Endless Summer

“I honestly don’t know.” I had wondered this myself. I glanced down the hall toward the den. “Where is everybody, anyway? I hope Sean isn’t in the house, the way you’re talking about him. If he were, I would need to give you some lessons in sneaky.”

She giggled again. Still watching the doorway to the den, I wished Lori would come around the corner and see me with Rachel when she was giggling like that. But I should have stopped thinking that way. As Lori had explained, there really was nothing to her date with Parker and no reason for me to be jealous.

“No,” Rachel said, “Sean and Tammy and McGillicuddy are out on the deck. Lori was out there a minute ago. She had a text message on her phone from her dad that said he and Frances were cruising to Chimney Rock. She said it sounded like her dad couldn’t sit still, worrying about whether she was seeing you over here.”

“It does sound like that,” I agreed. Good thing Lori and I had come back to the house when we did, before her dad and Frances took a detour from Chimney Rock, rode by here out of curiosity, and found a certain island hideaway.

Rachel nodded. “Lori thought it was the perfect chance to scare her dad. ings didn’t work out with Parker, so she decided to try the plan with Cameron. ey just left for Chimney Rock in one of the boats. What’s the matter? Hey, wait—”

I was already ru

“Cameron made out with Lori when she was eleven!” I yelled.

Sean and Tammy looked around at me with wide eyes. McGillicuddy looked at me too, but he watched me with that war-criminal stare, waiting for the one last sliver of evidence he needed to beat the monkey out of his best friend.

“In the warehouse,” I panted. “When he was fourteen. So if you think he is i

Out in the main river cha

Echoing my thoughts, McGillicuddy walked past me into the bow and stood there with the hard wind blowing his blond hair straight back, hands on his hips.

Sean sat down across the aisle and leaned toward me. If he made a snide comment, I would punch him.

He hollered at me over the motor, “Are you going to yak?”

I jerked my head around at him, ready for a fight. But his face didn’t give away that he was setting me up to be the butt of a joke, like I’d expected. He looked concerned. Of course he was not concerned. Sean was not capable of this. He had contorted his face into a facsimile of concern.

“No, why?” I yelled back, still bracing myself for the other half of the joke.

“You look really pale all of a sudden.” He reached across the boat and put his hand on my shoulder.

We stayed that way for approximately three seconds, him doing his concerned older brother imitation and me watching him like he’d grown another head, waiting for him to crack up.

Then he took his hand away, turned to the front, and stared into the wind like McGillicuddy and me.

It seemed like hours, but in only a few minutes we reached Chimney Rock. Here the cliffs were higher, made of granite instead of red clay. Stacks of boulders like chimneys jutted out from the bank. For their trouble, they’d been covered in graffiti over the years, just like the bridge across the lake. A path led from the shore up the side of one boulder, where you could jump three yards into the water. at was for kids. e path kept snaking up through the woods until it emerged on an outcropping where you could jump ten yards into the water. And if you were really daring, you followed the path to the top of the rock, a twenty-yard fall into the lake.

at’s why boats floated in front of the colorful cliffs now: to see who would jump. A lot of people walked out onto the highest outcropping. Very few of them went off. e folks in the boats below taunted them and chanted their names if they knew them, but most would-be jumpers stared at the water for a few minutes, then made their way back down to the middle rock and jumped amid boos from the boaters. Which was probably just as well, because people had been killed jumping off the highest cliff.

But I wasn’t interested in the jumpers today. Powering down the engine before I rammed someone, I sca

“ere they are.” McGillicuddy pointed to the far edge of the group of boats. I maneuvered forward until I picked out our target by its high wakeboarding bar. Cameron sat behind the wheel, watching the highest rock, because he was chicken and fascinated. And Lori sat sprawled in the bow, also seeming to watch the rock behind her shades, legs spread like a boy.

At the sound of our motor coming closer, she looked around and sat up, gri

“Spectacular.” I cut the engine and reached out for the side of the other boat so the two boats wouldn’t grind together, and so Cameron couldn’t get away.

McGillicuddy vaulted from one boat into the other and walked down the aisle until he stood in front of Cameron. “Hey, buddy.”

“Hey.” Cameron craned his neck to peer at the rock on the other side of McGillicuddy’s body. “Can’t see through ya.” McGillicuddy folded his arms. “I hear you kissed Lori in the warehouse when she was eleven.”

“Adam!” Lori shrieked.

I didn’t even care that she found out I’d spilled her secret. I focused on Cameron, who was floundering in his seat, looking at Lori and then at me looking for anybody to blame.

Finally he had to face McGillicuddy again. “I was fourteen,” he said sheepishly.

“I was fourteen a little over a year ago,” I said. “You give it a bad name.”

“If you want to teach him a lesson,” Sean called from the other side of the boat, out of the fray, “I have an idea.” He nodded toward Chimney Rock.

McGillicuddy reached down toward Cameron in the seat, and I reached forward. Between the two of us, with the threat of Sean as backup, we nudged and bullied Cameron into our boat, leaving Lori alone.

“Guys,” Lori called. “Y’all. Don’t do anything to him for coming over here with me. It was at my behest.”

“He needs to learn when to say no,” I threw over my shoulder at her as I started the engine. With McGillicuddy and Sean guarding Cameron in the bow, I idled the boat forward, easing through the crowd, until we touched land. Sean jumped out and tied the boat at the base of the path.

Cameron just sat there, refusing to budge, until McGillicuddy and I stood behind him and nudged him again. He was begi