After wakeboarding, I passed the office and heard Lori arguing with my mom about sending me to school. It wouldn’t work, and I didn’t let it faze me. I knew what I had to do.
The threat of Adam’s parents sending him to military school had lurked in the back of my mind for three weeks, like one of those bad backdrops in a school picture, a photo of a fake library. Even if your school picture turned out great for once, there was no getting around the fact that you were grinning your ass off in front of stacks of pretend books. No matter how high the ups had been for Adam and me in the past few weeks, this threat dragged them down.
Now the threat was finally real. And I refused to accept it.
I couldn’t tell whether Adam accepted it or not. Rather than being angry about it and throwing stuff, which is what I’d expected from him, he seemed confused, like he didn’t know what to make of it. Late in the afternoon he even executed a series of perfect tricks during his turn wakeboarding. The boys and I looked at one another, astounded. This was not like Adam at all. He wasn’t concentrating on new and exciting ways to fall down.
Was this a preview of what military school would do to him? Even if I never got together with Adam again, I had to save him from this. After I hung my life vest and wake-board in the warehouse, I knocked on the office door and went in to face his mother.
I slipped onto the stool behind her. She typed busily on her computer and didn’t turn around. She must know what I was there for.
I said, “I broke the rules too, you know. It takes two to tango, or to spend two hours in a tree house together. Wooooo.” I wiggled my fingers as if to scare her with my horrible infraction. Since she still hadn’t looked around at me, the drama was reduced somewhat.
Frustrated, I said, “Why is he in all the trouble and I’m not in trouble at all? Instead of him going to military school, we could each take half the punishment. We could set up a bivouac for you on the front lawn. We both have lots of experience playing army.”
“You’re not in trouble, Lori, because nobody believes you would have snuck out last night if Adam hadn’t convinced you.” She never stopped typing as she said this to her computer screen. “Adam, on the other hand, has a long history of going out of his way to do the opposite of what we say. The fact that we’re sending him to school doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
“It has everything to do with me!” I exclaimed.
“It did at first,” she acknowledged, “but now it doesn’t. Adam’s father and I have given him an order that he refuses to obey. And if he can’t obey it because of ADHD, yet he refuses to take his medicine, then he needs to learn another way to get along in the world. His father and I have tried. We can’t help him anymore.”
The office door screeched open. Adam filled the doorway. “ADHD is overdiagnosed and overmedicated,” he said in a professorial tone. “Studies show that one in three teenagers diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed stimulants doesn’t actually need treatment.” He slammed the door and was gone as quickly as he’d appeared.
“You are not that one of the three,” his mom hollered after him.
After her voice had stopped ringing in my ears, I said, “I don’t know. You think you can outsmart him, and then he comes up with something like that out of the blue. You realize he reads the newspaper and he’s not as out of it as he acts.”
“Oh yeah?” Mrs. Vader asked. “Name one thing Adam has done this summer that displayed any forethought.”
“He left roses all over the marina for me. You helped him do that.”
“Granted, but he did that to apologize to you because he’d flown off the handle the night before. Name one more.”
I opened my mouth to tell her about the sleeping bag, the pillows, the candle, and the Oreos in the tree house. I decided that evidence of advance planning for disobedience would not help his case.
Instead I said, “I think some of his problem is ADHD. I’ve known him forever, and he’s always been that way, so it’s hard to imagine what he’d be like otherwise. But some of his problem is Sean and Cameron egging him on. I know this sounds crazy, but I have seen Adam exercise extraordinary restraint in the face of incredible taunting. The first year I knew y’all, I thought his name was ADD.”
Mrs. Vader hit the space bar over and over, so hard that I thought it would fly off. “Sean is not supposed to call Adam that.”
“I am aware of that. Sean does it anyway.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this some time in the past umpteen years?” She kept her voice low, but I could tell she was fed up with me.
“If you tattled about anything, you got kicked out of the club,” I explained. “I don’t want to be a member of the club anymore.”
“Well.” She clicked the mouse to close the document she was working on, then opened another and resumed typing. “We think this is what’s best for Adam in the long run. You might as well get on board.”
I sat there for a few more minutes, listening to her fingers tap on the keyboard. Since I’d come in, she hadn’t once stopped typing or turned around to look at me. This told me she was upset. Normally she would have given me her outraged face a time or two during this conversation.
She was upset about sending him away. She was sending him away anyway.
And it was all my fault.
I wanted to stay and argue with her. I would have if I’d thought it would have done any good. But I was all out of vague arguments, and I was afraid if I got further into the specifics of Adam and me, he’d get sent to school faster, like he’d said.
I spun around on my stool and stalked out of the office, hell-bent on showing my dad that Adam wasn’t so awful, once and for all. Mrs. Vader didn’t think I was capable of disobedience on my own, did she? I was a good little girl without a mind of my own who only got in trouble if a boy led her astray? I would show them all and save Adam from military school at the same time.
Outside in the fading sunlight, Adam leaned against the wall. When he heard the door squeak open, he stood up straight and took a step toward me, worry lines deep between his brows.
I carefully closed the door all the way, then skittered toward him.
“I’ll take care of it,” we whispered at the same time.
“No—how will you take care of it?” I said quickly. We didn’t have much time to talk before someone discovered us together again. “I’ll go with Sean to the party tonight and horrify my dad.”
“You won’t!” Adam exclaimed, voice edging above a whisper, eyes intense with anger. “You promised you wouldn’t.”
“I did, but that was before you got sent away!” Surely he saw the difference and understood what was at stake here.
We stared each other down, stubborn, the heat from a whole day of sun breaking loose from the sidewalk under our flip-flops and rising between us.
“I will take care of it,” he growled, a threat. He stepped past me and hiked along the showroom wall, up his yard, toward his house. I wished he would take care of it, but he did not have a stellar track record for getting himself out of trouble.
Out the corner of my eye I saw Sean sliding the big metal door of the warehouse closed for the night.
I knew what I had to do.
First I shaved. This was harder than I thought. I’d only shaved stubble before, not the full mountaineer beard I’d been working on. I had to hack at it for a few minutes to get it off.
Then I ironed. I dragged the iron and the board from my parents’ room into mine and pressed a pair of shorts, then a long-sleeved button-down shirt. I would roll up the sleeves like an asshole. I would have worn a suit, but that seemed like overkill. I was going to see Lori’s dad and I wanted to look like a presentable guy who should be allowed to date his daughter, not a criminal who’d dressed up to face the electric chair.
But first I had to get through the ironing. It took a lot of patience. I had none. It took forever, and then I had to press the whole shirt again to get out the creases I’d pressed into it.<
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Finally I got dressed and examined myself in the mirror. I looked like Sean.
Ready as I’d ever be.
I ran downstairs and walked through my yard, past the tree house, into Lori’s yard, and across the driveway—the scenes of various crimes. I rang the doorbell.
Her dad opened the door and looked down at me. I wished the garage wasn’t a couple of stairs below the kitchen, because I seemed a lot shorter than him.
I pretended it didn’t bother me. I said, “I would like an audience. Sir.”
He frowned at me, but he didn’t send me away. He jerked his head in the direction of the den.
I followed him through the room and onto the screened porch. He sat down in the chair where he’d obviously been when I rang the bell. It looked like he’d been spending a lot of time there lately. Spy novels were piled on the table beside the chair, along with a pair of binoculars. McGillicuddy wasn’t kidding about his dad watching Lori and me.
“Sit,” he said.
I would not say woof. I would not. I sat down in the chair facing his.
“Shoot.” He tried to sound casual, but he kept frowning at me.
I took a deep breath. It came out shaky. I cleared my throat. “When Lori and I stayed out so late, that was an honest mistake. And when we were in the woods together the next day, we just wanted to talk about what had happened and what we could do about it.”
“That’s not all you wanted,” he broke in.
I paused over that. He had me there, but to admit this seemed counterproductive. To lie would be more counterproductive, because I was an awful liar.
I went on. “Last night, we were saying good-bye. We agreed not to see each other anymore, just like you said.”
“I said that three weeks ago,” he insisted, leaning forward in his chair.
“Yes, sir,” I acknowledged, “but you seem to think we’re not people. We are, and we had stuff to work through and things to wrap up.”
There was a long silence. He stared at me. I tried to meet his gaze, but loud tapping on my chair distracted me. I looked down and realized it was my finger.
I would not do well under his scrutiny. I knew better than to try my hand at poker. So I threw all my cards on the table face-up. “I love Lori. I have always loved Lori. And you may be right, I may have some ulterior motives at times, which you do not want to hear about. But I would not do anything to hurt her.”
He lost his cool. “You convinced her to jump out a window last night!”
I winced. “I caught her.”
“And you expect me to just say, ‘Okay,’ and let you near her, and then tell your parents not to send you to military school?”
He might have looked taller than me when he was in the kitchen and I was down in the garage, but now I had the upper hand. Compared to him, I sounded calm and reasonable as I said, “I don’t expect that. Frankly, I don’t expect much out of anybody anymore. I just wanted somebody to listen to me for once.” I stood up.
“Sit down,” he ordered me.
I sat down.
“I hope you can see my perspective on this,” he said. “When you have a teenage daughter, you won’t want someone like you coming anywhere near her.”
I almost said, I can see your lips moving, but I can’t understand you. The things he was blathering about made that much sense. But I remembered what Lori told me a couple of weeks ago about shooting myself in the foot. I was trying to solve this problem, not make it worse. I didn’t say a thing.
He must have seen me squinting at him, though, because he said, “Never mind. My point is, Lori is my only daughter. Ever since her mother died, blah blah blah, very important stuff, blah blah blah, a very, very important explanation for why I have treated you like shit.” I figured that was what he was saying, but I’d stopped paying attention because of what I saw over his shoulder.
A screen wall kept the porch mosquito-free. If you got near the screen, it was harder to see through, but from this distance it was all but invisible. Beyond it, bright green maple leaves rubbed against it, trying to get in. The maple leaves formed a bower, a perfect frame for Lori’s dock. And on that dock stood Lori, kissing Sean. The red words spray painted on the bridge way in the distance seemed to hover above their heads: LORI LOVES ADAM.
“In addition,” Lori’s dad said, “blah blah blah, why I have never trusted you as far as I could throw you and how I always knew you were trouble.”
Sean’s hand slid down to Lori’s ass.
“Some more crap,” Mr. McGillicuddy said. “And an invitation to you to incriminate yourself.”
Lori put her hand on the inside of Sean’s thigh.
“Adam,” Mr. McGillicuddy said. “Over here.” He waved his hand, blocking my view of my two-timing ex-girlfriend and my asshole brother.
“Sorry.” I shook my head. “ADHD. What were you saying?”
“I was saying you and Lori can date again. And I feel responsible for the military school thing. Your parents might have been headed in that direction already, but I certainly pushed them to the doorway. I’ll get you out of it.”
He was telling me that he would give me everything I’d hoped for when I came over here. I won. I could at least be happy that I wasn’t going to military school. My brain kept sending signals like this to my muscles, prompting a reaction, but I couldn’t move. My fists gripped the armrests as I watched Lori slip her arms around Sean’s waist and hug him hard.
“Why the long face?” her dad asked. “I thought this was what you wanted. Don’t worry about anything. I’ll call your mom right now. Trust me. I’m a lawyer.”
“Yes, sir.” I jumped up from my chair before I broke it into pieces by squeezing it with my fists. I extended one of my hands to Lori’s dad and he shook it. What we were shaking on, I had no idea. I just wanted out.
He walked me to the door and called after me across the yard, “I am very impressed with you, young man.” That was a new one on me, and I would have laughed at how ridiculous it sounded if I weren’t so intent on reaching a certain point in his yard with a certain vantage point from which to see a certain dock.
I peered through the trees. I hoped what I’d seen from the porch was a trick of light on water or an all-out hallucination. But there were Lori and Sean, still standing on her dock. The kiss had ended, but they were wrapped in each other’s arms.
That was supposed to be me.
Maybe it was me. I put my hand on my skull-and-crossbones pendant to check.
Nope, I was me and that was Sean.
I turned away. I couldn’t quite get my head around what my eyes were telling me. But it was catching up quickly, and my anger simmered. I had talked to Lori’s dad for her. I had shaved my beard for her—a huge disappointment, because I’d enjoyed my three weeks looking like a bank robber. I had ironed for her. I dwelled on these petty things to keep from descending into the bottomless pit that gaped in front of me. I had gotten us out of our mess. I had told her I would take care of it, but she had stopped believing in me.
Maybe she never had.
Or maybe she really was using our troubles to catch Sean, who she’d loved all along.
I wasn’t sure which was worst.
I was so angry that lights flashed behind my eyes, which told me I needed to think this through before I acted. Intellectually I knew I was jumping to conclusions about her and Sean. But even if she wasn’t after him, she had betrayed me again. I had fixed everything, for once. And she broke her promise to me. She had done the one thing I’d asked her never to do. I didn’t need a girlfriend like that.
I walked into the kitchen of my house to yet another horror. The air was filled with the scents of pizza and bitesize egg rolls and pretty much any crappy snack my mom could find in the deep discount section of the frozen foods aisle. She was preparing an extra-special spread for the party tonight. I’d almost forgotten about the party.
When she heard the door close, she looked around the corner at me, then came out f
rom behind the kitchen island to hug me hard. She held me at arm’s length, searching my face and smiling. “Lori’s dad called.”
“Woo-hoo.”
Her brow wrinkled in confusion, then rose. “He says you can date Lori again. And now he’s trying to convince me not to send you to military school.”
I nodded.
She put her hands on her hips. She was frustrated with me for not showing more joy at this fantastic news, but she wasn’t quite ready to let go of her own happiness yet. “What in the world did you say to him to make him change his mind?”
I shrugged. “I manned up.”
“Well. I have to say, I’m bowled over.”
“I’m so glad.”
“You should be. Much as I hate to look like Trevor McGillicuddy is jerking my chain, he makes a very good case for you. I’ll speak to your father and convince him that we don’t need to take that tour of schools.”
She waited for me to foam at the mouth with gratitude. I did not.
“Adam.”
“What.”
“I am telling you we’re not sending you to school and you can date Lori again. Isn’t that what you wanted? Are you hearing me?”
“What do you want me to do, thank you for treating me like a dog for three weeks?”
She stared at me really hard, and I thought she was going to lay into me. Then she asked, “Did you have an argument with Lori?”
“No!” I stomped past her, ran up the stairs, and slammed the door to my room. This time when my tenth grade player-of-the-year trophy teetered on its shelf, I let it fall. It crashed to the rug, and the football broke off the quarterback’s hand.
I flopped onto my bed, fished my phone out of my pocket, and called Rachel.
“Hey, Adam!” she squealed. “I’m so glad you got your party back! I can’t wait! Sean doesn’t have a date, does he?”
“You could say that,” I said. “I just saw him sucking face with Lori out on the dock.”
Rachel giggled like she always did at everything I said. Only this time, it was a maniacal giggle, like a psychotic bluebird. I was afraid she might start hyperventilating. “Oh, God! Oh no! This is exactly what you’ve been warning me about all along!”