Endless Summer

Another rose lay atop the woodpile.

A third was tied to an oak tree with a hangman’s noose fashioned from kudzu vine.

A fourth stuck out of a broken brick in the seawall.

A fifth lay across the handles of the doors into the marina. ey all smelled so lovely, my blood pressure hardly went up when Mrs. Vader shrieked at me, “Where have you been?”

She must have freaked out because the marina was already swamped with customers. e Crappy Festivities today were divided among the town swimming park and the three biggest marinas on this section of the lake, including ours. We got the crowning of the Crappy Queen. I wished we got a more interesting event, such as the Crappy Toss. I could have thrown a dead fish as far up the beach as anybody. e Crappy Queen contest was just a bunch of high school girls parading up and down the wharf as Mr. Vader called their names and a

Well, if Mrs. Vader wanted me there sooner, she should have told me the day before. “Where have I been?” I repeated. “I get asked that a lot for some reason.” She took the roses from me without comment and shoved me into the showroom, where a small crowd of people in shorts and flip-flops milled between the displays.

“It’s been a revolving door in here since we opened this morning,” she hissed. “People want to buy wakeboards, and they want to buy them from you.”

“Wow! Really?” I’d feel a little guilty selling people wakeboards, considering my experience two days before. But after all, my wreck was caused by a brain cloud and a broken heart, not equipment failure. I patted my head to make sure my bangs hung down over my stitches.

“Yes, really!” Mrs. Vader said. “Adam’s been covering for you, but he just mumbles at customers.”

“Where is Ad—,” I started to ask. en I saw his broad back, and the door to the warehouse closed behind him. Where he’d stood, a rose protruded from behind a Liquid Force on the wall.

He’d called me a bitch. I wasn’t ru

In the late morning, as I ma

“Lori!” my dad burst out. Flushing red, he realized he desperately needed a new slalom ski right then, and bolted for the display.

Frances watched him go. “Very fu

“Happy birthday.”

“Thank you, marm.”

She reached for my hand. “What a beautiful ring.” She moved my finger back and forth so the ring glittered under the fluorescent lights, and smiled at me again. “Your mother would be proud of you.”

“What a pretty dress,” I said. “Is it hemp?”

Holding her chin high, she said self-righteously, “It’s organic cotton.” She took a long whiff of the roses. “You and Adam have gotten yourselves in a mess, I hear. ‘Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!’ Sir Walter Scott.”

I patted her hand. “That’s nice, dear.”

“‘An honest man’s the noblest work of God.’ Alexander Pope.”

I squinted across the showroom. “I think I have a customer.”

My dad recovered and decided he could put off that slalom ski purchase after all. He came to the counter, put his hand on Frances’s back, and asked her, “Is Lori giving you lip?”

“She’s making fun of me!” Frances exclaimed in mock astonishment. “I’m offering her aphorisms and she’s making fun of me!”

“They do that.” Dad turned to me and said, “We’re going to wish Bill luck before the show. Aren’t you at least riding in the boat with the boys?”

“Ha! I’d rather go shopping.” Snort.

As Frances pushed open the door into the sunshine, she said something in Russian. Something long that she was determined to get out in full. Dad stood in the doorway and waited for her with a look of pure luv while she finished.

I didn’t need any sage advice on honesty and I definitely didn’t need any from Dostoyevsky. “ Do svidanya,” I muttered. en I realized the customer from across the showroom was approaching the counter. “Yes ma’am, may I help—” It was Tammy.

She slid a candy bar onto the counter. “Hook me up, would you? Now that I have a boyfriend, I’m trying to maintain my girlish figure.” As I sca

Vader wasn’t around, if they really deserved it. Tammy was McGillicuddy’s girlfriend. I didn’t want to be the a

She must have seen I was gearing up to tell her off. She knew me better than I’d thought. Either that or she recognized the fixed killer stare I got before I served an ace.

For whatever reason, she said in a hurry, “What draws me to McGillicuddy as a boyfriend is the same thing that draws me to you as a friend. You’re both so honest, to the point of being clueless. After years of being stuck at te

“Eighty-three cents,” I said. “You’re not helping yourself here.”

“And if I wanted honesty, I should have been more honest myself. When you left the party, I told McGillicuddy what I did to you. He didn’t un-ask me out, but I could tell he was disappointed.”

McGillicuddy would never un-ask a girl out. Even if he hated her guts, he’d keep his promise and act like a gentleman about it. I didn’t tell Tammy this because she was genuinely concerned about what he thought of her now. It was sort of sweet. “If it makes you feel better,” I told her, “he dreamed about you last night.”

“He did?” Her face glowed in the sunlight streaming through the showroom windows. Then she quirked her eyebrows at me. “He tells you about his dreams?” I nodded. “Me and Dad, every morning at breakfast. Are you going to pay for that?”

She dug in her pocket, peered at the change in her palm, and picked out some coins. She had the same purse-carrying issues I had. “Anyway,” she said, “I’m sorry for using you. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I didn’t give it a thought. But I should have.”

“Maybe I’d like to be used by a girl.” As she passed me the change, I said, “I’d like to be good enough friends with a girl that we use each other without asking, and help each other without question. I’d like to know a girl always had my back.” I tossed the coins in the register and slammed the drawer shut. e nickels had slid into the dime compartment, which would drive Mrs. Vader insane.

Tammy nodded. “We’ll work on it. So, the wakeboarding show’s starting soon. You want to go watch it with me?”

“Can’t,” I said, gesturing to the crowded showroom that was my responsibility. Wait a minute—it had emptied while I wasn’t watching.

Mrs. Vader popped her head out the door of the office. She gazed suspiciously at the cash register drawer, like she just knew something was amiss in there. “Lori, why don’t you take a few hours off? You should go outside and watch the boys.”

“I don’t want to go outside and watch the boys.” Actually I did. More than anything. I’d never missed a show before. And I’d never missed Adam so much. But I wanted to watch them from the roof or a tree or somewhere else Adam wouldn’t see me watching them. He’d called me a bitch. I wasn’t ru