Endless Summer

If all of us hadn’t been so accustomed to each other through years of bullying, he might have tried to escape into the water or to plead his case. But he knew it was no use, and if he begged, he’d be doing it in front of a crowd, which probably included some people he knew. He eased out of his seat and skulked to the bow like he had an appointment to walk the plank. Which, in a way, he did.

e three of us moved up the path. Sean fell in behind us, smirking. “Cameron, remember when you threw me off that first rock?” he called. “Remember I told you I’d get you back?”

“I was in third grade, you idiot. Only you would remember that.”

is was untrue. By pegging the grade he’d been in himself, Cameron had given away that he remembered it, too. And I remembered every insult as freshly as Sean did, every blow, every time Cameron had shoved me off that rock. On impulse I reached forward and slapped Cameron on the back of the head.

“Hey!” he roared, turning on me.

McGillicuddy put one meaty hand on Cameron’s chest to hold him off me. “Keep walking, my friend,” he said with a threat in his voice.

We emerged from the trees onto the highest plateau, with more graffiti sprayed on the flat surface: GO BACK! DANGER! JUMP AT YOUR OWN RISK! Cameron eyed it as McGillicuddy and Sean and I continued to walk him slowly forward, nudging him, shoving him, stepping on his bare toes.

“People really have died jumping off this thing.” He controlled his voice carefully, trying to keep face as the oldest brother, yet really, really not wanting to jump off this cliff. “If I die, Mom will kill you.”

“You should have thought of that before you made out with my little sister.” McGillicuddy pushed Cameron hard enough that Cameron stumbled dangerously near the edge, and there was a half second when I thought he would lose his balance and tumble over.

He righted himself, breathing hard. e rest of us stood in a semicircle around him—close enough that he had no escape route between us, but far enough away that he couldn’t pull a kamikaze move by grabbing one of us to take over the cliff with him. I seriously doubted Cameron had the balls to do this, but stranger things had happened, and it was in the back of all of our minds as we faced each other uneasily.

“What do you want?” he demanded.

“Stay away from my sister,” McGillicuddy said. “Or we will bring you right back here, and we will not be so polite about it.” I’d suppressed how I felt when I’d realized Cameron was with Lori. I’d acted cool on the boat, and I’d kept it inside for the walk up here. Suddenly I couldn’t keep it contained anymore, and it burst out of me in anger. “I wish you would go out with her again,” I challenged him.

“Adam,” McGillicuddy growled. “Wrong direction.”

“Touch her,” I yelled at Cameron. “Just look at her. If you do—when does Giselle get back from Europe? Two weeks from now? I will drive straight to your college and tell her that you called my girlfriend buried treasure, and that you were willing to whore yourself just to make her daddy mad. And then I will take Giselle out for coffee to console her, and one thing will lead to another…”

I could feel McGillicuddy’s eyes on me. Sean covered his mouth to keep from laughing. But Cameron watched me carefully, as serious as I was. “Giselle would not be caught dead going out with a sixteen-year-old.”

“We’ll see,” I said.

McGillicuddy had changed his mind about the effectiveness of my threat. He chimed in, “With the beard, Adam looks older. Hell, he’s taller than Sean.”

“Hey!” Sean protested.

“Okay,” Cameron said. “I mean, of course I’m going to stay away from Lori. I didn’t seek her out in the first place. She came up to me and said…” I took a step toward him.

He eyed me. “… And I was just trying to help her, and you…”

I took another step toward him. I didn’t care whether he took me over the cliff with him or not. If he didn’t swear to stay away from Lori, he was going over.

“Okay!” he exclaimed. “Yes, I was wrong. Okay?” When I didn’t budge, he turned to McGillicuddy to save him. “Okay?”

“Okay.” McGillicuddy grabbed him by the back of the neck and pulled him away from the edge. “Let’s go.” For all their big talk and big threats, the three of them sure did hurry away from the edge now that we had this settled. ey reached the trail and disappeared into the trees without looking back to see if I was following them.

I stepped all the way to the edge. e boats were tiny, and the water was dark blue here, the deepest part of the lake. In one of the boats closest to the cliff, I picked out Lori by her long blonde hair and perfect body and pink bikini. She stared up at me with her hands over her mouth. Somebody in another boat must have recognized me, or more likely thought I was Sean, because a faint chant made its way up to me: “Va-der! Va-der! Va-der!

I backed up three paces, took a ru

e wind was what I noticed. Underneath it I thought I could hear Lori screaming, but the wind was too loud in my ears for me to be sure. It was cold on my skin despite the light of the setting sun. The boats and the lake rushed up at me. I felt high.

en I hit the water hard—a lot harder than I expected, harder than it had felt smacking into me the millions of times I’d jumped off the middle cliff. e impact took my breath away, but only for a second. I sank so deep in the water that I hit a patch of bone-soaking cold. at woke me up again. If I sank any farther, I wouldn’t make it to the surface before I had to take a breath. I clawed my way toward the sunbeams shining through the surface.

I burst into the air and sucked in big lungfuls of it. Now that I knew I was alive, the high was wearing off already. My skin stung where I’d hit the water. And when I saw Lori in the boat with her hands still covering her mouth, I remembered how angry I was. I swam over to her and hauled myself up on the wakeboarding platform in back.

She rushed toward me. “Are you okay?”

I frowned at her. “No, I am definitely not okay.” I wrung out my T-shirt on her pink-tipped toes.

Her expression turned from concern to irritation as she realized I was upset about her escape across the lake with Cameron. “I mean, did you break your wrist or something? Again? You look really pale.”

“I think that must be left over from the shock and horror!” I started this sentence calmly, but by the time I finished, I was yelling at her, unloading everything I felt.

Luckily my brothers and McGillicuddy had descended the rock and were heading in our direction in the other boat, so I wouldn’t have to stay here with her much longer.

She flinched at my voice. Slowly she recovered, putting her hands on her hips and frowning down at me. “I thought we had a nice afternoon, Adam. I thought we fixed everything.”

e other boat arrived and floated slowly past, allowing McGillicuddy to jump on next to me. I traded places with him. en, just as Sean started the engine again to take us home, I looked her square in her green eyes and let her know exactly what I thought of her and her plan right now. I said, “So did I,” and turned toward the sunset.

“Stay home tonight.”

ese were the first words Adam had spoken to me since he jumped off Chimney Rock last weekend. After the boys and I finished our wakeboarding practice Friday afternoon, I was tying the boat to the dock cleat when he jumped onto the wharf and bent to mutter this in my ear. He never stopped, just kept walking, carrying his life vest and wakeboard into the warehouse.

Of course, this was for the best. I glanced up at the screened porch of my house, where my dad was always watching—or if he wasn’t, I thought he was, which amounted to the same thing. Adam had taken a big risk by bending down to talk to me at all.