Endless Summer

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 begi

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). ey 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. ere 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. en, 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. e 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. “is 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 wi

“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. e 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 te

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.