Текст книги "Endless Summer"

Автор книги: Jennifer Echols

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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

Nothing said romance like the scent of burning rubber. But to me, it started to seem very romantic. I almost wished Holly and Beige could see me now. Well, not really, because mud had splashed up on my calves. I scratched at a spot with my fingernail, and it smeared.

He asked, “Why does it have to be Sean?”

I snapped my head up and tried to gauge what he’d meant by this. I couldn’t tell, because he wouldn’t meet my gaze. Which was probably a good thing. I could feel myself flushing as my heart pounded.

I was attracted to Adam. Not as much as I was attracted to Sean, of course. at would never happen. But Adam had been so sweet and so fun, teaching me to drive.

Tangling with me as we switched places in the truck didn’t hurt either. Or carrying me on his back. I really enjoyed him carrying me on his back.

Did he mean, Why does it have to be Sean instead of me? And if he did…

Good God, what was the matter with me? Adam didn’t like me that way. He just hated Sean. He wanted to know why I was so stuck on Sean, of all people.

And I didn’t like Adam that way, either. Not really. Flirting with him was fun, but that’s all it was, and I was getting carried away. I needed to remember I was on a mission. I would tell him the whole truth about the mission. I owed him that much, since he’d agreed to help me by faking a relationship with me.

I munched a cheese fry and thought about Sean sashaying his way through the school lunchroom last spring, Beige on one arm, Holly on the other. Everyone turned to watch as he passed. People called out to him from the tables. All he needed was the paparazzi behind him. Also Beige or Holly needed a very small dog that got sick when it ate too much protein. I said simply, “Sean lights up the room.”

Adam still wouldn’t look at me. He tried to shake one fry loose from a cheesy clump. “I can see why you’d want to watch him, listen to him. Not why you’d want to get together with him. He lights up the room so bright that you would just be sitting there blinking, blinded.” He gave up on freeing the fry and stuffed the whole cheesy clump in his mouth. Immediately he started picking through the pile for another, like he needed something to do with his hands.

“I’ve always wanted to be with him,” I said. “Yeah, logically I can see the drawbacks, but I don’t think you or anyone could argue me out of it. I need to find out for myself, because I’ve wanted this so long.”

“Always,” Adam muttered, tossing up a bit of fry and catching it in his mouth.

“Almost always. Actually, I can remember the very day it started.” e mud field in front of us dissolved into a sun-splashed view of the lake through shady branches.

e roar of monster trucks faded, replaced by birds chirping, and my mother’s voice. “It was before Mom died. We were all really little. But I remember it so clearly. Your whole family was at my house for a cookout in the summer. I was with Mom and your mom up on the deck. I’d wanted to play with you boys, but Mom wouldn’t let me.

“Your mom said I was such a lovely little girl, so ladylike and polite. at’s what pricked my ears up, of course: the praise. But I kept playing like I wasn’t listening in.

en your mom said I didn’t always have to stay home. I was welcome to come over to your house to play whenever McGillicuddy came over. She called him Bill.

Whatever. Now I was really paying attention, and holding my breath to see what Mom would say. All I’d dreamed about my whole little life was playing with y’all.”

“Why?”

I snapped out of my daydream. I’d almost forgotten Adam was sitting there.

He put one hand on my knee, watching me, and didn’t even turn to look when Scooter purposefully spun his tires, coating one side of the pink truck in mud. “Why did you want to play with us?” Adam asked. “At that age, we were basically squirting each other in the face with water guns.”

“Compare this to sitting in my room by myself, dressing and undressing the Barbie.”

“Oh.” He nodded.

“Anyway, of course I was disappointed, as always. My mom said your mom was so nice to offer, but she didn’t want me playing with four boys very often. I’d grow up to be a tomboy.”

“What’s wrong with growing up to be a tomboy?”

“I think it’s fine until a certain age. When you’re young, being a tomboy may even give you a certain advantage. You can always beat girls like Holly Chambliss and Beige Dupree and, ohmyGod, Rachel in Little League softball. You can catch four fish in the Girl Scout fishing rodeo while they’re still refusing to bait their hooks because worms are icky.”

“Rachel will actually bait her own hook,” Adam defended her.

I didn’t want to hear it. I talked right over him. “After a certain age, people don’t know what to make of a tomboy, and you don’t fit in. You end up feeling empty and lost.”

ose frown lines appeared between his brows. He moved the plate of cheese fries behind him on the bench, slid over until his leg touched my leg, and put his hand on my knee again.

Strange how his touch made it easier for me to talk. I went on, “Just as Mom was telling your mom no, Sean came up the stairs crying. You and the other boys had dared him to stick bread between his toes and put his foot in the water. A fish mouthed him and he freaked out.”

“Er—,” Adam started.

I waved him off, because this was the most important detail. “My mom took his chin in her hand, turned his face toward me, and said, ‘Just look at those eyes. He’s going to be a heartbreaker.’” I found myself smiling at the memory. But when I turned to Adam and saw the look on his face, I stopped smiling.

“That sounds like a bad thing,” he grumbled.

“People mean it as a good thing,” I said, suddenly not as sure of this as I’d been for the last twelve years. But I couldn’t really expect him to understand. Talking about Sean around Adam was like throwing Evian on a fire. “And then Mom said, ‘Lori, just wait until you’re sixteen.’ She was stuck on the sixteenth birthday. We made a scrapbook with pictures of all my baby events, and spaces for when I would turn six and eight and ten and twelve, and a super-mondo sequined space for when I turned sixteen. She wanted me to have what she’d had, a great sixteenth birthday, exactly what any teenage girl would want. Her parents gave her a special grown-up ring, and she wore a groovy dress that’s hanging in my closet.”

We’d moved away from talking about Sean. Predictably, Adam took a deeper breath and relaxed against the bench. “Are you going to wear the dress on your birthday?”

“Are you kidding? It was 1979. White polyester, baby. Highly flammable. Burn baby burn, disco inferno. Unsafe. Uncool.”

“I’ll bet it’s pretty. You could wear it wakeboarding on your birthday, during the Crappy Festival show.” He was back to his old self.

I chuckled. “Unfortunately, you and I are the only two people in the world who would think that was funny.”

“What does that have to do with Sean?”

I squirmed a little under the gaze of the intense blue eyes. I felt his disapproval even though I hadn’t told him what he should disapprove of yet. But he was helping me with Sean, and I’d committed to telling him the whole story. “Mom died not long after that. I took it as a free ticket to Disneyworld. Yay, Mom wasn’t around to stop me!

I got to play with the boys! Only I always felt guilty about being the least bit happy she was gone, even when this was the one good thing about it. And I felt guilty I didn’t tell Dad or Frances that Mom wouldn’t have wanted me over at your house. It went against her wishes for me. I promised myself I’d clean up by the time I was sixteen. And if I could finally convince Sean to ask me out by my sixteenth birthday, I would know I’d turned out okay after all.” Adam nodded. “Because you think your mother picked Sean out for you.”

“No, not exactly—”

“Like an arranged marriage,” Adam interrupted. “That’s very forward thinking.”

“No, not like that. Mom knew what was best for me, and if she were still around, she would have taught me how to get it. She’s not around, so I have to figure this out for myself. I’m transforming myself from an ugly duckling into a beautiful swan. ere’s much preening to be done. It’s actually pretty time-consuming. I have to run my beak down every single feather to distribute the oill evenly and make myself waterproof.”

“Lori—”

“And I’ve almost perfected my Holly/Beige imitation. At least, I thought I had, until the mud riding started.”

“You think going out with Sean will turn you into Beige Dupree?”

“Sort of. If I hooked up with Sean, everyone would treat me differently. Everyone loves Sean. If Sean chose me, they’d think they’d always overlooked something special in me. Then maybe I really could become that girl. I know you hate Sean, but you understand why everyone else loves him, right?” I took Adam’s stony silence as a yes.

“Girlfriend/boyfriend love is totally different from brotherly love. But the effect would be the same. Like standing in his aura. Haven’t you ever wondered what it would be like if Sean loved and valued you as a person?”

“I’d know Armageddon was coming. I’d brace myself for the locusts.”

“I’m serious. If he just looked at you the right way, that alone could probably carry you through for a month. But if he loved you…” Adam shifted on the bench. I thought he was standing up to stalk away, disgusted. Instead, he placed his arm around my shoulders. Lightly his finger stroked valentines on my arm, which gave me the shivers all over again.

“Every word out of Sean’s mouth is meant to hurt me,” he said. “And it’s always been like that. Cameron says Sean changed after I was born. When I was a baby and Mom wasn’t looking, Sean threw blocks at my crib.”

I almost laughed. The idea was so ridiculous. It was even more ridiculous for Adam to be angry about something like that when he was sixteen years old.

I managed not to laugh. I believed him. I knew Sean.

“But that’s you,” I said. “I’m sorry he treats you that way, but I’m the one who’s going to get together with him, and he doesn’t treat me that way.”

“He will,” Adam said. “If you ever let him get close to you, he will.” e valentines he traced on my arm had turned to shapes with lots of sharp points, like in comic books when the superhero punches the villain. Ker-POW!

e tractor arrived then to pull the pink truck out of the mud. Adam took his hands off me—which I regretted more than I should have. He leaned forward to watch and make sure the driver didn’t attach the chain to the loose side of the front bumper.

“Why does it have to be Rachel?” I asked.

“It just does,” he said without taking his eyes off the truck.

“You might feel better if you talked about it.”

“I doubt it.”

“What do you like so much about her?”

When he turned to me, he seemed alarmed, as he had at the tennis court the night before. With wide eyes, he searched my eyes for something—which I probably would have given him, if I’d known what he was looking for. I asked, “What are you looking for?” He shook his head and turned back to the mud pit. “I like her because she’s so pretty,” he said in his bullshit voice.

“That’s no fair. I gave you a straight answer about Sean.”

The tractor started forward. The chain to the pink truck pulled tighter and tighter and broke. One end of it flew over the tractor, barely missing the driver.

“She’s cute,” Adam said. “She has a nice ass. I don’t know.”

Now I understood. Talking about her hurt him too much. It was easier for him to pretend the ADHD had kicked in.

After two more chains and a rope, the tractor liberated the pink truck, and Adam bought the driver a doughnut. Adam and I drove through the mud field for another hour and a half, taking turns. Mostly we managed to forget Sean and Rachel.

en we drove into town and hit all the teenage haunts: the arcade parking lot, the bowling alley parking lot, of course the movie theater parking lot. In theory this is exactly what I wanted. I was being seen out with Adam, in Adam’s truck. In practice, Adam had purposefully besmirched Sean’s pink truck with mud. It was like he wanted to be seen around town in it for that reason.

We rolled home at two minutes before my curfew. I’d figured he’d park the truck at his house, and I’d walk home. I was thrilled that he drove over to my driveway to drop me off. Sean wasn’t home yet to see us, but maybe someone in the Vaders’ house would watch across the yard and mention it to Sean later.

And then, as I was turning to Adam to thank him for teaching me to drive and allowing me to foam at the mouth about my mom, he bailed out the driver’s side door.

He walked around the front of the truck. I think he would have opened my door, a gentleman on a date, if I hadn’t opened it first. It was too strange. I jumped to the ground, forgetting I was wearing my heels again. He caught me just before I pitched over onto the gravel.

“I’ll—walk—you—to—the—door,” he said slowly and clearly, like talking to someone who didn’t speak English. Or didn’t go out with girls much, or, like, ever. He took my hand. We walked toward the lights slanting through the shadows of pine trunks. Tree frogs screamed in the night, and the air was wet. I shivered.

We climbed the steps to the porch. Dad hadn’t turned on the overhead light there, thank God. Adam stood close to me in the darkness, over me, expecting something. I expected something, too. I couldn’t have stood the disappointment if we’d done all we’d done that day, hugging and giving each other smoldering looks and all, without something to show for it at the end, even if we were just friends. But my head felt too heavy to raise my chin.

“Hey.” He put his hand under my chin and gently raised it for me. “If one of us were in love with the other, if it were uneven in some way, that would be bad.” He gave me a long look I couldn’t really see. The shadows on the porch were too deep. His eyes only glittered a little in the starlight.

I tried to give the look right back to him. “But we’re not,” I said, and what was that damned high squeakiness in my voice on not? I cleared my throat.

“But we’re not,” he agreed. “We have nothing to worry about. We can do whatever we feel like.”

“Right,” I said, and meant it.

e kiss was simple. He bent down and pressed his lips to mine. We stood still except for his pressure on my lips. But inside, every cell in my body turned a back flip to blind.

“Good night, Lori,” he whispered. He bounced back to the pink truck, cranked the engine, drove one hundred feet to his own driveway, waved to me, and went inside his house.

I stood on my porch and stared at his house for a long time, telling myself that I did not like Adam that way because I liked Sean and Adam liked Rachel and I did not like Adam. It was just that Adam was very smart, and was second only to Sean at making confusing things sound simple and death-defying stunts seem like a good idea.

Monday night, Dad insisted that Adam come over for dinner. Adam, my dad, my brother, and I ate and joked together like we normally would out in the yard, except that it wasn’t normal. It was weird. Adam sat in my mom’s chair at the table. We might as well have been staring at a showy centerpiece made of silk flowers and hand grenades.

Tuesday night was much more comfy. Sean was over at Rachel’s and Cameron was out with his girlfriend, so Adam and I had the Vaders’ living room to ourselves to watch a DVD. At least, that’s what we did for about thirty minutes. en we played CDs in his room, experimented with his drum set, and made milkshakes in the kitchen. Without anyone else around to show off for, we could just be ourselves. Friends.

Wednesday night we went mud riding. I wore my sensible shoes this time—rubber flip-flops that could be hosed off. I knew this wouldn’t sound very romantic when it got back to Sean or Holly or Beige. I also knew that, just like the other nights, I would stand on my porch with Adam and get the simplest, most shiver-inducing kiss. And then it would be over. The next morning, we’d go back to being friends.

ursday night we scored. So to speak. We’d planned to go to the arcade and see who could kick the other’s ass on the snowmobile racing game, but Adam called me just before it was time to pick me up. He sounded tinny, like his hand was cupped over his mouth and the receiver. “Code green. Code green. Rachel and Sean watching DVD here tonight. Over.”

e wound Rachel had inflicted on him must have healed enough that he could stand being around her and Sean. Or he must miss her so much that he was willing to take a more active role in making her jealous. Either way, this was our big chance!

Slamming down the phone, I rushed upstairs to exchange my Skechers for Steve Madden pumps and my tank top for something that said elegance, sophistication, Express. is was how I was supposed to talk about clothes, right? Naming the brands as if I cared? Another coat of mascara and a run-through with the comb attachment to McGillicuddy’s razor and I was ready, baby. Snap!

Sean’s truck was parked in the driveway behind the pink truck. He’d already brought Rachel over. I swallowed and tried to slow down my breathing as I pressed the doorbell with one shaking finger.

Almost immediately, I heard Adam bouncing inside. He jerked the heavy door open. “What are you doing? You don’t have to ring the doorbell, dork.” Dumbass! He’d called me a dork loudly enough for the Thompsons to hear three houses over. Talk about romance.

I was about to whisper acidly that he wasn’t doing a very good job of falling head over heels in love. en I noticed he was wearing his black T-shirt printed in white with a life-size rib cage. Adam looked best in black. e color reflected darkly in the hollows under his high cheekbones, not to mention the bruise under his eye, and made his strange light eyes stand out that much more. The skull and crossbones glimmered at his neck.

He raised his eyebrows, waiting for me to say what I’d opened my mouth to say.

I was speechless. So I grabbed his arm and spun him around at the same time. He was surprised. I managed to pin his arm behind his back for about two seconds before he shook loose and grabbed me.

“Now you’ve asked for it.” He scooped me up, threw me over his shoulder, and held both my wrists in one hand so I couldn’t tickle him. He kicked the door closed and hiked into the living room.

Pausing, he took a few steps toward Sean and Rachel watching TV on the sofa. ey sat close together in the dark room. I wouldn’t have been able to tell whose limbs were whose, except Sean didn’t shave his legs. ere was a love seat where Adam and I could have settled. en Adam thought better of it—too close for comfort—and hiked across the room.

“Hello, Sean. Good evening, Rachel,” I called cordially, upside down.

Rachel gave us a half-hearted pipsqueak greeting. Sean shouted at us, “Can you keep it down?” Hmph! Clearly he was in a jealous rage. Adam and I exchanged a knowing look as he slid me onto the desk in the corner. Still holding my wrists immobile, he fished in a drawer and brought out a long object.

I squinted at it in the dark. “Not the stapler!” I cried.

He grinned, tossed the stapler beside me, and rummaged in the drawer again.

“Please,” I gasped, “not the Liquid Paper!”

“Shut up!” Sean shouted.

Adam and I widened our eyes at each other like we were offended and hurt. I shook my wrists out of his grasp and reached behind me for a red Sharpie out of the pencil cup. Smoothing my hand across his chest (shiver), I made a red mark across the bottom right rib printed on his T-shirt, the rib I knew he’d broken. Or was it my other right? “What ribs have you broken?”

He looked down at his shirt. “This one,” he said, pointing.

I made a red mark across that rib. “What else?”

“Mm.” He stretched his shirt out at the bottom so he could see it better, and pointed to the opposite side. “ese two.” He watched as I made neat red marks across those ribs. His chin was close to my cheek.

“Both of you act crazy,” Sean said smoothly, “like you’re off your medication. Or like you’re going to a shrink.” I didn’t look at Adam. I didn’t think I looked at Sean, either. But I had an impression later of Sean’s face glowing white and then blue in the light of TV, and Rachel in the shadows beside him. I thought the medication comment was meant for Adam. I knew the shrink comment was meant for me.

I capped the marker and stuck it back in the pencil cup. “I’ll see you later,” I whispered, sliding around Adam and hopping down from the desk. I had to get across the room and outside without being further humiliated, which meant I must not fall down in my high heels. Or cry. I even closed the front door behind me without making any noise.

And then Adam burst through it and slammed it behind him, shaking the house. “Lori!”

“Shhh,” I said with my finger to my lips, backing off the porch and into the wet grass. I didn’t want to shout about what Sean had said. It was bad enough when we were quiet about it.

Adam collected himself as I watched, taking a deep breath through his nose, with his eyes closed. en he opened his eyes and said, “e five-minute date does nothing to make them jealous.” He formed his first finger and thumb into a circle. “Zero.”

I swallowed. “I can’t.”

He stepped closer to me. “Sean has a way of finding that one thing that will make you feel so good about yourself, or so bad about yourself. at’s why you love him.

That’s why I hate him. You knew this when you went fishing.”

I was too discombobulated to make a joke about my lures. I just wanted to get away from their house. “I’ve had enough of boys for today, I think.” He frowned. “Are you sure?” He rubbed my arm. My hair stood on end.

Shivering in the warm night, I put my arm down by my side, where he couldn’t reach it. “Too much of a good thing. It’s strange, but even cheese fries can get tiresome.”

“I’ll walk you home, then.”

“No,” I said, “I’m sorry. I’m just done.”

He watched me carefully for a moment, lowering his head to look into my eyes. “Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Bye.”

He walked back into the house and closed the door softly.

I stared at the door knocker, tree frogs screaming all around me. I had done the wrong thing. I wanted to be in the house with him. And Sean.

Sean had said something like that to me only once before, just a good-natured joke as we passed each other in the hall at school. I’d started to cry. e office had called my dad (again). Dad and McGillicuddy and I had had a Big Talk about it that night, wherein I told my dad that my business was not his to tell Sean’s parents about, and wherein McGillicuddy promised to have a discussion with Sean about keeping his mouth shut. Apparently he had, because Sean never said a word to me about it again. And if he told the whole school, they were very discreet and didn’t let on to me that they knew. Which would have been out of character for them, because they were bitches.

at first time happened not long after I went to the shrink, so Sean probably was just experimenting to see what I’d do. is time, he must have mentioned it because he was trying to hurt me. And if he’d tried to hurt me, he was in love with me and jealous of Adam. I knew this because when he wasn’t in love with me and jealous of Adam, he ignored me and was quite pleasant to me.

Therefore, the plan must be working! Hooray! So I should go back in there, flirt with Adam, and press the issue.

As I stood there, considering whether to ring the doorbell or just walk on inside like I owned the place, or like they’d installed a dog door, I heard Adam holler, “anks, Sean.”

“No problem,” Sean said more quietly, because he was too courteous to yell in Rachel’s ear.

I felt a flash of panic. ey weren’t being sarcastic. Adam was genuinely thanking Sean for getting him out of spending an evening with me. is was called a negative self-concept. I had learned about it in health class (tenth grade). Having a negative self-concept made me think people were making fun of me, on top of the times when they really were making fun of me, which I seemed to miss completely.

en footsteps pounded up the stairs inside. Adam’s bedroom light flicked on. He put his hands on the window-sill and pressed his forehead to the glass, looking for me, but he couldn’t see out because of the glare.

Adam wouldn’t double-cross me.

Would he?

Friday I had gas. This was fine with me. I spent most of the morning by myself on the dock, soaking up rays and feeling mentally diseased.

I didn’t think I could stand a lunch hour in the office, eating Mrs. Vader’s chicken salad sandwich, on edge, expecting Sean to sneak in or Adam to burst in or both. I told Mrs. Vader I was treating myself to a nice lunch out.

“Oh,” she said, nodding. “Something happened between ‘you and Adam’?” She moved her fingers in quotation marks.

Yeah, I didn’t have the energy to argue with her this time. That was Adam’s problem. I walked over to my family’s dock and launched the canoe.

The open water was choppy with wind and wakes from passing speedboats. I didn’t get T-boned. It was a little early for anyone to be drunk.

e wind blew me off course. I reached the far bank and needed to backtrack along the shore to the Harbargers’ house. Here in the shallows, protected by overhanging trees, the water was clear and calm. Miniature whirlpools stirred around my oar. I dragged my hand in the warm water, and minnows nibbled my fingers.

I docked at the Harbargers’ and ran up to the house. It was such a relief to feel the grass on my bare feet! Every toe had a blister from a different pair of high-heeled sandals. I slid open the glass door and stepped into the den.

Frances and the kids looked up. ey were sitting on the floor around the coffee table. Frances didn’t sit on furniture if there was a floor available. A copy of Mother Earth News lay open in front of her. She had stuck lengths of uncooked spaghetti into balls of Play-Doh. e kidlets were busy sliding Froot Loops onto the spaghetti, sorting by color. I couldn’t believe they’d fallen for that old trick. Frances could convince children anything was a game, for about five minutes. Obviously some children were more gullible than others.

I walked into the kitchen and looked in the refrigerator. No surprises there. e meat loaf was made with tofu. Frances’s strong points as a nanny included a master’s degree in early childhood education and a PhD in Russian literature, but nothing approaching cooking skills, unless it was some weird hippie experiment like drying fruit on the roof. Mmmmm, rubbery apricots with a hint of tar. I filled a bowl with Froot Loops, poured soy milk over them, and joined the powwow on the floor.

Between bites I asked, “What did you mean when you said mine wasn’t the only plot?”

Without looking up from the magazine on the coffee table, Frances said, “I told you. I don’t know.”

“What would be the metaphorical firecracker in the metaphorical homemade cheese?”

She shrugged.

“Like, Sean dared Adam to hook up with me because I’m so oafish and dog-looking?”

“You are not dog-looking,” Frances said sternly. “Besides, a plot like that would involve a high level of organization. They would have to think it through carefully. None of you do that. Except Bill, of course, who thinks things through so carefully that he can’t take action. Like his father.” My spoon stopped in my mouth at the mention of my dad, who’d been the farthest person from my mind. I swallowed and shouted, “en what the hell kind of plot are you talking about?”

Frances didn’t even react when I cussed in front of her charges. She reasoned that making a big deal out of curse words drew attention to them and caused children to use them more. So she ignored them. I’m not sure this ploy worked, but then, she’d had an uphill battle with McGillicuddy and me. We lived next door to Mr. Vader, who could have written a dictionary of filth. She asked, calm as ever, “Have you thought Adam might really like you?” The hair on my arms stood up, just as if Adam were sitting behind me with his hand on my shoulder.

“No, I haven’t.” at would be seven kinds of awful, if Adam had agreed to pretend to get together with me because he really wanted to get together with me. My ploy to get Sean would be ruined. I might finally land Sean, like in my dreams. But knowing I’d broken Adam’s heart would be a downer and a distraction. Like making out in the movie theater, knowing the pink truck in the parking lot was on fire. My mother wanted me to be with Sean, but didn’t she want me to be happy?

Frances turned the page. “Open your eyes. And watch out for those boys.”

Wakeboarding that afternoon, I watched the boys until my eyeballs hurt from the sun glinting off the water. I could have sworn there was nothing to watch out for. Sean was a little warmer to me than usual—the way he always acted after he’d insulted me, like some friendliness here could make up for a lack of friendliness elsewhere.

Adam was very warm to me. While Sean drove, my brother wakeboarded, and Cameron spotted, Adam pulled me into his lap in the bow. He set his chin on my shoulder and rubbed his hands up and down my thighs. e best part of this, for the purpose of making Sean’s blood boil, was that Adam did it without comment, without expecting me to comment, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for him to act like my boyfriend.

e worst part of this, for the purpose of watching out for those boys, was that if my eyelids had been duct-taped open to my eyebrows, I still wouldn’t have been able to tell whether Adam liked me, or pretended to like me, or liked me but pretended he was only pretending.

e five of us pitched the wakeboards and life vests from the boat back into the warehouse. e Friday night party would start soon, so Sean, Cameron, and my brother headed for the houses. I ought to have been right behind them. I needed plenty of time to shower and primp and change clothes twenty times like girls were supposed to do before parties.

But I took Adam’s hand and held him back from the others. I whispered what had been bugging me all day. “Frances thinks you have a plot, other than the plot with me to make Sean and Rachel jealous.”