Even worse, the longer this went on, the more shy I felt around her. Not shy, exactly—I was not shy, and Lori was so friendly that nobody could feel shy around her. It was more like I wanted to impress her as her boyfriend, and for about two days I’d felt confident I could do it. Now I was regressing back to the way I’d felt ever since I could remember, knowing I liked her more than she liked me, and deathly afraid to make a move for fear of messing things up with her. Or getting sent to military school.
So when she grinned and put up her arms to slide past me in the narrow space between the refrigerator and the island in the kitchen, I didn’t even put out a finger to stroke the strip of exposed skin between the hem of her tank top and the waistband of my jeans she’d cut off into shorts, with her pink bikini bottoms peeking out. I just looked longingly after her and took my second helping of catfish back to the table.
But after dinner, I got another chance.
“Run down the hill,” Sean said. “Hurdle the cooler. Get sprayed by the hose. Swing on the rope. Catch the ball.”
“Agreed,” Cameron said. “One, two, three…”
“Break!” the five of us shouted, raising our hands from the pile in the center. I walked to the end of the dock, where I had a clear shot to pass the football to whoever swung over the lake on the rope hanging from a branch of the enormous oak tree. Lori followed me, dragging the garden hose. I was a little surprised her dad didn’t complain about this, because she’d stripped off her tank top and my shorts to reveal her pink bikini underneath. Sean and McGillicuddy wandered over to sit with my parents and Lori’s dad and Frances under the tree. Cameron hiked up the yard to get a running start.
“Oh, God,” Lori said without looking at me, “what are they thinking, leaving the two of us alone out here on the dock together? We might talk or something.”
“That would be awful,” I said. “I might give you a hickey.”
She laughed, still watching for Cameron’s start instead of looking at me. “Just by talking to me?”
“I can talk really dirty. You’d be surprised.”
She turned red. I hoped her dad couldn’t see her blush from that distance. My mom had cracked open a bottle of champagne to celebrate him finally asking out Frances. Maybe that would put him in a better mood about the hood next door making his daughter blush.
“How do you like Frances dating your dad?” I asked.
“I was excited about the possibility of getting a new mother, until she started acting like one.”
“Oh.”
“Speaking of bizarre dates,” Lori said, “I’ve been meaning to tell you something all week.”
She was done with me. She was dating someone else. Maybe that’s why I’d turned shy around her the past few days. I’d been afraid of this, and I didn’t want to hear it.
Before she could spill to me, I said, “Here he comes.” Cameron barreled down the grassy hill. He leaped over the big cooler. Lori gripped the trigger on the hose and released the pressure that had been building up, catching him in the side of the face with a hard stream even from thirty feet away. He put up both hands to block the water and tripped over his own feet, nearly falling as the grass gave way to the sandy beach.
“Good shot,” I told her.
“Tomorrow night I’m going out with Parker Buchanan.”
Cameron jumped onto the rope. His momentum carried him far out over the lake. My stomach felt like it was going with him, swinging over a bottomless pit.
I waited until the precise moment to power the football out to him. He let go of the rope at the apex of his swing just as the ball hit him in the chest. He reached his arms around it a fraction of a second too late. The ball bounced off him and plopped into the lake at the same time he did.
Everyone made disappointed noises. Only Frances clapped for him, and when he surfaced, she called through cupped hands, “Good try, Cameron.” Frances had always employed positive reinforcement with kids, which is why my family found her so weird.
I took advantage of the commotion. Still watching Cameron floundering in the water, I asked Lori, “You’re breaking up with me?” If I’d been looking into her green eyes as I asked this, I probably would have broken down. As it was, only my voice broke. I hoped the splashing covered it up.
“No, of course not!” She moved her hand toward me like she would touch me, but she stopped herself in time. Her hand stayed there in the hot air between us. “I’m going ahead with my plan to date boys more insidious than you.” Her hand flexed, fingers splayed, hoping I would hold off until she finished. I wondered what she thought I would do.
“I figured Parker wasn’t as bad as Kevin Ye,” she went on, “because he has not been to jail. Yet.”
Cameron waded out of the water and tossed the ball back to me. I dried it on my shirt. Ever since my dad made the “sex on a stick” comment, I’d been careful not to expose my chest, even when boarding and swimming. Sean told me I was getting a farmer’s tan.
I realized too late that I was exposing my belly as I dried my shirt. Lori watched. I glanced toward the oak tree, but her dad was leaning forward, talking to Frances with his hand on her knee. We had fallen into a parallel universe where people who never touched each other were suddenly in love, and people who were in love weren’t allowed to touch each other.
Nobody paid attention to Lori and me anyway. McGillicuddy ran down the hill. He was so big and gained so much momentum that he almost didn’t leave the ground in time to jump over the cooler. His toes grazed it as he leaped. Lori squeezed the trigger on the hose. He’d turned away so the water didn’t catch him in the face. She sprayed him in the back of the neck, droplets of water shooting out in all directions like an explosion. He ran that way with his face averted until he hit the beach, then caught the rope and swung out over the water, a lot farther than Cameron had gone.
I waited until the perfect moment to fire the ball at him. We made it look easy. He caught it and dropped into the water in an enormous cannonball.
Everyone cheered for him. He surfaced triumphantly and tossed the wet ball back to me.
“Great arm!” my dad yelled. He toasted me with his champagne flute.
“There’s no way they’ll start him on the varsity team,” Sean called as he moved from the shade of the tree up the hill to take his turn. “Adam won’t remember the plays. He won’t remember what team they’re playing. You can’t have a quarterback with ADHD.”
“We’ll see,” I yelled back. You asshole, I thought. Then I turned to Lori. “I can’t believe you’re going ahead with this plan after I asked you not to.”
“Face forward and do not look at me.”
I didn’t like people telling me what to do, even Lori. But in this case, she was right. I faced forward and stared out over the lake. In the hot evening with most boats docked for the night, the surface was glassy, reflecting the sunset. No one would have suspected millions of critters lived underneath, churning the water with their complex lives. Just like no one would have looked at Lori and me then, standing side by side on the dock with a football and a garden hose, and thought we were discussing our whole future together.
“This is exactly why I’m going ahead with the plan,” she said. “We’ve hardly exchanged two words since Sunday night. Now it’s Friday and we have no indication that my dad will give in any time soon. Your parents have threatened you with military school. We have to do something. So I asked out Parker for tomorrow night. He knows it’s a favor. We’re only going to the movies. I’ll pick him up at his grandparents’ house around six thirty—”
“You’re picking him up?” I asked. “In what, a boat?”
“No, silly, in my dad’s Beamer. I got my license.”
“You did?” I couldn’t help exclaiming.
My dad looked up from his conversation with my mom and eyed me.
“Yes!” Lori said. “I’m sorry I forgot to tell you, with everything else going on. Actually I didn’t tell you because I wasn’t allowed to speak to you.
Whatever.”
I should have felt happy for her for getting her license. The day I got my license a month ago was one of the happiest days of my life, second only to Lori’s birthday a week ago, when we’d gotten together. On my own birthday, I’d dumped my dad out of my truck at the marina and driven all over town for hours by myself.
But I didn’t feel happy for her. I felt jealous. “I wanted to be the one to take you to get your license.”
She nodded. “I know. I’m sorry. I would have loved to take my street test in your pink truck, but I didn’t know when my dad would let me see you again, and I didn’t want to wait forever. Sean drove me.”
I looked at her. I knew my dad was watching us, and I didn’t care. A soft breeze blew the white-blonde hair around her face into her eyes. With both hands she gathered all her hair into a ponytail in back, twisted it, and pulled it forward over one shoulder. I wished she would magically produce a clip from her bikini bottoms and pin it up. All of this would have been so much easier if I had an ugly girlfriend.
I knew she felt guilty when she went on. “My dad had a big case this week, and of course Frances was keeping the Harbarger kidlets. I begged your mom to let somebody off from the marina—anybody. Finally she said Sean could take me because he was just hanging around the showroom and hitting on the customers anyway.”
I thought, Better them than you. I looked angrily toward Sean.
He stood on the grass with his hands on his hips, surveying the course. He didn’t want McGillicuddy to show him up. “McGillicuddy and Cameron wet the grass when they came out of the lake,” he complained. “It will be slippery.”
“Oh, come on!” I hollered.
At the same time, Cameron yelled, “Pussy!” and quickly covered his mouth, looking around stealthily in the hope that Mom wouldn’t know who’d said it.
“Teams don’t get extra points for field conditions,” Lori pointed out. “Take it like a man.”
“Best two of three,” McGillicuddy suggested.
These words weren’t even out of McGillicuddy’s mouth when Sean started forward, hoping he’d catch Lori off guard and avoid the hose. He hurdled the cooler neatly and ran face-first into her stream of water.
“Good one,” I told her.
He continued blindly down the yard, caught the rope, and swung anemically over the lake. I threw the ball. He grabbed at it and missed, dropping into the lake empty-handed.
Everyone moaned.
He surfaced, spluttering, and pointed at me. “You were high.”
I called, “You are high if you think that was high.” Actually it had been a bit high, because I’d aimed for his head.
“My turn,” Lori said. “Who’s manning the hose?”
“I will,” Sean said. He waded toward her with his hands out.
She squirted him, a hard spurt square in his belly button.
“Oh,” he cried, doubling over. “You’ll pay for that.” He hopped up onto the dock.
“Will I?” she asked, handing over the hose.
It was a good thing I trusted her. Otherwise I might think she was flirting with him.
He slapped me on the back. “You should have seen her taking her driving test. I fastened my seat belt and took all the sofa cushions with me just in case—”
“You did not.” Lori poked him in the ribs. Grrrrr.
“But you knew your left from your right?” I asked, because I wanted to know, and because I wanted to distract her and stop her from touching Sean.
“I sat in the backseat,” Sean said. “When the tester told her to turn right, I tapped on the right side of her seat. When the tester told her to turn left, I tapped on the window.”
This was very kind of Sean. I wanted to kill him.
Lori laughed along with him, but she kept her eyes on me. “I didn’t believe you, Sean. I wouldn’t put it past you to steer me wrong just for fun.”
“Who, me?” He tried to squirt Mom all the way across the lawn with the garden hose.
“I used a trick Adam taught me. I put the fingers of my left hand in the shape of an L on the steering wheel.”
“But why are you driving on the date with Parker tomorrow night?” I asked. “Why can’t Parker drive you? I was hoping your first date driving would be with me.” Now I sounded selfish and I knew it, but I couldn’t help it.
Lori nodded. “I thought about that. My dad knows I’ve been bluesing for my license. If Parker drove instead, my dad might figure out this is all a set-up.”
“Lori, he’s going to know it’s all a set-up anyway.”
“He isn’t. Look at me.”
It was a testament to how much I’d missed her that I breathed a little faster just from looking deep into her green eyes. For a second my asshole brother wasn’t standing right next to us and our nosy parents weren’t watching us. Lori and I stood alone together on the dock, as we had a thousand times before, when it didn’t matter.
“I’m clueless,” she said. “Right?”
“Right.” I wasn’t going to lie to her. She wasn’t a dumb blonde, but the way she acted, you’d have to know her since birth or look at her SAT scores to figure this out.
“Well, I inherited it from somewhere.” She turned her back on me. I watched her go, staring at her tanned back and her perfect ass in that pink bikini. She passed Sean, walked up the dock, and continued through the grass to the starting place for the obstacle course.
I hadn’t run the course yet—I would take my turn last because I was always the most likely to get hurt—but I felt like I’d run it already, the way my heart pounded.
Sean gave up trying to squirt Mom with the hose. He held it almost straight up, adjusting the stream for the slight breeze. The water cascaded on top of my head before descending to earth.
I didn’t even hit him. For one thing, I was used to Sean. For another, my dad had warned me to display one iota of self-control. This was more than an iota. This was a kappa and perhaps even a lambda, the longer this went on. The cold water soaked my hair and splashed onto my T-shirt.
As if it were perfectly normal for him to annoy me for no apparent reason, which I supposed it was, I asked him, “Are you going out with Rachel tomorrow?” I didn’t expect him to say yes. If they were going out, Rachel would have called me to ask my advice on how to act—as if I could advise anyone on how to deal with Sean. I just thought I would plant the seed in his head to ask her out, in case he’d forgotten about her already. He’d seemed crazy in love with her last week, which was the first time any of us had ever seen Sean act that way. But if she’d escaped his mind already, that would be a lot more like him.
He said, “You wish.”
The water was so cold that my head ached. I didn’t dare glance at him. That would certify how much I cared. But I was astonished he saw through me. He knew that I was worried about him dating Lori, and that I’d be relieved if he dated Rachel again. I tried so hard to be conniving and still wasn’t nearly as devious as Sean when he seemed off his game.
Abruptly, he pointed the hose away from me, into the lake. Lori was about to start. I wiped the football on the only dry section of my shirt that was left.
“Girl power!” called Frances. She might have been a little drunk.
Lori dashed down the grass and hurdled the cooler, clearing it by a foot. Sean sprayed her with the hose, catching her square in the left boob. I almost cried foul. I put my hand over my mouth.
Lori just laughed. She kept running to the end of the lawn, across the sand, and leaped for the rope. She swung way out over the lake, and I threw the football.
Thinking back on it later, I didn’t remember being angry with her for flirting with Sean. I would never hurt her for that, or for any reason, on purpose.
Still, there had to be some explanation. The football hit her in the chest so hard that I heard the smack where I was standing. She dropped into the water with the ball and disappeared under the surface. The smack echoed once across the lake.
“
Nice arm, son,” my dad called to me. He gave me a thumbs-up.
“Why are you egging him on?” my mom complained. “You never threw a football at me that way.”
“I didn’t bother. You catch like a girl. Watch, Lori will come up in a second with the ball.”
A second came and went. Two seconds. I watched the spot where Lori had disappeared.
Sean said, “You’ve killed her.”
The football popped to the surface. By itself.
I jumped into the water and swam toward the spot. At the same time, McGillicuddy and Cameron sprang from under the tree and ran into the lake. I’d only managed a few strokes by the time they dragged her up the beach, one on each side, along with half the water in the lake.
I swam after them as fast as I could and ran up the beach. She was on all fours, face white. Her ribs pulsed like she was trying to cough but she couldn’t get any air in or out.
Everyone surrounded her now in a tight circle. “Lori!” her dad shouted.
“Pound her on the back,” Frances suggested.
She shook her head, eyes closed, and held up one hand.
I’d seen that face plenty of times before, when we were kids. “I knocked the wind out of her,” I explained.
She nodded, sucking in small breaths. She looked like she might laugh, but she didn’t have the air to laugh.
My mom leaned down toward us. “Breathe,” she told Lori unhelpfully.
Lori nodded again. She sat back in the sand and moved her hands in circles in front of her to show us she was trying. The skin on her chest between her breasts was bright red where the football had hit her. Her gasps got longer and longer. Finally she had enough air in her lungs to cough out, “Quarterback or what?”
The whole circle around us laughed—brothers heartily, adults nervously. I stood up, soaked T-shirt dripping on the sand, and put out a hand to help her up.
Her dad glared at me. I put my hand down and stepped back two paces. He extended his hand to help her, then pulled her away from the group.
Now everybody stood around in knots in the fading light, talking about other times when Lori had gotten the wind knocked out of her. So I wasn’t the only one who remembered this. My mom mentioned the time Lori ran into the dock on water skis and broke her arm. Frances brought up an episode even I had forgotten about, when Lori fell out of my tree house. Frances watched me as she said this, trying to gauge my reaction.