Текст книги "Endless Summer"

Автор книги: Jennifer Echols

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

“At first,” Adam went on, “we thought we’d make him want something I had. You. Now he wants something you have.”

“Boobs?” I asked, trying to sound bored.

“Your place at the end of the wakeboarding show. row a jump and fake an injury. You have to make it look like you’re really hurt, so Cameron doesn’t rib Sean about girls making sacrifices just to go out with him.”

Cameron cranked the boat to pull Sean up, and my brother spotted. With the motor roaring and Nickelback blaring, I was free to tell Adam (loudly) exactly what I thought of that plan. I sat up and turned to face him.

Before I could get the words out, he leaned close and said, “I told you before you’re not a good actress. I have a lot more confidence in you now. I thought you liked me.

You had me fooled.”

I stared into his blue eyes, trying to see what was behind them. “You really want me to throw a jump and go out with Sean?”

“This has nothing to do with me,” he said grimly.

“It has everything to do with y—”

He put his finger to my lips. “If you want Sean, this is what you need to do, because this is how he is. Love him or leave him. I’m just trying to help.” He slid off the seat with a high zipping sound of his board shorts against the vinyl and bounced toward the back of the boat. He plopped down in the seat across the aisle from my brother and crossed his feet on the edge of the boat, relaxed, satisfied by a job well done. When Sean landed a front flip, then tumbled a couple of extra times before face-planting, Adam’s shoulders shook. He was laughing.

“Lori!” McGillicuddy shouted, standing directly in front of me. e boat drifted again, and Sean dripped on the platform. “I said, did you see the log? I guess you didn’t see the log, since you’re in a coma.”

“Log schmog.” I stood up and reached for my life vest.

McGillicuddy followed me as I stepped over Adam and Sean, who didn’t bother to move their feet out of the aisle as I passed. Just like old times. “There’s a huge log out near the pontoon boat,” McGillicuddy said. “When we get near it, I’m veering to the right of where we usually go. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said, sliding over the back of the boat to the platform and stepping into the bindings on my wakeboard.

“To the right,” Cameron laughed.

“I said okay.” I was in no mood to be teased about my driving right now.

e drone of the motorboat was great for thinking, fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on whether you hated yourself. At the moment I wasn’t enjoying it too much. I was supposed to be pinning down my routine for the show, but I just did flips and 360s automatically, my mind on Adam.

Staring at him in the boat told me nothing. He was so far away that he was just a tan face with light brown hair, and if he’d changed places with Sean, I wouldn’t have known. But I stared at the boy I thought was Adam and tried to figure out exactly what he was plotting. Clearly he’d paid more attention to MTV reality shows than he’d let on.

If I pretended to get hurt so Sean could take my place in the show, he probably wouldn’t ask me out. He’d watched Adam and me while we were together, that was for sure. And I’d thought at first that the light had dawned and he’d seen my ravishing beauty for the first time. Looking back, though, I thought he’d watched Adam more than me. Sean had worried Rachel would get jealous and Adam would snatch her away again.

If Sean did ask me out, though, I’d know for sure that my internal makeover had worked—two days before the deadline of my sixteenth birthday! And I’d also know Adam had been right. Sean was so low, he couldn’t stand to ask out a girl who’d shown him up. It was almost worth throwing a jump just to see what happened and get some closure on this issue.

I could do any old jump and pretend to hurt my ankle. I’d hurt it last summer when I fell and my foot came halfway out of the binding, which was why I’d laced up the bindings so tightly since then. Faking a limp would be more difficult. But I’d need to limp for only two days, until the Crappy Festival show. e question was whether I should complain about it enough to go to the hospital and have them find nothing, which seemed like a huge waste of time and money. Adam had hurt himself before and had been in a lot of pain but refused to go to the hospital, so there was some precedent for this. Of course, he finally had to go, and his arm was broken in three places.

There was also the small detail that Adam was like that and I was not.

Suddenly I found myself shooting farther and faster beyond the boat than I’d expected. We were turning at the bridge, just under the words AOAN LOVES LOKI. I pulled up and took control of the run.

What had I been thinking? Had I seriously been considering throwing a jump and pretending to be hurt just to get a boy? What kind of boy did you catch with a ploy like that?

And furthermore, what kind of person was Adam to give me the idea?

I decided right then that I was not going to pretend to get hurt and throw this show for Sean or anybody. Furthermore, I would skip the party tomorrow night, because there would be no one there I wanted to see, except Tammy. Well, okay, maybe I wouldn’t skip the party, because who could skip a party next door? But I wouldn’t enjoy it. Or I would hang out with Tammy, ignoring the boys. And furthermore, sometime between now and then, maybe tonight since I obviously would not have a boy to go out with, I would ask McGillicuddy to drive me to town. I would buy the latest Kelly Clarkson album as a birthday present from me to me. I would fight and fight and fight to play it in the boat the next time we went wakeboarding. I was sick to death of Nickelback.

Something dark in the water flashed past the corner of my eye. I turned and saw an enormous log tumbling gently in the water. Just then the pull on the rope changed, and I remembered McGillicuddy was veering to the right to avoid the log. I veered to the right with him as I headed for the pontoon boat to ride the rails.

Only I was coming up too fast on the backside of the pontoon boat. I glanced over at the boys and motioned to Adam to slow down. I’d screwed this trick already.

Adam was motioning to me, an exaggerated wave away from the pontoon boat. And he was mouthing something. Your other right. I realized what I’d done then and dropped the rope. The side of the pontoon boat emblazoned VADER’S MARINA zoomed toward me, smack.

This probably would have been a lot easier if I’d gotten amnesia or at least felt a little woozy from the impact, but I didn’t. I knew exactly what was happening as I slipped wakeboard-first under the pontoon boat and slowed to a stop. e buoyant wakeboard on my feet and the life vest hugging my chest stuck me like magnets to the slippery underside of the boat.

My head—I had cracked my head open when I hit the boat, and the pain was almost unbearable, but I had nowhere to put it. Blood curled around me, backlit by sunbeams streaming through the water at the edges of the boat. I needed to get out from under. I was running out of air.

I tried to kick myself over to the edge—but my feet were still stuck in the wakeboard bindings. Bending over to untie them was the only way out. I would run out of air before then. I could hardly think of anything except running out of air, the throbbing in my head, the blood forming graceful curlicues in front of my eyes.

I reached one hand as far toward the edge of the boat as I could, hoping I could pull hard with every bit of life I had left and slip out from under, dragging the wakeboard with me. My hand sank into a firm, gelatinous mass. Without looking, I knew it was bryozoa. I had died and gone to hell. is was how my mother must have felt. e water had always been my friend. The water had betrayed me.

en they came for me. ey were under the pontoon boat with me, blurry and green like ghosts in the water. One boy shoved down on the wakeboard. e other boy put a strong arm across my chest and pushed off from the bottom of the boat with his feet. He took me lower in the water—wrong direction, hello, I could hardly suppress the urge to breathe in water instead of air. I struggled. He let me go. The wakeboard and the life vest propelled me to the surface, clear of the boat.

I popped into the air, gasping. Sean put his arms around me again and held my head above the water so I could breathe. e thought crossed my mind of rejecting a boy’s help and resisting the damsel-in-distress role, but really it was a little thought that had no effect on letting Sean help me breathe. e more I breathed, the harder my head throbbed, so I also had a little thought that MTV would never invite me to dance on stage during one of their Spring Break specials now that I looked like the Elephant Man.

And a little thought that I had been wrong about Sean. Mom had sent me a sign. She’d sent Sean to save my life. Maybe he was worth a faked injury, after all.

Of course, there was also McGillicuddy down at my feet, and the fact that the motorboat had been only twenty yards away from me when I went down, so maybe it wasn’t Mom’s doing. God, my head hurt like a mother.

McGillicuddy got me loose from the wakeboard. Sean held me up to Cameron in the boat, who grabbed me under the arms and lifted me in. Immediately Sean climbed the ladder and came to me. He pulled me out of the life vest, then eased me down and cradled my head in his lap.

Just like in my dream, he looked down at me with eyes lighter than the deep blue sky behind him. e sunlight turned his hair and shoulders and broad chest gold as he pressed both hands to my head.

Unlike in my dream, he dripped water and tears on my face, stinging my eyes. e blood didn’t help either. Oozing from under Sean’s hand, it crawled like mosquitoes on my skin. I felt pretty.

“Calm down,” McGillicuddy said. “Calm down. For God’s sake, would you calm down?”

“I’m fine,” I said between heaving coughs. “At least I can move my toes, so I won’t have to ride the short bus.”

“I meant Adam.”

I stared past the pain in my head, upward at Adam’s chin. Adam held me, not Sean. I hadn’t recognized him upside down, without the skull and crossbones.

“Sean,” Cameron called. “We’ve got her. Let’s go.”

e engine started, and the boat lurched into high speed. Down in Adam’s lap, below the sides of the boat, the motor sounded muffled, more a buzz than a roar.

Without Nickelback blaring, for once.

“Let me see,” McGillicuddy said, bending next to Adam.

I cringed and closed my eyes and tried to go to a different place, away from the pain, as they fumbled on my forehead. Poked at my forehead. I came back from that different place and said, “DON’T TOUCH IT.”

“It’s going to need stitches,” McGillicuddy said. “They might have to shave your hair a little. But if they do, I’ll shave mine too. So will Adam. Right, Adam?”

“It’s a wonder you weren’t killed,” Adam cried. “It’s a wonder you didn’t at least put your eye out.” McGillicuddy said, “Adam, would you calm down?”

I squeezed my eyes more tightly shut.

“I can’t believe you actually did it,” Adam said. “I can’t believe you’re that stupid.”

“I didn’t,” I mouthed. That’s all I could do. Sean and Adam had been my whole life for the last couple of weeks, but it was surprising how little I cared about them when I suddenly had a throbbing headache the size of the lake. Even if I’d wanted to, I didn’t have the strength to fight. Adam wouldn’t have believed me, anyway.

At first, all five Vaders plus McGillicuddy crowded into the emergency room with me. e nurses kicked everyone out except Mrs. Vader. ey must have mistaken her for someone motherly and soothing. She barked at people and insisted on seeing their credentials before she’d let them touch me. en Cameron came back and said Adam had taken a swing at Sean and gotten them all kicked out of the waiting room. So Mrs. Vader herded them all home where they could beat the hell out of each other in peace.

She sent McGillicuddy in to sit with me.

I didn’t have a concussion, and they didn’t shave my head or anything traumatic like that. After the first prick of anesthetic, my head didn’t even hurt much. Which was a good thing, because McGillicuddy went to buy himself some Pop-Tarts out of the snack machine. I lay there by myself on the hospital bed and stared at the water-stained ceiling while the doc stitched me up, scolded me, and left to find me some pain pills for when the anesthetic wore off. I felt very sorry for myself and very alone until Dad showed up, with Frances.

Dad grasped my hand in both of his. “Lori. Oh, my Lori.” He started to cry softly.

“Dad, I’m okay.” I patted his arm: there there.

“Trevor,” said Frances. Her hand was on Dad’s back. “Deep breaths.”

Dad sniffed a deep breath through his nose while Frances held his gaze and moved her hands in circles in the air in front of her, encouraging him to breathe therapeutically. e way they were acting, people at the hospital who didn’t know them might mistake them for a couple. A very odd couple, with Frances in her tie-dyed hippie costume and Dad in his lawyer costume from the office.

“Here,” I said, easing off the bed. “Lie down, Dad.”

He switched places with me, never loosening his grip on my hand. “I don’t want you to be scared because of this.”

“She won’t,” Frances said.

“I won’t,” I said.

“I want you out there wakeboarding again tomorrow,” he sobbed.

“I can’t, Dad. The doc said I’m not supposed to go swimming until my stitches come out in a few days.”

“Then I want you wakeboarding the day they come out. And do exactly what you were doing when you got hurt.” I thought about this. “It would be difficult to replicate.”

“Do you understand me?” he said, still crying.

“Shhh,” Frances said, patting his shoulder.

“Yeah, Dad,” I said, looking toward McGillicuddy in the doorway. He munched his Pop-Tart. I twirled my finger beside my ear: crazy. McGillicuddy nodded. At least I wasn’t the only sane person around here.

A nurse brought me some pills, which I took gladly because I didn’t want my brain to hurt like that again, ever. ey weren’t supposed to be strong enough to put me to sleep, but they did. Or it was the medicine combined with the adrenaline draining away. e fatigue from nearly drowning, touching bryozoa, being sobbed over by a couple of he-men, etc. I’d had such a busy day.

All I knew for sure was that I stretched out on the backseat of Dad’s car and slept on the way home. When we got there, I wasn’t moving. ey prodded me, but I could not see myself climbing the stairs to my room. I did not see why they couldn’t let me sleep in the car parked in the garage. The backseat felt delicious.

McGillicuddy carried me up the stairs, and Dad tucked me into bed. Ahhhhhhh, bed had never been such a relief. Dad and McGillicuddy spoke softly in the doorway.

Dad: “She didn’t even wake up. You be sure and come get her if there’s a fire.”

McGillicuddy: “A fire. Right, Dad.”

I laughed myself back to sleep. A fire. Really! In the last twenty-four hours, I’d been through everything bad I could imagine. What else could possibly happen?

“Lori, when we’re old enough, I want you to be my girlfriend.” Sean kissed me. With his mouth still on my mouth, he pulled me off the bow seat and down into the floorboard of the boat, out of the wind.

I broke the kiss to say, “I guess this means we’re old enou—”

He cut me off by kissing me. His tongue circled deep inside my mouth, and I opened for more. When I got bored with this (the idea of getting bored with making out still caused me to laugh, ho ho), I lifted my chin so he could kiss my neck. en I turned my head so he could kiss my ear. Wow, this was the best dream ever, and so long!

Suddenly anxious, I peered into the back of the boat to see whether the other boys were watching us. The boat was empty.

“Who’s driving?” I gasped.

“You are,” Sean said.

“Oh.” This made me a little nervous, but not nervous enough to wake up or anything. I turned my head so he could kiss my other ear.

“Listen,” he breathed. “What’s that?”

“The boat motor,” I murmured without thinking. “And Nickelback.”

He propped himself up on his forearms and cocked his head to hear better. “Actually, I think it’s JoJo.” The skull and crossbones dangled above my eyes.

“Adam!” I cried, sitting bolt upright in my bed. I peered over at the clock blaring “Too Little, Too Late.” No wonder the dream had lasted so long! My alarm had gone off, but I’d slept right through fifteen minutes of radio. e photo of my mother lay flat on the bedside table. McGillicuddy must have knocked it over by accident last night when he put me in bed.

“Stupid subconscious!” I slapped myself in the back of the head. “Ow!” e shock of the slap rippled through my brain and into the gash on my forehead. I cupped my hand over the stitches.

A soft knock sounded at the door. McGillicuddy leaned in without waiting for an answer. He glanced at the clock, then at me. “Breakfast is being served to the psych ward in the dining hall. You want me to send up an orderly to help you get out of bed?”

I stuck out my tongue at him. I didn’t mind psych ward jokes from McGillicuddy. He was the only one who understood. Except—

“Adam came to see you.”

I took in a sharp breath. “When?”

“Last night, and again this morning.”

“Why didn’t you wake me up?” I wailed.

“Because any other time in the history of your life, you would have snuck in my room and rearranged my sock drawer in revenge for waking you up. You know I need the argyles in the front.”

“Well, what’d he say?”

McGillicuddy gathered a year’s worth of wakeboarding mags and his copy of The Right Stuff and stacked them neatly on the floor so he could sit on the edge of my bed.

“Last night he was just checking on you. This morning he came over to say he’s taking the day off work. But he wanted you to know, he’s through.”

“He’s through? With what?” With Sean? Fighting with Sean?

“With you.”

Of course he was through with me. He’d told me as much while I bled in his lap yesterday. As long as I heard it with my own ears, I could hope I’d misread the whole situation. Hearing it from McGillicuddy made it real. Almost. “Are you making this up?”

“No. He’s really mad at you. I’ve never seen him this mad. Not even at Sean.” McGillicuddy thumbed through e Right Stuff to make sure I hadn’t gotten marshmallow on it. “But I want you to know some good will come out of your crash. It’s inspired me to do something I’ve wanted to do for a long time.”

“Remove your own appendix?”

“Ask Tammy out.”

My head hurt. “Tammy? Why?”

“I think she’s been coming to the Vaders’ parties to see me. I know, I know, this seems as impossible to me as it does to you, but I really think she likes me.” I grunted a little with the increasing pain in my head. I didn’t want to tell him this, but it might save him some humiliation later. “McGillicuddy, you’re wrong. She’s been coming to the Vaders’ parties to see me. We’re friends.”

He squinted at me. “Why do you think so?”

“She told me so.”

“Couldn’t it be one of those schemes, like you and Adam are pulling on Sean? She’s pretending to be your friend so she can see me without admitting that’s why she’s at the party.”

“Tammy wouldn’t do that to me,” I said. My pulse began to race, and my head throbbed harder with every heartbeat. “What do you mean, one of those schemes like Adam and I are pulling on Sean?”

“I figure if you can brain yourself on a pontoon boat just to get a boy to ask you out, I can ask a girl out and brave a little rejection.” Now I winced against the throbbing in my head. “Adam told you I crashed just to get Sean to ask me out?”

“Yeah. He told me you’ve faked going out from the beginning. He’s really mad about you crashing.” McGillicuddy leaned across the bed and nabbed his copy of The Hunt for Red October, which I’d been telling him since last summer I did not borrow, when in actuality I had lost it under some (clean!) laundry and didn’t come across it until last week. “Adam and Sean have always fought,” McGillicuddy said, tucking the book under his arm for safekeeping. “But you’ve made it a million times worse. Can you imagine the five of us wakeboarding together for the rest of the summer?”

“No,” I admitted. It sounded about as fun as getting a tooth pulled every afternoon. “But I didn’t start this in the first place. Sean did. Sean stole Rachel from Adam.”

“Adam never liked Rachel anyway,” McGillicuddy said. “He was madder about the insult than the girl. He was in love with you. If it hadn’t been for you wanting to fool Sean, Adam would have simmered down eventually and let Sean have Rachel. We’d be back to normal by now.”

“Reverse, please,” I said. “Adam was in love with—”

“You. Where did I go wrong? I raised a little brother, not a femme fatale.”

I didn’t quite get it. Could Adam have been telling me the truth about his plot? It seemed too good to be true, and too awful if I had screwed this up. “Did Adam say he’s in love with me?”

“Was in love with you. Yes, that’s what he said. How the hell else would I know? I wish I didn’t. is place is getting to be like that awful girls’ reality show, what’s it called? The chicks in my dorm call dibs on the TV in the rec center and won’t let us watch basketball.”

“Is it on MTV?”

“Yes!”

“Get out of my room.”

As he stood, I made a weak grab for The Hunt for Red October, but he dodged me. He closed the door behind him.

Adam was in love with me. He wasn’t just saying it to keep me with him while he made Sean jealous. He was in love with me.

Head throbbing, I looked around my room, which still reflected the boy I’d been before I started transforming myself. I hadn’t gotten around to a room makeover with purple flowers and a fuzzy pink ottoman. As the air-conditioning clicked on, the fighter jet models I’d built from kits swayed at the end of their strings near the ceiling. I was a little brother. I was a mess.

Adam had been in love with me, just like this.

And now he wasn’t.

It was a good thing Advil took care of my headache. If I’d had to stay out of work and spend the day at home, I would have driven myself insane (if I wasn’t already). As it was, I showered faster than usual to make up for lost time, taking care to keep my stitches out of the spray. I ate breakfast as usual, except Dad gave me a big hug and sobbed a little into my hair. As usual, McGillicuddy and I opened the door to hike across our yard and the Vaders’ to the marina—

–and there stood Sean with his finger on the doorbell. He asked me brightly, “Will you go to the party tonight with me?” My brain said, Hooray! I’m going out with Sean! My time has come!

My body was strangely quiet. ere was no happy skin. My brain reached down through my nerve endings to poke at my heart and make sure it was okay. My heart said, Eh. At this point I realized I did need to go back to the shrink. I sagged against the doorjamb, rolled my eyes, and uttered something very unladylike.

McGillicuddy stepped around me and wagged his cell phone between his fingers. With a pointed look at Sean, he told me, “Call me if you need me.”

“I could take you,” Sean shouted after McGillicuddy. “Bring it on.” His voice echoed around the garage. en he turned back to me and sighed, “I was afraid you’d say that. Look, I told my dad we’d come to work a little late this morning because we’re going to fish your wakeboard out of the lake. Let’s talk.” I followed him down to my pier, where he’d tied the wakeboarding boat. Clearly it did occur to him to dock in a certain place to save someone a long walk. Himself.

Just not me. We stepped in, and I looked around on the floor. “Who cleaned the blood out of the boat for me? I was going to do it this morning.”

“Adam,” Sean said. “When we get to the pontoon boat, you’ve got to tell me this story. He was saying it was his fault and crying the whole time. Pussy.” He slapped his hand over his mouth. “Sorry. I almost forgot you weren’t a guy.” Before I could offer a choice response, he cranked the motor and the Nickelback.

As we zoomed toward the pontoon boat, I noticed that a dump truck had mistakenly unloaded a pile of soot onto the side of the bridge. e closer we got, the more clearly I could see it wasn’t a pile of soot after all but carefully applied spray paint marking out the letters AOAN LOVES LOKI. Adam had been busy. He must have gone out in the motorboat in the near-dark last night, or the near-dark this morning. He wanted to get the offensive words off the bridge as quickly as he could. ey would have haunted him until he got rid of them. He hated me that much.

“Junior!” Sean stood in front of me, clapping his hands. “McGillicuddy Part Deux!” He’d stopped the boat next to the pontoon boat. “McGillicuddy left your wakeboard floating here, so let’s check under the pontoon boat first.” He handed me one of the oars that motorboats carry in case their engines stop when they run over logs. As we poked around under the pontoons, he asked, “Why’s Adam so pissed at you?”

“It’s complicated. We’ve only been going out to make you and Rachel mad.” I couldn’t believe I was telling him this. But my brilliant ploys had gotten me into this fix, and I’d lost hope they could get me out. Also, I must have bled out my last lick of sense. “I’ve sort of had a thing for you.” He pulled his oar from under the boat and put all his weight on it, like he needed it to keep him from collapsing. “You? Have a thing for me?”

“Had.”

He made a face. “Ugh!”

is should have been the low point of my life, the one I’d dreaded for over a decade: rejection by Sean. Now that it had finally happened, I didn’t feel humiliated. I was angry. “What do you mean, ugh? You flirted with me a couple of weeks ago, before your first party. Remember wiping bryozoa on me? at’s the mating dance of the brain-dead Vader brothers.”

“Oh, yeah! I’d forgotten all about the bryozoa.” He waved his hand in the air, dismissing the bryozoa incident like a pesky yellow jacket. “Adam was acting protective of you that day for some reason. I got the idea he might like you a little. So I figured I’d push his buttons. I can’t see myself really coming on to you, ever.” He shoved his oar under the boat again. “No offense.”

“None taken, you ass.”

He glanced sideways at me. “When I said ‘Ugh,’ I just meant, ‘Ugh, what could Buddy possibly see in little old me?’” Sure you did. “I honestly can’t remember,” I said, poking my oar under the boat, too. “Anyway, Adam thinks I crashed into the pontoon boat on purpose so you could close the wakeboarding show again, and you’d like me better. I didn’t, but Adam thinks I did.” I ran my finger over the little dent my thick skull had made in the aluminum side of the boat. “I guess he was willing to take the fake love just so far.”

“So you’ve faked hooking up.”

I glanced toward the bridge, at the scribble that once had said AOAN LOVES LOKI. “Yeah.”

“You faked flirting with each other on the desk in the living room.”

“Yeah.” It hadn’t felt like faking, but what did I know?

“You faked making out on the end of the dock at the party last Friday? And disappearing into the lake? Because that was convincing.”

“Yes. I mean, we really made out, but we weren’t really in love.” At least, I hadn’t realized it at the time.

“at little shit!” he yelled so loudly that I worried about the innocent ears of Frances and the Harbarger children around the bend. I imagined Frances pretending she hadn’t heard a thing as the shout echoed around their fenced yard.

“Now why are you so pissed?” I asked.

“Because it worked! He stole Rachel from me!”

I stomped my foot on the floor of the boat, like a girl. “You stole Rachel from him in the first place, just to make him mad. Even if you thought you really liked her by the time she broke up with you, she only seemed like something you’d want because Adam had her in the first place.” He brought in his oar again and leaned on it. “I may be shallow, Lori, but I’m not a monster.” He gazed downstream. “I don’t think your wakeboard’s under here.

Maybe the current caught it.”

I looked downstream, too, in the general direction of the dam several miles away. My wakeboard had probably gotten stuck in one of the gates and cut off the power supply to the tri-county area. The way my morning was going, the hydroelectric police would be waiting for me on the marina dock.

“Let’s try one more place.” He cranked the engine, drove to the nearby bank, and cut the power again. As the boat drifted, we used the oars to shift the logs and leaves washed up against the edge of the woods. “You think I’m a monster,” he said quietly.

“I think we all are.”

A gust of wind blew us along faster. It swooped through the woods, swaying the trees and littering us with blossoms and leaves and delicate tree crap.

“Well,” he finally said. “I didn’t steal Rachel just to make Adam mad. I pretended that’s what I was doing. at’s what Adam would think anyway. But really, I’ve been into her for so long. I couldn’t stand the thought of going to college without finding out if she liked me, too.” I was going to yell at him for being so selfish until it occurred to me that this was pretty much how I’d felt about him.

“I’ve seen the way she looks at Adam,” he went on. “Girls don’t look at me like that. They look at me, sure, but not like that.” Cunning as Sean was about other people, surely he couldn’t be this obtuse about himself? In exasperation, I pointed out, “You don’t look at them like that.”

“I look at Rachel like that. And she says she can tell from the way I treat Adam that I have no soul. I could have sworn I did.” He laughed.

Rachel might have more sense than I’d given her credit for. She’d never actually insulted me, besides calling me a ‘ho to her friends when I did the secret handshake with Adam, which was understandable. I had no reason to dislike her, other than the obvious boy-ploys. And no reason at all to think she was stupid.

“But over the last couple of weeks,” Sean continued, “I’ve seen how good you and Adam are together. And how good Rachel and I are together. Maybe Adam and Rachel are good together, too, but if they are, I’d like to rip Rachel’s heart out and throw it down in the driveway and drive back and forth over it in my truck a couple of times and give it back to her. I know you feel the same way about Adam.”