The Boys Next Door (2 page)

“That’s quite all right,” I managed in the same fake-formal tone. His warm hands still held my waist. This was the first time a boy had every touched my bare tummy. My happy skin sent shocked messages to my brain that went something like,
He’s touching me! Are you getting this? He’s touching me! Eeeeeeee!
My brain got it, all right, and put the rest of my body on high alert. My heart thumped painfully, just like in my dream.

But as I looked into his eyes, I saw he was already gone, glancing up the stairs to the marina. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he’d been flirting with me. I knew better. He treated all girls this way.

He slid out of my grasp. He may have had to shake one hand violently to extricate it from my friendly vise-like grip. “See you later, Junior,” he threw over his shoulder at me as he climbed the steps to the marina.

When we were kids, he’d started calling my brother
McGillicuddy
because he thought our last name was such a riot. It caught on with the other Vader boys, and Cameron had told everyone at school. I’m not sure anyone in town knew my brother as Bill. Thankfully, everyone in town knew me as Lori. The names Sean had made up for me were too long to be practical nicknames: McGillicuddy Junior, McGillicuddy the Younger, McGillicuddy Part Deux, McGillicuddy Returns, McGillicuddy Strikes Back, McGillicuddy’s Buddy.

You see what I was up against? Obviously he still saw me as my brother’s little sister. I sighed, watching him climb the steps, muscles moving underneath the tan skin of his legs. He was immune to the delicious temptation of my pink tank top. But I had another trick up my sleeve, or lack thereof. Later that afternoon, when we went wakeboarding, I would initiate Stage Two: Bikini.

The dock dipped again as Adam jumped from the boat. I turned to greet him. We did our secret handshake, which we’d been adding to for years: the basic shake (first grade), upside down (second grade), with a twist (fourth grade), high five (fifth grade), low five (seventh grade), pinky swear (eighth grade), elbows touching (ninth grade). We’d been known to do the secret handshake when we passed in the halls at school, and on the sidelines during Adam’s football games.

Everybody on the girls’ tennis team fetched water and bandages for the football team during their games. It wasn’t fair. The football team didn’t bring
us
drinks and bandages at tennis tournaments. I never complained, though, because I got to stand on the football field where the action was, which was all I really wanted. The secret handshake had proven surprisingly hard to do when Adam was in football pads. We’d made it work.

But Adam had gotten together with Rachel a month before. Ever since I’d heard a rumor that she didn’t want her boyfriend doing the secret handshake with “that ‘ho next door,” I’d tried to cool it in public. I mean, if
I’d
had a boyfriend, I wouldn’t have wanted him doing a secret handshake with anybody but me, especially if he looked like Adam.

Because Adam looked basically like Sean. Up close and in daylight, you’d never mistake them for each other, especially now that they were older. Their facial features were different. At a distance or in the dark, all bets were off.

Adam’s hair was longer than Sean’s and always in his eyes, but you couldn’t tell this when they were both windblown in the extreme, like now. If you happened to be watching them from your bedroom window as they got in a fight and beat the crap out of each other at the edge of their yard where their mom couldn’t see them from their house—not that I would ever do such a thing—you could tell them apart only because Sean was more filled out and a little taller, since he was two years older. Also, they walked differently: Sean cruised suavely, while Adam bounced like the ball that got away from you and led you into the street after it.

But what I always looked for to tell them apart instantly, when I could see it, was Adam’s skull-and-crossbones pendant on a leather cord. I’d bought the pendant from a bubble gum machine when we were twelve. In one of my many failed attempts over the years to become more girl-like, I’d been trying for a Miley Cyrus pendant for myself. The last thing I wanted was a skull and crossbones. I’d given it to Adam because it was made for him.

Suddenly I realized I was standing on the hot wood of the dock, still touching elbows with Adam, staring at the skull-and-crossbones pendant. And when I looked up into his light blue eyes, I saw that
he
was staring at
my
neck. No. Down lower.

“What’cha staring at?” I asked.

He cleared his throat. “Tank top or what?” This was his seal of approval, as in,
Last day of school or what?
or,
Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders or what?
Hooray! He wasn’t Sean, but he was built of the same material. This was a good sign.

I pumped him for more info, to make sure. “What
about
my tank top?”

“You’re wearing it.” He looked out across the lake, showing me his profile. His cheek had turned bright red under his tan. I had embarrassed
the wrong boy
. Damn, it was back to the football T-shirt for me.

No it wasn’t, either. I couldn’t abandon my plan. I had a fish to catch.

“Look,” I told Adam, as if he hadn’t already looked. “Sean’s leaving at the end of the summer. Yeah, yeah, he’ll be back next summer, but I’m afraid I won’t be able to compete once he’s had a taste of college life and sorority girls. It’s now or never, and desperate times call for desperate tank tops.”

Adam opened his mouth to say something. I shut him up by raising my hand. Imitating his deep boy-voice, I said, “I don’t know why you want to hook up with that jerk.” We’d had this conversation whenever we saw each other lately. I said in my normal voice, “I just do, okay? Let me do it, and don’t get in my way. Stay out of my net, little dolphin.” I bumped his hip with my hip. Or tried to, but he was a lot taller than me. I actually hit somewhere around his mid-thigh.

He folded his arms, stared me down, and pressed his lips together. He tried to look grim. I could tell he was struggling not to laugh. “Don’t call me that.”

“Why not?”

“Dolphins don’t live in the lake,” he said matter-of-factly, as if this were the real reason. The real reason was that the man-child within him did not want to be called “little” anything. Boys were like that.

I shrugged. “Fine, little brim. Little bass.”

He walked toward the stairs.

“Little striper.”

He turned. “What if Sean actually asked you out?”

I didn’t want to be
teased
about this. It could happen! “You act like it’s the most remote poss—”

“He has to ride around with the sunroof open just so he can fit his big head in the truck. Where would you sit?”

“In his lap?”

A look of disgust flashed across Adam’s face before he jogged up the stairs, his weight making the weathered planks creak with every step. I wasn’t really worried he would ruin things for me and Sean, though. Adam and I had always gotten along great. When the older boys picked on us, we stood up for each other as best we could. The idea of me hooking up with Sean bothered him simply because he hated Sean with the white heat of a thousand suns, and the feeling was mutual.

A few minutes later, just as I was helping the clueless captain of a ski boat shove off, I heard footsteps on the stairs behind me. Sean alert! Sensory overload! But no, I saw from the skull-and-crossbones pendant that it was Adam.

On cue, Sean puttered past us in a powerful boat, blasting Crossfade instead of Nickelback for a little variety, looking so powerful himself in cool sunglasses, his tanned chest polished by the sun. He waited until he reached the very edge of the idle zone (Mr. Vader was probably watching from somewhere inside the marina to make sure the boys idled in the idle zone) and floored it across the lake to make another delivery.

I’d forgotten all about Adam behind me until he tickled my ribs. In fact, I was so startled, I would have fallen in the lake if he hadn’t caught me. This was the second time ever a boy had touched my bare tummy, and something of an anticlimax.

Don’t get me wrong—the attention and his fingers on my skin were very pleasant. But he was just being friendly, brotherly. He was totally devoted to Rachel, and he knew I was totally devoted to Sean. It was like craving a doughnut and getting french fries. You were left with an odd taste in your mouth, and you still wanted that doughnut afterward.

Mmmmm, doughnut.

For the rest of the morning, I pumped gas. I worked on my baby tan through the SPF 45. At lunchtime I went up to the marina and ate the chicken salad sandwich Mrs. Vader made me and watched
What Not to Wear
, which I’d been studying recently almost as hard as I’d studied for my algebra final this week. I ate veeeeeeeeery slowly, one nibble of bread and scrap of celery at a time, in case the beginning of Sean’s lunch coincided with the end of mine.

After Mrs. Vader looked in on me the fourteenth time, I got the hint and galloped back down to the gas pumps. Of course
that’s
when Sean and Adam roared back into the marina in the boat.

I gave up. Now that Sean had seen me dry, it was safe to go swimming.
Safe
being a relative term. I knew from experience that before you went swimming off a dock for the first time each summer, you needed to check the sides and the ladder carefully for bryozoa, colonies of slimy green critters that grew on hard surfaces underwater (think coral, but gelatinous—
shudder
). They wouldn’t hurt you, they were part of a healthy freshwater ecosystem, their presence meant the water was pristine and unpolluted, blah blah blah—but none of this was any consolation if you accidentally
touched them
. Poking around with a water ski and finding nothing, I spent the rest of the afternoon watching for Sean from the water.

And getting out occasionally when he sped by in the boat, in order to woo him like Halle Berry coming out of the ocean in a James Bond movie (which I had seen with the boys about a hundred times. Bikini scene, seven hundred times). Only I seemed to have misplaced my dagger.

Sometimes Sean was behind the wheel. Sometimes Adam was. I could tell which was which even when I was too far away to see the skull and crossbones. Adam was the one waving to me, and Sean was the one looking hot behind his sunglasses. Maybe Sean was watching me and I simply couldn’t tell from his mysterious exterior. He only
appeared
unmoved by my newfound buxom beauty.

Yeah, probably not. There were several problems with this theory, not the least of which was that when they passed by, I never timed my exit from the water quite right for Stage Two: Bikini. Then, in case they did turn around, I had to appear as if I’d meant to get out all along—for some reason other than driving Sean to distraction with lust.

Oh—hair toss—I was getting out to look at teen fashion mags, like a normal almost-sixteen-year-old girl. I examined the pictures and checked this info against what I’d gathered from
What Not to Wear
, plus some common sense (I hoped). High fashion was all well and good, but if it prompted the object of your affection to comment that you looked pregnant or you had elf feet, really it wasn’t serving its purpose.

Around four o’clock I climbed the stairs and walked around to the warehouses. I knew the boys wouldn’t save me the hike by driving around to the gas pumps to pick me up. Adam might, if it were up to him, but it wasn’t up to him.

Just as well. Adam, Sean, Cameron and my brother, all wearing board shorts, stood in a line, pitching wakeboards and water skis and life vests and tow ropes from the warehouse into the boat. Adam, Cameron and McGillicuddy half-turned toward Sean as he related some amusing anecdote that was probably only thirty percent true. In fact, the other boys didn’t notice, but Sean had stopped working. They handed wakeboards around Sean in the line. His only job was to entertain.

I wanted him to entertain me, too. I could listen to Sean’s stories forever. The way he told it, a trip to the grocery store sounded like
American Pie
. But I had a job to do. I had a grand entrance to make. While walking toward them, I dropped my backpack, then pulled my tank top off over my head to reveal my bikini.

And just balled up my tank top in one hand as if it were nothing, and threw it into the boat. “Heeeeeey!” I said in a high girl-voice as I hugged Cameron, whom I hadn’t seen since he’d come home from college for the summer a few days ago. He hugged me back and kept glancing at my boobs and trying not to. My brother had that look on his face like he was going to ask Dad to take me to the shrink again.

I bent over with my butt toward them, dropped my shorts, and threw those in the boat, too. When I straightened and turned toward the boys, I was in for a shock.

I had thought I wanted Sean to stare at me. I
did
want him to stare. But now that Sean and Cameron and Adam were all staring at me, speechless, I wondered whether there was chicken salad on my bikini, or—somewhat worse—an exposed nipple.

I didn’t feel a breeze down there, though. And even I, with my limited understanding of grand entrances and seducing boys, understood that if I glanced in the direction they were staring and there
were
no nipple, the effect of the grand entrance would be lost. So I snapped my fingers and asked, “Zone much?” Translation:
I’m hot? Really? Hmph
.

Adam blinked and turned to Sean. “Bikini or what?”

Sean still stared at my boobs. Slowly he brought his strange pale eyes up to meet my eyes. “This does a lot for you,” he said, gesturing to the bikini with the hand flourish of Clinton from
What Not to Wear
. Surely this was my imagination. He didn’t
really
know I’d been studying how to be a girl for the past year!

“Sean,” I said without missing a beat, “
I
do a lot for the
bikini
.”

Cameron snorted and shoved Sean. Adam shoved him in the other direction. Sean smiled and seemed perplexed, like he was trying to think of a comeback but couldn’t, for once.