Endless Summer

Crowded with my brother and me in Mrs. Vader’s tiny office were three big, bare-chested boys wearing nothing but board shorts. ey smelled better than usual, since it was so early and they hadn’t spent the whole day sweating in the sun. Not that I minded their scent all that much—especially when Adam, who was standing closest to Mrs.

Vader at her desk, peered at me over Sean and Cameron.

Since he’d dropped me off after our disastrous date, my mind had worked furiously to punch its way out of this box we’d built for ourselves. But now, as he looked over at me with his pale blue eyes so big and mysterious in his ta

“Adam,” Mrs. Vader said. Somehow she conveyed a lot of disgust in that one name. Having raised three boys close in age, Mrs. Vader was good at this sort of thing.

“Yes, ma’am,” Adam said politely, and therefore sarcastically. If he hadn’t gotten a Talking-To an hour ago, he would have responded to her call with his full name, rank, and serial number like a prisoner of war.

I tried to catch his eye and give him a warning look. Our romance was at stake here. I didn’t think this was a good time to be sarcastic.

“You’ve got gas,” Mrs. Vader said.

Cameron and Sean cracked up. Some jokes never got old, at least to teenage boys whose little brother was in trouble.

“I figured,” Adam muttered. Heading for the office door on his way down to the marina’s floating gas station, he pushed his way past Cameron and Sean. He even shoved my brother. I would have found this angry-at-the-world act kind of sexy if things hadn’t been so serious. We were in enough hot water.

He slid past me, his chest warm against my bare arm. I looked up into his eyes and watched him as he moved past me. My skin tingled wherever he touched me, like sand sparkling and swirling in the lake when the water was stirred. He filled the su

I turned back toward Mrs. Vader’s desk. She and the three remaining boys stared at me like they’d never seen me before. Like I was Lori McGillicuddy, Teen Geek and Fashion Disaster, transformed into an underage sex goddess. Just the effect I’d been going for two weeks ago when I was trying to hook Sean. Now that I was in trouble, not so good. To assure them I was the same old Lori, I said, “Fu

“Ew,” Sean said. Cameron fa

“Sean and Bill,” Mrs. Vader called, “you’re in the warehouse.”

My brother amiably headed toward the warehouse door. Sean put one hand on Mrs. Vader’s shoulder. “Are you sure you don’t need help here in the showroo—” He stopped midsentence when Mrs. Vader glared at him. “On second thought, I’ll see if McGillicuddy needs any help in the warehouse. Good suggestion.” He crossed his eyes at Cameron and me as he slipped past us out the office door.

“And you two,” Mrs. Vader said to Cameron and me. “We sold a lot of stock over the festival weekend. You’re delivering boats.” Cameron took the stack of tickets she handed him. “Score!” he exclaimed, holding up his arms to signal a touchdown, because the boys considered this the choice job.

Then he glanced at me. “No offense. I didn’t mean you.”

“Nice.” I’d been so focused on the catastrophe with Adam, I hadn’t even processed that there were a lot of sex jokes in my future, courtesy of rude boys. I approached Mrs. Vader’s desk cautiously, because she looked like she’d had Just About Enough. “I wanted to remind you that you do not allow me to deliver boats, as I have been known to crash them.”

“It’s time you earned your keep around here, Lori,” Mrs. Vader snapped. “You’ve had your boater’s license for almost a year. Now you’ve turned sixteen. Whether or not you’ve learned left from right, you need to act like a grown-up. You can’t rely on the boys to do everything for you. Take some responsibility.” My jaw dropped lower and lower as she said this. First of all, I worked hard around the marina, mostly, and she paid me minimum wage. What did she expect me to do, scrub the wharf with a toothbrush?

Actually, as she seemed pretty miffed, I would not have suggested this, even in jest.

Second of all, bringing up the fact that I was directionally challenged was a low blow, since my handicap had caused me to wreck on my wakeboard and bash my forehead just three days ago.

And finally, the suggestion that I had been careless and irresponsible in sullying her youngest child with my sexiness… well, that called for a Retort. I shifted my dropped jaw to one side and gritted my teeth with the effort not to say a word. I could still salvage my relationship with Adam and convince our parents to let us date. I knew I could if I just kept my mouth shut for now, which, let me tell you, was about as ridiculous an idea as my sudden transformation into a teenage temptress.

Staying silent became even more difficult when, from behind me, Cameron moaned, “Woooo,” like his mom had dissed me good.

I pressed my lips together and backed out of the room, without so much as a “Yes, ma’am.” I was afraid of what I might say if I said anything at all.

Cameron moved past me and slid a few sheets of paper from his mom’s printer. “Hey,” she protested when he snagged a black marker and a roll of tape, but he just followed me out.

In the sun, with the office door safely closed behind us, he asked, “Why couldn’t you and Adam hook up last summer too, and the summer before? Y’all are a riot. Sure beats three-on-two water polo for my entertainment dollar.”

It was imperative that I pretend nothing about this bugged me. To Cameron, and especially to Sean, any inkling Adam and I were really worried would be like blood in the water to a shark. I waved at the paper in Cameron’s hand. “What’s with the school supplies?” He handed me the tape. Spreading one sheet of paper against the side of the building, he covered it with a big black ll in marker. He wrote an R on the other sheet and tried to hand them both to me. “Tape these on either side of you in the boat. They’ll keep you straight.” I looked at the ll and R, then at him. “I know my left from my right, thank you very much.”

“Okay then.” He pulled the boat tickets from his pocket and examined one. “The first place we’re going is about five miles to the right.” Before I thought, I gazed in that direction. Not that I could really pick out a house so far away along the forested shoreline.

“Caught ya,” Cameron said. “Your other right.”

Like Adam had taught me, I made an ll with the fingers of my supposedly right hand. If it had really been my right hand, the ll would have been backward. Oops.

“at’s not fair. Now you’ve got me thinking about it, which is what confuses me.” I took the sheets from Cameron anyway. I definitely didn’t want either of us to return them to Mrs. Vader in her office just then. Judging from her current mood, I should steer clear of her for a couple of decades. We trotted down the steps to the wharf.

“So…,” he said. “Did you and Adam do it or not?”

Risking death by taking my eyes away from the stairs beneath my flip-flops, I looked up at Cameron.

Suddenly I remembered the one time he and I had kissed, when I was eleven years old and he was fourteen and clearly very pedophilic and misguided, or perhaps just desperate. It was an awful lip-lock, especially compared with every bone-melting kiss I’d shared with Adam in the past few weeks.

Nevertheless, that’s what I thought about as I looked up at this nineteen-year-old college boy. He was asking me if I’d had sex with his brother. If I had, I would have been beyond mortified at this question. In fact, I probably would have refused to leave my house this morning, or ever. Frances could quit her gig with the fam across the lake and homeschool me.