Текст книги "Endless Summer"

Автор книги: Jennifer Echols

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

“Here’s what you did wrong, Adam,” he barked. “I told your parents to make it clear to you that you were not to see Lori again. You did it anyway. at’s what you did wrong.”

“But—,” I started.

“Shhh,” Lori said beside me.

“That’s—,” I started again.

“Shut up,” Lori muttered.

“—ridiculous,” I finished.

“Adam, stop talking,” Lori said.

“Adam, stop talking,” Frances repeated.

I knew I was only getting myself in more trouble. Lori’s dad unballed and balled his fists, daring me to talk back. I was beyond caring. I was right and he was wrong. I said, “Of course I’m going to see her. I live next door.”

“Not for long,” he shouted. “Lori, go with Frances. Go home.”

I balled my own fists then. Now it sounded like Lori was a dog.

Lori gave me a wide-eyed warning look, then obediently jogged a few steps forward and walked with Frances toward her house.

Her dad turned to me. “You. Follow me.”

“Woof,” I said.

Lori and Frances both stopped under the trees and looked back at me. We all half expected Lori’s dad to really blow his top this time.

He didn’t. His balled fists expanded into claws that wanted to strangle me. Then he turned without a word and headed for my house.

Lori widened her eyes at me and nodded after her dad, urging me to go on. Frances pointed at him and gave me the stern nanny look.

I followed. But I let him get a good thirty feet ahead of me so he’d worry. at far away, he couldn’t hear my footsteps across the pine needles. He kept looking over his shoulder to make sure I hadn’t escaped. We continued past my house, all the way down to the marina. He waited for me outside the office door with his arms folded. When I caught up with him, he swung open the office door, ready to feed me to my parents.

But the office was empty. He pointed me inside. I slouched past him and collapsed into my mother’s desk chair. I’d been so keyed up for a shouting match, I was almost disappointed it was delayed. For a few minutes, anyway.

“Stay.” He glared at me a moment more, then closed me inside the office while he went to look for my parents.

I stared at the painted metal door. Sean had drawn a smiley face on it in WD-40 when I was eight and he was ten. He blamed it on me, and Mom believed him. e huge greasy smile in the faded paint never would wash out—believe me, I’d tried. I’d been forced to try. Now it taunted me. Going in the woods with Lori had been my idea. Going parking with her last night had been my idea, too. I knew that, and yet all my troubles pointed back to Sean.

On impulse, I rolled the chair closer to the desk, snagged the phone, and punched in Rachel’s number. If it hadn’t been for Lori, I could have been into Rachel. As it was, I’d only gone out with her last month for the same reason I went out with any girl: to have some fun, but also hoping that Lori was watching and that she would finally get jealous. I liked Rachel, though. I felt bad about using her until she cheated on me with Sean. Afterward, I figured she deserved whatever she got, because of her infidelity and extremely poor taste.

She must have recognized the marina office number on her cell phone and thought it might be Sean, because her voice sounded tight, like she could hardly contain herself. “Hello?”

“It’s only me.” I hadn’t meant to disappoint her.

“Hey, Adam!” she squealed. She didn’t want me to feel bad for making her feel bad. Which was cute and all. Rachel was a really nice person. But if I’d gone into the woods with Rachel and then called Lori, Lori would have answered with a cackle and a “So, did you get some?” I missed her already.

“Hey,” I said. I was lucky Rachel had answered her phone. Now that I had her, I needed to get what I wanted from her as quickly as I could. Lori would call her soon for a girl talk about what an idiot I was for not going along with her plan. I had to get Rachel on my side now, before my dad came in and grabbed me. “What’s up with you and Sean?”

“What do you mean?” she snapped. “Did he say something about me?”

Just as I’d suspected. “He didn’t say a word,” I admitted.

She let out a little huff of frustration. “Then why do you think there’s something up between us?”

“Not between you,” I said. “It’s all one-sided. You got mad at him and broke up with him last week. He came groveling back to you but you blew him off. You expected him to crawl back again. He hasn’t. He talked to you at the festival yesterday but he didn’t ask you out. Am I right?”

“Well.” Her voice pitched even higher as she got upset. “I broke up with him because it seemed like he only wanted to date me to make you mad. After we broke up, I thought he would take a few days and realize how wrong he’d been, and then he’d beg to have me back and he’d appreciate me more. I never thought I would break up with him and he would shrug and say, ‘Okay’!”

“I can tell,” I said. “You pranced around in your bikini at the lake this afternoon and he still didn’t ask you out. He is not acting like the boys you’ve dated before at all.”

“You can lose the superior tone, Adam Vader,” she said sternly. “e last boy I dated before Sean was you.” She paused. “Of course, you only asked me out to make Lori jealous.”

I laughed. Not a desperate-about-my-girlfriend laugh, but a cavalier laugh like Sean’s. I felt ill. “That’s why I’m calling.”

“You want to make Lori jealous again?” Rachel guessed. “The two of you have enough problems.”

“Tell me about it.” e sick feeling grew. I winced at another of those pangs in my stomach, just like this morning when I found out I was banned from Lori. en I said, “Lori still likes Sean.”

“She does not!” Rachel squealed. I heard her swallow. She said more calmly, “She does not, Adam. She likes you. You should have heard her talking about you on the boat this afternoon.”

You should have heard her talking about Sean in the woods, I thought. “Here’s the thing. She’s forming this plan—”

“Uh-oh,” Rachel said.

“—to date other guys until I don’t look so awful to her dad.”

“But she’s not dating Sean,” Rachel said.

“Not yet,” I admitted. “But she will. If this goes on long enough, I promise you she will.”

“I don’t believe it,” Rachel said. “And even if I did—”

I had her.

“—what could I do about it?”

“Nothing yet,” I said. “But when the time comes, I want you to be prepared. I may ask you to do something that would help me keep Lori interested or to send Sean your way.” I felt guilty as I said this. Sean and I had promised to stay out of each other’s way when it came to Lori and Rachel.

I talked myself out of it. I could count on one hand the number of promises to me that Sean had kept.

In fact, upon further reflection, I couldn’t think of a single one.

“I don’t know,” Rachel said. “Lori and I haven’t been friends very long. I wouldn’t feel right, going behind her back like that.”

“She’ll forgive you,” I said. “She’s very forgiving. And you’d be doing her good. You want to keep her away from Sean, don’t you? He’s bad news.” Rachel giggled at this. She’d always giggled at pretty much everything I said—another thing I liked about her. She was easy to please. is went a long way toward explaining her infatuation with Sean. I chuckled along with her, even though I was dead serious.

She quieted down and asked, “You think I’m an idiot for liking him, don’t you?”

“No. I think you have the same taste as every other girl at our high school. I don’t understand that big belt over the long shirt, either.”

“It’s called a tunic.”

“It’s called ugly. And one more thing.”

She sighed. “What.”

“Don’t tell Lori you’ve been to my secret make-out hideout. If she asks you about it, tell her that you and I never went there.”

“Why would she care?” Rachel asked. “You and I went there when we were dating, before you and Lori got together.”

“Yeah, but she thinks she was the first, and I didn’t tell her otherwise.”

Rachel was quiet for a few moments. In the background I could hear her little sisters yelling at each other about something. If she was trying to figure out how boys’

minds worked, she was way out of her element. She was no Lori.

Finally she said, “I don’t want to lie to her. Like I told you, she and I haven’t been friends very lo—” I interrupted her before she went any farther down that high-and-mighty path. Time to play the sympathy card, which never worked on Lori but was a sure thing with every other girl I knew. “Lori and I are going through a tough time right now. You would be helping, not hurting. Please help me, Rachel.”

“It just doesn’t make any sense,” she said weakly. “I thought you did want to make her jealous. If you want me to conceal from her that I’ve been to your hideout, it sounds like you don’t want to make her jealous.”

“I don’t want to make her jealous yet,” I explained. “She hasn’t gone out with Sean yet. Right now I want her to feel special, like she’s the only girl I ever introduced to my secret make-out hideout. It’s only after she goes out with Sean that I’m going to pull the rug out from under her.”

“Adam Vader,” Rachel said. “I had no idea you were so sneaky.”

“Right. That makes me even sneakier. Deal?”

We hung up, and I felt guilty all over again. I was worried about Lori going out with Sean, but I was actually more worried Lori would discover she wasn’t the first to experience the secret make-out hideout. I wished she had been the first and I’d never taken Rachel there. I didn’t want to see Lori’s face when she found out otherwise.

I could have admitted this to Rachel. Maybe I should have. But I didn’t trust her after she’d cheated on me with Sean.

Of course, she was right that I’d only gone out with her to make Lori jealous. She had no reason to trust me, either. We made perfect partners in crime.

Suddenly I realized how tense I was, leaning forward and gripping the edge of the metal desk with both hands. I leaned back in the chair. is didn’t relax me any. I found myself staring up at the bulletin board over the desk. Tacked to it were business cards for boat sales reps, a diagram of an F/A-18 Hornet that Cameron had drawn when he was about ten (and I thought he was so impossibly old), the schedule for everybody who worked at the marina (Lori was under Sean, I noticed with annoyance), and a brochure for a military boarding school. I’d almost forgotten my parents were thinking about sending me away.

I’d told Lori’s dad he couldn’t keep me from seeing Lori because I lived next door. When he’d said, “Not for long,” that’s what he must have meant. at’s what he was talking to my parents about right now.

They wouldn’t do that to me. Would they?

No, they wouldn’t. Not yet. Not just because Lori’s dad told them to.

But the threat was there. Last year when I was flunking chemistry, my mom started investigating schools. She’d asked Lori’s dad about it because he had a fraternity brother who’d gone to one, and who might be able to get me into a good one for those of us with ADHD, instead of one full of actual juvenile delinquents. is was my mother’s fear—that if she sent me away to clean up my act, I’d actually become more corrupted and learn to pick locks better. It was all the same to me. Prison was prison.

I’d brought up my chemistry grade by the end of the semester, though. I hadn’t improved my test scores, but the longer the class went on, the more our grade was based on lab. I was excellent at lab. Unlike every nerdy girl in the class and half the guys, I was not afraid of the Bunsen burner.

I’d worked my ass off for that C, all for nothing.

This office had no windows.

I jumped up from the tiny chair, kicked open the door, and escaped from my cell.

Around the side of the warehouse, I fished my football out of the bushes. I jogged about ten yards up the boat ramp, aimed carefully, and fired a pass at one of the huge metal doors.

BANG.

Bull’s-eye. I ran after the ball and stopped it before it rolled into the yard and down the hill into the lake. I jogged back up the ramp with it and let another pass fly.

BANG.

If Lori’s dad had found my parents in the warehouse and they were looking for me now, the noise would notify them of my whereabouts. I didn’t care. e more passes I threw, the better I felt.

BANG.

“Adam!” my dad roared. e sun was setting now. From where I stood on the ramp, the corner of the warehouse appeared to cut the huge orange sun exactly in half. My dad walked toward me out of that orange glow, like the devil. He hiked up the ramp and stopped near me, stroking his beard.

I can’t repeat in mixed company any of what he said to me. However, I can convey the general import of the message by replacing the word I shouldn’t have said in front of my mother with the word “monkey.” I hate monkeys.

“Son,” he said, “you monkeyed up.”

“I know.” I put off the rest of this conversation by running after the football again. But when I returned to my starting spot, he was still there.

“Now, I’m not going to send you to military school just because Trevor McGillicuddy has his panties in a wad.”

“Thanks,” I said.

BANG.

He raised his voice. “But the reason I will send you is the reason your mama and I were discussing it in the first place. You have absolutely no monkeying self-control.

None.”

“Thanks for nothing.” I ran down the ramp to retrieve my football.

“at’s a prime monkeying example,” he shouted after me. “You’re in trouble and you’re still talking back. People like you end up in jail, son. Nobody is going to help you out then. Trevor’s already so mad at you he could spit, and I’m not wasting my boat money paying for a lawyer to defend you for a crime you’re likely guilty of anyway.”

I walked back up the ramp, tossing the football from hand to hand. I tucked it under one arm and slapped my dad on the back. “Your confidence in me is heartwarming.

Makes me want to return all the money I stole from the little old ladies and kick the heroin.” He gave me the same look he’d sent my way that morning in the kitchen. I had gone too far.

I raised both hands and one football. I had no defense and nothing else to say.

“Why can’t you stay the monkey away from her?” he burst.

“Because.” This was impossible to explain. I didn’t understand it myself. I put my hands down in defeat. “It’s Lori.”

“I know,” he said. Shockingly, he sounded halfway sympathetic.

“And she’s beautiful,” I went on.

He nodded.

I pointed the football through the trees, toward her house. “And she’s right there!”

“I know, son, and it’s going to earn you a tour through the ass end of the South’s finest secondary schools for monkey-ups.” I bounced the football on the side of my head in frustration. “What do you want me to do?” He pursed his lips and eyed me in the dusk. “Show me you have one iota of self-restraint.”

“I will,” I said quickly.

“Stay away from her.”

“Okay.”

“Keep your hands off her.”

“I’ll try.”

He scowled at me.

“I will,” I said.

He wiggled his fingers at me. “And it might help public relations with Lori’s pop if you put on a shirt and quit walking around here like sex on a stick.” I rolled my eyes. He did make me feel self-conscious about my bare chest, though. I wanted to fold my arms. Instead, I threw the football as hard as I could at the warehouse door.

BANG.

“Nice arm,” Dad called after me as I chased the football. “Ever thought about throwing against the rock wall of the house? You’re making a dent in my door.”

at was the point. I liked making a dent. I liked watching it grow bigger with every throw. I didn’t say this, though. As I walked toward him, spinning the football on one finger, I did admit, “The metal door makes a more satisfying noise. Like fireworks. I can feel it in my chest.” He reached out and stroked my cheek with his fist. “What’s this scrub you’re working on?”

I batted his hand away. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” I yanked his beard.

He feinted toward me.

I bounced the football off his chest and caught it again. “I could so take you, old man.”

He chuckled and headed past me, up to the house. “You do what I said,” he called over his shoulder.

“I will.”

“I would hate to see you go.”

I watched him walk all the way up the yard, hands on his knees when he got to the steepest part, until he disappeared into the house.

en I looked toward Lori’s house again. It was big, but all I could see between the thick tree trunks was wooden corners and white lights. It looked exactly like it always had from over here, but I felt so much different about it now.

In my earliest memory it was a scary place, because Lori and McGillicuddy’s mother had died. Later it was a mysterious and wonderful place, like the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. I didn’t go to their house often, but when I did, McGillicuddy’s room was full of model airplanes still intact because he had no older brothers to break them on purpose, and Lori was liable to pop around the corner, treating me to a little thrill.

Lately I’d hardly dared go over there because I was sure Lori would know I liked her. When I did have an excuse to visit McGillicuddy, I walked through the halls holding my breath. e little thrill had grown into something much stronger, something that made me want to steal Lori away from McGillicuddy and get her alone. And now…

Now I just hoped she hadn’t gotten in too much trouble.

Keep my hands off her. Right. I waved fireflies away from my face and threw the football at the warehouse as hard as I could.

BANG.

As the doorbell rang, I was dumping potato chips into a bowl. is was something one did when having one’s friends over for lunch. is was, in fact, the only thing I could think of that one did when hostessing a lunch.

At the sound of the bell, I glanced toward the door and tried to slow my pulse. It was not Adam, miraculously freed from the wrath of his parents (and my dad). It was Tammy and Rachel, who’d agreed to come over again today to help me figure out what to do. They were conniving, like all girls but me. I figured they could troubleshoot.

“Heeeey,” I wailed.

Tammy and Rachel made unfamiliar girly noises of sympathy and wrapped me in a group hug. “Oh, no!” Rachel exclaimed. “Have you been crying?”

“I’m all cried out.” My voice was muffled against Tammy’s T-shirt—which was safe from stains, because I never wore makeup to work. I wished I could have enjoyed the group hug and taken them up on the implicit invitation to cry my eyes out all over again. is was why they’d driven out here on my lunch break. is was what girls did.

But I really had depleted my store of tears, and probably lost five pounds of water weight in the process, while dusting the marina showroom with Sean this morning.

Plus, weird as it had been to show my emotional side to Sean, it would have been even stranger to cry in front of my brother, who would be back any second. Now that he and Tammy were together, I supposed he would listen in on all my girly confabs. Not that I’d ever had any of those before.

Plus, now that I’d rid myself of the initial hysteria at getting Adam in even more trouble, I couldn’t concentrate on crying. I was thinking too hard about my plan for getting us out of this mess.

e girls and I detangled ourselves from one another and stepped into the kitchen, shutting the door on the midday heat. “It’s so romantic,” Rachel said. “Like Romeo and Juliet!”

“Romantic, no,” I said. “Like Romeo and Juliet, yes, except that it’s real. With suckage.”

“Give us the scoop.” Tammy slid into a chair in front of the bread and sandwich meat I’d piled on the kitchen table. “Did your dad convince Adam’s parents to punish him?” She glanced around the kitchen as she said this. I knew she wasn’t as interested in the scoop on Adam as the scoop on my brother’s whereabouts.

“I don’t know yet,” I said. “McGillicuddy’s supposed to be down at the gas pumps, finding out from Adam right now. I worked with Sean and Cameron this morning, but neither of them knew anything. They weren’t around when Adam got in trouble. They asked him later what happened, and he told them to screw off.”

“Poor thing.” Rachel, who was still standing next to me, slipped her arm around my waist.

I shot a sideways look at her. “Poor thing” was right. I felt awful for Adam. But I didn’t necessarily want Rachel feeling awful for him—not when she’d been dating him two weeks ago. I was not schooled enough in the arts of girls to know whether she was bullshitting me or not. I was about to call her on it when McGillicuddy walked in.

“Hi, Rachel,” he said. “Hi, Tammy,” he said in a different tone. He stepped over to the kitchen table and kissed her. At first I thought this was going to be a McGillicuddy-style peck. Historically he was not good with girls. But this turned into something more. They kissed quite deeply in the middle of the kitchen.

Rachel and I looked at each other. She removed her arm from around my waist. I walked to the table, picked up a fork, and dinged it on a glass. “Hello, no PDA in the business meeting. We are here to rescue my love life, not to advance yours.”

They broke apart, glaring at me. McGillicuddy was as pink as the sliced ham on the table.

We all sat down, and I passed around ingredients for them to make their own sandwiches. All three of them shot me strange looks every time I passed something new.

Perhaps other girls actually made lunch when they invited people over? en I followed their gazes to the jars on the table. I hadn’t been handing around condiments you’d usually put on a sandwich. I’d just cleared out the door of the refrigerator and plunked the contents on the table, thinking this stuff must be good for something, though I’d never seen anyone use it.

I picked up a Mason jar with green oozing down the sides and showed it to my brother. “Look, this is from five years ago when Frances was our nanny, not our dad’s squeeze. Remember the organic muscadine chutney? Ah, memories.” I hugged it to my cheek. Shocked by the cold (and the sticky), I plunked it onto the table again.

“Sometimes it’s good to let go.”

With her finger wrapped safely in a napkin, Rachel eased the jar a few inches farther from her plate. “Could I have a knife?”

“I’m not sure even a knife will help you hack into that Mason jar,” I said. “It’s pretty ol—”

“For the mayo,” Rachel said.

Realizing I had supplied no utensils for the grand repast, I jumped up, crossed the kitchen, and opened what I thought was the knife drawer. Clearly I had not prepared food in a while. is was a drawer full of kitchen tools we had no use for when Frances was not around, such as the avocado slicer, the garlic press, and the melon baller. I’d had a lot of fun cooking with Frances back in the day. She thought she was teaching me to cook, which made her happy. I mashed food like it was Play-Doh and learned nothing, which made me equally happy.

I grabbed a few implements in case someone needed them, sat back down, and handed Rachel a butter knife. en I asked my brother, “What’d you find out about Adam?”

“Well,” he said between bites, “there’s some talk of military school.”

“What!” I shouted. “Adam would be the worst person in the world to go to military school.”

“I think that’s the idea,” my brother said. “You go into military school because you’re undisciplined and unmilitary. They make you toe the line.” I felt like my insides had been scooped out with the melon baller in front of me. Adam did not toe the line. at was why he was in so much trouble. But that was also one of the things I loved about him. A disciplined and military Adam would not be a new and improved Adam. It would not be Adam at all.

“But they’re not sending him yet,” McGillicuddy went on. “ey’ve talked about it before, and this latest problem”—he glanced at me, like I was the problem—“has brought up the discussion again. They won’t send him if he stays away from you.”

“They’re saying, ‘Stay away from your girlfriend or we’ll send you to military school’?” I asked. “That makes no sense.”

“It’s more like they’re saying, ‘We gave you simple instructions and you couldn’t follow them.’” I threw a potato chip at my brother. Rachel and Tammy ducked, as if people did not throw food at their tables. “You don’t have to act so smug about it,” I said. “You helped him polish the marks out of the boat faster. You sent him in my direction.”

“Isn’t the issue really that your parents are watching you all the time?” Tammy asked. “You could both quit the marina and get jobs at the same place somewhere else.” I frowned at her. I hadn’t thought of this. If I got a job on land, I might dry up. I couldn’t imagine a summer away from the lake. But to save Adam from military school, it would be more than worth it. I asked, “Like where?”

“You both have your lifeguard certification,” Tammy said. “You could work at the city pool or the country club.”

“Yeah!” I exclaimed. Work and water!

Rachel shook her head. “Adam wouldn’t be able to stay still in that lifeguard chair for more than five minutes.”

“Yeah,” I said. She knew this because she’d dated Adam. However, I did not want to be reminded of this at the present time. Waving away Tammy’s amateurish idea, I said, “I already wanted to talk to y’all about this, but military school makes it even more important. Adam won’t follow this order from his parents. ere’s my irresistible beauty and allure—”

Tammy laughed.

“—shut up, and then there’s the very idea of his parents telling him he can’t do something. It’s a perfect storm for Adam to self-destruct. I need to get us out of this mess before that happens. And I have a plan.” I explained my ingenious mission with Kevin Ye, ignoring Rachel when she choked on her lemonade at several points. I finished,

“Isn’t that a good plan?”

“No,” McGillicuddy spoke up, “but it’s consistent.”

I went on. “The problem with this plan—”

“The problem?” Tammy asked. “Like there’s only one?”

“—is that I ran it by Adam, and he does not like it.”

“You have got to be kidding,” McGillicuddy said flatly.

“It’s the Kevin Ye aspect. Adam doesn’t want me dating a felon.” Or his brother, or his other brother. “It could still work if I thought of someone who passed muster with Adam and horrified my dad at the same time.”

“What about Parker Buchanan?” Rachel asked. “Your dad must know him by reputation. Everybody in town’s heard that he made out with three different girls in the food court at the Birmingham mall and all their boyfriends tried to jump him in the parking lot.”

“That’s perfect!” I pounded my fist on the table. Rachel’s lemonade sloshed over the side of her glass. “Sorry.” I stood up to snag a towel.

“I was joking,” Rachel said.

My brother warned her, “Do not make jokes to Lori that you don’t want to be misunderstood and taken seriously.”

“Why is Parker perfect?” Tammy asked. “He’s a playboy who lives on the edge. Why would that be so scary to your dad? He sounds like a combination of Adam and Sean.”

“Yes, but he’s from Birmingham,” I pointed out as I wiped up the lemonade at Rachel’s place—or tried to, and ended up scooting the puddle into her lap. “Sorry. Maybe you should do this.” I handed her the towel and sat back down in my place. “You know how people around here feel about Birmingham. You don’t even have to explain that anything from Birmingham is more intense. If you wreck your car and people want to know how badly you were hurt, all you have to say is, ‘e ambulance took me straight to Birmingham,’ and everybody knows you went to the university hospital because you were at death’s door. If you’re going on a date and you say, ‘We went to Birmingham,’ people know your boyfriend took you to the fanciest restaurant in the state because he’s trying to get in your pants.” McGillicuddy cleared his throat. Next to him, Tammy took a huge bite of her sandwich. He must be taking her on a date to Birmingham sometime soon.

To cover his own embarrassment—or just to make sure he understood my plan, but I doubted this—my brother reached behind him and snagged the pad and pen on the counter beside the phone. He drew a little diagram. “So an ADHD boyfriend is bad, and a playboy ADHD boyfriend would be worse, but a playboy ADHD boyfriend from Birmingham is the top of this hierarchy.”

“at’s what I’m counting on,” I said. “I would not rely on Parker’s reputation alone. I would go out with him on a couple of dates, enough to let Dad know we’re getting serious, and then stage a Teen Crisis.”

Everybody cracked up but me. Tammy asked, “What kind of Teen Crisis?”

“I have no idea,” I said defensively. “You’ve been watching MTV longer than I have.”

“Are you just going to flirt with Parker and win him over,” Rachel asked, “or are you going to explain to him what you’re doing?”

“I’ll explain to him what I’m doing,” I said. “Otherwise I would feel awful. What if he fell for me for real?” Rachel and Tammy looked at each other.

“It is not beyond the realm of possibility,” I grouched.

“What makes you think he’ll do it?” Tammy asked.

“I’ll offer him something in return. I’ll take him around town, introduce him to people, show him where we hang out. I will leave out the part where I am extremely unpopular and kind of socially challenged. Do you think he might believe I’m popular?”

“Depends on how long you’re together,” Rachel said. “He’ll wise up eventually.”

My brother tapped the pen on the pad. “Won’t you feel guilty for lying to Dad?”

I did feel a twinge of guilt at that, but anger took over. “I won’t be lying to him. I will be going out with Parker. I might not be going out with him with romantic intensions, but I will not say I am. Dad will only infer this, and everybody knows you should not infer anything. You should get it in writing.” All this lawyer lingo reminded me that my brother was leaving behind incriminating evidence. I reached across the table, snatched the pad in front of him, and tore out the sheet where he’d made little notes about the plan. I tore out the sheet under that, too, in case the imprint of the pen was clear enough to show up if a paranoid father rubbed a pencil across it. I tore both sheets into a pile of tiny pieces while the three of them watched me as if I had completely lost my mind.

“e thing is,” I said, trying to sound sane, “I need to explain all this to Adam in private. I can’t get McGillicuddy to explain it to him. Something will be lost in the translation.”