Endless Summer

everything awful, that is—and every bit of it was happening to me today.

Finally it was my turn to board. Parker disappeared around the bend. I had nobody left to take out my aggression on but my brothers. Instead of buckling on my board in the boat and flipping backward over the side like a scuba diver, as I normally would have, I waited for Cameron to crawl out of the water onto the deck in back. I pretended to slip while getting in, and I shoved him with my shoulder.

“Oh, man, you have pushed the wrong brother,” he told me. I thought this was more of a jab at Sean than at me. I’d whipped Sean a couple of times recently.

Then Cameron pushed me so hard, my board slid all the way across the deck, and I smacked into the water on my ear.

I shook off the pain underwater and surfaced. Now Lori watched me from her boat. She was waiting for me to come up, either because she was concerned or because she was simply paying attention to me at the precise moment I didn’t want it. She gave me a thumbs-up.

“Sunglasses.” McGillicuddy stretched his open hand toward me.

“I won’t lose them,” I said. If I’d managed to keep them on during that dramatic entrance, they weren’t in danger of falling off.

“Right,” Cameron said. “You never lose them.”

“Adam’s sunglasses are piled up like buried treasure on the bottom of the lake,” Lori giggled as her boat prowled slowly by ours, headed for shore. All three girls waved to us like beauty queens on a parade float. They must have been done for the day.

Her boat sped up then. Over her motor, McGillicuddy and Sean must not have heard Cameron murmur, “Talk about buried treasure,” still looking straight at Lori.

I kicked off my board, pushed it ahead of me, and caught our boat in five strokes, just as McGillicuddy started the engine. All three of the guys snapped their heads in my direction in surprise as I pitched my board into the boat and pulled myself dripping over the side. Then I punched Cameron in the jaw.

It would have co

Before he could come after me again, a second set of flip-flops approached my nose and scuffled with Cameron’s pair. McGillicuddy was pulling Cameron off me. And then Sean caught me in a headlock.

“We’re taking impulsive to a new level, aren’t we?” Sean shouted in my ear, over the noise of the motor.

“He called Lori buried treasure!” I meant this for McGillicuddy. Since Sean held my head down, I had to yell as loudly as I could. “Cameron was looking at Lori and he said, ‘Talk about buried treasure!’”

“You did?” I heard McGillicuddy say. All I could see was the boat’s carpet. I could only imagine the look on his face.

“I wasn’t talking about her!” Cameron bellowed.

“Then who the hell were you talking about?” Sean shrieked.

Sean had a point, for once. Cameron had been talking about my girlfriend and McGillicuddy’s sister, or McGillicuddy’s girlfriend, or Sean’s ex-girlfriend, who Sean was very touchy about. ere was nobody else in the girls’ boat. e four of us guys used to comment on girls we saw drive by on the lake (with Lori in our boat too, rolling her eyes at us). Cameron had picked the wrong girls this time.

Furious as I was, I realized something else was wrong. Even though Sean still held my head down, I was the only one who thought to ask, “Who’s driving the boat?” Over the motor, I heard girls screaming at us the instant before we crashed.

The impact threw Sean off me. There was an awful screeching. I scrambled up and saw everybody was on the floor now but me. I jumped into the driver’s seat and threw the throttle into reverse.

Too late. We’d puttered into the marina and had hit one of the newer model speedboats. As I backed away from it, I saw the black mark our bumper had made up the side.

Worse, my dad stood on the wharf, watching. Fu

Cameron and Sean moaned at me, rubbing it in.

As I idled the boat into the usual space and cut the engine, McGillicuddy picked up my broken sunglasses from underfoot and handed them to me. “Looks like that mark will come out with buffing.”

“I hope.” Bailing out of the boat onto the wharf, I tossed the sunglasses into the trash before Cameron and Sean could rib me any more about this awful day. I blinked in the darkness of the warehouse until I could see, and I grabbed the wax and a cloth. en I blinked in the bright sunlight outside and thought I was hallucinating. My first break: Lori, Rachel, and Tammy had parked their boat and were talking to the guys on the wharf. I walked over, gripping the wax and cloth hard in each fist, hoping Lori wasn’t flirting with Cameron again, or Sean. Maybe I should put the can of wax down before I found out. It could really hurt somebody.

“Adam,” Lori called, loudly enough for me to hear her, but not so loud that her voice would carry up to my mom in the marina office—or to her dad, who might be listening from their screened porch facing the water. “I came over to get some tips from the boys about teaching Tammy and Rachel to board. Of course I did not come over here to see you. How could you think such a thing? That would be disobedient.”

I held up the wax. “For my own disobedience, I have to buff the boat. Then I’m going for a jog.” She tilted her head. Probably her eyes widened, but I couldn’t see them behind her sunglasses. I hated not being able to see her eyes. She asked, “In this heat?” I didn’t mind jogging in the heat. e heat was a big, friendly animal that liked to wrestle and only occasionally sat on me until I lost my breath. Anyway, she was missing the point. I repeated carefully, “I am going for a jog.”

“I heard you the first time,” she said. “It’s late afternoon in the middle of June. It’s ninety-five degrees out here.”

“He means he’s going for a jog,” Rachel and Tammy said at the same time.

“He’s going for a jog.” Lori still didn’t get it. Normally her blondeness was one of the things I loved about her. At the moment, not so much.

Exasperated, Cameron told her, “Adam wants you to go for a jog too.”

She said, “Oh!”

“If you two airheads have to hook up secretly for very long,” Sean said, “you’re not going to make it.”

“Like you’re an expert on making relationships work,” Rachel piped up.

Now Cameron and McGillicuddy moaned, rubbing in the jab at Sean. I couldn’t help but chime in. And when I saw the look Sean gave me, I regretted it. I didn’t expect him to be on my side against my parents, but I hoped he wouldn’t go out of his way to sabotage me. And sabotage was more likely if he and Rachel stayed broken up and he stewed in his own juices.

Lori was thinking the same thing—eyeing me, or so I thought. I desperately wanted to reach down from the wharf and take those sunglasses off her. She asked me, “Not that I have any interest in this whatsoever, but how long will it take you to buff the boat?”

“An hour,” I said.

“Thirty minutes,” McGillicuddy said. “I’ll help him. Then I’m taking Tammy bowling, so if you go for a jog, I won’t be around to see it.” Lori mouthed a thank you to her brother. “Okay then. Thanks for the wakeboarding tips, guys.” She started the engine and cranked the throttle into reverse.