks, “Do you have a curfew?”

“Eleven o’clock,” I say, confused since it’s just early afternoon.

“Get a jacket and your bathing suit, then.”

“What are we doing?”

“You’re supposed to make yourself scarce, right? Come get lost in the crowd at my house, then we’ll figure something else out.”

As always, the contrast between the Garretts’ yard and ours is extreme—Dorothy walking out of black and white and into Technicolor. Alice is playing Frisbee with some guy. Little shrieks and screams are coming from the pool. Harry’s whacking away at a T-ball stand, but with a tennis racket. Alice wings the Frisbee at Jase, who catches it easily and throws it to the guy—not Cleve-who-knew-the-score, but a hulking football-player type. I hear Mrs. Garrett saying loudly from the pool area, “George! What did I tell you about peeing in here?”

Then the screen door bursts open and Andy charges out, carrying about five different bathing suits.

“Alice! You have to help me.”

Alice rolls her eyes. “Just pick one, Andy. It’ll be fine. It’s only a date.” Andy, a pretty fourteen-year-old with braces, shakes her head, looking near tears. “A date with Kyle.

Kyle! Alice. I’ve never even been asked on a date and now I have. And you won’t even help.”

“What’s up, Ands?” Jase walks over to her.

“Kyle Comstock. From sailing camp? I’ve practically capsized the boat looking at him for three whole summers now? He asked me to go to the beach and then the Clam Shack. Alice is completely and totally no help whatsoever. All Mom says is to wear sunscreen.”

Alice shakes her head impatiently. “C’mon Brad, let’s get wet.” She and the football-player type march off toward the pool.

Jase introduces me to Andy, who turns anxious hazel eyes on me. “Can you help? No one should have to have a first date in a bathing suit. It’s unfair.”

“You’re right,” I say. “Show me what you’ve got.”

Andy spreads the bathing suits out on the ground. “Three one pieces, two bikinis. Mom says the bikinis are out. What do you think, Jase?”

“No bikinis on a first date.” He nods. “I’m sure that’s a rule. Or should be. For my sisters anyway.”

“What’s he like?” I ask, surveying the other suits.

“Kyle? Oh, well, you know. Perfect?” She waves her hands.

“You need to be more specific, Ands,” Jase says dryly.

“Funny. Sporty. Popular. Cute but doesn’t act like he knows it? The kind who makes everybody laugh without trying too hard.”

“That one.” I point to the red Speedo.

“Thank you. What about after we swim? Do I change into a dress? Do I put on makeup? How do I even talk to him? Why did I agree to do this? I hate clams!”

“Get a hot dog,” Jase advises. “They’re cheaper. He’ll appreciate it.”

“No makeup. You don’t need it,” I add. “Especially after the beach. Throw some conditioner in your hair so it keeps the wet look. A dress is good. Ask lots of questions about him.”

“You have saved my very life. I shall be indebted to you for all eternity,” Andy says fervently, and streaks back into the house.

“I’m fascinated,” Jase observes in an undertone. “How did you decide which suit?”

“She said sporty,” I respond. The skin at the back of my neck gives this little twitch at the sound of his voice so close to my ear. “Plus her dark hair and tan skin with red. I’m probably jealous. My mom says blondes can’t wear red.”