Endless Summer

“Oh.” My dad actually looked sheepish. “It’s one o’clock in the morning and I was going to tell you to shut the monkey up and go to bed. I didn’t realize what was going on in here.”

“What’s going on in here?” Cameron asked suspiciously.

“Maturity.” My dad backed out of the room and closed the door.

“Lori is quiet.”

I looked up at Tammy sharing a seat with McGillicuddy in the back of the boat. Even in the starlight before the fireworks, the whole distance of the boat away from her, I could see she was poking her bottom lip out, feeling sorry for me. McGillicuddy leaned around her to watch my reaction too.

I appreciated their concern. eirs and everybody else’s I knew. at morning I’d discovered that even the regular workers in the warehouse had heard about the big blowup between Adam and me and were rooting for us to get back together. McGillicuddy had come into the showroom a million times and given me a play-by-play of the lovelorn noises Adam was making in the warehouse—the one time I didn’t want to know. Rachel had driven over in her grandparents’ boat to eat lunch with Sean, and they had grilled me about my plan to get Adam back, as if they couldn’t stand for us to be apart now that they were together.

In fact, every molecule of my body wanted to do something to fix this. I could feel my molecules like a full stadium at a football game, standing up and cheering me on and dancing to a fight song.

But Frances was somewhere out there in the enormous crowd of boats gently bobbing in the darkness. She was with my dad on the Vaders’ pontoon boat, and they were in love. She must have fallen in love with him while she was my na

Actually, as I thought about this, I realized it wasn’t much of a reward, waiting around for YEARS to hook up. I was not down with that. But I had been content to spend my Fourth of July passing Adam quietly at work, watching him bust ass in a spectacular failure of a discombobulator during the wakeboarding show, and generally letting some more water flow under that bridge.

I took a deep breath through my nose and pictured the water flowing, calming myself as I tried to be one with the water. It was a good thing I didn’t have to pee. “Lori is meditating,” I said.

“Lori has picked a strange place to meditate,” Cameron called from behind the wheel of the boat.

I sighed again, and this time it wasn’t because I was one with the lake. “Lori would like to be left alone.”

“Lori has picked a strange place to be left alone,” Sean commented. He sat in the bow with me, on the other side of Rachel, holding her hand in a death grip like their lives depended on it.

He did have a point. I was glad they’d finally gotten together. Again. And I wouldn’t have missed Adam’s fireworks for the world. Just thinking about him doing something he loved—setting off explosions—made me smile. But I did wish there were some way for me to see this show that did not involve proximity to other people, especially people determined to pick on me and draw attention to the fact that I was not myself.

I sighed yet again, a looooong sigh that encompassed my extreme fatigue exacerbated by being stuck in a boat with boys. “Lori has had a bad day.”

“Lori’s day is over.” Rachel reached over and patted my knee.

And just what the hell did THAT mean? On the one hand, it sounded soothing. ere was a comfort in knowing your bad day was coming to an end, and all you had left to do was watch fireworks, ride back home in someone else’s boat, brush your teeth, and go to bed.

On the other hand, it sounded ominous, like Adam and I had already enjoyed our day in the sun, and now Rachel was signaling me to move over, Rover. When she’d come to the marina for lunch with Sean, she and I had talked a little. We’d told each other we were sorry for last night’s Xtreme Dating. But I could tell it would take a while for us to truly forgive each other.

And now she had that look in her dark eyes that she’d gotten a couple of times in the last few weeks when I’d asked her about Adam. e one that said she knew more than she was telling.

I didn’t want to go ballistic on her while all of us waited patiently and contently for the explosions, but God! “What do you mean,” I started, my voice rising over the eerily quiet lake, “my day is o—”

BANG!

We all jumped in our seats at the first explosion. Because the sound was delayed, we looked up to see the bouquet of golden light already spreading across the black sky.

In the pause before the next explosion, the crowd in the boats actually said, “Oooooh.”

More rockets snaked trails of smoke through the gold, then exploded green and blue. e percussion of their explosions reached us at the same time the strings of “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” waltzed through the loudspeakers.

“Wow,” Rachel said. I looked over at her and Sean, gazing up at the sky with their heads close together, fireworks reflecting in their eyes. Everyone in the boat was gazing up. Everyone on the whole lake was gazing up. It would have been a great time to be a pickpocket. But only Adam would think of something like that, or the girlfriend of Adam who had gotten used to him over the years and missed him awfully.

Rocket after rocket zipped into the night sky, paused, then turned itself inside out in a rain of light. “My Country, ‘Tis of ee” ended and “America the Beautiful” began. “America the Beautiful” gave way to “You’re a Grand Old Flag.” I would have time enough to pine away for Adam when I lay awake in bed tonight, but right then I enjoyed the beauty of the fireworks and the fact that Adam was helping set them off from the grassy hill next to the yacht club and having the time of his life.

I jumped again—not at an explosion this time, but at my cell phone buzzing in the back pocket of Adam’s cutoff jeans. Maybe my dad was texting me that he and Frances were staying out later than me—but couldn’t he wait until the fireworks were over? I glanced at the screen to see who’d sent the text.

Adam.

I suppressed the urge to look around and make sure nobody was watching. Adam and I might not be together anymore, but the ban had been lifted. He was free to text me if he wanted. Again, his timing was not good, but then again, he might be asking me to call him an ambulance. I opened the message.

This one’s for you.

“You’re a Grand Old Flag” ended. The next song over the loudspeakers wasn’t a patriotic tune at all but a new rock song Adam and I both liked. A love song.

A smaller rocket cut across the sky, trailing smoke. It exploded in a red heart.

“Awwwww!” said the crowd.

“Upside down,” said Sean.

The heart was, indeed, upside down. It grew and grew, upside down, until its lights trailed and faded.

A bigger rocket exploded in bright golden sparks, and then came another red heart.

“Upside down,” said all the boys.

Three explosions layered on top of one another, gold, blue, pink. Then still another red heart exploded, growing and growing before it faded.

“Upside down,” said everyone in the boat but me.

My own heart expanded for Adam. I whispered, “I know what he meant.”

I stood up and started to put one foot over the side of the boat.

“Where are you going?” Sean grabbed me by the wrist. “Are you bailing on us? You’re not upset, are you? Adam’s pla

“Birmingham!” I exclaimed. “That’s serious!”

“That’s what I said to Adam.” Sean raised one eyebrow at me.

I watched a Roman candle pulse into the air: foop, foop, foop, with very bad aim, too low. In silhouette, the people in the boats closest to the shore ducked and covered their heads with their arms. “Adam makes terrible plans,” I said.