Текст книги "Endless Summer"

Автор книги: Jennifer Echols

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

I stared at him and wondered what my mother had been thinking.

“I don’t think we need to worry about that, though,” he said. “Rachel wants to get back with Adam, but Adam doesn’t want Rachel, if you can believe that! He called her last night after he dried up and had this, like, reasonable, adult conversation with her. He told her it was over between them, and not just because she’d made out with me when I snapped my fingers. He went out with her in the first place to make you jealous.”

None of this sounded like something Adam would share with Sean on purpose. McGillicuddy, maybe, or Cameron, but not Sean. “Did you listen in on this conversation?”

Sean gave me this how dare you insinuate such a thing look. Which told me, yes, he had listened in on this conversation.

He went on, “So we know they won’t get back together. If they do look like they’re getting back together at the party tonight, Adam will be faking. All we have to do to get him back with you is convince him you’re better than nothing. Which…” He looked me up and down, then shrugged.

e wind gusted again, lifting sections of his light brown hair, and flattening his T-shirt against his strong chest. He was a lot like Adam, and completely different. I said,

“You are a sad, sad little man.”

“I am what I am. So, I know this will sound kind of gross, but will you make out with me at the party?” I poked at the shoreline with my oar. “is is a bad idea. It was a bad idea the first time I had it, and it’s a bad idea now.” But I might as well try something to get Adam back, right? I’d hit bottom. Nothing we did could make things worse.

“If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for me. Lori, I’m in love with Rachel. at’s never happened to me before. I’m not willing to let that go without a fight. And if you feel the same way about Adam, seems like you wouldn’t let it go, either.” He took a few steps closer to me in the boat. “He holds a grudge, you know.” I snorted. “I know.” Nothing had ever been more obvious.

“You can’t just hope he’ll come around someday. He won’t. You have to bring him back. Hey, what do we have here?” He leaned way over the side of the boat, grabbed a flower-printed edge underneath a log, and brought up my dripping wakeboard. Handing it to me, he said, “Your chariot, mademoiselle.” It was exactly like something Adam would say. I clung to the wet wakeboard and squeezed my eyes shut to keep from crying. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll do it. Okay.” It all would have been hilarious if it hadn’t sucked.

And I couldn’t go through with it. When McGillicuddy said he was heading for the party, I stayed behind. I actually started the enormous project of picking up all the books and magazines scattered three deep on the floor of my room. After about an hour and hardly any progress, I realized that by shelving them, I was messing up a filing system I didn’t even know I had. Books I wanted to read again were thrown on one side of my bed. Bad books were abandoned by the window. Wakeboarding mags were strewn from my dresser to my desk in approximate order of how hot the boys were in them, and so forth. I gave up and sat downstairs in the den with my dad for a long time, watching Dirty Jobs.

My cell phone rang. I pried it from the pocket of my tight miniskirt. I knew girls were supposed to carry purses instead of stuffing everything in their pockets, but I needed to ease into this transition over the coming year. Sirens weren’t built in a day. “Hello?” Sean was on the other end of the line, making chicken noises.

I hung up and said bye to my dad. Again, I didn’t notify him what was going on with my many suitors. I figured the situation would change anyway in the next fifteen minutes or so.

Sean stood in the doorway of the Vaders’ house, letting all the air-conditioning out into the hot night. Waiting for me. “Where have you been?”

“Duh, I’ve been next d—”

He grabbed me, pulled me into the foyer, and slammed the door. “Rachel and Adam are inside talking. To each other! And I’ve told everybody here that you and I are together. When you didn’t show up, it looked like you didn’t love me as much as I love you.”

“Stop the presses.”

“So we need to make up for lost time.” He body-slammed me against the wall and stuck his tongue in my mouth.

Well, I just let him do it. Why not? I let him slide his hands up and down my sides, too, in case that helped the cause. If he wanted to touch my boobs, I would need to take that under advisement, but otherwise I found I had a very high tolerance for a handsome ass of a boy using me as target practice.

Besides, out the corner of my eye, I could see Holly and Beige watch us from the end of the hall. ey disappeared around the corner. Next a couple of guys from my algebra class walked very slowly by the opening, pretending not to watch us.

Sean came up for breath. I tried not to gasp quite as hard as I had after bashing my head and nearly drowning.

“How many gawkers is that?” he asked.

“Four,” I said. “Is that enough to spread it around the party? And how can you stand to kiss a girl like that when you don’t feel anything for her?” He rubbed the back of my neck, like a lover. “I feel something for you. You clean up okay. Don’t you feel something for me?” I shook my head. “I’m not feeling you, dog.”

“Don’t shake your head,” he said through his teeth. “We’re going into the party now. Don’t do anything negative. Agree with everything I say. Laugh a lot. Can you put your hands on my crotch?”

“Why, hell no, I cannot.” I didn’t remember anything like this happening in Pride and Prejudice. “Can I find Tammy, take her to the bathroom with me, and giggle about you?”

His eyes widened in admiration. “That would be awesome!”

I was getting good at this. I gave him a peck on his stylishly stubbly cheek, patted his ass, and walked into the living room.

Every head snapped up to watch me.

Including Adam’s. ere were thirty-something people in the shadowy room, and I saw him right away. He sat on the couch with Rachel, exactly where Sean had sat with her the night he insulted me. Adam wasn’t wrapped around Rachel like Sean had been. He wasn’t touching her at all. He was talking to her. ey could have been friends.

So they weren’t doing anything to make me jealous. All he did was look up at me with such fury in those blue eyes that I knew I was going to throw up.

“Help,” I croaked, putting a hand on Tammy’s shoulder.

She looked around at me. She looked at the boys she’d been talking with: Cameron and McGillicuddy. “Can Cameron help you?” she asked me coldly. “ey’re his brothers, so he could help you better. Bill and I were talking.”

Hadn’t she heard Sean’s blitzkrieg rumors? I wasn’t pretending to hook up with Adam to get Sean. Surprise! I was pretending to hook up with Sean to get Adam, and if ever something was giggle-in-the-bathroom material, this was it. I was calculating how much of this to divulge to her while Cameron and McGillicuddy were listening, when something else clicked in my brain. “Are y’all going out?”

“Yes!” McGillicuddy beamed.

Tammy beamed too, then tried to hold the smile as she realized she’d been busted.

“So,” I said to Tammy, “when you told me you came to the last party to see me, really you were using that as an excuse to see McGillicuddy.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” Tammy said distantly, a tone she’d never used with me before. e tone Beige used all the time. “I guess I didn’t understand you and I were that close.”

“I guess it was my mistake,” I said.

“I want to go back to college,” Cameron said. “Linear Differential Equations class will seem so relaxing after this summer.” McGillicuddy frowned at Tammy, then moved toward me like he would pull me aside and talk to me. But McGillicuddy didn’t go out much. He’d actually asked someone out! I didn’t want to mess up this thing with Tammy for him. Not over some weird girl-jealousy that I didn’t even understand completely.

“I gotta do something,” I mumbled, pulling the skull and crossbones from my pocket. This took a couple of tries when my fist got stuck.

Across the room, Sean stood with some of his many friends. Down by his side, where the crowd couldn’t see, he motioned to me. Rachel and her friends were right behind him. If I went to him, he’d make sure they saw everything that counted.

From the sofa on the other side of the room, Adam glared at me.

I took a step toward Adam. e force of his glare was like a magnet turned the wrong way against another. I took another step toward him and felt the force in my stomach. I would never be able to reach him in the face of such force. Plus Scooter Ledbetter was trying to start a mosh pit in the center of the room. So I skirted the force like I was headed out the door to the deck. Then, when Adam bit his lip and looked down, I snuck past the repellant force and plopped next to him on the couch.

“Here.” I held out the skull and crossbones in my sweaty palm. Attractive! It didn’t matter any more. “Look,” I said in a rush, “I didn’t crash into the pontoon boat to get Sean. Even I am not that unbalanced.”

His mouth moved so little that I almost thought he used telepathy to tell me, “I don’t believe you.”

“No shit. And I’m sorry about the PDA with Sean. I don’t know what I was thinking, Adam. I want another chance with you, and I know that wasn’t the way to get it.”

“That’s okay,” he said so brightly, so unlike him, that I knew something evil was coming. “I like Sean taking my seconds.”

“See, that’s the problem,” I snapped, angry again despite myself. “You say you love me, but you’re always looking over your shoulder for Sean.”

“And you’re always looking over your shoulder for Sean. Or Holly, or Beige.” e Foo Fighters song booming through the room ended at the precise moment he said,

“Or whoever’s made you change from what you were into a first-class bitch.”

Only a moment more of silence ticked by before Fall Out Boy started. But the damage was done. People at the edge of the crowd were slow to start dancing again. ey thought we couldn’t hear them over the music as they yelled in clear voices, “Did you hear what Adam called Lori?” I told myself he wouldn’t have said anything so horrible to me if he weren’t jealous. Of course, I’d told myself the same thing when Sean mentioned the shrink. But Sean was Sean, and Adam was Adam. And while I was trying to use my intimidating brain power to turn myself into water vapor and vanish into thin air, Adam snatched the skull and crossbones from my open palm. “I have just the use for this,” he said as he stomped out the door to the deck.

I left my sparkly shoes on the floor next to the couch. I knew that jig was up. But even in my bare feet, I didn’t make it outside before Adam was on the ground far below, halfway to the dock. Possibly he’d jumped over the deck railing.

I dashed down the stairs. Sean called to me from the deck above me. I dashed faster. This was no time to save face. I had a terrible feeling about that skull and crossbones.

Sure enough, by the time I’d pushed through the crowd in the yard and the wall of people on the dock, Adam was sitting with the boys playing quarters. I stepped forward to stop him. It was too late. Instead of a quarter, he bounced the pendant on the dock. And instead of ringing the cup, the skull and crossbones slipped between two planks, into the lake.

“Ohhhhhh!” said the other boys.

“Get it,” I told Adam.

He said thoughtfully, “No.”

I pictured it sinking through the water, but it wasn’t heavy enough to stay in one place on the bottom. e current would sweep it away if he didn’t hurry. “I bought it for you!” I shrieked.

“I wore it for you,” he said evenly. “And now I’m through with it.”

I shoved back through the wall of people, jumped into Mr. Vader’s personal fishing boat tied on one side of the dock, and grabbed a big waterproof flashlight. I didn’t have to push through the wall of people on my way back because they saw me coming and got out of my way. I walked straight through the game of quarters, scattering frightened boys. I sensed rather than saw Adam’s hand reach for my ankle and miss as I hopped into the lake in my adorable clothes.

e water was warm and black. Oops. I clicked the button on the flashlight and directed the beam underneath the pier. e water was only about eight feet deep here, so I was able to kick down to the rocky bottom, where I thought the pendant had fallen through.

In the eerie green light, I saw it glinting on a big branch the boys had lodged under the dock to attract fish. at was bad enough, because wood got slimy in water. But this was worse: the pendant glinted from its resting place in A GLOB OF BRYOZOA clinging to the branch. Ugh, ugh, ugh, and the pendant moved as the bryozoa bobbed in the current. Any second now, the skull and crossbones would tumble deep into the lake, lost forever.

My breath was gone. I swam toward the surface to collect one more breath. I didn’t expect half the school to be peering over the side of the dock, watching for me in the darkness. That was okay. I was on a mission to PLUNGE MY HAND INTO THE BRYOZOA OH MY GOD. I took my breath and dove back down—

And someone on the dock grabbed me around the waist. Someone strong who wasn’t dislodged from the dock when I struggled. Adam lifted me backward out of the water.

“Let me go!” I hollered, not looking at him, still leaning toward the water and trying to struggle free. e flashlight clattered to the dock. “I saw it. I can still get it. Let me go!”

“You’re not supposed to get your stitches wet,” he said.

I wanted to point out that he would not know this, since he didn’t stick around the emergency room long enough to hear what the doctor had to say. en I remembered Adam had a lot more experience with stitches than I did.

And then, out the corner of my eye, I saw a blur, and Adam was gone. An enormous splash backed everyone away from the water. Adam and Sean flailed in the lake.

“Get their parents,” I said over my shoulder. If Cameron or McGillicuddy had been there, they would have stepped forward before now. And Sean’s friends and Adam’s friends never intervened, like fights between brothers were somehow sacred. I watched Adam and Sean in the water to make sure neither of them went down for too long—

though there wasn’t much I could have done if they had. Nothing seemed to be happening behind me. e crowd watched the show as attentively as I did. I turned around and screamed, “Go get their parents!” Three people ran up the dock and through the yard.

I jumped out of the way as one of the boys hauled himself up the ladder. He snapped his legs up before the other boy could drag him back into the lake. But then the second boy grabbed the top of the ladder, swung himself onto the dock, and tackled the first.

ere didn’t seem much point in explaining to Adam that Sean had only attacked him because Sean and I were pretending to be a couple and trying to make Adam jealous. After one of them had hit the other, it didn’t really matter why anymore, at least not to them. I bent as close to them as I dared and hollered, “I’ve already told your parents.”

“Sean, stop,” came Rachel’s voice from the crowd, ever-helpful.

I expected them to roll toward me. I’d have to jump out of the way as they wrestled on the dock and caught each other in various choke holds. Instead, the boy on top punched the one on bottom, a pop to the nose. The fight came to an abrupt stop.

The crowd gasped. They murmured, “No, that’s Adam on top. Adam kicked Sean’s ass.”

Adam sat on Sean’s chest, his right fist clenching and unclenching. I couldn’t see his face or Sean’s in the dim light, but I could tell from the way they held themselves that they were giving each other the evil eye. And I knew I shouldn’t be worried anymore about pulling Sean off Adam, protecting Adam from Sean.

Adam said so quietly I could hardly hear him over the waves lapping against the dock, “Don’t you ever hit me again.” The murmur up the hill increased, and the crowd in the yard began to part. Mr. Vader was coming. But it was Mrs. Vader who came running in her bathrobe.

“Sean!” she called when she hadn’t even hit the dock yet. “Sean, get off him!” As the crowd slowed her down, she said, “You two have got to stop doing this. You’re going to kill each other.” She made it through the wall of people and stopped short.

“I’m through,” Adam said. He eased off Sean and stood up.

Sean sat up, looking down. His nose streamed blood.

Mr. Vader said behind us, “Hey. Is that my beer?”

I’d seen enough. I pushed my way through the crowd, up the pier, into the grass. Knots of people followed me with their eyes, turning as I passed. Cameron, McGillicuddy, and Tammy jogged down from the house. Tammy called to me. I shook my head and kept going. ey didn’t come toward me. ey must have seen the expression on my face.

When I reached the darkest shadows of the trees between our houses, I looked back. Mrs. Vader stood in front of Adam in their yard, with her hands on her hips. He shivered in his soaked clothes. She put out her arms for him. He walked into her embrace and put his head down on her shoulder. She rubbed his back to warm him.

Furious as I was with him, I hoped he didn’t get in too much trouble—about the beer, and especially about the fight with Sean. I hoped his parents understood this fight was inevitable, with or without Rachel and me and MTV reality shows. And that tonight was the first night of the rest of his life.

It was not, however, the first night of the rest of my life. It was night 5,843, and felt like it.

I stepped into the kitchen and closed the door. I dripped all over the floor. Dad freaked out about stuff like this. Someone might slip! I’d have to find a towel in the laundry room and drag it behind me all the way to the den—unless, of course, he heard me come in and called to me to ask me how my night went. en I’d have an excuse to skip the towel. I could sit in his lap, even though I was soaked. I could break down, and he could tell me what to do about Adam.

He didn’t call to me. Maybe he hadn’t heard me in my bare feet. I opened and closed some kitchen drawers gratuitously. Still he didn’t call to me.

I gave up, got a towel out of the laundry room, and scooted it across the floor with my feet, catching the water that dripped from me. As I headed through the den to the stairs up to my room, I saw Dad. He’d fallen asleep on the sofa in front of the TV, cell phone gripped on his chest. I was on my own.

I walked up the stairs, which took more energy than usual. There were a lot of stairs. Thirteen, to be exact: 1. Made

2. You

3. Change

4. From

5. What

6. You

7. Were

8. In

9. To

10. A

11. First

12. Class

13. Bitch

By the time I got to the top, I was pooped, and not furious anymore. Confused and hurt about Tammy. Hurt and sad about Adam.

A long time passed before I realized I was standing in my dark room, listening to the laughter and music from the party outside.

Closing my door behind me, I slid my wet clothes off. Oh God, dead wet cell phone in my skirt pocket. ere went my birthday money from my grandparents. I didn’t need to turn on the light to find my mother’s sweet sixteen disco dress in my closet, because it practically glowed in the dark. I slipped it on and walked to the window.

Sean and Adam lay on that strip of grass between our yards where they liked to fight each other because their mom couldn’t see them from their house. Adam and Sean had finally killed each other! No—Adam’s arms were behind his head. Sean’s legs were bent, with one foot propped casually on the opposite knee. ey watched the stars, talking.

Talking!

Adam sat up. He wore his sweatshirt with his football number on the back, the one I’d borrowed last weekend. He shook a little like he was shivering again. He stuck his hands in his pockets. He pulled out one hand and looked at it, then looked over his shoulder at my house. He’d found my eyelash comb.

Maybe he saw my dress glowing in the moonlight, because he turned all the way around to stare. Now Sean sat up and turned around, too. Or maybe it was Sean and then Adam. I couldn’t tell them apart in the dark. It didn’t matter now, anyway. Bwa-ha-ha, I hope I creeped them out like Miss Havisham ( Great Expectations, eighth grade English).

But one of them was Adam. Tingles crept up my arms and across my chest at the thought of him watching me. is would have to stop. Pining after Sean had been bad enough. At least I’d always thought pining after Sean would have a happy ending. I knew no good would come from pining after Adam. Plus it was a lot more real to me now, not a cartoon relationship lost but a real boyfriend, a real friend. I choked back a sob as my throat closed up.

I watched him for a little longer. Yes, I could tell him from Sean, even at a distance, even in the dark. e way he moved his head, the way he tapped his fingers on the ground in that fidget I’d fallen in love with. That could have been me instead of Sean, sitting with Adam in the dark. But there wasn’t a way to fix this.

Ten years from now, I’d be married to someone I’d met at college. Adam would be married to someone he’d met on the bomb squad. We’d all come home to visit our parents at anksgiving. Adam and I would see each other out on the docks. We would feel obliged to talk for a few minutes and laugh uncomfortably about this one summer that had ruined our friendship forever. And then we’d walk away.

I looked at the clock on my bedside table behind me. 12:02. I closed the window shade, blocking out the party and Sean and Adam. I slipped off the disco dress and folded it into a big box with the scrapbook Mom and I had made to fill in with pictures of my sixteenth birthday. Standing in a chair precariously balanced on books, mags, and Mr. Wuggles—God only knew what was under there, really—I slid the box onto a shelf in the top of my closet. Where it belonged.

I woke to Kelly Clarkson’s “Breakaway.”

My body had gotten used to waking at this time. I didn’t remember my dreams.

I would miss them.

But I tried to shake it off. I tried not to wish Adam would show up with a birthday present for me—even though I’d forgotten to get one for him! I would have the usual birthday breakfast with Dad and McGillicuddy, just like every year, and then I’d try to get through my first-ever day of avoiding my ex-best friend. While I worked at his parents’ marina. And he worked there too. Easy.

For breakfast, Dad made me pancakes with blueberries in the shape of smiley faces, because he was a dork. Between the butter and the syrup, McGillicuddy handed me a long tube-shaped present. Actually it was just a wrapping paper tube with the wrapping paper still on it, and something rolled up inside. Boys were like that. He saw my look and shrugged. “It would have been a waste of perfectly good wrapping paper. This worked.” Still giving him the look, I pulled out the contents of the tube and unrolled a wakeboarding poster. “Dallas Friday!” I exclaimed. “Dallas Friday shattered her femur doing a whirlybird.”

“I thought it was perfect for the occasion,” McGillicuddy said. “Fearless.”

Dad cleared his throat and pushed a little box across the table to me. It was beautifully wrapped with an intricate bow that most girls would keep on their bulletin boards.

Obviously wrapped in a store. I slipped the bow off intact and tried to unstick the paper without tearing it. It tore by accident and then, what the hell, I ripped it off.

I flipped open the velvet ring box. Inside was a silver ring with pearls and diamonds. It looked real. Was I supposed to bite it to make sure? No, that was gold coins in cowboy movies. It also looked vaguely familiar. “You didn’t get this at the store.”

“I had them check the settings,” Dad said. “They cleaned it and wrapped it for you.”

I examined the ring more closely. “It belonged to Mom.”

“Her parents gave it to her for her sixteenth birthday.”

I looked into his eyes, so full of concern. We had a touching moment. en of course McGillicuddy dropped his fork and went under the table to hunt for it, and it was hard to keep the touching moment going while McGillicuddy sat on my toes. “Ow!” I kicked him.

“When you were younger,” Dad said, “I thought you’d never wear it, because it wasn’t your style. Lately, I’m not so sure. I thought I should give you the choice.” I freed it from the box and slipped it onto my finger. It was a crazy ring, diamonds glinting in contrast with the smooth pearls. And it was heavy. If I ever got in a fix in a dark alley, I could use it as brass knuckles. Or if I was cornered on a rooftop, I could hook it onto a clothesline and slide to freedom like James Bond. Don’t try this at home.

“I’ll wear it because it’s a part of me,” I said. “ank you, Dad.” I walked around the table and hugged him. en I sat back down, took another bite of pancake, and stared straight ahead at the empty chair.

And I realized for the first time ever that we kept an empty chair at the table. ere were three of us. You would think we would have three chairs normally, and bring in a fourth when Adam came to dinner, which clearly wouldn’t be happening anymore. It wasn’t like the table was square, and a chair missing from the fourth side would be conspicuous. The table was round, and could have three chairs as easily as four or five or eight.

I was swallowing my pancakes in order to point this out when Dad said, “I need to tell you something, Bill. I don’t want you to see me on the bank during the wakeboarding show and wipe out because of the shock. We’ve had enough wakeboard falls for one lifetime.” He took a sip of coffee. “I have a date for the Crappie Festival.” He took another sip of coffee. “It’s Frances.”

I sat still, thinking back to that talk I’d had with Frances. She’d said, You’re the only one who comes to visit. Except—

McGillicuddy didn’t budge, either. Dad must have taken our nonreaction as disapproval. “I never said anything while she worked here,” he hurried on. “I never did anything. We were coping so well, for a grieving family—”

“Except for when you sent me to the shrink,” I pointed out.

He continued more loudly, “—and I was terrified of messing that up.” He turned to McGillicuddy. “But now you’ve got a foot or two out the door.” He turned to me.

“And you’re—” He sighed. “Grown. I thought it would be okay now.” He took still another sip of coffee, nonchalant, but his eyes darted to McGillicuddy and me in turn.

“Even if it’s not okay, I’m still going out with her.”

We sat in silence a few moments more. Then McGillicuddy hollered, “Fanny the Nanny!”

“It’s all very Jane Eyre of you, Dad,” I said. McGillicuddy had read Jane Eyre in ninth grade English, and then I’d read it in ninth grade English. We’d wished we had Frances back just so we could make Jane Eyre jokes.

McGillicuddy snorted. “Hide the lighter fluid.”

“Check the attic,” I said.

Dad sat back in his chair, relaxing a little.

“No wonder she used to get so mad when Sean sang to her from The Sound of Music,” McGillicuddy said.

“Does this mean we have to start drinking soy milk again?” I asked Dad.

“I’m glad we’ve gotten this settled,” Dad said. “Bill, what’d you dream about?”

McGillicuddy blinked at the change of subject. “I can’t tell you.”

“Why not?” I grinned.

“She’s a real person.”

I took this as my cue to head for the marina. Dad would probably coax the dream out of McGillicuddy—Dad was a lawyer, after all—and I didn’t particularly want to hear just then about Tammy beating McGillicuddy at wrestling in chocolate pudding.

But McGillicuddy stood when I did. Dad looked up at him and said, “You take care of your sister today.” McGillicuddy shrugged. “How?”

Dad looked at me. “And you watch out for those boys.”

It was way too early in the morning for a breakdown, so I squeezed my eyes shut to hold back the tears and stepped out the door, calling, “I’m afraid I have nothing to be afraid of.”

In the garage, balanced on the handle of the seed spreader, looking out of place between the lawn mower and the tiller, was a long-stemmed pink rose.

McGillicuddy passed me. I called, “Tammy left you a gag gift.”

He hardly glanced at the rose on his way out the garage door. “Pink isn’t my color.”

Frances must have left it as a joke for Dad, then. I should take it into the kitchen before it wilted. Almost wishing it were mine, I ran my finger across a soft petal. My hand found a pink ribbon tied around the stem, then a tag hanging from the ribbon. e tag said in Adam’s scrawl, “YES it’s for you.” I let a little laugh escape even as my eyes filled with tears.

He’d called me a bitch. I wasn’t running back to him when he left me one rose. On the other hand, there was no need to stuff it down the garbage disposal. Maybe Adam and I could be friends again after all. Someday. Besides, I adored the scent of roses: perfume and dirt. I put the blossom to my nose, inhaled deeply, grinned, and headed to work.

Another rose lay atop the woodpile.

A third was tied to an oak tree with a hangman’s noose fashioned from kudzu vine.

A fourth stuck out of a broken brick in the seawall.

A fifth lay across the handles of the doors into the marina. ey all smelled so lovely, my blood pressure hardly went up when Mrs. Vader shrieked at me, “Where have you been?”

She must have freaked out because the marina was already swamped with customers. e Crappy Festivities today were divided among the town swimming park and the three biggest marinas on this section of the lake, including ours. We got the crowning of the Crappy Queen. I wished we got a more interesting event, such as the Crappy Toss. I could have thrown a dead fish as far up the beach as anybody. e Crappy Queen contest was just a bunch of high school girls parading up and down the wharf as Mr. Vader called their names and announced the weights of the biggest fish they’d caught all year, and what bait they’d used. At least the event did its job of bringing customers in.

Well, if Mrs. Vader wanted me there sooner, she should have told me the day before. “Where have I been?” I repeated. “I get asked that a lot for some reason.” She took the roses from me without comment and shoved me into the showroom, where a small crowd of people in shorts and flip-flops milled between the displays.