He turned to my brother and repeated, “Take care of your sister.”
My brother and I closed the door behind us—softly, so as not to startle an already shell-shocked father—and walked through the garage to the yard, heading past the Vaders’ house to the marina. As soon as we were out of Dad’s earshot, I said, “Well! It’s a good thing you’re not serious about taking care of me. Dad can keep me from going out with Adam, but he’ll never see me on the lake. He won’t know about anything I do at the marina, because you won’t tell him. Hold up a minute.” I’d been limping behind my brother on one bare foot and one flip-flop, scanning the yard for a flash of pink as we went. I remembered having both flip-flops on at the bridge. After that, it got fuzzy. All I knew was that I’d been wearing only one when I arrived home an hour ago. My dad had characterized this as my telltale state of undress.
Now I dove into an azalea and brought out my flip-flop. I shoved my toes into it and turned around.
McGillicuddy frowned at me.
Suddenly I realized how it looked to him and to my dad. “Come on,” I pleaded. “A flip-flop in the bushes does not mean anything. If you ever see my bikini top hanging from the bird feeder, I give you permission to raise an eyebrow.”
He cleared his throat. “Dad will see you on the lake. While you were in the shower, he went out on the screened porch, dragged the lawn chair into position, and made sure he could see the lake through the trees. After work I’m supposed to get out the ladder and clip more branches out of the way.”
“Oh.”
“And if I see you with Adam, I have to tell Dad.”
“You are not serious,” I wailed.
“I promised Dad. It’s a big brother’s duty. Just because you’ve lost his trust doesn’t mean that I—”
“I didn’t do anything to lose his trust,” I interrupted. “Adam and I fell asleep. That’s the truth. You know Adam’s harmless.”
“I do not,” McGillicuddy said sternly.
“Well, not harmless, but he wouldn’t hurt me.”
“He wouldn’t mean to,” McGillicuddy acknowledged. “But Adam’s got it bad for you, Lori. And sometimes what Adam intends to do and what he actually does are two different things.”
I scowled down the hill. Early morning mist rose from the smooth lake and evaporated as it touched the sun. A little over two weeks ago, I’d skipped happily toward that mist, knowing it would burn off to reveal a whole summer day working with Sean. A week ago, I’d still thought I was after Sean, but I’d fallen for Adam, whether I knew it or not. Yesterday Adam had won me over. It had been the best birthday ever.
We’d screwed it up already. Literally. We were the only two teenagers in the world who could get in trouble for hitting a home run when we hadn’t even gotten to second base. Now the fog over the lake looked menacing. It lapped at the marina piers and curled toward the warehouse and the showroom. It threatened to grab the little love affair between Adam and me and drag it under the surface of the lake, never to be seen again.
Then McGillicuddy said, “I have to tell Dad if I see you with Adam. Just don’t let me see you.”
“Thank you,” I gushed. I would have hugged him if that wouldn’t have been weird. Instead, he turned to walk toward the marina again, and I skipped beside him.
What a relief that somebody was on our side. The situation had seemed bad this morning after Dad yelled at me. It had seemed downright hopeless after I talked to Adam on the phone and he told me he was as grounded from me as I was from him. But I figured everybody would cool down after a few days. Yesterday my dad had been happy Adam and I were a couple, and Adam’s mom had helped throw us together in the first place. It wasn’t logical for them to do a one-eighty just because Adam and I had stayed out all night.
Or maybe it was logical, but it wasn’t fair.
Now that we had my brother as an ally, I felt better. I was sure I could fix everything. As we shuffled across the mat of pine needles, I asked him, “Can you talk to Dad for me?”
My brother eyed me. I didn’t blame him. Dad had put on quite a spectacle this morning. His friendly lawyer facade had crumbled completely after a night of dead-or-missing daughter and no sleep. He yelled at me all the way through breakfast, and I had the strangest experience of being the reasonable one in the argument. Unlike him, I’d gotten plenty of rest. I’d slept through the night just dandy on Adam’s chest. I had felt awful about keeping my dad awake and worried—until he started yelling.
“Can you?” I prompted my brother.
“Dad’s pretty mad,” he said.
“Really,” I said flatly. “I did not get that at all.”
“You should ask Frances,” he said.
“I thought of that.” If anybody besides my brother would believe Adam and I didn’t deserve to be treated like sexual deviants, it was my ex-nanny, Frances, who was now my dad’s girlfriend. I’d given her the play-by-play over the past few weeks. She knew I’d gone after Sean, caught Adam instead, and decided I’d netted the right boy after all.
But something about the idea of going to her for help made me uncomfortable. All those years she was our nanny, my brother and I thought we were pulling something over on Frances. The boys next door thought the same thing. Recently, watching her with the new family she worked for across the lake, I’d realized she let us get away with things on purpose, to learn lessons. She knew me a little too well. This was disturbing on its own, but it was doubly disturbing that this person who knew me a little too well wore hemp shorts and Birkenstocks in public.
Plus, she’d warned me a week ago that seemingly innocent Adam was trouble. And she told me that despite this, nobody would forbid me to go out with him. This was the one thing she’d been wrong about. A VERY IMPORTANT OVERSIGHT.
Plus, “Everything changed yesterday when she started dating Dad.”
My brother nodded. “It’s disconcerting.”
“Very disconcerting.” I hauled open the door to the marina office and waved him inside. “And I’m not sure she’s on my team anymore.” I stepped over the threshold after him, into enemy territory.
Crowded with my brother and me in Mrs. Vader’s tiny office were three big, bare-chested boys wearing nothing but board shorts. They smelled better than usual, since it was so early and they hadn’t spent the whole day sweating in the sun. Not that I minded their scent all that much—especially when Adam, who was standing closest to Mrs.
Vader at her desk, peered at me over Sean and Cameron.
Since he’d dropped me off after our disastrous date, my mind had worked furiously to punch its way out of this box we’d built for ourselves. But now, as he looked over at me with his pale blue eyes so big and mysterious in his tanned face and his longish hair carelessly pushed back like he had no clue how hot he was—now I knew that if we didn’t find a way to convince our parents to let us be together, this was going to seem like one endless summer.
“Adam,” Mrs. Vader said. Somehow she conveyed a lot of disgust in that one name. Having raised three boys close in age, Mrs. Vader was good at this sort of thing.
“Yes, ma’am,” Adam said politely, and therefore sarcastically. If he hadn’t gotten a Talking-To an hour ago, he would have responded to her call with his full name, rank, and serial number like a prisoner of war.
I tried to catch his eye and give him a warning look. Our romance was at stake here. I didn’t think this was a good time to be sarcastic.
“You’ve got gas,” Mrs. Vader said.
Cameron and Sean cracked up. Some jokes never got old, at least to teenage boys whose little brother was in trouble.
“I figured,” Adam muttered. Heading for the office door on his way down to the marina’s floating gas station, he pushed his way past Cameron and Sean. He even shoved my brother. I would have found this angry-at-the-world act kind of sexy if things hadn’t been so serious. We were in enough hot water.
He slid past me, his chest warm against my bare arm. I looked up into his eyes and watched him as he moved past me. My skin tingled wherever he touched me, like sand sparkling and swirling in the lake when the water was stirred. He filled the sunny doorway for a second. Then he was gone down the wooden stairs to the floating dock.
I turned back toward Mrs. Vader’s desk. She and the three remaining boys stared at me like they’d never seen me before. Like I was Lori McGillicuddy, Teen Geek and Fashion Disaster, transformed into an underage sex goddess. Just the effect I’d been going for two weeks ago when I was trying to hook Sean. Now that I was in trouble, not so good. To assure them I was the same old Lori, I said, “Funny. I figured you’d give me gas.”
“Ew,” Sean said. Cameron fanned the air to dispel the pretend smell, and my brother took a step away from me.
“Sean and Bill,” Mrs. Vader called, “you’re in the warehouse.”
My brother amiably headed toward the warehouse door. Sean put one hand on Mrs. Vader’s shoulder. “Are you sure you don’t need help here in the showroo—” He stopped midsentence when Mrs. Vader glared at him. “On second thought, I’ll see if McGillicuddy needs any help in the warehouse. Good suggestion.” He crossed his eyes at Cameron and me as he slipped past us out the office door.
“And you two,” Mrs. Vader said to Cameron and me. “We sold a lot of stock over the festival weekend. You’re delivering boats.” Cameron took the stack of tickets she handed him. “Score!” he exclaimed, holding up his arms to signal a touchdown, because the boys considered this the choice job.
Then he glanced at me. “No offense. I didn’t mean you.”
“Nice.” I’d been so focused on the catastrophe with Adam, I hadn’t even processed that there were a lot of sex jokes in my future, courtesy of rude boys. I approached Mrs. Vader’s desk cautiously, because she looked like she’d had Just About Enough. “I wanted to remind you that you do not allow me to deliver boats, as I have been known to crash them.”
“It’s time you earned your keep around here, Lori,” Mrs. Vader snapped. “You’ve had your boater’s license for almost a year. Now you’ve turned sixteen. Whether or not you’ve learned left from right, you need to act like a grown-up. You can’t rely on the boys to do everything for you. Take some responsibility.” My jaw dropped lower and lower as she said this. First of all, I worked hard around the marina, mostly, and she paid me minimum wage. What did she expect me to do, scrub the wharf with a toothbrush?
Actually, as she seemed pretty miffed, I would not have suggested this, even in jest.
Second of all, bringing up the fact that I was directionally challenged was a low blow, since my handicap had caused me to wreck on my wakeboard and bash my forehead just three days ago.
And finally, the suggestion that I had been careless and irresponsible in sullying her youngest child with my sexiness… well, that called for a Retort. I shifted my dropped jaw to one side and gritted my teeth with the effort not to say a word. I could still salvage my relationship with Adam and convince our parents to let us date. I knew I could if I just kept my mouth shut for now, which, let me tell you, was about as ridiculous an idea as my sudden transformation into a teenage temptress.
Staying silent became even more difficult when, from behind me, Cameron moaned, “Woooo,” like his mom had dissed me good.
I pressed my lips together and backed out of the room, without so much as a “Yes, ma’am.” I was afraid of what I might say if I said anything at all.
Cameron moved past me and slid a few sheets of paper from his mom’s printer. “Hey,” she protested when he snagged a black marker and a roll of tape, but he just followed me out.
In the sun, with the office door safely closed behind us, he asked, “Why couldn’t you and Adam hook up last summer too, and the summer before? Y’all are a riot. Sure beats three-on-two water polo for my entertainment dollar.”
It was imperative that I pretend nothing about this bugged me. To Cameron, and especially to Sean, any inkling Adam and I were really worried would be like blood in the water to a shark. I waved at the paper in Cameron’s hand. “What’s with the school supplies?” He handed me the tape. Spreading one sheet of paper against the side of the building, he covered it with a big black L in marker. He wrote an R on the other sheet and tried to hand them both to me. “Tape these on either side of you in the boat. They’ll keep you straight.” I looked at the L and R, then at him. “I know my left from my right, thank you very much.”
“Okay then.” He pulled the boat tickets from his pocket and examined one. “The first place we’re going is about five miles to the right.” Before I thought, I gazed in that direction. Not that I could really pick out a house so far away along the forested shoreline.
“Caught ya,” Cameron said. “Your other right.”
Like Adam had taught me, I made an L with the fingers of my supposedly right hand. If it had really been my right hand, the L would have been backward. Oops.
“at’s not fair. Now you’ve got me thinking about it, which is what confuses me.” I took the sheets from Cameron anyway. I definitely didn’t want either of us to return them to Mrs. Vader in her office just then. Judging from her current mood, I should steer clear of her for a couple of decades. We trotted down the steps to the wharf.
“So…,” he said. “Did you and Adam do it or not?”
Risking death by taking my eyes away from the stairs beneath my flip-flops, I looked up at Cameron.