The Boys Next Door (13 page)

“Why does it have to be Rachel?” I asked.

“It just does,” he said without taking his eyes off the truck.

“You might feel better if you talked about it.”

“I doubt it.”

“What do you like so much about her?”

When he turned to me, he seemed alarmed, as he had at the tennis court the night before. With wide eyes, he searched my eyes for something—which I probably would have given him, if I’d known what he was looking for. I asked, “What are you looking for?”

He shook his head and turned back to the mud pit. “I like her because she’s so pretty,” he said in his bullshit voice.

“That’s no fair. I gave you a straight answer about Sean.”

The tractor started forward. The chain to the pink truck pulled tighter and tighter and broke. One end of it flew over the tractor, barely missing the driver.

“She’s cute,” Adam said. “She has a nice ass. I don’t know.”

Now I understood. Talking about her hurt him too much. It was easier for him to pretend the ADHD had kicked in.

After two more chains and a rope, the tractor liberated the pink truck, and Adam bought the driver a doughnut. Adam and I drove through the mud field for another hour and a half, taking turns. Mostly we managed to forget Sean and Rachel.

Then we drove into town and hit all the teenage haunts: the arcade parking lot, the bowling alley parking lot, of course the movie theater parking lot. In theory this is exactly what I wanted. I was being seen out with Adam, in Adam’s truck. In practice, Adam had purposefully besmirched Sean’s pink truck with mud. It was like he wanted to be seen around town in it for that reason.

We rolled home at two minutes before my curfew. I’d figured he’d park the truck at his house, and I’d walk home. I was thrilled that he drove over to my driveway to drop me off. Sean wasn’t home yet to see us, but maybe someone in the Vaders’ house would watch across the yard and mention it to Sean later.

And then, as I was turning to Adam to thank him for teaching me to drive and allowing me to foam at the mouth about my mom, he bailed out the driver’s side door. He walked around the front of the truck. I think he would have opened my door, a gentleman on a date, if I hadn’t opened it first. It was too strange. I jumped to the ground, forgetting I was wearing my heels again. He caught me just before I pitched over onto the gravel.

“I’ll—walk—you—to—the—door,” he said slowly and clearly, like talking to someone who didn’t speak English. Or didn’t go out with girls much, or, like, ever. He took my hand. We walked toward the lights slanting through the shadows of pine trunks. Tree frogs screamed in the night, and the air was wet. I shivered.

We climbed the steps to the porch. Dad hadn’t turned on the overhead light there, thank God. Adam stood close to me in the darkness, over me, expecting something. I expected something, too. I couldn’t have stood the disappointment if we’d done all we’d done that day, hugging and giving each other smoldering looks and all, without something to show for it at the end, even if we
were
just friends. But my head felt too heavy to raise my chin.

“Hey.” He put his hand under my chin and gently raised it for me. “If one of us were in love with the other, if it were uneven in some way, that would be bad.” He gave me a long look I couldn’t really see. The shadows on the porch were too deep. His eyes only glittered a little in the starlight.

I tried to give the look right back to him. “But we’re not,” I said, and what was that damned high squeakiness in my voice on
not
? I cleared my throat.

“But we’re not,” he agreed. “We have nothing to worry about. We can do whatever we feel like.”

“Right,” I said, and meant it.

The kiss was simple. He bent down and pressed his lips to mine. We stood still except for his pressure on my lips. But inside, every cell in my body turned a back flip to blind.

“Good night, Lori,” he whispered. He bounced back to the pink truck, cranked the engine, drove one hundred feet to his own driveway, waved to me, and went inside his house.

I stood on my porch and stared at his house for a long time, telling myself that I did not like Adam that way because I liked Sean and Adam liked Rachel and
I did not like Adam
. It was just that Adam was very smart, and was second only to Sean at making confusing things sound simple and death-defying stunts seem like a good idea.

Monday night, Dad insisted that Adam come over for dinner. Adam, my dad, my brother, and I ate and joked together like we normally would out in the yard, except that it wasn’t normal. It was weird. Adam sat in my mom’s chair at the table. We might as well have been staring at a showy centerpiece made of silk flowers and hand grenades.

Tuesday night was much more comfy. Sean was over at Rachel’s and Cameron was out with his girlfriend, so Adam and I had the Vaders’ living room to ourselves to watch a DVD. At least, that’s what we did for about thirty minutes. Then we played CDs in his room, experimented with his drum set, and made milkshakes in the kitchen. Without anyone else around to show off for, we could just be ourselves. Friends.

Wednesday night we went mud riding. I wore my sensible shoes this time—rubber flip-flops that could be hosed off. I knew this wouldn’t sound very romantic when it got back to Sean or Holly or Beige. I also knew that, just like the other nights, I would stand on my porch with Adam and get the simplest, most shiver-inducing kiss. And then it would be over. The next morning, we’d go back to being friends.

Thursday night we scored. So to speak. We’d planned to go to the arcade and see who could kick the other’s ass on the snowmobile racing game, but Adam called me just before it was time to pick me up. He sounded tinny, like his hand was cupped over his mouth and the receiver. “Code green. Code green. Rachel and Sean watching DVD here tonight. Over.”

The wound Rachel had inflicted on him must have healed enough that he could stand being around her and Sean. Or he must miss her so much that he was willing to take a more active role in making her jealous. Either way, this was our big chance!

Slamming down the phone, I rushed upstairs to exchange my Skechers for Steve Madden pumps and my tank top for something that said elegance, sophistication, Express. This was how I was supposed to talk about clothes, right? Naming the brands as if I cared? Another coat of mascara and a run-through with the comb attachment to McGillicuddy’s razor and I was ready, baby. Snap!

Sean’s truck was parked in the driveway behind the pink truck. He’d already brought Rachel over. I swallowed and tried to slow down my breathing as I pressed the doorbell with one shaking finger.

Almost immediately, I heard Adam bouncing inside. He jerked the heavy door open. “What are you doing? You don’t have to ring the doorbell, dork.”

Dumbass! He’d called me a dork loudly enough for the Thompsons to hear three houses over. Talk about romance.

I was about to whisper acidly that he wasn’t doing a very good job of falling head over heels in love. Then I noticed he was wearing his black T-shirt printed in white with a life-size rib cage. Adam looked best in black. The color reflected darkly in the hollows under his high cheekbones, not to mention the bruise under his eye, and made his strange light eyes stand out that much more. The skull and crossbones glimmered at his neck.

He raised his eyebrows, waiting for me to say what I’d opened my mouth to say.

I was speechless. So I grabbed his arm and spun him around at the same time. He was surprised. I managed to pin his arm behind his back for about two seconds before he shook loose and grabbed me.

“Now you’ve asked for it.” He scooped me up, threw me over his shoulder, and held both my wrists in one hand so I couldn’t tickle him. He kicked the door closed and hiked into the living room.

Pausing, he took a few steps toward Sean and Rachel watching TV on the sofa. They sat close together in the dark room. I wouldn’t have been able to tell whose limbs were whose, except Sean didn’t shave his legs. There was a love seat where Adam and I could have settled. Then Adam thought better of it—too close for comfort—and hiked across the room.

“Hello, Sean. Good evening, Rachel,” I called cordially, upside down.

Rachel gave us a half-hearted pipsqueak greeting. Sean shouted at us, “Can you keep it down?”

Hmph! Clearly he was in a jealous rage. Adam and I exchanged a knowing look as he slid me onto the desk in the corner. Still holding my wrists immobile, he fished in a drawer and brought out a long object.

I squinted at it in the dark. “Not the stapler!” I cried.

He grinned, tossed the stapler beside me, and rummaged in the drawer again.

“Please,” I gasped, “not the Liquid Paper!”

“Shut up!” Sean shouted.

Adam and I widened our eyes at each other like we were offended and hurt. I shook my wrists out of his grasp and reached behind me for a red Sharpie out of the pencil cup. Smoothing my hand across his chest (shiver), I made a red mark across the bottom right rib printed on his T-shirt, the rib I knew he’d broken. Or was it my other right? “What ribs have you broken?”

He looked down at his shirt. “This one,” he said, pointing.

I made a red mark across that rib. “What else?”

“Mm.” He stretched his shirt out at the bottom so he could see it better, and pointed to the opposite side. “These two.” He watched as I made neat red marks across those ribs. His chin was close to my cheek.

“Both of you act crazy,” Sean said smoothly, “like you’re off your medication. Or like you’re going to a shrink.”

I didn’t look at Adam. I didn’t think I looked at Sean, either. But I had an impression later of Sean’s face glowing white and then blue in the light of TV, and Rachel in the shadows beside him. I thought the medication comment was meant for Adam. I knew the shrink comment was meant for me.

I capped the marker and stuck it back in the pencil cup. “I’ll see you later,” I whispered, sliding around Adam and hopping down from the desk. I had to get across the room and outside without being further humiliated, which meant I
must not
fall down in my high heels. Or cry. I even closed the front door behind me without making any noise.

And then Adam burst through it and slammed it behind him, shaking the house. “Lori!”

“Shhh,” I said with my finger to my lips, backing off the porch and into the wet grass. I didn’t want to shout about what Sean had said. It was bad enough when we were quiet about it.

Adam collected himself as I watched, taking a deep breath through his nose, with his eyes closed. Then he opened his eyes and said, “The five-minute date does nothing to make them jealous.” He formed his first finger and thumb into a circle. “Zero.”

I swallowed. “I can’t.”

He stepped closer to me. “Sean has a way of finding that one thing that will make you feel so good about yourself, or so bad about yourself. That’s why you love him. That’s why I hate him. You knew this when you went fishing.”

I was too discombobulated to make a joke about my lures. I just wanted to get away from their house. “I’ve had enough of boys for today, I think.”

He frowned. “Are you sure?” He rubbed my arm. My hair stood on end.

Shivering in the warm night, I put my arm down by my side, where he couldn’t reach it. “Too much of a good thing. It’s strange, but even cheese fries can get tiresome.”

“I’ll walk you home, then.”

“No,” I said, “I’m sorry. I’m just done.”

He watched me carefully for a moment, lowering his head to look into my eyes. “Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Bye.”

He walked back into the house and closed the door softly.

I stared at the door knocker, tree frogs screaming all around me. I had done the wrong thing. I wanted to be in the house with him. And Sean.

Sean had said something like that to me only once before, just a good-natured joke as we passed each other in the hall at school. I’d started to cry. The office had called my dad (again). Dad and McGillicuddy and I had had a Big Talk about it that night, wherein I told my dad that my business was not his to tell Sean’s parents about, and wherein McGillicuddy promised to have a discussion with Sean about keeping his mouth shut. Apparently he had, because Sean never said a word to me about it again. And if he told the whole school, they were very discreet and didn’t let on to me that they knew. Which would have been out of character for them, because they were bitches.

That first time happened not long after I went to the shrink, so Sean probably was just experimenting to see what I’d do. This time, he must have mentioned it because he was trying to hurt me. And if he’d tried to hurt me, he was in love with me and jealous of Adam. I knew this because when he
wasn’t
in love with me and jealous of Adam, he ignored me and was quite pleasant to me.

Therefore, the plan must be working! Hooray! So I should go back in there, flirt with Adam, and press the issue.

As I stood there, considering whether to ring the doorbell or just walk on inside like I owned the place, or like they’d installed a dog door, I heard Adam holler, “Thanks, Sean.”

“No problem,” Sean said more quietly, because he was too courteous to yell in Rachel’s ear.

I felt a flash of panic. They weren’t being sarcastic. Adam was genuinely thanking Sean for getting him out of spending an evening with me. This was called a
negative self-concept
. I had learned about it in health class (tenth grade). Having a negative self-concept made me think people were making fun of me, on top of the times when they really
were
making fun of me, which I seemed to miss completely.

Then footsteps pounded up the stairs inside. Adam’s bedroom light flicked on. He put his hands on the window-sill and pressed his forehead to the glass, looking for me, but he couldn’t see out because of the glare.

Adam wouldn’t double-cross me.

Would he?

Friday I had gas. This was fine with me. I spent most of the morning by myself on the dock, soaking up rays and feeling mentally diseased.

I didn’t think I could stand a lunch hour in the office, eating Mrs. Vader’s chicken salad sandwich, on edge, expecting Sean to sneak in or Adam to burst in or both. I told Mrs. Vader I was treating myself to a nice lunch out.

“Oh,” she said, nodding. “Something happened between ‘you and Adam’?” She moved her fingers in quotation marks.

Yeah, I didn’t have the energy to argue with her this time. That was Adam’s problem. I walked over to my family’s dock and launched the canoe.

The open water was choppy with wind and wakes from passing speedboats. I didn’t get T-boned. It was a little early for anyone to be drunk.

The wind blew me off course. I reached the far bank and needed to backtrack along the shore to the Harbargers’ house. Here in the shallows, protected by overhanging trees, the water was clear and calm. Miniature whirlpools stirred around my oar. I dragged my hand in the warm water, and minnows nibbled my fingers.

I docked at the Harbargers’ and ran up to the house. It was such a relief to feel the grass on my bare feet! Every toe had a blister from a different pair of high-heeled sandals. I slid open the glass door and stepped into the den.

Frances and the kids looked up. They were sitting on the floor around the coffee table. Frances didn’t sit on furniture if there was a floor available. A copy of
Mother Earth News
lay open in front of her. She had stuck lengths of uncooked spaghetti into balls of Play-Doh. The kidlets were busy sliding Froot Loops onto the spaghetti, sorting by color. I couldn’t believe they’d fallen for that old trick. Frances could convince children anything was a game, for about five minutes. Obviously some children were more gullible than others.

I walked into the kitchen and looked in the refrigerator. No surprises there. The meat loaf was made with tofu. Frances’s strong points as a nanny included a master’s degree in early childhood education and a PhD in Russian literature, but nothing approaching cooking skills, unless it was some weird hippie experiment like drying fruit on the roof. Mmmmm, rubbery apricots with a hint of tar. I filled a bowl with Froot Loops, poured soy milk over them, and joined the powwow on the floor.

Between bites I asked, “What did you mean when you said mine wasn’t the only plot?”

Without looking up from the magazine on the coffee table, Frances said, “I told you. I don’t know.”

“What would be the metaphorical firecracker in the metaphorical homemade cheese?”

She shrugged.

“Like, Sean dared Adam to hook up with me because I’m so oafish and dog-looking?”

“You are
not
dog-looking,” Frances said sternly. “Besides, a plot like that would involve a high level of organization. They would have to think it through carefully. None of you do that. Except Bill, of course, who thinks things through so carefully that he can’t take action. Like his father.”

My spoon stopped in my mouth at the mention of my dad, who’d been the farthest person from my mind. I swallowed and shouted, “Then what the hell kind of plot are you talking about?”

Frances didn’t even react when I cussed in front of her charges. She reasoned that making a big deal out of curse words drew attention to them and caused children to use them more. So she ignored them. I’m not sure this ploy worked, but then, she’d had an uphill battle with McGillicuddy and me. We lived next door to Mr. Vader, who could have written a dictionary of filth. She asked, calm as ever, “Have you thought Adam might really like you?”

The hair on my arms stood up, just as if Adam were sitting behind me with his hand on my shoulder.

“No, I haven’t.” That would be seven kinds of awful, if Adam had agreed to pretend to get together with me because he
really
wanted to get together with me. My ploy to get Sean would be ruined. I might finally land Sean, like in my dreams. But knowing I’d broken Adam’s heart would be a downer and a distraction. Like making out in the movie theater, knowing the pink truck in the parking lot was on fire. My mother wanted me to be with Sean, but didn’t she want me to be happy?

Frances turned the page. “Open your eyes. And watch out for those boys.”

Wakeboarding that afternoon, I watched the boys until my eyeballs hurt from the sun glinting off the water. I could have sworn there was nothing to watch out for. Sean was a little warmer to me than usual—the way he always acted after he’d insulted me, like some friendliness here could make up for a lack of friendliness elsewhere.

Adam was
very
warm to me. While Sean drove, my brother wakeboarded, and Cameron spotted, Adam pulled me into his lap in the bow. He set his chin on my shoulder and rubbed his hands up and down my thighs. The best part of this, for the purpose of making Sean’s blood boil, was that Adam did it without comment, without expecting me to comment, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for him to act like my boyfriend.

The worst part of this, for the purpose of watching out for those boys, was that if my eyelids had been duct-taped open to my eyebrows, I
still
wouldn’t have been able to tell whether Adam liked me, or pretended to like me, or liked me but pretended he was only pretending.

The five of us pitched the wakeboards and life vests from the boat back into the warehouse. The Friday night party would start soon, so Sean, Cameron, and my brother headed for the houses. I ought to have been right behind them. I needed plenty of time to shower and primp and change clothes twenty times like girls were supposed to do before parties.

But I took Adam’s hand and held him back from the others. I whispered what had been bugging me all day. “Frances thinks you have a plot, other than the plot with me to make Sean and Rachel jealous.”

His eyes flew wide open, and the rest of him seemed to shrink back a bit. Then he stood up straighter, and his brow went down. “Frances? I haven’t spoken to Frances in years. Plus she’s creepy.”

“Only because she’s always right,” I said. “And last night, something you said to Sean… Do you have a plot against me? Are you double-crossing me? He dared you to go out with the dog next door, and if you did, he’d give you your cute little girlfriend back?”

He snorted, then seemed to have a hard time huffing out laughter, almost as if he were
relieved
. He snatched me to his tanned chest, hugged me hard, and breathed into my wet hair, “You’re not a dog. You’re beautiful.”

Right. I knew what he meant. Beautiful on the inside. I
had
saved a baby sparrow or two in my time. I was not someone he would want to
hook up
with, but a beautiful person. Hooray.

“Don’t ever let Sean convince you you’re not.” He glanced in the direction Sean had gone. “Let’s go for a sailboat ride.”

I loved sailing. But if we went now, we’d be late for the party. “Can’t we do it tomorrow?”

“This will be an investment in your future. It’ll be worth it.”

I waited while Adam leaned into the office to tell Mr. Vader what we were doing, and I followed him back into the warehouse. The sailboat was very old and very small. The hull was a light fiberglass platform with a hole for the metal mast. Adam and I toted the hull, mast, and sail to the edge of the wharf, threw them in, and tossed down a couple of life vests. Adam stepped carefully onto the hull, sat down, and steadied it against the concrete wall for me as I stepped on and sat down. The sitting down was very important. The boat was so small that it would tip and throw us off if we shifted our weight the slightest bit too far, like trying to stand on a basketball. Together we lifted the mast upright, slid it into the hole in the center of the hull, and unfurled the red sail.

“Do you want to drive?” he asked.

“You can drive,” I said.

I scooted around the mast to the tiny bow. Adam slid to the back, taking the rope attached to the sail in one hand and the handle of the rudder in the other. He pulled the sail taut, the wind filled it—and the boat tipped over, dumping us both into the lake.

I came up quickly. The life vests were floating away on the current, but the more important thing was to make sure the mast didn’t fall out of the hole and sink. We’d have a hard time retrieving it from the bottom of the lake, even here near the wharf where it was relatively shallow.

Adam had the same idea. Without a word to each other, we met under the boat. His hair floated weirdly around him and his blue eyes were bright in the dark green water as he motioned for me to turn the hull right side up while he dove after the slowly sinking mast.

I came up into the sunshine for a breath and flipped the hull. Adam surfaced beside me, groaning with the weight of tugging the sail full of water. Together we managed to bundle it around the mast so less water was trapped in it. We pulled the sail and mast out of the water, slipped the mast into the hole in the hull, and peeled the sail into position. Water rained everywhere.

“This is romantic,” I said. “You have a knack. What the hell kind of date
is
this?”

He laughed. “You’ll see.”

After we retrieved the life vests, I sat on the bow like in
Titanic
. But without any of that
I’m queen of the world
bullshit, holding my arms out. Come on, it was a sailboat on a lake. Adam steered us back and forth across the water. The red sail billowed above us in the strong breeze, so we wouldn’t get T-boned by drunks. Unless of course they headed straight for us like in a bullfight.

Sometimes Adam jerked the boat around so fast that I slipped off the bow and into the water. Dunk! These were not accidents, I thought—the gleam in his blue eyes was too gleamy. He turned the boat only when we were very close to shore, though, where it was safe. I wasn’t too concerned about getting ground to bits by a passing boat motor in the open water.

We made it to the bridge and floated under. The sound of cars zooming on the highway overhead echoed in a sucking sound underneath, with a
clack-clack, clack-clack
as they crossed from one section of bridge to another. I called over the noise, “How much farther are we going?” I looked back at the Vaders’ house, tiny across the water. “The party will start soon.”

“Someone there you want to see?”

I thought he sounded bitter. But when I turned around to glance at him, he was the usual Adam, quiet and intense, one finger tapping the boat with barely contained energy.

“Yes, duh. Isn’t there someone at the party
you
want to see? We can’t make them jealous if we’re not there.”