“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. “That’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.
Suddenly I remembered the one time he and I had kissed, when I was eleven years old and he was fourteen and clearly very pedophilic and misguided, or perhaps just desperate. It was an awful lip-lock, especially compared with every bone-melting kiss I’d shared with Adam in the past few weeks.
Nevertheless, that’s what I thought about as I looked up at this nineteen-year-old college boy. He was asking me if I’d had sex with his brother. If I had, I would have been beyond mortified at this question. In fact, I probably would have refused to leave my house this morning, or ever. Frances could quit her gig with the fam across the lake and homeschool me.
However, as I had not, I found the question interesting. Empowering, even. People didn’t consider me a child anymore, or a tomboy. They considered me Trouble in High Heels (or, at the moment, flip-flops—but I did own heels now). Maybe being an underage sex goddess wasn’t so bad. I fought the urge to pat my boobs underneath my bikini and test whether they’d grown.
“Adam told Mom you didn’t do it,” Cameron prompted me.
I blinked, realizing Cameron and I had paused on the stairs, facing each other. I galloped down them again, asking him over my shoulder, “Why’s your mom so mad, then?”
“Mom never believes Adam,” Cameron said. “And Adam didn’t make it easier on himself.” We’d reached the bottom of the steps. He nodded to the speedboat the boys used as a chaser when they made deliveries. “You drive the fifteen-thousand-dollar boat and I’ll drive the fifty-thousand-dollar, brand-new one. Sound okay?”
“Fine,” I muttered, stepping into the chaser boat. I did need to practice driving, even if it was a boat rather than a car. Every bit helped. I wanted to take my driving test this week—as soon as I could get off work for a few hours, drag a licensed driver with me, and convince someone to trust me with their insured vehicle. Adam and I had intended that licensed driver to be him and that insured vehicle to be his truck, but it looked like we’d blown any chance of that.
Or he had. As I puttered through the wharf behind Cameron’s boat, I felt bitter that I couldn’t grin and wave to a hot Adam at the gas pump. Hot as in obscenely good-looking with his shirt off, and hot as in an air temperature of eighty degrees at seven thirty in the morning. I couldn’t risk his mom seeing me flirting with him—not that he himself seemed to comprehend such concepts as subtlety and tactics.
At least I didn’t have to stare at the highway bridge all day like he did, with LORI LOVES ADAM freshly painted among the other graffiti of love. Last night it had seemed daring and romantic. Now I wished the words weren’t there to taunt Adam—in red, no less—or to irk our parents further.
I throttled up to keep pace with Cameron as he arced to the right, or left, or whatever. Upstream. Away from the highway bridge. And I pondered what Cameron had said: Adam didn’t make it easier on himself. What had Adam done?
I couldn’t ask Cameron about this at the house where we delivered the boat. We had to make nice with the customer. We made nice so well that Cameron came away with money, which he pocketed. Then he saw me watching him and guiltily handed me a five without showing me what the other bills were. To determine whether I was being cheated (highly likely), I would consult with Adam later on the etiquette of sharing these tips. If I was ever allowed to speak to him again.
I couldn’t ask Cameron what had transpired this morning between Mrs. Vader and Adam when we launched the chaser boat either, because the motor was too loud. And when we idled it back to the wharf, Mrs. Vader stood in the office door, motioning to me with both hands above her head and phone message slips between her fingers.
“You worried a lot of people last night,” she said as she handed me the slips and walked into the show-room, leaving me alone in the office. I examined the messages.
For: Junior
Taken by: Sean
Time: 8-ish
From: Tammy
Message: I was at your house with Bill last night when you didn’t show up. I take it you’re still alive or Bill would have called me. Are we still on for this afternoon?
That slip was scrawled as if Sean couldn’t care less whether I could read it (surprise). The next message, however, he’d taken neatly, as if afraid of offending his ex-girlfriend when I didn’t get the gist.
For: Junior
Taken by: Sean
Time: 8:16 a.m.
From: Rachel
Message: Girlfriend, your dad called me last night looking for
you and woke me up! I was worried about you! Tammy is still bringing me over to wakeboard this afternoon and I will kill Adam for you if you want me to! Your dad is whack!!!
I called both chicks back to confirm our wakeboarding date and let them know I was alive. Hanging up quickly so I didn’t get run off the phone by Mrs. Vader before my break time was up, I turned my attention to the message that really mattered.
For: Lori
Taken by: D. Vader
Time: 8:30 a.m.
From: Frances
Message: Call me.
Frances answered the phone just as the machine picked up. She sounded out of breath. “Harbargers’ residence.”
“You’ve got to talk Dad down for me,” I whispered into the phone.
“I don’t think I can do that, Lori. Excuse me.” More faintly, with her mouth away from the receiver, she called, “Alvin, not on the cat. No, sir. Let kitty go.” A thump sounded loud enough that I held the phone away from my ear, and even at that distance I could hear horrific cat noises.
Then she came back, but after I heard what she had to say, I wished she hadn’t. “Your father was terribly upset last night, Lori, and rightly so. He thinks you and Adam aren’t mature enough to handle the responsibility of being alone together, and I support him in that decision.”
“What’s the matter with you?” I demanded. “You sound like some kind of authority figure. Is someone making you say these things? Are you being held against your will? Tap once on the receiver for kidnappers and twice for spies.”
“This is no laughing matter.”
“It sure the hell isn’t. Any other time you would have talked some sense into Dad for me, but now you refuse because you’re sleeping with the enemy.”
“Lori!” she exclaimed, sounding genuinely appalled at my jab at her for going on a date with my dad yesterday. Not much appalled Frances—not that she let on, anyway—so I actually squirmed in the office chair as she scolded me. “That is a completely inappropriate comment.”
“No, Sleeping with the Enemy is a 1990s Julia Roberts movie,” I backtracked. I’d never seen it the whole way through, but during puberty Sean had been very fond of the bathtub scene and had subjected the rest of us to it over and over. “Your role as my nanny was to help my dad see that it was safe and healthy for me to play with the boys. You and I have an unspoken yet binding agreement that your role should continue now that you are my ex-nanny.”
“We have no such thing,” she said haughtily, like an ex-nanny without a sense of humor. “Adam’s mother told me Adam’s side of the story and how he expressed it to her. Sounds to me like Adam needs to grow up. Mirabella, kitty does not like that. Mir—” In the background, kitty sang “The Star-Spangled Banner.” “I’ve got to go,” Frances said.
“Wait,” I said. “What do you mean, Adam needs to—”
Frances hung up.
I stared at the phone in my hand. A boat horn honked outside. Cameron idled a sparkling new boat around the chaser boat. I galloped down the steps to the wharf and leaped into the driver’s seat of the chaser. Before switching on the engine, I shouted through cupped hands to Cameron, “What did you mean when you said Adam didn’t make it easier on himself this morning?”
Cameron shrugged. “For starters, when he first came in this morning, he said to my mom, ‘You’re up early.’ This time we’re going to the left.” I could have sworn he pointed to the right as he said this, and he roared off.
Over the course of the day, I was able to drag more information out of Cameron and piece together the rest of Adam’s defiant act, full of sassy one-liners he would not have uttered if he were trying to get out of trouble. He’d even said [cuss word you never, ever say in front of your mother]!
Cameron shared this last tidbit late in the day as we idled into the wharf after making our final delivery. Down on the floating dock, Adam finished topping off a boater’s tank and straightened with the gas nozzle in his hand in time to watch us pass.
I saw us through his eyes. Me, his girlfriend, in a bikini, wearing big movie-starlet sunglasses, behind the wheel of the boat. His oldest brother, shirtless, in Ray-Bans, whispering (well, shouting, but still) in my ear.
Though Adam was twenty yards from me, I could almost see those little creases form between his brows when he frowned. When he was worried. When he was jealous.
Sure enough, he slammed the nozzle into the gas pump, tossed one last furious look over his shoulder at me, and stomped up the wooden steps.
At this point it occurred to me that, despite my best efforts, Adam might prove difficult to date.
And I was right.
“Where’s Lori?” I asked as I threw a life vest at Cameron in the wakeboarding boat. I was part of a line. Sean in the warehouse (where it was cool and he wouldn’t melt) tossed the wakeboarding equipment we needed to McGillicuddy, and McGillicuddy tossed it to me. Then I tossed it from the wharf down to Cameron. Or threw it, because I was pissed.
Cameron caught the life vest just before it smacked him in the face. “Why the hell are you asking me?”
“I figured you’d know, since you were hanging all over her just now.”
“I was not,” Cameron insisted. He glanced around the wharf like he was afraid his girlfriend from college, Giselle, would overhear. I wished she would. Unfortunately, she’d gone to Europe until the middle of the summer.
McGillicuddy must have shot Cameron a dark look from behind my back. They were best friends, but that went only so far when it came to Lori. McGillicuddy thought Cameron was too old for her. Damn straight.
Cameron dropped the life vest and held up both hands. “I did not.”
Sean’s voice echoed inside the warehouse: “Aw, Adam is in wuv, and he misses Lowi.”
A life vest hit me in the back. I turned to pick it up and saw that McGillicuddy wasn’t paying attention. His eyes lingered on Cameron a moment longer to send his warning about Lori. Then he told me, “She’s teaching Tammy and Rachel to board this afternoon, remember?” He nodded toward his house.
Over at the McGillicuddys’ dock, three sunkissed girls in bikinis—Rachel tiny, Tammy tall, and Lori the happy medium—loaded their boat with gear. Exactly what we were doing but prettier, and nobody was getting hit in the head.
“Ow!” I put one hand to the back of my head where the handle of the ski rope had dinged me and glared at Sean in the darkness of the warehouse door.
Lori had told me she was boarding with Rachel and Tammy today instead of with us. But in the face of losing her, I’d forgotten. And all day I’d looked forward to spending an hour in our boat with her, the one place where we weren’t banned from each other. Lori was the best wake-boarder we had. A good wakeboarding show in three weeks on the Fourth of July would raise interest in the sport, which would translate into sales for the marina. Maybe my mom was willing to give that up to test my maturity, or what the hell ever, but my dad was easily bought, thank God.
And now this. Lori had flirted with Cameron in the chaser boat, and now she wasn’t even coming wakeboarding with us, as she had almost every summer afternoon as far back as I could remember. A hot breeze lifted her laughter across the water to me. Her boat looked small. She seemed very far away.
McGillicuddy pried my fingers from the bundle of ski rope and tossed it down to Cameron. “Relax,” he told me. “There’s a deep breathing exercise for that.”
“There’s a pill for that,” Sean’s voice echoed.
Normally I wouldn’t have let the comment pass. Sean loved to jab at me because I didn’t take my medicine for ADHD. If I didn’t respond, he’d jab at me harder. When I was little enough to complain to my mom about Sean constantly ragging on me, she always told me to ignore him and he’d stop. That might have worked with a normal brother. Sean was not normal.
This time I hardly felt the sting. I watched Lori push her boat away from her dock with one long leg, toes pointed, and hop in at the last moment before she lost her balance.
The
other guys must have been as interested as I was in what was going on in the other boat. Sean had dated Rachel until she broke up with him a few days ago. There were some people in the world besides me who saw through Sean’s pretty-boy act. McGillicuddy and Tammy had gone out for the first time last night—and, judging from the fact that he was not grounded from her, I assumed their date had gone better than mine had with Lori. We managed to speed up the equipment line and launch our own boat a few seconds later.
And when I neglected to crank up the rock music, not one of them said a word. We preferred to hear girls.
Manning the wheel first, I steered the boat into the middle of the lake—far enough from the girls for safety, but close enough that I could hear Lori explaining to Tammy the starting stance for boarding. McGillicuddy strapped on his life vest and board and hopped over the side. I would drive him in a couple of big circles on this section of the lake, then Sean would board, then Cameron. Lately they wanted me to board last. That way, if I had to go to the emergency room, they’d already taken their turns.
All three of them boarded better than they had all summer, which didn’t take much, since Lori had been putting us all to shame lately. At least, they looked good as far as I could tell. I was driving, not spotting, so the only glimpses I caught of them were in my rearview mirror as they hung upside down in mid-trick.
And the whole time, I had one eye on the girls’ boat. They were never hard to spot. They stayed in one place, with Tammy and then Rachel in the water trying to pull up, and Lori driving and instructing them at the same time. I should have been over there helping her.
Or Cameron should, I thought bitterly.
Lori did not have one eye on me. I didn’t know how long I could stand this panicky feeling as I watched her across the water, waiting and wishing for her to glance in my direction. Now I knew how my friends on the football team felt when they drove around town on the slim chance they might cruise by the cute girl they liked in the parking lot of the movie theater. I’d never felt that desperate about Lori. Ever since we were kids, she’d sat right beside me in the boat. We might not have been officially together until yesterday, but at least she’d always been nearby.