Текст книги "Endless Summer"

Автор книги: Jennifer Echols

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

I shook my head. “I hate to be the one to tell you, but real girls do not want threesomes.” Like I knew. He was the one in college.

He looked at me in horror.

I shrugged. “Sorry.” Then I asked, “Was Miss Portman wearing leather?” I was just making conversation. I could predict the answer.

“How did you know?”

“I am very sneaky.” I pulled into the movie theater parking lot, stopped my truck in a space nose-to-nose with the Beamer, and cut the engine.

e summer twilight was fading fast. e sky was pale pink behind the theater. Streetlights flickered overhead but couldn’t quite commit to glowing at full power. e parking lot was packed full of cars and pickup trucks—it was Alabama, after all—but a lot of them were still occupied. High school kids pulled up next to each other and talked through their rolled-down windows. ey held miniature tailgating parties in their trailer beds. A roving band of football players stopped at truck after truck, spreading rumors and stirring up trouble. At least, that’s what I figured. I couldn’t hear them, but I’d spent a lot of time in this parking lot.

“I can tell you’re sneaky,” McGillicuddy said sarcastically. “at’s why you parked right in front of her. I hope you wanted her to know you’re following her. And I’m warning you, I don’t think she’s going to like it.”

“I don’t care whether she likes it or not,” I lied. In reality I was trying to figure out where she’d gone. It was common for guys from my high school to say they were going to the movies with a girl. is did not necessarily mean they were going into a movie. ere was a lot to do at or around the movie without paying to sit indoors for an hour and a half in the dark while enormous heads talked at you and the explosions were few and far between. Often there was more violence outside the movie than inside. Possibly more sex. Almost certainly more shots fired.

Naturally I assumed that when Lori said she and Parker were going to the movies, she meant they were driving into the vicinity of the movie theater, parking in the lot, and showing off her new driver’s license and her dad’s Beamer to whoever drove by. That was bad enough. But she was inside the theater? In the dark? With Parker? I looked through the binoculars. The movie theater lobby was empty.

“Let me ask you something,” McGillicuddy said. “Your short-term goal here is to monitor Lori’s date with Parker. If you ruined her date with Parker, that would be okay with you too.”

“Duh.”

“And then what?”

I put the binoculars down on the window frame and turned to look at him. “What do you mean, ‘And then what?’”

“Lori’s going out with Parker because she’s trying to convince Dad to let the two of you date again. If you mess up her plan, you won’t get to date her and she’ll be mad at you.”

“What’s your point?”

“I’m trying to figure out your long-term goal. What do you expect to happen after you scare the bejeezus out of Parker and piss off Lori?”

“Long-term goal?” I mused. “I don’t have any of those.”

“Maybe you sh—”

“Vaderrrrr!” ree guys from my football team finished hanging through somebody else’s truck window and jogged over to mine. ey poked their heads into my personal space and yelled, “McGillicuddeeeee!” They reeked of beer.

“Hello.” McGillicuddy saluted them.

ey retreated through the window, thank God. “What’cha doing with the binoculars?” the left tackle asked, grabbing them. “Wouldn’t happen to have something to do with anybody’s hot mess of a blonde girlfriend going out with Parker Buchanan, would it?”

“It might,” I admitted, grabbing the binoculars back. “I need these. We’re staking her out.”

“Stalking her out.” The running back nodded.

If there was a chance in hell I would start as quarterback in the fall, I needed to get along with the running back. I said carefully, “Staking her out.”

“You’re parked as close as you can get to her daddy’s Beamer,” the punter piped up. “You’re waiting outside the movie for her. You have binoculars. Sure seems like stalking.” The punter was a know-it-all.

“I’m not stalking her,” I insisted. “I’m making sure she’s safe. Besides, how could you stalk Lori McGillicuddy? She’d see you and come out to your truck and say, ‘Hi, I’m Lori. Are you my stalker? It’s so neat to meet you! While you’re stuck here watching my every move, can I bring you anything? Sweet tea?’” The running back laughed. “I had Spanish with her last year. You sound just like her.”

“Yeah.” I sighed.

“Too bad you weren’t out here with your binoculars ten minutes ago,” the running back said. “They were standing in the lobby, and Parker had his hand up her skirt.”

e punter and the tackle backed away from the truck, doubled over with laughter. Between gasps, the tackle called to the running back, “You know that big mofo in the truck is her brother.”

“I know,” the running back said. “I’m just saying.”

I turned to McGillicuddy. He had gone very still in the passenger seat. He gave me a dark look, asking me with his eyes whether to believe this.

I didn’t know whether to believe it either.

My so-called friends were already walking away. “Reggie,” I called to the running back. “Y’all come here.” Tears streaming down their faces, slapping each other on the shoulder, they sauntered over. I’m glad somebody thought it was funny, because I sure as hell didn’t.

I grinned. “He did not,” I said, trying to sound more skeptical than I was. When Lori was trying to get Sean, she’d made out with me. Now that she was trying to get back together with me, maybe she’d asked Parker to put his hand on her ass. Why not? “Reggie, come clean with me. Did he really?” The running back held up his hand. “I swear on the Bible.”

“You don’t have a Bible.” The movie theater parking lot was definitely not the place to be carrying one around, considering what went on out here.

“Here you go, here you go.” The tackle pulled a receipt out of his pocket and handed it to the running back.

e running back crumpled the receipt in his fist and held up his other hand. “I swear on this receipt for bubble gum and razor blades that I saw Parker Buchanan put his hand up your girlfriend’s skirt, and I wish I’d had your binoculars.”

“See you at practice in August, Vader,” the tackle called through the window. “Good luck with your stalking.”

“Staking!” said the punter. ey moved across the parking lot and stopped at the next truck with an open window. ey were probably telling the people inside that they’d seen Parker Buchanan with his hand up Adam Vader’s girlfriend’s skirt. Or, they were telling the people inside that they’d lied to me about this, and now they had a bet on how fast I got myself arrested.

“Do you believe them?” McGillicuddy asked quietly.

“Of course not,” I muttered. “They’re just trying to get a rise out of me. They’re worse than Sean.” Untrue. Nobody was worse than Sean. They were pretty bad, though.

“Why? Do you believe them?”

“She was wearing a miniskirt when she left the house,” McGillicuddy said. “I noticed this uneasily.” I turned to look at him again. Despite his size, usually he appeared friendly, like Lori, his face honest and open. At the moment, with his blond brows down and his eyes fixed on the empty lobby, he looked like murder.

“We’d better go.” I bailed out the driver’s side door at the same time McGillicuddy stepped to the ground on the passenger side.

I made sure McGillicuddy had caught up with me and was hulking behind me before I approached the guy manning the ticket booth. “Let me in for just a second.” Ticket guy looked me up and down. “No way, Vader. Pay up like everybody else.”

“All I have to do is beat the shit out of the dude my girlfriend is with,” I said, “and then I’ll leave. Promise.” Ticket guy narrowed his eyes at me. “Who’s the dude?”

“Parker Buchanan,” I said.

“My girlfriend loves Parker Buchanan,” ticket guy said in a high voice that I hoped was supposed to be his girlfriend. “She thinks Parker is the shit. I am sick of hearing about Parker.” He looked over his shoulder at the door into the theater, then turned back to me. “If I let you in, you have to wait a few minutes before you stick it to him. I need time to get up to the projection booth so I can watch.”

I nodded, then pushed through the door into the lobby. McGillicuddy followed right behind me. I thought for a second that ticket guy would say something about McGillicuddy getting in free, too. en McGillicuddy shot him the scary Gestapo look. I was a little frightened myself. I hadn’t seen that look since we played World War II.

Ticket guy disappeared up the staircase to the projection booth. I counted to thirty, nodded to McGillicuddy, and jerked open the door to the theater.

For a few seconds, I was blind in the dark. I averted my eyes from the movie screen. Gradually the silhouettes of seats and shoulders materialized, black on black. I stayed at the back of the theater, surveying the crowd.

Luckily, because it was convenient, or unluckily, because it did not bode well for Lori being on a fake date rather than on a real one, she and Parker were in the back row.

I could see right away that they weren’t making out. She sprawled across her seat with one leg tucked under her and the other knee hooked over the armrest. She’d hung around boys too long. I knew this and she knew this, but I wasn’t sure Parker knew it. If he looked where I was looking, he’d get a glimpse of the gaping hole in Lori’s skirt, which her thighs should have blocked. And he must have been as turned on by this as I would have been if I’d sat next to her, because his arm was draped around her shoulders.

I took a few steps forward until I was even with the back row and called, “Parker.”

He looked over at me, startled. Lori did too, and when her eyes slid to McGillicuddy, her mouth fell open.

“Come outside with me,” I demanded. Everybody in the back third of the theater was shushing me now. ey sounded like snakes. I’d fallen into a pit of them and was fighting my way out, getting madder every second Parker sat there with his arm around my girlfriend.

“Do not go outside with him, Parker.” Lori eased her legs together as if I wouldn’t notice how she’d been sitting as long as she moved slowly enough. “is is not the plan.”

e movie was full of explosions. A helicopter chased a car between skyscrapers in Manhattan and nearly side-swiped pedestrians or took out police cars. It was so interesting that I might have been able to sit down and watch the whole movie, at least until the explosions ended and the plot started again, if it hadn’t been for Lori. Even explosions and ADHD couldn’t divert my attention from that.

“Let’s go, Parker,” I said. I didn’t care what Lori thought anymore.

I had never been so mad at Adam, and he had never looked so perversely hot. He scowled down at me, week-old stubble on his chin making him look older than sixteen and almost authoritative. Yet light escaped the edges of the movie projection beam, softened his features, and caught in his long eyelashes.

Determined as I was to get rid of him and go ahead with my plan, he seemed equally determined to drag Parker out of the theater and start an old-fashioned duel with him, bottle rockets at twenty paces. I mean, he seemed really determined and confident, like he was finally comfortable with his newly broad, tall body and anxious for another chance to try it out.

I glanced over at Parker. When I’d called him about this date, he’d sounded excited about the prospect of seeing new popular venues in our town (movie theater! bowling alley! tennis court! that was pretty much it!) and meeting new people. In fact, he’d sounded a little too excited. And the entire half hour our fake date had lasted so far, he’d been a perfect gentleman. If you want to know the truth, I was a little disappointed.

Now, confronted with an angry boyfriend, which according to legend was a situation Parker was all too familiar with, he shrank into the red velveteen seat. He must have been caught off guard. Any second now, he would spring into action. And if we went outside the theater like Adam wanted, I was afraid someone would get hurt.

I had no choice. e longer Adam stood there (with my traitor brother behind him) grumbling at us in a threatening tone, the larger a fraction of the audience would turn around and stare unabashedly at us, just as the back ten rows were doing now. In about thirty seconds, somebody would snitch to the rent-a-cop the theater employed as a security guard and bouncer for unruly tween boys who threw bite-size candies at the screen.

“Pardon,” I said to Parker as I reached back to remove his arm from around my shoulders. “Sorry,” I murmured to the couple I slid past in the row. “I can’t believe you,” I whispered to Adam as I stepped into the aisle.

I was so furious with him. But the theater was dark, and I was close to him for the first time in almost a week, if you didn’t count standing next to him on the dock yesterday and getting clobbered with his football pass. My skin tingled with awareness as I came within inches of him, and the hair on my arms stood up. I almost looked forward to the opportunity to tell him off.

I stopped when I reached my brother blocking the aisle. He actually looked angry at me. He was never angry at me. But no—his angry expression was directed past me, at Parker. None of this made any sense. Adam might have gotten dragged into my plan kicking and screaming, but the plan with Parker was McGillicuddy pre-approved!

McGillicuddy and I had discussed it!

I waited for Parker to catch up with me. Adam fell in behind us as if he and McGillicuddy were our jailers. With Parker’s reputation, I figured he probably got hauled into fake-boyfriend status every day of the week. Each weekend he probably really stole someone’s girlfriend. He could handle himself with Adam, I was sure. But I hadn’t prepared him for this level of rudeness from Adam. I took Parker’s hand.

Strangely, he refused my hand. It was hard to tell in the dark, but it sure seemed to me like my hand chased his hand back and forth around his hip, and his hand conducted evasive maneuvers. I knew he did not find me so loathsome that he would refuse to touch me—he’d just had his arm around me, after all. Perhaps he needed the barrier of clothing. Perhaps he didn’t want to hold my hand in front of Adam. Maybe he knew it would hurt Adam’s feelings. Maybe he was scared of Adam. But none of these things was part of the Parker I knew by reputation.

So I walked up the aisle and through the bright lobby by myself, rejected from holding Parker’s hand, wishing I were holding Adam’s. It occurred to me that this sort of teen intrigue was exactly what I’d always dreamed about as a tomboy tween paging longingly through fashion magazines that might as well have been written in Russian, as much as I understood about hobo bags and ankle boots.

“Vader!” called the movie worker standing in the doorway of the stairs up to the projection booth. “You didn’t beat the shit out of him. You owe me your admission fee.”

“I was in there for two minutes,” Adam said through his teeth.

“That wasn’t the agreement,” said the movie worker.

I truly hoped the movie worker would get a clue and shut up soon. Adam seemed to grow taller and broader every second, and I wouldn’t have put it past him to sock Parker right there, if that was the deal Adam had arranged with the movie worker, and then to sock the movie worker for good measure.

“How long is the movie?” McGillicuddy snapped.

“An hour and forty-five minutes.”

“Then he owes you seventeen cents,” McGillicuddy concluded, ever the engineering major, even when he was completely off his rocker. “Lori, give him seventeen cents.”

“There were two of you in there,” the movie worker protested. “That’s…” He took way too long to add seventeen and seventeen.

“irty-four,” I helped him out. “But Parker and I paid full price, and we were only in there for…” I pulled out the new cell phone my dad insisted I spend my birthday money on before I went on a date anywhere with anybody. I glanced at the time. “Fifteen minutes. So you actually owe us…”

“Fifteen dollars and nine cents.”

I started to grin at McGillicuddy for this brilliant bit of figuring. Then I realized the voice hadn’t come from McGillicuddy. It had come from Parker.

My astonishment at bad boy Parker letting loose with this nerd-bomb was exceeded only by Adam suddenly shouting, “LET’S GO!”

e four of us walked all the way across the parking lot. When we got close to my dad’s car, I saw that Adam had parked right in front of it. He’d pulled up so close that the bumpers were within a millimeter of touching, because Adam was like that.

I turned to McGillicuddy and said, “I need to talk to Adam alone.”

“I can’t let you do that.”

“e alternative is for Adam to get in a fistfight with Parker here in the parking lot. at is assault. You will have aided and abetted him by coming into the movie theater and dragging Parker out of there. How is that going to look on your job application to NASA?”

“Well…”

“Didn’t you say Adam and I could talk as long as you didn’t see it?”

He gestured to Adam’s truck, looking ill. “Go ahead.” He said something to Parker and folded his arms while Parker climbed into the front seat of my dad’s car. en my brother slid onto the hood of Adam’s truck with his feet on the bumper and stared Parker down. My brother had never acted like this before, except when we were kids playing war and the boys next door made him be the evil German.

I turned to Adam. “Get in,” I said as forcefully as I could. I climbed through the unlocked door of his truck, into the driver’s seat. I’d been in the driver’s seat all night, and it made me feel more in control of my little teenage life careening down the toilet. I wasn’t ready to give up that control now—especially in the face of Adam’s anger. I cranked the engine with the keys he’d left in the ignition and hit the buttons to close the windows. Bad enough that everyone in this town between the ages of thirteen and twenty-one could see us have this argument. I didn’t want them to hear it, too.

Adam rounded the truck and slid into the passenger side. Except for our positions on the seat being reversed, we’d sat exactly like this lots of times a couple of weeks ago, when we were only pretending to like each other. I wanted to do that with Adam again. I was trying to get us back there, and he’d sabotaged me half an hour in!

e second he closed the door behind him, I hollered, “What part of ‘I’m pretending to go out with someone worse so my dad will let me date you’ don’t you understand?”

He swung his head around at me, pinning me against the seat with his light blue eyes full of anger. “The part where Parker Buchanan puts his hand up your skirt.” I laughed because it was funny. It was something you would hear about a slutty girl in ninth grade or a popular girl in eleventh. I was neither.

Then I stopped laughing. Adam obviously believed this had happened. Where in God’s name had he gotten this idea?

I leaned forward and said carefully, “Adam. You saw Parker and me when you so rudely interrupted our fake date just now. He did not have his hand up my skirt. And you did not give us a lot of warning that you were coming, so I would not have had time to remove his hand from my nether region. Honestly!” I blushed at the very idea of doing this in a movie theater.

“Not in the theater. In the lobby.” Adam’s words were still closed and angry, but the fire in his eyes had cooled a few degrees. Possibly he was realizing that he was—gasp

–wrong.

“Parker did not have his hand up my skirt in the lobby,” I said patiently. “at makes no sense. Even ho’s do not let boys put hands up their skirts in the lobby when they have a whole dark theater at their disposal. Who told you that?”

He looked out over the parking lot, then gestured toward a group of three football players weaving among the cars. One of them stopped, put his hand over the top of the beer can he was holding, shook it up, and spewed it all over the hood of an outsized Lincoln Continental.

“Reginald Evans,” Adam said.

We both watched Reggie hightail it across the parking lot, away from the driver of the Lincoln, dodging cars like they were defensive tackles. I saw why he was the star running back on our high school team.

He was not, however, somebody I would trust for personal information about my friends. I said, “Reginald Evans can’t read. I was in Spanish with him last year.”

“Well, maybe he just can’t read Spanish.” Adam tracked Reggie’s path until he was looking at me again. “Miniskirt or what?” He did not sound appreciative as he said this. He sounded bitter.

“Or what?” I exclaimed. “In case you missed this when I explained it very carefully last night, I am pretending to be on a date with Parker, and I am dressed accordingly.”

“Oh, yeah? You never wore a miniskirt when you went out on a date with me.”

“I never went out on a date with you!”

“What do you call last Saturday night? You wore flipflops and my jean cutoffs.”

I huffed out my exasperation. “I call that hanging out all day at the festival on the lake, then spray painting our names on the bridge. Miniskirts are not appropriate attire for crawling around public structures. Somebody could look up my skirt and see my sexy panties.”

“If you tell me you are wearing sexy panties right now, I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” I wasn’t challenging him. I was reminding him that his anger did not match anything he was actually going to do, and his own mouth was his biggest enemy.

He glared at me for a few seconds as my words sank in. en he sat back against the seat, let out a huge sigh, and fished in his pocket. He brought out his lighter and flicked it, watching the flame. “You didn’t even wear a miniskirt for that couple of weeks when you were pretending to date me.”

“That’s because you were taking me mud riding!” I pointed out. “Besides, I did wear a miniskirt for the first Vader party of the year.” It was even the same miniskirt I was wearing now, the only one I owned. It was my go-to outfit for intrigue.

He nodded. “You didn’t wear it to the party for my sake. You were trying to hook up with Sean.” I banged my head against the driver’s side window—on purpose, to emphasize my frustration, but a little harder than I’d intended. “Again with the Sean,” I said.

“Again with the Sean,” he agreed self-righteously.

Without raising my head from its resting place against the window, I said, “You’re not supposed to be jealous of Sean right now, Adam. You’re supposed to be jealous of Parker.”

“Oh, go ahead and make an ADHD joke,” he said. “Go ahead.”

“Adam!” I shouted. “I do not make ADHD jokes about you. Sean does that. I am your friend.” He looked out the passenger side window. “Is that what you are now?” he said to the glass.

“I don’t know what to say to you, Adam,” I told his back and his golden brown curls, which were getting longer and looked like he was grooming them about as often as he was shaving, i.e., never. “You’re determined to be mad at me no matter what.”

His shoulders rose and fell slowly with a deep breath. Still looking out the window, he said, “Tell me about your panties.” I was going to tell him the sexy panties were a joke. en it occurred to me that sexy panties were my friend. e whole thing might backfire on me if he believed I wore this mysterious lingerie for Parker. But I was hoping I’d made him feel sheepish enough about the ridiculous hand-up-the-skirt scenario. All that was left was to get Adam back in my corner. I did this by waving imaginary sexy panties at him.

“ey are red lace,” I said. “See-through. ey are those boy shorts, do you know what I mean? ey cut across my butt. ey’re kind of uncomfortable to sit on, actually.” I made this up based on my last glance into the window of the lingerie shop as I walked toward the sporting goods store. In reality I was wearing Powerpuff Girls panties I’d had since I was twelve.

Adam totally bought my story, though. He turned toward me with his eyes wide, but little frown lines remained between his brows. He flicked his lighter and held his thumb on the button so the flame burned steadily. He dipped his head to examine my thighs sticking out of my miniskirt. He was imagining the phantom panties. His gaze traveled up to my Slinky Cleavage-Revealing Top. Finally his eyes met mine. ey did not look friendly, exactly. I would not have asked him to borrow twenty dollars just then. They looked… lustful?

Yes, this was a lustful look, I was pretty sure, judging from the way my body answered. is look lit fuses in my heart and left trails of gunpowder down my limbs for the fire to burn along.

I wiggled on the seat, emphasizing that my imaginary lace boy shorts were cutting into my butt cheeks.

Adam’s mouth dropped open.

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK. I jumped, sure that my heart knocking against my chest in response to Adam’s lustful thoughts was going to kill me.

But it was only McGillicuddy, still sitting on the truck, knocking on the hood. en he twirled his finger in the air: Wrap it up. He was sweet to signal us without looking at us, so he could still tell Dad truthfully (sort of ) that he hadn’t seen us together. I would have felt overwhelmed with sisterly love for him at that moment if he hadn’t been disobeying my direct order to help me change Dad’s mind. He was guarding my fake date like a prisoner of war.

“Are you still mad at me?” I asked Adam.

He worked his jaw, still staring a hole through me, but he didn’t say a word. He flicked his lighter again.

“Fine.” I opened the driver’s door and slid out of the cab very, very slowly, letting my skirt ride up waaaaaaay too high to escape the notice of the parking lot. I calculated the precise height at which it would reveal the super-sexiness of Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup and stopped there, so that my phantom sex panties remained forever my secret.

“Lori—,” Adam growled.

I jumped down from the cab and slammed the door. Ha! Try that teen soap-opera business on me, would he? I was way ahead of him. I had stepped up my MTV intake for precisely this reason.

As I passed McGillicuddy, I called, “You and I are going to have a talk when we get home, young man.” He glared at me. “Are you sure you want to ride home with Parker after what he did?”

“He didn’t do anything, as Adam will tell you. Both of you were taken in by a running back who can’t tell la casa from qué pasa.” I flounced around the back of the Beamer—Adam had parked so close to it that there was no room to slip a piece of paper between the bumpers, much less me—and slid into the driver’s side, trailing my long sexy legs behind me for Adam’s benefit (and accidentally kicking over an RC Cola bottle standing upright in the parking space, which somewhat ruined the effect, what with the fizz. Note to self: Sexy exits do not include fizz).

“Parker, I am so sorry,” I gushed as soon as I’d closed us safely inside the car and locked the doors. “I know you’ve met them both before at some point, but in case you’ve forgotten, that’s my boyfriend, Adam, whom we’re trying to get me back together with, and that’s my brother. ey know about the plan, but their friend told them that you—” I took a deep breath. I’d just been boasting about my panties to Adam, but I couldn’t even bring myself to tell Parker what the ruckus was about. It was so embarrassing, not to mention far-fetched.

Or was it? According to the rumors, the old hand-up-the-skirt ploy wouldn’t have been new to Parker. However, it definitely didn’t go with the vibe I’d gotten from him since I picked him up for this date. He’d put his arm around me when I’d asked him to in the theater, yes, but he hadn’t tried to go down my shirt, which was standard eighth grade fare in the back row of the movie theater (or so I gathered—not that I knew this from personal experience), and which I wouldn’t have put past him. I’d been willing to take the risk in the name of getting Adam back.

Parker said in a small voice, “Could you get me out of here?”

I looked over at him, his dark hair gelled just so, his shoulders broad in a preppy pink shirt that no male in town would have been caught dead in but that somehow worked on the Birmingham boy. A lot of girls said he had a mesmerizing stare that made them want to take their bras off, but to me it had always looked a lot like bug eyes, and right now he was staring bug-eyed at Adam and McGillicuddy way up in the cab of the truck. They glared right back down at him.

“Sure. Do you want to go back to my house?”

“Will they be there?” he asked, bug eyes never leaving the horrifying threat in front of him.

“Er, no. My brother has a date with his girlfriend. I don’t know what he’s doing here, come to think of it. And Adam wouldn’t dare set foot in my house.” I wasn’t sure this was true. The longer I knew Adam, the more I realized there wasn’t much he wouldn’t dare do, even in the face of my extremely angry father.

Hey, great idea! “Yeah, let’s go to my house.” With Parker quickly losing his enthusiasm for this fake date, I needed to squeeze all the juice out of him while I could.

at meant introducing him to my dad. Over the next few days my dad would ask around town about Parker and find out about the many horrors, ideally including the time Parker and his prep school friends filled the famous fountain in the center of Birmingham’s Southside with cheese grits.

Sticking my tongue out at Adam—he just turned away—I cranked the engine of the Beamer, looked carefully behind me for football players and monster trucks and RC

Colas, and backed out of the space. I half expected Adam to follow right behind me. Half hoped he would. Because that would have given me another chance to argue with him. Arguing with him seemed to be allowed by McGillicuddy and, bad as it was, it was miles better than no contact with Adam at all.

But an entire drive of watching the rearview mirror assured me I’d shamed Adam and my brother sufficiently to shake them off my tail, damn it. As I parked the car in my driveway, I turned my attention back to Parker, who was curled into a ball in the passenger seat, shaking. “Oh God, I’m so sorry about the air-conditioner. Why didn’t you say something?” I’d cranked the cold air all the way up, and Parker was paying the price in frostbite. Not everybody got all hot and bothered when Adam stared at them, apparently.