The Other Boy

Pandemonium broke loose as people shoved out the back door, yelling, “Get out!” No one had the nerve to go past Maddy’s parents, still standing in the living room doorway. Maddy’s mouth was dry and the walls were spi

“Call me,” Morgan managed to whisper.

And all of a sudden, everyone was gone. Only Maddy and Brian still stood together in the middle of the floor.

“Arrhmmm!” Bob Sinclaire cleared his throat pointedly. Maddy winced. “You’d better go,” she muttered to Brian. “I’ll text you.”

“Um, bye, Mr. and Mrs. Sinclaire,” he tried weakly, giving Maddy a sympathetic glance. He awkwardly squeezed through the doorway.

11

Hailey Abbott

Once the three of them were alone, Maddy’s mother slowly walked into the room and sat down on the leather sofa. With a cry, she jumped back up, soaked from the pool of beer on the cushion. Her father’s face was purple. Her mother gingerly perched on a sofa arm. Not looking at Maddy, she muttered, “We forgot the Vineyard Association paperwork.”

Ah. Maddy righted an upturned chair and slowly sat down. She buried her face in her hands. She wasn’t quite sure which was worse—the guilt she felt looking at her mother’s face, or the regret that she was probably in the biggest trouble of her entire life. Her parents were silent, obviously waiting for an explanation—but really, what could she say? She should at least try to dig herself out of this, though. “Guys,” she began, “I’m really sorry—”

“Sorry!” her father exploded. “What are you talking about? We leave this house for five hours, after spending a month going over the summer rules. All we want is to get a box of files and what do we find? A hundred drunken teenagers trashing our house!”

“Daddy—”

“And who is responsible for this? Who? Our daughter, who assured us that she would take care of everything this summer! ‘Don’t worry, Dad,’ you said. ‘I’ll be just fine.’

Well, this doesn’t look like ‘just fine’ to me, Madeline!”

Maddy took a deep breath. “Look, Dad, just let me explain.”

12

The Other Boy

“Explain what, Maddy?” Mom said. Maddy’s stomach sank all the way to her ballet flats. “This situation seems perfectly clear to me. We trusted you. You broke that trust.”

Maddy had a horrible feeling she knew what was next. She desperately tried to head it off with a pitiful stream of babbling.

“I’m so sorry, guys! I promise, promise, promise it will never happen again—ever! It was going to be my only party, I swear, just a little reward after school, before senior year, to celebrate summer. I—I—” She searched around for something, anything, to appease them. “I won’t even stay here this summer! I’ll go live with Morgan—Mrs. Gainsley is incredibly strict.”

“No,” her dad said firmly. “You are going to spend the rest of the evening cleaning up this house, and then in the morning, you’re going to Napa with us. So get started.” The calmness in his voice sounded terrifyingly final.

Maddy let out her breath. “Okay, Dad,” she said in a barely controlled voice. “I understand that I screwed up and that I should go to Napa for a while to help you guys out as my punishment. But how long are we talking about? A week?” She had to stop to control the tremor in her voice. “Two weeks? I’ll help you clean and mow or whatever. . . .” She broke off. Both of her parents were staring at her.

13

Hailey Abbott

“Maddy,” Mom said.

“What?”

“Your father isn’t talking about a short visit. You’ll be helping out at the vineyard for the rest of the summer.”

Clunk. As silence fell over the room like a dead weight, Maddy’s visions of the beach, Brian, and freedom floated out into the now-foggy San Francisco night.

“The entire summer. . . ?” she croaked. Her dad skewered her with a stare. He spoke as if Maddy were someone of severely limited intelligence.

“Do . . . you . . . truly . . . think . . . you’re . . . staying . . . here . . . after . . . all . . . this?” Maddy swallowed. Debbie Sinclaire got up from the sofa and went into the kitchen. “This discussion is finished,” she shot over her shoulder. There was a pause. Then an eruption.

“Madeline Sinclaire! Can you please explain why the hell there is bean dip all over this ceiling?”

Maddy watched her dad stiffly walk onto the deck. He stood illuminated by tiki torches with his hands on his hips, staring at a lawn chair floating upside down in the pool. As Maddy stood to walk to the kitchen, she saw her father’s shoulders slump as he slid his head into his hands. And she felt the best summer ever slip right through her fingers.

14

Chapter Three

!

Ow!” Weighed down by two huge duffel bags and dragging a giant suitcase behind her, Maddy stumbled as she stubbed her toe on the edge of the door frame. She managed to squeeze the bags through the door and wrangle them down the steps. The morning was fresh and dewy, with puffy white clouds skating overhead in the deep azure sky, but it might as well have been sleeting as Maddy crammed her stuff into the trunk of the Lexus RX hybrid. Good-bye beach, bye shopping, bye sleeping until noon, bye hanging out with Morgan and Kirsten. And mostly, bye Brian. She had texted him that she was being kidnapped. Rescue me! she had typed, without much hope.

“Maddy! Did you remember your hiking boots?” her 15

Hailey Abbott

mother’s voice called from the house. The woman had no right to be this perky at seven a.m. “The terrain is pretty rocky up there!” Her mom sounded like she was relishing the thought.

“I did, Mom!” Maddy sang out through gritted teeth.

“Well, we’re leaving in just a minute. Dad’s just checking the air-conditioning one more time.”

Suddenly, Maddy heard a car engine behind her. She whirled around to see Brian stepping down from his yellow Nissan XTerra.

“Hey, babe,” Brian cooed. He was still wearing his clothes from the party, and his hair was all matted on one side, sticking up on the other. She could see sleep sand in the corner of one eye as he bent to kiss her forehead.

“You look awful,” she noted. “Have you been home yet?”

He scrubbed at the side of his face with his hand.

“No, I crashed on Chad’s couch. I can’t believe I’m awake this early. But I couldn’t let you leave without saying good-bye.” He leaned down to kiss her just as the front door slammed. Maddy clutched at Brian.

“Don’t let them take me!” she whispered. “I am going to absolutely die up there.”

He kissed her forehead again. “I’ll call you every night.” The garage door opened and Brian looked up.

“I’d better go.”

16

The Other Boy

Maddy watched forlornly as he backed down the driveway and floored the accelerator. As he sped away, an arm appeared out of the driver’s window and flapped a few times. She lifted her own hand in response and kept it up until the car had disappeared around the corner.

“Okay!” Mom came out of the house. She seemed to have recovered her good humor now that they were almost on their way back to Napa. “Got all your stuff in the car?” she asked Maddy.

“Yep.”

Dad bustled up and slapped his hands together.

“Everyone go to the bathroom?”

Oh. My. God. Was the entire summer going to be like this? She looked up at the sky, hoping to fight the overwhelming feeling that her world was shrinking beyond recognition. She climbed into the backseat and buckled her seat belt, planting her sneakered feet firmly on a box of dishes. “Let’s just go already, okay?”

Her parents exchanged a classic our-teenage-daughteris-such-a-pain-in-the-you-know-what glance. Good, Maddy thought. We’re all on the same page. I think you guys are a pain in the ass too. She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the leather seat back. She could hear a double bam-bam as her parents got in and shut their doors. Maybe she could just sleep the whole way. 17