Endless Summer

Mrs. Vader folded her arms. “Go outside anyway.”

I folded my arms too. “I don’t want to go outside.”

“Well, I don’t want you to work.”

“I want to work.”

She pointed at me and screamed like I imagined real mothers did when their daughters turned out too much like them. “You’re fired!”

“All right!” I threw my cash register key onto the counter and stomped outside.

en turned right back around, smacked into Tammy, stepped inside, and took the roses Mrs. Vader held out to me wrapped in a paper towel. Her lips were pressed together, just like Adam’s expression when he was trying not to laugh.

I stalked down the sidewalk outside. Tammy scampered to keep up with me. “Are you really fired?”

“Of course not,” I sighed. “She fires me about once a week in the summers. I guess I’ll take the rest of the day off, though. What’s all this for?” I slowed to a stop at the edge of the enormous crowd. e air smelled like hamburgers and fu

“They’re crowning the Crappie Queen!” Tammy said.

“If you’re going to hang around here, you need to use the correct pronunciation. It’s Crappy Queen.”

“It’s Rachel.”

Sure enough, down on the wharf, Mr. Vader was calling Rachel forward as the new Crappy Queen. There was some justice in the world.

And then I changed my mind. Instead of the evening gown I’d seen at Crappy Festivals past, Rachel skipped onto the wharf in cutoff jeans pulled over her bathing suit, and bare feet. She gri

“Pardon,” McGillicuddy said right behind me. He shoved me off the sidewalk. I shoved him back, then realized that when he pushed me, he’d tucked another rose into my bouquet. Walking backward down the hill, he blew a kiss at Tammy. Tammy giggled and blew him a kiss back.

Another voice behind me said, “A-choo!” SOMETHING FLEW INTO MY BOUQUET. I almost dropped my beautiful roses to avoid further contact with nastiness.

But it was only Cameron, pretending to sneeze another rose at me.

“Racking up, aren’t you?” Tammy asked, and I had to grin.

Right after Cameron came Sean. His nose was only a little blue. I could hardly tell it had bled the night before. Sean was like that. And he held a rose between his teeth.

I smirked at him. “Don’t tell me. You want me to come and get it.”

“Oh no,” he said through a mouthful of stem, holding up his hands in warning. “Adam would kill me.” He handed me the (spitty, ew) rose. “Did Dad crown Rachel the Crappy Queen yet?”

“Yes,” Tammy and I said together.

Sean’s face fell. “Oh!” He ran down the sidewalk. At the bottom of the hill, he caught Rachel by the arm and talked to her for a few seconds. His face fell further, and she shook her head. He walked away after the other boys, toward the wakeboarding boat. I almost felt sorry for him.

“I’m going to congratulate Rachel on her coronation,” I said to Tammy.

“You aw?” Tammy said with her mouth full of candy bar. “Uhhh—”

“Come with me, because you’re my friend and help me without question. I may need someone to call 911 if she breaks my arm.”

“I’w be wight behiwd woo.”

I maneuvered down the hill through the crowd, using the roses to clear the way in front of me. Now Rachel talked with an elderly couple, which might make her less likely to deck me. “Rachel!” I squealed, jumping up and down, spilling petals. “Congratulations!” She stared at me like a fish out of water, but the elderly couple thanked me in the ma

“I need to tell you a couple of things,” I said, hugging the roses to my chest and putting my other arm around her.

“Come this way,” Tammy said, moving along the seawall. Rachel looked back to signal the elderly couple to save her, but I moved in, blocking her view. What a team Tammy and I made. Beyond the crowd, Tammy sat on the seawall with her legs hanging over. I did the same, and Rachel sat between us.

“It wasn’t my idea to enter,” Rachel spoke up defensively. “I caught a two-pounder, and my granddaddy said we could not let the mayor’s daughter win again this year with only a one-pounder and a plastic mi

Rachel rose further in my opinion.

“I don’t need to tell you how bizarre that is,” I said. “Obviously you have a sixth sense about these things.” I nodded toward Sean cranking the boat and backing it away from the wharf. My brother was in the bow, Cameron sat further back, and Adam was bent below the side of the boat, gathering something. “I needed to tell you Sean is really in love with you.”

Now she looked toward the boat puttering across the inlet. “How do you know? You can just tell, right? You can tell by the way he acts? After the last couple of weeks, I’ll never be able to trust that again.” She tried to sound tough, but her delivery was stilted, and her eyes rolled for emphasis at the wrong place. I’d never actually talked to her before—I’d only watched her from afar—or I would have noticed this. She came off as a lot younger and more unsure of herself than I’d expected. Which made me like her even better.

“I know because he told me,” I said. e boat pointed in our direction, almost like it was heading for us rather than the open water. “I also needed to tell you your wakeboard bindings came in at the showroom this morning.”

“Oooh, I forgot Sean gave you a wakeboard!” Tammy said. “I wish I could learn.”

“It’s fun,” I said. Maybe McGillicuddy could take Tammy out wakeboarding. Maybe Sean could invite Rachel again and hope she showed up this time. Of course, both Sean and McGillicuddy would have to fight the boys every step of the way. We were good together, but it would be nice to wakeboard with other people once in a while, without a freaking outcry and rumors of mutiny.

“Hey,” I said suddenly. “I have a boat.” ere it was, tied on the side of the dock in front of my house. We hardly ever used it because we were always in the Vaders’

boat. I nudged Tammy. “If you want, come over after I get off work tomorrow, and I’ll teach you to wakeboard.” I turned to Rachel. “You too, Miss Crappy.” Of course, they probably didn’t have boaters’ licenses, which meant I’d have to drive. ey’d be learning to wakeboard, so I’d just take them around in slow circles. Surely I couldn’t mess that up. They wouldn’t suspect a thing.

“That would be great!” Tammy exclaimed. She touched Rachel’s bare toes with her toes. “I’ll pick you up, Your Crappiness.” In case Tammy got the wrong idea, I warned her, “McGillicuddy won’t be with us. He’ll be with the boys. This will be a girl trip.”

“I know,” she said, as if she did really know and wasn’t trying to get out of it.

“But we could cruise by the warehouse very slowly like we need to borrow another tow rope,” I said. “I have become an expert at seduction.” Rachel snorted, then gave up suppressing it and proceeded to laugh her ass off. e Crappy Crown detangled itself from her hair and would have fallen in the lake if I hadn’t caught it for her. Finally she calmed enough to cough out, “I don’t know. I’m not very graceful.”

“Who am I,” I asked, “Michelle Kwan?”

“Not hardly,” Tammy said at the same time Rachel said, “I see your point.” But neither of them was looking at me. ey watched the wakeboarding boat float right in front of us, full of boy.

Specifically, full of Adam. He stood in the bow, one arm cradling a bouquet of roses—a fu

McGillicuddy leaned over the bow, too, and caught the seawall, holding the boat there so it didn’t scrape against the wall and didn’t drift away. e boys had pla