The Boys Next Door Read online

  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.

  Off to the side, my brother still looked very uncomfortable. I hadn’t thought through how he’d react to the unveiling of the swan. I hadn’t thought through any of their reactions very well, in case you weren’t getting this. I wanted Sean to ask me out, but I didn’t want to lose my relationship, such as it was, with everybody else. Like The Price Is Right: I wanted to come as close as I could to winning Sean without going over.

  “Team calisthenics,” McGillicuddy called. I understood he wanted to change the subject, but I’d hoped we could skip team calisthenics now that we were all grown up. Mr. Vader used to make us do push-ups together before we went out. The stronger we were, the less likely we were to get hurt. When my brother and Cameron got their boater’s licenses and we started going out without Mr. Vader, we kept doing push-ups before every wakeboard outing. It was a good way for the rest of the boys to keep Adam and me in our places.

  No hesitation, no complaint—this was part of the game. I dropped on my hands on the concrete wharf just as fast as the rest of them, and started doing push-ups. All five of us did push-ups, heads close together, with limited grunting at first. And absolutely no grunting from me or from Adam. We stayed in shape, because we cared about the calisthenics.

  And because we both were in training for sports. Adam might start for the football team this year. I was just trying not to get kicked off the tennis team by an incoming freshman. My game was okay, but I was nowhere near as good as Holly and Beige, who had just graduated. Or Tammy, who would be a senior this year, and team captain. Plus, there was an unfortunate incident last year. I didn’t train all winter, got to our first meet, overexerted myself, and barfed on the court. I went on to win the match 6–2, 6–1, but nobody seemed to remember that part. Since then, I’d made sure to stay in shape.

  Today I held my own in push-ups. After about fifty, I was nowhere near my limit. Cameron’s grunting increased. I tried to concentrate on my own self, but Cameron was hard to ignore. His face turned very red. His arms trembled, and finally he collapsed on his bare stomach. My brother hadn’t trembled or grunted as much, but he took the opportunity to lie down on his stomach, too, hoping no one would notice as Cameron drew the fire.

  Cameron cursed and said, “I don’t know why I can’t get my ass in gear today.”

  Between push-ups, I breathed, “About twelve ounces too much frat party for both of you.”

  Cameron scrambled toward me. I knew I was in trouble, but it was too late to get up and run. One solid arm circled my waist. With his other arm, he held my legs so tightly I couldn’t wiggle or, better yet, kick him in the gut. He took two steps toward the edge of the wharf.

  I managed not to plead or scream. After almost sixteen years with boys, I had a lot of control over my natural girl-reactions. It wasn’t until he pitched me off that I remembered I did want to react like a girl today. Then, as I hit the water, I realized I hadn’t screened this swimming area for bryozoa. “Eeee—”

  I plunged in. Almost before my toes hit the bottom, I was pushing up through the water, toward the sunbeams and the platform on the back of the boat, which was less likely to harbor bryozoa than any part of the concrete wharf. Ugh, ugh, ugh, I could almost feel a heinous mass squishing past my skin—but I made it safely to the surface.

  And slapped myself mentally as I climbed up on the platform. If I’d pulled off my new siren act, Cameron wouldn’t have tossed me into the lake. I would have been too delicate and too haughty. He wouldn’t have dared to touch me. On the other hand, he did recognize that I was a girl, on some level. If I’d been Adam, he would have just shoved me in instead of picking me up.

  By the time I stood on the platform, I remembered I was now wearing a wet bikini. I collected myself enough to make jumping down into the boat look halfway svelte. But nobody was looking at me anymore. Cameron and my brother stood over Adam and Sean still doing push-ups.

  Adam, eyes on the concrete, kept pushing himself up in an even rhythm. Sean watched Adam with a little smile and gritted teeth, turning redder and redder. The bulging muscles of Sean’s tanned arms trembled.

  Oh God, Sean was going to lose.

  He fell on the concrete with a groan, followed by eleven choice curse words. Adam kept doing push-ups, probably because these games we played tended to change without warning. Sean might claim Adam was required to do five more push-ups per year younger. Adam was no fool. He made sure. Sean stood, and Adam was still doing push-ups.

  “We’ve created a monster,” my brother said.

  Adam did one last push-up for good measure and stood up slowly. He clapped his hands together to brush off the dust. And then—don’t do it, Adam, don’t make Sean any angrier than he already is—he gave Sean a grin.

  “I don’t believe it!” shouted Cameron. “You know what else? Adam is taller! Stand back-to-back and let me make sure.”

  Sean refused to stand back-to-back with Adam. They goaded him and called him names that I can’t repeat, but that had to do with Sean being a girl, the worst insult imaginable. So Sean and Adam stood back-to-back. Sure enough, Sean was more muscular and filled out, as always, but Adam was half an inch taller.

  Adam turned and gave Sean that grim look with dropped jaw, trying not to laugh. “I’m the biggest.”

  “Ohhhhhh!” Cameron and my brother moaned like Adam had gotten in a good punch on Sean in one of their boxing matches. I’ll spare you the full five minutes of size jokes that ensued. Tammy and some other girls on the tennis team had told me they were so jealous of me growing up around boys, because I had a window into how boys thought. This, my friends, was the deep, dark secret. The size jokes went on and on as if I weren’t there, or as if I weren’t a girl. I wasn’t sure which was worse.

  Sean smiled, wincing only a little when they shoved him. He would keep smiling no matter what they said to him. This was one of the many things I loved about Sean. Surely the boys knew they couldn’t break him. They would try anyway.

  I was a little concerned about what Sean would do to Adam later. Sean didn’t let Adam get away with stuff like that. But I supposed that was Adam’s business, the dumbass.

  Disgusted, I sat in the boat with my back to them. When they ran out of size jokes for the moment—they would think of more as the afternoon went on, trust me—they piled into the boat and proceeded to argue about who got to drive first. The consensus was that Sean could drive first as a consolation prize because he was a loser.

  There was no question about me driving. I got my boater’s license when I turned fifteen, just like they did. The problem was that I didn’t know my left from my right. This was their fault, really. They taught me to waterski when I was five years old. Nobody thought I’d get up and stay up on the first try, so I wasn’t properly instructed on the dismount. I couldn’t steer. Too terrified to drop the rope, I ran into the dock and broke my arm.

  My right arm. At the time, my brain must have been designing the circuitry that told me left from right. Because since then, I’d never been able to hear Sean yell, “Go left!” or my brother holler, “Turn to the right!” without thinking, Okay. I broke my right arm. This is my right arm. They want me to turn this way, by which time I had missed the turn, or run the boy I was pulling on the wakeboard into a tree. We found this out the hard way last summer, the first time I tried to pull Adam.<
br />
  Sean started the engine and putted through the marina waters, and Adam had the nerve to plop onto the seat across the aisle from me. Sean reached the edge of the idle zone and cranked the boat into top speed. Adam called to me so softly I could barely catch his words over the motor, “Close your legs.”

  “What for? I waxed!” I looked down to make sure. This was okay now, because Sean was facing the other way and couldn’t hear me in the din. Indeed, I was clean. I spread my legs even wider, put my arms on the back of the seat, and generally took up as much room as possible, like a boy. I glanced back over at Adam. “Does it make you uncomfortable for me to sit this way?”

  He watched me warily. “Yes.”

  “May I suggest that this is your problem and not mine?”

  He licked his lips and bent toward me. “If it keeps Sean from asking you out, it’s going to be your problem, and you’re going to make it my problem.”

  “Speaking of which,” I said, crossing my legs like a girl. “Thanks for staying out of my way. How the hell am I supposed to get Sean to ask me out when he’s all pissy?”

  “You wanted me to lose to him at team calisthenics? That was too sweet to miss.”

  “You didn’t have to win by quite so much, Adam. You knew I needed him in a good mood. You didn’t have to rub it in.”

  Adam grinned. “And you wanted me to stop growing?”

  “Do not make a joke about your size. If you can’t think of anything to talk about except your large size, please say nothing at all.”

  So we sat in silence until Sean slowed the boat in the middle of the lake. McGillicuddy put on his life vest, sat on the platform, slipped his feet into the bindings of his wakeboard, and hopped into the water. He and Cameron had been the ones to discover wakeboarding, and they did it first while the rest of us were still waterskiing. To look at them today, you’d think they’d never gotten the hang of it. My brother face-planted twice in his twenty-minute turn. Cameron had a hard time getting up. Frankly, I was beginning to worry.