Endless Summer

“I am all that,” he admitted, “but I don’t have a black belt.”

I had surmised this already, but I played along. “You don’t?”

“No. And… Lori, can you keep a secret? I have so much bottled up inside me, and the pressure is getting to me.” He swallowed. “I didn’t date Miss Alabama when I was in middle school.”

“You didn’t?” I tried to feign continued interest. But if he wanted to self-debunk, he might go on all night, and frankly I was more interested in what Dad and Frances were watching on the Discovery Cha

“No. I’m basically just a nerd. I have a 4.0 GPA, and I plan to matriculate at Yale and major in cognitive science with a double minor in statistics and ancient Greek.”

“You don’t.” I stifled a yawn.

“I do. The reason I’m spending the whole summer with my grandparents is that nobody knows me here, and I can be whomever I say I am.”

ere were a lot of things about this statement that made me angry. e lie. e fact that I’d been taken in by the lie. His smug tone of voice when he talked about it, revealing himself to be the biggest nerd I had ever met, even nerdier than the kid from my algebra class who collected antique motherboards, and absolutely the worst person I could have chosen to drive Dad into letting me date Adam again.

I said, “Can you be a person who is GONE FROM MY BEDROOM?”

Instead of moving away from me, which I would have much preferred, he scooted closer to me on the bed. “Why are you angry, Lori?”

“Why do I have to explain this to everyone twice?” I ran my hands through my hair and squeezed my head to keep my brain from falling out. “I was trying to go out with Satan so Adam wouldn’t look as bad to my dad. If my dad already knows you have a 4.0 and you know that he knows, why did you agree to go on a fake date with me?”

“You made me an offer I couldn’t refuse,” Parker said. “You offered to show me around town and introduce me to people. I knew you were popular because you’re always at that party next door.” He nodded toward Adam’s house. ose Friday night parties, ethereal and magical in my memory, admittedly had been excruciating in reality because I’d always been trying to get Sean’s attention. Or, more recently, Adam’s.

“And you’re so pretty.” He scooted even closer to me on the bed and put his hand on my thigh.

Just what I’d waited for all night. And now, not so much. I glared at him.

He wisely removed his hand without further prompting from me. “Lori, come on. Don’t be mad. Aren’t you basically doing the same thing, putting on this big show for your dad to get what you want? You can’t be mad at me for fooling people. Besides, we have to survive another ten minutes in your car together. I don’t have another way home.”

“Why don’t you call your family’s helicopter to come get you,” I suggested, “or did you make that up too?”

“My family does have a helicopter, but I didn’t crash it into the statue of Vulcan in Birmingham. I hope you didn’t believe that part of the story. It only works on twelve-year-old girls.”

“Why are you trying to impress twelve-year-old girls? Are you that desperate?”

He opened his mouth.

“Don’t answer that,” I interrupted. I didn’t want to know.

A knock sounded at the door. I thought about tackling Parker on my bed, but now that I knew my dad saw through Parker’s whole bad-boy lifestyle, there was no point. I didn’t even leap over to Parker and snatch up his hand. “Come in,” I called like a girl without issues.

The door creaked open very slowly.

My heart raced. Adam!

No such luck. It was only McGillicuddy, peering into the room with that now-familiar scowl on his face. “Leave this door open,” he said.

“What are you doing home?” I demanded. “I thought you had a date with Tammy tonight.”

“I do,” he said. “I came home to get my car and take a shower before I go over to her house.” I thought for a second. “Why are you just now home? What did you and Adam do after we left the movies?” My brother looked guilty. “Nothing.” With a final dark look in Parker’s direction, he disappeared.

“McGillicuddy,” I called. Now I did drag Parker by the hand after me as I followed my brother into his room.

“at’s why I have to take a shower,” my brother admitted, opening a drawer and extracting a neatly folded T-shirt. He grabbed the center of the T-shirt he was wearing and stretched it out toward me. “Do I smell like kerosene?”

I sniffed tentatively. “A little.” I wondered whether Adam was home taking a shower before his mother could ask him about the peculiar kerosene odor. “If you’re going to Tammy’s anyway, can you drop off Parker at his grandparents’?”

“No!” Parker exclaimed from behind me.

I turned around. I could tell from the way his eyes flitted back and forth that the look on my brother’s face was not any more hospitable than the look on mine.

“I mean…,” Parker stammered. Suddenly he focused over my shoulder, and his eyes lit up. “Is that a B-17?” I looked where he was looking—at the huge model of a World War II–era bomber hanging by fishing line from the ceiling. “Why, yes,” I informed him. McGillicuddy had built it from a kit when he was fourteen, and I had applied the decals. It was our pride and joy.

“At home I have a B-17E, with the longer fuselage.” Parker stepped farther into my brother’s room, closing the gap between them. Clearly he had lost his fear of being eaten.

“I always wanted a B-17G, which has six more guns,” my brother said, and with that they lost me. Since I’d been trying to shake some of my grosser tomboy habits, I should have been glad that I was so easily out-boyed by a boy.

“Before I go,” I informed both of them, because clearly it was okay for my brother to take Parker home now, “I have one more favor to ask of Parker.”

I didn’t talk to Lori again for a week and a day. I tried to stop being mad at her about Parker. I knew Reggie had made up the indecent incident at the movies. Trouble was, when Reggie had suggested it, I had imagined it, and in my mind it really happened. Maybe if I’d been allowed to talk to her, I could have gotten over it, but since my dad gave me the evil eye if I so much as looked in her direction, the whole insult of it continued to dog me.

Toward the end of the week I couldn’t stand it anymore. I called Rachel and asked her what she’d done lately about getting Sean back. Unfortunately for her, or fortunately, depending on what you thought of Lori’s plans (and I did not think very much of them), Rachel was not nearly as proactive as Lori. I could have told Rachel that Sean was patient and vengeful. If she didn’t do something, the summer would end and he would go to college without ever asking her out again. He might even pine away for her, if he had room in his very small heart to do that, but it would be worth it to him if she felt bad about breaking up with him.

So I suggested that she have everyone over to her grandparents’ place on the lake. She would see Sean and, God help her, win him back. I would see Lori.

Rachel’s grandparents’ house was far enough away that my parents and Lori’s dad weren’t likely to cruise by on the geriatric pontoon boat. It was close enough that we could all drive over there in the wakeboarding boat after business at the marina slowed down. It would look casual and spur-of-the-moment. It would not occur to Lori’s dad that Lori and I could get in much trouble there, on the same lake as him, under the watchful eye of extremely old people.

And maybe, just maybe, Lori and I could slip away from McGillicuddy for a few minutes in private.

At least, that’s what I figured. But Lori’s dad was smarter than I thought. Even though he knew I would be there, he allowed Lori to go. But he made her go in her own boat with McGillicuddy, while I drove with Sean and Cameron.