Endless Summer

Sean, being Sean, had managed to make the pink truck seem cool. ere were many rumors around school about the adventures of Sean in the pink truck with Holly or Beige. I had dreamed of my own adventures in the pink truck. Now my dreams had come true!

Except that in my dreams, I was not a dork. “Sean came to pick me up!” I groaned. “This is terrible! What do I do?”

“Act casual,” Tammy said in a level tone, watching the truck park just outside the high chain-link fence. “Interested, but not manic.”

“How do I do that? I don’t know how to do that!”

“Go hug him hello.”

Just then a breeze kissed the back of my neck under my ponytail, reminding me how hot the night was, and how heavily I’d exerted myself chasing Tammy’s serves. “I’m sweaty.”

“If he likes you, he won’t mind.” She led the way through the gate and headed for McGillicuddy’s side of the truck to distract him for me.

As I walked toward Sean’s side, Sean opened the door and started to get out. I had to walk all the way around the big, heavy door to hug—“Adam!” He looked down at me, arms open wide for me because I’d been holding mine out. He dropped his arms when he saw the look on my face. “Nice to see you, too,” he said grumpily.

I patted him lightly on one cheek—the cheek opposite the one with the blue bruise under his eye. e pats got harder until I was pretty much slapping him. “Why can’t you be Sean? Oh, God.” I knew almost before I’d gotten the words out that Adam didn’t deserve that. I stood on my tiptoes and slid my arms around him. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

He didn’t say anything. But he did put his arms around my waist.

I looked up at him. “It’s just…. Why are you driving Sean’s truck?”

“It’s my truck.”

Sean must have gotten a new truck for graduation, just like Cameron. And now Adam was driving the pink truck, because—crap. “Oh, Adam, I forgot your sixteenth birthday!”

“I know.”

ose two words told me he’d already thought everything I was thinking. Our birthdays were three weeks apart. We’d had a few birthday parties together when we were little. How could I have forgotten his freaking birthday? “I was preoccupied with finals,” I gasped, “and summer coming up, and—”

“Sean. I know.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” I said sincerely. I hugged him as hard as I could, then started to pull back.

His hands didn’t leave my waist. “I’m still kind of mad,” he said.

Laughing, I tightened my hold on him. I felt him bend down and put his chin on my shoulder.

On the other side of the truck, talking with McGillicuddy, Tammy raised one eyebrow at me.

That’s when I had an Idea.

I ran my hand down Adam’s side until I found his hand. “Let’s talk privately.”

He looked down at his hand in mine like he couldn’t quite believe this was happening. I couldn’t either. “Okay,” he told our hands.

I called across the hood of the truck, “Adam and I will be right back. We’re going to talk privately.” Tammy and McGillicuddy stared at us, then each other, then us again. Finally I pulled Adam away, swinging his hand like holding hands with him wasn’t the weirdest thing ever. We walked down the sidewalk, around the corner of the fence to the side of the te

I backed him against the fence. I didn’t shove him or anything, but I’m sure he felt trapped against the chain links because I stood so close to him, and the determined expression on my face was so frightening.

I squeezed his hand. “I still think Sean and Rachel’s little fling is fake. Sean’s trying to get revenge on you, and Rachel’s trying to make you jealous. She wants to heat up your romance for the summer. In two weeks, by the Crappy Festival, it’ll be over with Sean, and things will be back to normal.” And Sean would be free again. “But you need to up the stakes to keep her interested. To make sure she comes back and never leaves you. To teach her a lesson.” Adam breathed faster. His blue eyes widened as it dawned on him what I was going to suggest. In fact, he looked close to panic. I almost backed down. I’d be pretty embarrassed if he ran screaming away and hitchhiked with someone on the road just to escape from me. But I had to salvage my chance with Sean. I’d never gotten as close to him as I had yesterday afternoon in the lake! So I pressed ahead.

“You and I should pretend to hook up. at’ll show Rachel you’re not putting up with her bullshit. And it’ll show Sean I’m girlfriend material. We’ll drive them mad, I tell you, mad!” I made a joke out of it in case Adam burst into uncontrollable laughter at the idea of even pretending to hook up with me. en I could say I’d been kidding all along. I knew Adam valued me as a friend. But I offered him a way out in case he thought I was a dog.

He swallowed, still watching me, alarmed. “You want to hook up with me. To make Rachel jealous, so I can get her back.”

“Right,” I said, wondering why this was so hard for him to understand. Maybe he didn’t watch as many MTV reality shows as I did.

“You think that would work? It would make her jealous to see me with another girl?”

“Sure.” It was looking more and more like my dog theory was correct. “Unless you think I’m the wrong girl for the job. I’m just suggesting you do this with me because I’m trying to hook Sean, too.” Did he think being with me would ruin his chances with Rachel or any other girl at our school forever, as surely as if he’d gone out with Godzilla?

“Okay,” he said quickly.

“Okay?” I had thought it would be harder to convince him. I’d missed something. Which, I’ll admit, was not all that unusual.

“Okay, we’ll pretend to hook up.” He still watched me. His eyes traveled from my eyes to one of my ears, down my neck and further down to my cleavage (thank you sports bra!). He actually leaned back against the fence for better viewing of my legs beneath the micro-miniskirt. en he met my gaze again. Like he was surveying what he had to pretend to hook up with, and it checked out, with no damage to his rep.

I should have appreciated this. I passed inspection! But his gaze made me uncomfortable enough that the pesky tingle returned. Worse, he seemed to sense he was causing me to tingle. He made that face with his jaw dropped, trying not to smile. en he gave up and broke into the broadest grin I’d seen on his face since—well, since yesterday afternoon, when he beat Sean at push-ups.

A memory flashed into my mind of Adam, age eight, jumping off the roof because Sean dared him to. (Broken ankle.) I wondered what I’d gotten myself into.

Suddenly very nervous, I rubbed my tingling hands together and looked toward the road. “Should we drive to the movie theater parking lot where more people will see us together? We could pretend to k—” I looked back at Adam at that moment, and something stopped me in the way he watched me.

“Iss,” he said, nodding.

“And they’ll tell everyone. It’ll get back to Sean and Rachel.”

Now he was shaking his head no. “That’s not going to work. We can’t stage it so carefully. I’m an awful actor. Something tells me you’ll never win an Oscar, either.”

“Hey—”

“So we need to make it look natural. We need to act like we’re into each other all the time, without checking first to see if someone is watching.” His hand was trembling in mine. “Maybe this is the first time we’ve realized we’re into each other. And maybe this is our first kiss.” He leaned down. When his face got within a few inches of mine, I giggled. Not the fake giggle of a tomboy raised by wolves, either. A real, girly, high-pitched giggle that originated somewhere in my sinuses and made me want to slap myself. There was hope for me yet.

“See?” he whispered against my lips. “This is what we’re trying to avoid. We need to act like we want to do this.” And he kissed me.