Endless Summer

“Yeah.” I sighed.

“Too bad you weren’t out here with your binoculars ten minutes ago,” the ru

e punter and the tackle backed away from the truck, doubled over with laughter. Between gasps, the tackle called to the ru

“I know,” the ru

I turned to McGillicuddy. He had gone very still in the passenger seat. He gave me a dark look, asking me with his eyes whether to believe this.

I didn’t know whether to believe it either.

My so-called friends were already walking away. “Reggie,” I called to the ru

I gri

“You don’t have a Bible.” The movie theater parking lot was definitely not the place to be carrying one around, considering what went on out here.

“Here you go, here you go.” The tackle pulled a receipt out of his pocket and handed it to the ru

e ru

“See you at practice in August, Vader,” the tackle called through the window. “Good luck with your stalking.”

“Staking!” said the punter. ey moved across the parking lot and stopped at the next truck with an open window. ey were probably telling the people inside that they’d seen Parker Buchanan with his hand up Adam Vader’s girlfriend’s skirt. Or, they were telling the people inside that they’d lied to me about this, and now they had a bet on how fast I got myself arrested.

“Do you believe them?” McGillicuddy asked quietly.

“Of course not,” I muttered. “They’re just trying to get a rise out of me. They’re worse than Sean.” Untrue. Nobody was worse than Sean. They were pretty bad, though.

“Why? Do you believe them?”

“She was wearing a miniskirt when she left the house,” McGillicuddy said. “I noticed this uneasily.” I turned to look at him again. Despite his size, usually he appeared friendly, like Lori, his face honest and open. At the moment, with his blond brows down and his eyes fixed on the empty lobby, he looked like murder.

“We’d better go.” I bailed out the driver’s side door at the same time McGillicuddy stepped to the ground on the passenger side.

I made sure McGillicuddy had caught up with me and was hulking behind me before I approached the guy ma

“All I have to do is beat the shit out of the dude my girlfriend is with,” I said, “and then I’ll leave. Promise.” Ticket guy narrowed his eyes at me. “Who’s the dude?”

“Parker Buchanan,” I said.

“My girlfriend loves Parker Buchanan,” ticket guy said in a high voice that I hoped was supposed to be his girlfriend. “She thinks Parker is the shit. I am sick of hearing about Parker.” He looked over his shoulder at the door into the theater, then turned back to me. “If I let you in, you have to wait a few minutes before you stick it to him. I need time to get up to the projection booth so I can watch.”

I nodded, then pushed through the door into the lobby. McGillicuddy followed right behind me. I thought for a second that ticket guy would say something about McGillicuddy getting in free, too. en McGillicuddy shot him the scary Gestapo look. I was a little frightened myself. I hadn’t seen that look since we played World War II.

Ticket guy disappeared up the staircase to the projection booth. I counted to thirty, nodded to McGillicuddy, and jerked open the door to the theater.

For a few seconds, I was blind in the dark. I averted my eyes from the movie screen. Gradually the silhouettes of seats and shoulders materialized, black on black. I stayed at the back of the theater, surveying the crowd.

Luckily, because it was convenient, or unluckily, because it did not bode well for Lori being on a fake date rather than on a real one, she and Parker were in the back row.

I could see right away that they weren’t making out. She sprawled across her seat with one leg tucked under her and the other knee hooked over the armrest. She’d hung around boys too long. I knew this and she knew this, but I wasn’t sure Parker knew it. If he looked where I was looking, he’d get a glimpse of the gaping hole in Lori’s skirt, which her thighs should have blocked. And he must have been as turned on by this as I would have been if I’d sat next to her, because his arm was draped around her shoulders.

I took a few steps forward until I was even with the back row and called, “Parker.”

He looked over at me, startled. Lori did too, and when her eyes slid to McGillicuddy, her mouth fell open.

“Come outside with me,” I demanded. Everybody in the back third of the theater was shushing me now. ey sounded like snakes. I’d fallen into a pit of them and was fighting my way out, getting madder every second Parker sat there with his arm around my girlfriend.

“Do not go outside with him, Parker.” Lori eased her legs together as if I wouldn’t notice how she’d been sitting as long as she moved slowly enough. “is is not the plan.”

e movie was full of explosions. A helicopter chased a car between skyscrapers in Manhattan and nearly side-swiped pedestrians or took out police cars. It was so interesting that I might have been able to sit down and watch the whole movie, at least until the explosions ended and the plot started again, if it hadn’t been for Lori. Even explosions and ADHD couldn’t divert my attention from that.

“Let’s go, Parker,” I said. I didn’t care what Lori thought anymore.

I had never been so mad at Adam, and he had never looked so perversely hot. He scowled down at me, week-old stubble on his chin making him look older than sixteen and almost authoritative. Yet light escaped the edges of the movie projection beam, softened his features, and caught in his long eyelashes.

Determined as I was to get rid of him and go ahead with my plan, he seemed equally determined to drag Parker out of the theater and start an old-fashioned duel with him, bottle rockets at twenty paces. I mean, he seemed really determined and confident, like he was finally comfortable with his newly broad, tall body and anxious for another chance to try it out.

I glanced over at Parker. When I’d called him about this date, he’d sounded excited about the prospect of seeing new popular venues in our town (movie theater! bowling alley! te

Now, confronted with an angry boyfriend, which according to legend was a situation Parker was all too familiar with, he shrank into the red velveteen seat. He must have been caught off guard. Any second now, he would spring into action. And if we went outside the theater like Adam wanted, I was afraid someone would get hurt.

I had no choice. e longer Adam stood there (with my traitor brother behind him) grumbling at us in a threatening tone, the larger a fraction of the audience would turn around and stare unabashedly at us, just as the back ten rows were doing now. In about thirty seconds, somebody would snitch to the rent-a-cop the theater employed as a security guard and bouncer for unruly tween boys who threw bite-size candies at the screen.