The Boys Next Door (10 page)

Subtlety and patience were not a couple of my strong points. Perhaps you have figured this out. However, I managed to keep my eyes on the prize, which meant bypassing the seat next to Sean and hunkering down against the wind in the bow with Adam. Problem was, Sean’s seat faced backward so he could spot for my brother wakeboarding. He didn’t even
see
the knee-weakening look Adam gave me as I sat down.

But Cameron in the driver’s seat could see us, and Sean might be so gracious as to turn around once in a while. I wondered what Adam would want to do with me. Whether he would try to touch me, and where. Maybe he was thinking the same thing I was thinking: it was a bit early for PDA in our faux couplehood. If we suddenly fell in love after almost sixteen years of being friends, it would be
obvious
we were faking to show Sean we didn’t care about him and the treacherous Rachel.

For whatever reason, Adam didn’t touch me. He was content to watch me, darkly. I had no idea why he was looking at me this way. Clearly we were
not
thinking the same thing after all.

Then I had another problem. Adam had told me two days before that I’d screwed my chances with Sean by taking his place in the wakeboarding show. Maybe I should face-plant an air raley so Sean wouldn’t think I was rubbing it in. But you know what? I was still so thrilled with my great runs two days in a row, I wasn’t willing to throw it for a boy. Even a boy this important. Maybe this was something I could work on as I matured.

Sean had another bad run. Adam did too—ouch!—but at least he enjoyed it. I had another run so fantastic, I decided I’d work on an S-bend the next day. Ideally this would involve
landing
the S-bend, unlike some adrenaline junkies I knew.

And Sean didn’t seem to mind I did well and he didn’t. He was his usual pleasant self, a bit too distant for my taste, same-old, same-old. He must have
really
been basking in the fact that he’d gotten Adam’s goat. I mean, girlfriend. That was okay. I would get Sean in the end.

I was feeling very hopeful about the whole situation when we docked at the marina. Maybe it was the sun again, or the lingering glow from my good run. But when Adam helped me out of the boat and we did the secret handshake, I didn’t even care it was a complete waste of handshake because Sean had already gone into the warehouse and didn’t see it happen. Doing the handshake made me feel like
somebody
valued me enough to do a secret handshake with me.

“By the way,” I said during the high-five, “what was up with the look you kept giving me in the boat?”

“What look?” Adam asked, blushing. He knew what I meant.

“This look.” I showed it to him.

He squinted at me. “I’m not a doctor, but I’d say either indigestion or a stroke.”

We laughed, touched elbows, and parted ways on the wharf. I sauntered to my house, taking big sniffs of the hot evening air scented with cut grass and flowers, not minding too much that I had to spend a few minutes blowing a gnat out of my nose. I wished Sean had asked me out like he was supposed to. But if I had to go on a fake date to get him, there was no one I’d rather go on a fake date with than Adam. I might even enjoy it, as friends.

After supper with Dad and McGillicuddy, and a luxe beauty routine that included teasing my mascara-coated eyelashes apart with the comb attachment to McGillicuddy’s electric razor, I was ready. An hour early. I peered out my bedroom window at Adam’s house and wondered what he was doing right now. Getting ready himself? Taking a shower?

Even though the picture of him in the shower was all in my head, I took a step back from the window at the force of the picture, and the realism. I must be picturing
Sean
in the shower, because the boy in the shower wasn’t wearing a skull and crossbones.

Adam wore the skull and crossbones while wakeboarding and swimming. He must wear it in the shower too. Or did he? In all the times over the years we’d worked together at the marina, when he’d bent down and the pendant had swung from the leather string, I’d never noticed a dirty patch in the shape of a skull and crossbones on his neck. Okay, I couldn’t stand another hour of torturing myself this way.

I said
ta
to my dad and waded in my high heels down my yard to the dock. Then I untied the canoe and set off across the lake. Crossing the lake in a canoe, a sailboat, or anything without a motor could be harrowing. The lake was about a half mile wide at this point, and a canoe crossing the traffic pattern was likely to get T-boned by a speedboat driven by someone from Montgomery who didn’t understand boating laws and was drunk to boot. But the busiest part of the day was over, and I paddled fast.

On the other side, I tied up to the Harbargers’ dock. Funny that the kids weren’t swimming. They’d probably been swimming all day and had brained each other several times with plastic shovels and nearly drowned once, and their nanny was about damned tired of it and had made them get out of the water. I was all too familiar with this scenario.

Sure enough, as I waded up their yard, I heard the kids laughing behind the fence. Even I, the Great Lori, Number One Seed Wakeboarder on the Vader’s Marina Team, didn’t think I could scale a wooden fence wearing high heels. Pitching one shoe over and then the other, I jumped up, grabbed the top of the fence, and hoisted myself up.

The kids were making castles in the sandbox. Really just mounds of sand, but I’m optimistic. Frances sat cross-legged in the grass nearby, wearing her summer hippie uniform: tie-dyed T-shirt, hemp shorts, bare feet. (Stuck in the grungewear of her college days, she also had a winter hippie uniform that involved wool and Birkenstocks.) She and the kids stared up at me.

I dropped down on their side of the fence, walked over, and sat on the edge of the sandbox. “Whatsamatter?” I asked the kidlets. “You’ve never seen such a vision of loveliness?”

“There’s a gate, you know,” Frances said.

“I didn’t notice.”

“It’s on the other side of the house, off the driveway, where people usually put gates.”

“I got in, didn’t I? God, you always want me to do things
your
way.” This was sort of unfair. Frances had been pretty hands-off as governesses went. Like I had anyone to compare her to. “Well, this time I’ve definitely done something that isn’t covered in the child care manual. Go ahead, ask me what happened at the party. Ask me what happened the night
after
the party. Ask me where I’m going now, dressed to kill.”

The kids gaped at me when they heard the K word. Which probably didn’t reassure them about their futures as well-adjusted teens under the instruction of Fanny the Nanny. It didn’t help matters that while I told Frances about Sean and Adam, she placed her hands on her knees and began one of her deep-breathing relaxation techniques.

“Well?” I shouted. Her eyes flew open. I prompted her, “Doesn’t this sound like a supreme girl-adventure? Do you watch MTV reality shows? That’s a silly question, isn’t it? Never mind. Maybe they have drama like this on
The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer
.”

“Something else is going on with those boys,” she said.

“Like what?”

“I’m not sure. It’s been years since I gave Adam
or
Sean
or
Cameron
or
Bill the evil eye. You’re the only one who comes to visit. Except… Mirabella, we do not eat the sand.” She scooped up the girl and took her inside. The girl didn’t protest. These children had been drugged or lobotomized.

I turned to the boy. “Don’t you ever protest?”

He shook his head.

“Hold strikes? Write letters of complaint? She always told us we had permission to do anything if we could write a convincing argument for it. We tried.”

He intoned in a cute little zombie voice, “We do not eat the sand.”

Frances came back out and deposited the girl in the sandbox again. The girl examined some nearby dried leaves hungrily. “I guarantee you something else is going on there,” Frances repeated. “Yours isn’t the only plot.”

“Right. Sean stole Rachel from Adam to get revenge. Sean is always the instigator of the plot. For the record, Sean is the one who started calling you Butt I Don’t Need a Governess. I probably wouldn’t have been half the hellion I was, if it hadn’t been for Sean egging everybody on.”

“I don’t know,” Frances said thoughtfully. “It was Adam who set off the firecrackers in my homemade cheese.”

“OH MY GOD I HAD COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN ABOUT THE HOMEMADE CHEESE.” I laughed until I choked. The children studied me with serious eyes. They were adapting to the Montessori method a lot better than McGillicuddy and I had.

“I always loved Adam,” Frances said.

I sniffled. “You
did
?” Frances wasn’t too free with the professions of love.

“But Adam had room to grow. Sounds like he still does.”

Feeling strangely defensive of Adam all of a sudden, I said, “
Everybody
has room to grow.”

“And I don’t want you to be his field.” She gave me a stern look.

“What am I, a crop of rutabagas?”

She glanced at the kids and said through her teeth to me, “Do you understand?”

“Not really. Are you forbidding me to see Adam?” This was actually kind of romantic, though ridiculous.
I forbid you to see the boy next door!

“Mirabella and Alvin,” Frances said, “please turn on the garden hose and water your mother’s beautiful flowers.” Miraculously, the brainwashed kiddies stood and obeyed, taking half the sand with them. Frances watched them go, then turned to me.

“Ever since your mom died,” she whispered, “your dad has been terrified for you kids. But he’s gone out of his way not to be overprotective so that
you
don’t live life afraid. And those were the instructions he gave me as your caregiver.” She reached over and patted my knee. “No one’s going to forbid you to do anything, Lori. Just… watch out around those boys.”

Adam sat on the end of my dock with his shoes beside him and his bare feet swinging in the bryozoa-infested waters. Just kidding—my dock had been Sanitized for My Protection by a minnow net with a very long handle.

I skimmed the canoe against the dock and stopped myself with an oar. He stood up dripping, caught the rope I threw him, and wound it around the dock cleat. “Date or what?” he asked.

Grabbing my shoes from the bottom of the canoe, I confirmed, “Date. Ew. It’s so weird to think about. Help me out, lovah.”

He put out a hand to help me onto the dock. He did it in such a gentlemanly fashion, with no tickling or pinching or even a secret handshake, that I couldn’t help but yank his arm to startle him. Then
he
put his weight on
me
to keep from falling, and we both came within a few millimeters of flipping the canoe over and landing in the lake.

We both managed to save at the last second. He helped me out of the canoe as if nothing had happened, except his face was bright red, and he wore that
don’t make me laugh
look. “Your dad said you went to see Frances.”

“Yeah. I told her about the plan, and she thinks you’re only going along with it because you want to get lucky with me.” We shared an uncomfy titter at this ridiculous idea as he slid his feet into his shoes, but something made me press him about this. “Did you get lucky with Rachel?”

He stared down at me, disapproving. He turned the disapproving stare in the general direction of the Harbargers’ dock across the lake.

“You did,” I said with a sigh. I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath.

“N—,” he started. “W—Mmph.” He put both his hands into his hair. This showed me how strong and well-formed the biceps were on this tanned, beautiful boy. “I didn’t, but you don’t know that, okay? I have two older brothers. As far as they’re concerned, I’ve been doing the entire cheerleading squad since I was fourteen.”

He hadn’t. So why was I picturing the tanned biceps straining as he braced himself above… who?

“Your dad’s thinking the same thing,” Adam said.

“About your biceps?” I chuckled.

Slowly and oh so painfully I realized no one had made a joke out loud about Adam’s biceps.

Slowly and less painfully he put his arms down. “I would like some gum,” he said. “Would you like some gum?”

“I would love some gum,” I croaked.

He reached deep into the pocket of his shorts and drew out each of the following items in turn, placing them in his other pocket: his wallet, a lighter, a Sacagawea dollar, a plastic box of fishhooks, a four-inch-long pocketknife. Finally he produced a pack of gum so old, the company had switched to a new logo since it was made. Fine. Anything I could stuff into my mouth.

“I meant,” he said, jaw working hard on a petrified square, “your dad thinks I want to get lucky with you too. At least, that was his second reaction when I rang the doorbell and told him I was there to pick you up for our date. His first reaction was to threaten to have me arrested.”

“Oh, pshaw.” I swallowed a mouthful of artificial flavoring. Mmmmm, igneous. “He threatens to have
me
arrested. It’s a term of endearment.” I walked down the dock so Adam would follow me. When I glanced back, he was still standing at the end of the dock. I threw over my shoulder, “I’ll visit you in prison.”