Текст книги "Endless Summer"

Автор книги: Jennifer Echols

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Текущая страница: 22 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

is is hard for me to remember, but at one time I felt, like, honored to be allowed to play with them because they were older than me.” He leaned closer so I could hear him better over the booming bass line. “If hanging with the big dogs made you so miserable, why didn’t you and Adam go hang by yourselves?”

“We did, once.” I searched my memories of that summer day, the sunlight glinting off the points of waves on the lake, filtering through moving spaces between the leaves of a tall tree, threading itself into Adam’s curls as we nailed a sign to his tree house that said KEEP OUT JERKS. “Normally it didn’t occur to us that we could do that.”

“Until now,” Sean said, “when it’s too late.”

“Ha ha. Not funny.”

“I don’t think it’s funny either,” Sean said. “I think Rachel and Adam are really together.” He glanced behind me. “Speak of the devil.” In my excitement to see Adam, I whirled around and fell off the window seat. A shadow loomed overhead, blocking out the tiny bit of strobe light that made its way through the bodies dancing in the center of the room. My brother stood over us with his hands on his hips.

I reached up and slapped Sean’s leg. “I thought you meant Adam!”

Sean focused on McGillicuddy instead of me. “It’s okay.” Sean put up his hands. “I didn’t kiss her in the warehouse when she was eleven.” McGillicuddy shook his head. “Adam and Rachel just left.”

I leaped up from the floor before Sean had even made it off the seat. “We never saw them drive up! Did you tell them Sean and I aren’t together?” All our assorted brothers and close friends had been instructed to tell Adam and Rachel they were wanted for a conference at the window seat.

“Apparently they never came inside,” McGillicuddy shouted over the music. “I heard this from some people coming in from the dock. ey said Adam and Rachel shot bottle rockets into the lake and left again.”

“That’s my date!” I turned to Sean and pounded on his chest with my fists. “Your girlfriend stole my date night!”

“Oh, God,” Sean breathed.

I relaxed my fists and pressed my hands on his chest, holding him steady. Then I asked McGillicuddy, “Did they ‘leave’?” I made finger quotes, which would indicate that they had put on a big show of acting like they were driving elsewhere to make out. At least, this is what the finger-quotes indicated to me. “Or did they leave?” He frowned at me. “They left.”

Tammy danced over with a big grin on her face, the kind of grin one wears when one is at a party with one’s boyfriend and one’s life is not going to hell in a handbasket.

She grabbed McGillicuddy and pulled him onto the dance floor before I could ask him whether he’d understood the whole finger-quote concept.

“Rachel and Adam are together,” Sean wailed. “I mean, really together. ey’ve left without standing outside this window and mooning us”—he gestured to our view of the driveway—“or even waiting until we looked up at them. I’m telling you, Lori, Adam was dating Rachel in the first place. I stole Rachel from Adam. After less than two weeks, she broke up with me because of the way I treated Adam. They’re not kidding. They’re back together now.”

“at’s impossible.” In my heart I knew this could not be true. Illogical as it sounded, Adam only blew up at people he loved: his parents, many times over the years; Sean, constantly. He had blown up at me quite a few times over the past few weeks. He had never blown up at Rachel. If he always got along great with somebody, it was a sure sign that he didn’t really care what that person thought.

But I could not shake the feeling that everything we’d done together for the past month was a lie. Just as Sean had said, the first night I got an inkling that I had feelings for Adam, he was dating Rachel and he caught her making out with Sean. Why couldn’t he be in love with her still, fighting to win her back? at made a lot more sense than what I’d believed for a month, that he’d dated her but he’d loved me all along. ere was too much evidence that he wanted her instead of me. I suspected he’d taken her to his Secret Make-Out Hideout first, since he’d acted so suspiciously when I’d asked him about it last weekend. He’d talked her into inviting everyone over to her grandparents’ house, which meant he’d been calling her. And tonight he had said he was with her, flaunting her at his own party. I had no good reason not to believe him.

e month we’d been together—sort of, off and on—had been an act. When I thought about the parts that had been an act, it made perfect sense. But when I thought about him teetering on the edge of crying in the tree house, my stomach twisted into knots. To put on an act like that, he would be awfully sneaky, even sneakier than Sean’s wildest dreams of sneaky. He would have to be heartless. He would need to not care at all. And I knew, from growing up with him, that he cared.

Maybe he really did care about some things. Rachel, for instance. Maybe he just didn’t care about me.

I put my palm tenderly to Sean’s cheek and said, “I know where they went.”

“Can you take off your shirt?”

I couldn’t see Rachel clearly on the other side of my truck’s cab. My eyes hadn’t yet adjusted to the darkness of my secret make-out hideout. But I could hear her laughing her ass off. “Not even for Sean.”

“Well, we have to make it look good somehow. Do you mind if I take off mine? My dad says I look like sex on a stick with my shirt off.”

“Knock yourself out.”

I started to pull my shirt over my head. I was used to wearing T-shirts. When it wouldn’t give, I remembered I was wearing something Sean-like. As I unbuttoned it, I asked, “Want to make a bet how long it takes him to get out here?”

“Don’t you mean them?”

I hoped. “I don’t know. Sean will be here for sure. He’ll come after you. He’s liked you all along. But if Lori has been after Sean, she’ll try to stop him from coming. I don’t know whether she would come herself.” I pulled off my shirt and threw it out the window for effect. “Lie down.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“inking ahead is very hard for me,” I explained, as if she hadn’t found this out during a month of dating me. “I should have rigged a trip wire across the road so we’d know when they were coming. Sean won’t drive up here with his headlights on. They’ll walk up and surprise us. We have to be ready. It probably won’t take long.”

“All right.” She scooted down and stretched out across the seat.

I lay on top of her, putting my weight more on the seat beside her so I wouldn’t crush her.

“This is embarrassing,” she said against my cheek.

I was halfway offended. “Why? We actually did this last month.”

“We never lay down,” she said softly. “My grandmother would be so disappointed in me.”

“Tell your grandma you’re involved in a web of deceit, that’s all. They probably did stuff like this in their horse-drawn carriages all the ti—”

e door nearest our heads jerked open and strong hands dragged me out by the shoulders. I braced myself against the doorframe, first to keep from being dragged, and then, when that didn’t seem possible, to keep from dragging across Rachel and hurting her.

But she was gone from under me—already out the other door. As Sean threw me to the ground on my elbow, Rachel ran around the front of the truck, yelling. “Sean, stop. It’s all a joke.”

“I’m not laughing!” Sean shouted at her. He stomped off through the weeds. Immediately he changed his mind, stalked back, and stood over me. I readied myself to roll away from him if he tried to kick me.

Instead, he pointed at me. He breathed in and out through his nose, collecting himself, before he said, “You are not my brother.” He charged through the weeds again, down the road.

“Sean,” Rachel scolded him.

“Now you know how I feel,” I called after him.

Rachel turned to me. “Happy now? Is this what you wanted?” She hurried in the direction Sean had gone, calling to him. As she passed Lori at the tailgate of the truck, she said, “I’m sorry. We’ll talk, okay? But I’ve got to—Sean!” She disappeared into the trees.

Lori didn’t move, didn’t look behind her to watch Rachel and Sean go. She gazed down at me with her arms folded and her jaw set. “ Were you joking?” she asked sharply. “Because for a minute, I sure thought you weren’t.” Her eyes flicked to my bare chest and back to my face. Now that my eyes had adjusted to the moonlight, I could see everything I didn’t want to see.

Slowly I stood, brushing the dirt off my shorts and rubbing the elbow I’d fallen on. “What was I supposed to think when you made out with Sean on your dock?” Now that I had a few hours’ distance, I realized there were several different things I could have thought and I should have asked her about them. But that made me feel like the rug was being jerked out from under me, which left me grasping for anything to keep myself upright. “I can’t trust you.” She opened her hands. “I don’t understand you, Adam. I’m with you, but you act like I’m the enemy. I see our future like this, with you always leaping before you look and me watching through my fingers, scared to breathe. I can’t do it anymore. When we were just friends, I feared for you all the time, but I dealt with it. If we’re something more than friends—”

“Maybe we shouldn’t be,” I interrupted her. “What makes you so sure we’re meant to be together, anyway?”

“My mother said so.” She said this instantly, without thinking. I could tell this because she put her hand up to touch two fingers to her lips—not like slapping her hand over her mouth, but tentatively wondering where those words had come from. She brought both hands together and twisted the ring her mother had left her around and around her finger.

I said, “Your mother is dead.”

She put her hands down and stared coldly at me.

Even I knew that was too much. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

She looked at me from head to toe, and her cold stare settled on my face again.

I took a step toward her. “Lori, I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.”

“I can’t forgive you for that.” She stared at me a few moments more, to drive her point home.

She turned and walked away through the forest.

I watched her go until even her blonde hair, which seemed to glow in the dark woods, disappeared into the gloom.

Then I banged my head against the truck.

It was a long walk home through the neighborhood. Even if Sean and Rachel had been waiting for me in Sean’s truck at the end of the dirt road, I wouldn’t have taken that ride. They weren’t waiting for me.

en I spent fifteen long minutes standing in my garage, picking botanical debris off my cute outfit. Showing up with beggar lice on your miniskirt was almost as bad as coming home with a hickey. Finally I opened the door.

“Lori?” my dad called from the den.

I stopped in the kitchen and took a long, deep, calming breath, then let it all out in a Zen-like sigh. I could talk to him pleasantly now. Funny: Lovesick depression felt a lot like responsible obedience. “Yes, Father?”

“You’re home early.”

Oooooh, that was low.

I took another long, deep, calming breath. is one didn’t work as well as the last one had. Stepping forward, I peeked at my reflection in the dark oven window. I looked like a serial killer. I manually raised my eyebrows and the corners of my mouth with my fingertips. Now I looked like bad plastic surgery.

“Lori?” he called again.

Smiling in a deathlike manner, I ventured into the den. e lights were out. e TV was on but quiet, as if nobody were paying it any attention. And Dad lounged across the couch with Frances curled up against him.

Two months ago this would have astonished me. ree weeks ago, right after they finally got together, I was happy for them, if somewhat uncomfortable. Now it made me very, very angry.

“Tell us about the party,” Dad suggested. “Was your first night back with Adam everything you dreamed about?” He kissed the top of Frances’s head.

I did not even try the long, deep, calming breath this time. I already was developing a headache from grinding my teeth together. Now that my eyes had adjusted to the dim light, I spied Frances’s nanny basket next to an armchair in the corner. I plopped down in the chair to explore it.

e nanny basket was a bottomless tote bag overflowing with Frances’s never-ending art supplies and random objects to teach and pacify small children. I tossed out a tennis ball, a long string tied in a circle for playing cat’s cradle, and a copy of Anna Karenina.

“Didn’t you always tell me to give away toys I hadn’t played with in a year?” I asked Frances. “ Anna Karenina has been living in your nanny basket for at least ten years, and it’s never come in handy.”

“I beg your pardon,” Frances said. “Alvin Harbarger plays with that. He looks up the difficult words in the dictionary and writes out the definitions.”

“Frances. Way to ensure a carefree childhood. Alvin is, like, four.”

“He is five.” She sounded more irate with me than she normally would have been just for messing with her nanny basket—almost as if I were barging in on her perfect date night.

OH REALLY?

Finally finding what I’d been searching for, I pulled out a sheet of red construction paper and a pair of child-safe scissors and started cutting. “Actually, Adam and I wanted some time alone, since we have been deprived of this so long. We skipped the party and saw a movie.”

“Adam sat through a whole movie?” Dad asked. “What movie did you see?”

“e Scarlet Letter.” e handles of the tiny scissors dug into my fingers, but I kept cutting. Big pieces of the red paper fell away. “I read the book in ninth grade. Did you?”

“I read it sometime,” Dad acknowledged. “I didn’t know there was a remake of the movie out.” Frances elbowed him gently. “She’s not serious, Trevor. She’s trying to tell you something.” Dad stared at me, slowly puzzling it out. “e Scarlet Letter . What happens in e Scarlet Letter ? What is she trying to tell—Oh my God!” He jumped up from the couch, dumping Frances onto the floor.

“NO, NOT THAT!” Frances and I shouted at the same time.

I tossed the scissors back into the nanny basket, fished out a roll of tape, and waggled my red paper letter at him with a wobbly sound. “It’s an I, not an A. And it’s not for me. It’s for you.” Stepping over the nanny basket and Frances, I taped the letter to his shirt. “I will make you lots of different color I’s to coordinate with all your suits and ties. Wear them in shame.”

He looked down at his chest in confusion. “What does I stand for?”

I opened my mouth to form the I word.

And something happened to me. I had never been so angry in my life. At Adam for what he’d done, at Sean and Rachel for being in the way, at Dad for putting us in this position in the first place. At myself for telling Adam I couldn’t forgive him.

I was so angry that for a second, I actually became Adam. I felt the unfairness of it all, the burden of it, living with it for weeks—or in his case, years. I understood how he could become so angry at his parents that he had to talk back to them and sabotage his relationship with me, even though he did care.

Because for that second, I was about to get grounded for the rest of the summer, maybe for the rest of the year. I was going to call my father an idiot.

From the corner of my eye, I could see Frances still on the floor, shaking her head.

Dad looked back up at me, blond brows down, growing suspicious. “What does I stand for?” he asked again.

I put my hand in the center of the I on his chest. Did he know he had ruined my summer by banning Adam and that changing his mind now didn’t help? Did he know he’d ruined my relationship with Adam forever? Did he know he’d ruined my life? My mouth still formed the shape of an I.

I opened my mouth a little wider. “Irony,” I forced out.

I took one more long, deep, calming breath, and I sighed.

And then I headed upstairs to my room.

When I reached the steps, I heard Dad say from behind me, “What’s eating her? I told her she could date Adam again.”

“And now they’ve had a fight,” Frances said. “It’s ironic.”

“I’ll go talk to her,” Dad said.

“No,” I whispered to the steps.

“No!” said Frances. “I’ll go.”

I was near the top of the staircase by then. I could have run into my room and slammed the door. I had that impulse.

But I didn’t do it. I walked into my room, sat on my bed, and waited for Frances to come up the stairs. She hadn’t even poked her head through the doorway before I started to cry.

“Oh, Lori,” she cooed sympathetically, which just made me cry harder. She sat beside me on the bed and held out her arms to me, and I totally lost it.

I never dared shed a tear around the boys growing up, even when I got hurt playing with them. I wanted to be like them, and they didn’t cry. Even if I had cried, I wouldn’t have sought solace from Frances. She was not my mother.

Or was she? I cried into her lap as if she were, and I learned what people meant by a “good cry.” As I cried, I thought about everything Adam had done to me and everything I had done to him. Offenses leveled at both of us by Sean, the Vaders, my dad, and even Frances herself in refusing to take my side. One cry led to another until I truly was all cried out. When I’d said that to Tammy a few weeks ago, I had no idea what I was talking about. I sat up, feeling empty, with a headache but no desire to cry.

“Tell me what happened,” Frances said.

I sniffed. “Adam hurt me as badly as he possibly could, and then…”

Behind her big ugly glasses, Frances’s brows went down. “And then what?”

“And then I told him I would never forgive him!” Whoops. I was still wrong about being all cried out. I found some more tears and cried them into my hands.

Frances waited until I was done. Again. “So you’re not crying over what Adam did. You’re crying because you told him you couldn’t forgive him?”

“I guess!” I wailed.

“Does that mean you can forgive him?”

“I might, if he would never do that to me again.”

Frances put her hand on my knee. “I think he’s going to do it again.”

“Why?” I demanded.

“All the years I’ve known you, you and Adam have been consistent. You seem alike in many ways. No wonder you’ve always gotten along so well. But you arrive at that similar place from opposite directions, which is why you argue. You want the best for everyone, Lori. You want everything to work out. You fix things. You have no malice.”

“Adam doesn’t fix things,” I said ruefully. “He has a lot of malice.”

“Adam feels much more deeply than you or I can understand,” Frances said. “He will find your buttons and push them. He will hurt you. I think it’s a defense mechanism he developed growing up behind Cameron and Sean.”

I felt guilty talking about him this way, though I knew it was true. “He’s not always mean like that,” I said.

Frances nodded. “He can also be the sweetest, most thoughtful young man I’ve ever met. His highs are very high, and his lows are very low. For an even-keeled person like you, it’s fine to be friends with someone like that. It’s harder to be in love. Then you’re on the receiving end of the lows as well as the highs.” I laughed. “Nobody’s ever accused me of being even-keeled.”

“In comparison with Adam,” Frances clarified.

“The Titanic while sinking was even-keeled in comparison with Adam.”

She smiled. “e next time you hurt him, he will turn around and hurt you again. Maybe when he’s done that to you enough times, you will get tired of it, and you really won’t be able to forgive him. You’ll walk away for good. I don’t think you’re there yet.” I ran my hands through my wreck of an updo. My fingers found more beggar lice. I flicked them behind my head and put my hands down before Frances saw. “How do I fix it?”

“You don’t fix it, Lori,” Frances said. “Stop trying to fix it. You’re liable to do more damage, because you’re both still angry. Let him cool down, and when the time is right, you’ll know.”

My brother knocked on the doorframe. “Just came from the party. Eventful night. So! Sean and Rachel are back together.” He nodded at Frances’s happy exclamations and follow-up questions, but he watched my reaction.

“Good,” I sighed, meaning it. I bore Rachel no ill will. Or maybe some, but not enough to begrudge her her relationship with Sean. Sean was an excellent kisser, which I had always suspected. He was also a halfway decent guy, which had never crossed my mind.

My brother cleared his throat. “Lori, did you and Adam have a fight? I mean, another fight? A humdinger?” I snorted. “No, I’m sobbing in Frances’s lap because she will marry our father someday and bring back the vegi/soy mayonnaise.”

“What’s the matter with vegi/soy mayonnaise?” Frances asked.

McGillicuddy wrinkled his nose at the memory. en he said, “Adam asked me to call him if you weren’t home safe. And he’s trying to put a hole through the warehouse door with his football.”

I hopped out of Frances’s lap and rushed to open the window. I couldn’t see the big door from this angle, but I heard the BANG of the football on metal, and then Mr.

Vader hollering, “Adam! It’s eleven thirty at night! Put that football away! [Cuss word you never, ever say in front of your mother]!” I shut the window. “I have to go!”

Frances shook her head at me.

“Right,” I agreed. “I have to stop trying to fix it.”

But after she and my brother had left my room, I opened my window again. I thought about Adam and let the periodic BANG of his football lull me to sleep.

My mom tapped at my door. I knew it was her because she had this special way of drumming her long fingernails on the wood.

She wanted to talk to me about Lori. I did not want to talk to her. But after being banished to military school and then reinstated as a member of the family all in the space of twenty-four hours, I decided now was not the time to insist on privacy.

“Just a minute.” I rolled off my bed, where I’d been lying facedown for an hour with a book about living with ADHD balanced on the back of my head. I checked myself in the mirror. I hadn’t cried, but I looked like it anyway, all haggard and kind of green. Or maybe that was from lying down with a book on my head. I crossed the room and opened the door.

Sean stood there with a mischievous grin, hand still forming a claw. He’d tapped on the door with his fingernails to fool me.

I slammed the door in his face.

Before the latch caught, the door bounced open again. Cameron stood just behind Sean with the rubber toe of his shoe blocking the door from shutting. “You look like hell,” Cameron said.

“I look like Sean.” is was a joke from my darkest memory. If Sean told me I was ugly, I could deflect the insult easily, because he was calling himself the same name. If Cameron told me I was ugly, he was also insulting Sean, and Sean would get revenge on him without me having to do a thing.

Sean smiled briefly at me to show I wasn’t funny. Then he said, “I came to apologize.”

“What’s the punch line?” I asked. “Did Rachel put you up to it?”

“Rachel didn’t tell me to say this. But she does make me see myself differently.” He leaned against the doorframe and managed to look cool and collected, even when debasing himself. “I’m sorry I said you weren’t my brother, because you are. I was just so shocked when I saw you with Rachel. I’ve never gotten naked with her like that.” I glanced nervously down the hall. My parents’ bedroom wasn’t far. I didn’t want them to overhear the word “naked.” I stepped out of the way and let my brothers into my room. They belly flopped onto my beanbag chairs. As I closed the door behind us and crossed the room to sit on my bed again, I told Sean, “You broke the pact first.”

“I did break the pact,” Sean admitted, “but only because your wheeling, dealing girlfriend convinced me you’d want it that way.”

“at’s exactly what she did to me at Chimney Rock!” Cameron exclaimed. “We pushed her around for years, and now she’s finally morphed into a more powerful creature bent on revenge! Reooouur!” He held up his paws, bugged out his eyes, and imitated a giant she-creature stomping across the marina. Sean made noises like fighter planes strafing the creature with machine-gun fire.

I rolled my eyes. “Guys. Hello. I’m sorry too.”

That got their attention. They put down their hands and looked at me.

“I know I fly off the handle,” I said. “I’m going to try really hard not to do that before I lose everything.” Probably it would help if I read the book on ADHD rather than just balancing it on my head, but at least I’d found it on the shelf, which was a start.

“You’re two years younger than I am, and you’ve always been able to do stuff I can’t do. I mean, this is fine.” Sean slid the book from my bed and hefted it in his hand.

“Know thyself, or whatever.” He tossed it across the room. “But a lot of guys would kill to be more like you. I think you should embrace it. I mean, you will jump off Chimney Rock. That’s got to look good on a job application, if it’s the right job, and if you can figure out how to explain it.” I nodded. “Are you sorry for calling me ADD my whole life?”

“No, it’s funny.”

Oh well. I couldn’t expect Sean to make a complete one-eighty. I turned to Cameron. “What are you here to apologize for?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I’m here to make sure you’re not really going to ask out Giselle.”

I’d never had any intention of doing this. However, I decided to let Cameron sweat it for a few more minutes. I leaned back against my headboard, put my hands behind my head, and crossed my ankles. “You could have prevented this, you know. If I were still dating Lori, I’d have no interest in Giselle. But when I first got in trouble, I wanted your help, and you said you didn’t have a dog in this fight.”

“You can’t date Giselle!” he exclaimed. “You can’t be with her. You would ruin her life. Screw what Sean said. Nobody is going to employ you for jumping off Chimney Rock. What kind of job are you going to get when your professional football career flames out? How are you ever going to get life insurance? Nobody is going to give you life insurance when they look at your health record and see you broke your arm four times before you were sixteen.”

“I’m not messing with Giselle,” I assured him. Then I moved my arms and bounced my head against my headboard. “I just want Lori back. I don’t know what to do.”

“Nothing,” Sean said. “I would not suggest doing nothing for three weeks and waiting for the girl to make a move. is didn’t work out well for me, at least not at first.

But I would suggest doing nothing for a few days and thinking about it.”

“e entertainment value for us will be much reduced.” Cameron looked at Sean and they both cracked up. en Cameron turned to me again. “But it will be better for you.”

“And Lori,” Sean added.

“What the monkey!” My dad slammed through my door and burst into my room wearing nothing but his bathrobe.

We all looked up at him in surprise. “You tell us,” I said.

“Oh.” My dad actually looked sheepish. “It’s one o’clock in the morning and I was going to tell you to shut the monkey up and go to bed. I didn’t realize what was going on in here.”

“What’s going on in here?” Cameron asked suspiciously.

“Maturity.” My dad backed out of the room and closed the door.

“Lori is quiet.”

I looked up at Tammy sharing a seat with McGillicuddy in the back of the boat. Even in the starlight before the fireworks, the whole distance of the boat away from her, I could see she was poking her bottom lip out, feeling sorry for me. McGillicuddy leaned around her to watch my reaction too.

I appreciated their concern. eirs and everybody else’s I knew. at morning I’d discovered that even the regular workers in the warehouse had heard about the big blowup between Adam and me and were rooting for us to get back together. McGillicuddy had come into the showroom a million times and given me a play-by-play of the lovelorn noises Adam was making in the warehouse—the one time I didn’t want to know. Rachel had driven over in her grandparents’ boat to eat lunch with Sean, and they had grilled me about my plan to get Adam back, as if they couldn’t stand for us to be apart now that they were together.

In fact, every molecule of my body wanted to do something to fix this. I could feel my molecules like a full stadium at a football game, standing up and cheering me on and dancing to a fight song.

But Frances was somewhere out there in the enormous crowd of boats gently bobbing in the darkness. She was with my dad on the Vaders’ pontoon boat, and they were in love. She must have fallen in love with him while she was my nanny, but she never did anything about it. She was patient, and now she had her reward.

Actually, as I thought about this, I realized it wasn’t much of a reward, waiting around for YEARS to hook up. I was not down with that. But I had been content to spend my Fourth of July passing Adam quietly at work, watching him bust ass in a spectacular failure of a discombobulator during the wakeboarding show, and generally letting some more water flow under that bridge.

I took a deep breath through my nose and pictured the water flowing, calming myself as I tried to be one with the water. It was a good thing I didn’t have to pee. “Lori is meditating,” I said.

“Lori has picked a strange place to meditate,” Cameron called from behind the wheel of the boat.

I sighed again, and this time it wasn’t because I was one with the lake. “Lori would like to be left alone.”

“Lori has picked a strange place to be left alone,” Sean commented. He sat in the bow with me, on the other side of Rachel, holding her hand in a death grip like their lives depended on it.

He did have a point. I was glad they’d finally gotten together. Again. And I wouldn’t have missed Adam’s fireworks for the world. Just thinking about him doing something he loved—setting off explosions—made me smile. But I did wish there were some way for me to see this show that did not involve proximity to other people, especially people determined to pick on me and draw attention to the fact that I was not myself.

I sighed yet again, a looooong sigh that encompassed my extreme fatigue exacerbated by being stuck in a boat with boys. “Lori has had a bad day.”