Endless Summer

On the other hand, you would think a boy with as much savvy and—let’s face it—as many impulse control issues as Adam could have risked another tryst with me at some point during this whole week. He hadn’t because he was still mad about Cameron.

Plus… what did he want me to stay home for? Was he sending me a message via carrier pigeon? Or did he want me to stay home just so he’d know where I was while he went out and had fun? It was like him lately not to tell me and to expect me to play along.

And I’d had enough. I decided I should go out that night, just to spite him.

Problem was, I had no one to go with. Tammy would be out with McGillicuddy. I sure wished Rachel was available. I’d been itching to milk her for more about what had happened when she dated Adam in May. In the past he’d talked like their relationship hadn’t meant much, but last weekend at the island, he’d hinted at something more serious.

ere would be no milking tonight. Rachel needed to spend Fourth of July holiday time with her family—which she said was an okay trade-off, since she got to take care of this on July the second. After a two-week hiatus for the beer infraction, the Vaders had reinstated the boys’ weekly party, just in time for a blowout tomorrow night on July the third. Rachel would be able to come to that. And she could come with all of us to watch Adam’s fireworks over the lake on the Fourth.

So nine o’clock Friday night found me sitting at my desk in my room, carefully piecing together the tail of a B-52 Stratofortress. I’d bought the model earlier in the week because McGillicuddy and Parker’s convo piqued my interest again. I missed building models. It was strangely calming to construct something according to someone else’s predetermined plan. A month ago I’d thought I needed to stop doing anything tomboyish so I could blend in with girls better and catch boys more efficiently. Now that I’d caught one and my dad had thrown him back, I didn’t see the point in trying.

As I carefully lowered my X-Acto knife to place one of the machine guns, the gun fired a cloud of bullets! At least, that’s what it sounded like. I bent to retrieve the knife, which had narrowly missed my foot, and wondered whether I’d inhaled too much glue. Then the noise came again—tiny rocks thrown against my window.

I turned out the lights, waited a few seconds with my eyes closed to adjust them to the dark, and looked outside. Adam stood between the trees. It could have been Sean

—they looked enough alike—but Sean would never hike around in the woods in the hot, humid summer night without good reason. It would mess up his hair.

Adam switched a flashlight on and off to signal me in Morse code, which I’d picked up through many years playing army. e boys always made me hold the grenades.

Dot, dash, dash, dash…

J-U-M-P

Was he referring to his fall from Chimney Rock last Sunday? Did he want a medal? I opened my window, leaned out as far as I could without losing my balance, and stage-whispered, “What do you mean, jump?”

He walked closer. I still couldn’t see his face well enough to make out whether it was Adam, but his skull-and-crossbones pendant glinted in the moonlight. He stood directly under the window and held out his arms as if he would catch me.

I looked guiltily around my dark room. I’d never snuck out of my bedroom before. I didn’t particularly want to be disobedient. I loved my dad. I wanted to get along with him. Being a wayward teen seemed like a lot more trouble than it was worth.

I looked back at Adam. He tapped his foot.

Decision made. I stuffed some pillows into my bed and pulled the covers over them. If this was supposed to be me, I had gained a lot of weight and I was not carrying it well, because I was looking awfully rectangular. However, McGillicuddy was out with Tammy and Dad was downstairs with Frances. I seriously doubted anyone would come up to check on me and discover that I had turned into polyfill.

I lowered the window until the opening was barely wide enough for me to squeeze my butt through. en I eased out, feet first, realizing as my toes scraped the shingles that I should have worn shoes, and realizing as my thighs scraped the shingles that jeans would not have been a bad idea either. I crawled backward down the short section of the roof and hung my legs over the eaves. This was my last chance to go back. I looked up at the dark glass.

“Drop,” Adam whispered from below. “I’ve got you.”

I took one last deep breath. I had to psych myself up to take risks. I was not like Adam. I counted in my head, one, two, three… and could not quite bring myself to let go. I started over. One, two, I wanted to see Adam, didn’t I? Three.

“Oof!” Adam caught me all right, with the side of his head. I could tell by the feel of his skull on my foot as I kicked him. He grabbed me as best he could anyway, and we half landed, half fell in the pine needles.

He lay facedown on the ground. I flopped him over on his back to make sure he was alive. If he had a concussion, we’d have to call the ambulance, which meant we’d get caught and he’d get sent to military school. On the bright side, maybe the military school would not take him if he had brain damage. “I’m so sorry.”

“Worth it,” he grunted. He rolled onto his feet like a ninja and grabbed my hand. “Hurry, before they release the hounds.” We ran through the dark yard, chased by imaginary barking noises. We didn’t have far to go. He stopped in the woods halfway between my house and his and made an

“after you” gesture at the ladder of his tree house.

“Are you sure?” I asked. “A family of foxes lived in it last year.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve cleaned it out a little since then.”

I climbed the ladder and peeked up into the tree house. His old sleeping bag covered the plywood floor. Pillows cushioned the plywood walls.

“Ohhh, this is so cool.” He’d gone out of his way to plan this. I climbed the rest of the way up and slid across the soft padding to make room for him. He sat beside me.

The tree house was smaller than I remembered. It had seemed like a kingdom floating above the forest when we were kids. Now we could stretch out, but just barely.

He leaned behind me and flicked his lighter. A candle sputtered to life. The soft light kissed his intense face, sparkled in his beard, smoothed the worried lines between his brows.

“We’re going to catch the tree house on fire,” I warned him. “And the forest, your house, the marina, the whole neighborhood. My dad will be so pissed.”

“It’s in a container.” He showed me the candle in a jar. “And it’s on a metal pie plate. Check me out. I think ahead.”

“You do!” I really was impressed, because padded tree houses and candles in jars were not like Adam at all.

I sat back against the pillows and watched him. He put his hands behind his head and relaxed against the pillows too. We sat a little apart from each other, but our legs made an angle and our feet met in the middle. I stroked his broad, ta

He took a deep breath and let out a slow sigh. “It’s been a long time since I’ve sat outside at night,” he said. “Well, it seems like a long time. I guess it was only three weeks ago, on your birthday, in my Secret Make-Out Hideout.”

“That fateful night,” I said ruefully.

“I forgot how loud it is out here,” he said.

We listened for a long time, and I stroked his foot with my toe.

“And how many layers,” I finally said. “A low hum on the bottom, then a medium, then a high hum. at’s the background. en there’s the croaking, like a chanting, and every few seconds a chirp.” I moved my toe to the underside of his foot, where he was ticklish.

Now he jerked away, but he still didn’t take the hint and scoot in my direction.