Endless Summer: The Boys Next Door; Endless Summer (33 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This office had no windows.

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

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

BANG.

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

BANG.

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

BANG.

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

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

“Son,” he said, “you monkeyed up.”

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

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

“Thanks,” I said.

BANG.

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

None.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And she’s beautiful,” I went on.

He nodded.

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

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

“I will,” I said quickly.

“Stay away from her.”

“Okay.”

“Keep your hands off her.”

“I’ll try.”

He scowled at me.

“I will,” I said.

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

BANG.

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

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

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

He feinted toward me.

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

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

“I will.”

“I would hate to see you go.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

BANG.

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

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

“Heeeey,” I wailed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Sometimes it’s good to let go.”

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

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

“For the mayo,” Rachel said.

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