That’s why I hate him. You knew this when you went fishing.”
I was too discombobulated to make a joke about my lures. I just wanted to get away from their house. “I’ve had enough of boys for today, I think.” He frowned. “Are you sure?” He rubbed my arm. My hair stood on end.
Shivering in the warm night, I put my arm down by my side, where he couldn’t reach it. “Too much of a good thing. It’s strange, but even cheese fries can get tiresome.”
“I’ll walk you home, then.”
“No,” I said, “I’m sorry. I’m just done.”
He watched me carefully for a moment, lowering his head to look into my eyes. “Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Bye.”
He walked back into the house and closed the door softly.
I stared at the door knocker, tree frogs screaming all around me. I had done the wrong thing. I wanted to be in the house with him. And Sean.
Sean had said something like that to me only once before, just a good-natured joke as we passed each other in the hall at school. I’d started to cry. e office had called my dad (again). Dad and McGillicuddy and I had had a Big Talk about it that night, wherein I told my dad that my business was not his to tell Sean’s parents about, and wherein McGillicuddy promised to have a discussion with Sean about keeping his mouth shut. Apparently he had, because Sean never said a word to me about it again. And if he told the whole school, they were very discreet and didn’t let on to me that they knew. Which would have been out of character for them, because they were bitches.
at first time happened not long after I went to the shrink, so Sean probably was just experimenting to see what I’d do. is time, he must have mentioned it because he was trying to hurt me. And if he’d tried to hurt me, he was in love with me and jealous of Adam. I knew this because when he wasn’t in love with me and jealous of Adam, he ignored me and was quite pleasant to me.
Therefore, the plan must be working! Hooray! So I should go back in there, flirt with Adam, and press the issue.
As I stood there, considering whether to ring the doorbell or just walk on inside like I owned the place, or like they’d installed a dog door, I heard Adam holler, “anks, Sean.”
“No problem,” Sean said more quietly, because he was too courteous to yell in Rachel’s ear.
I felt a flash of panic. ey weren’t being sarcastic. Adam was genuinely thanking Sean for getting him out of spending an evening with me. is was called a negative self-concept. I had learned about it in health class (tenth grade). Having a negative self-concept made me think people were making fun of me, on top of the times when they really were making fun of me, which I seemed to miss completely.
en footsteps pounded up the stairs inside. Adam’s bedroom light flicked on. He put his hands on the window-sill and pressed his forehead to the glass, looking for me, but he couldn’t see out because of the glare.
Adam wouldn’t double-cross me.
Would he?
Friday I had gas. This was fine with me. I spent most of the morning by myself on the dock, soaking up rays and feeling mentally diseased.
I didn’t think I could stand a lunch hour in the office, eating Mrs. Vader’s chicken salad sandwich, on edge, expecting Sean to sneak in or Adam to burst in or both. I told Mrs. Vader I was treating myself to a nice lunch out.
“Oh,” she said, nodding. “Something happened between ‘you and Adam’?” She moved her fingers in quotation marks.
Yeah, I didn’t have the energy to argue with her this time. That was Adam’s problem. I walked over to my family’s dock and launched the canoe.
The open water was choppy with wind and wakes from passing speedboats. I didn’t get T-boned. It was a little early for anyone to be drunk.
e wind blew me off course. I reached the far bank and needed to backtrack along the shore to the Harbargers’ house. Here in the shallows, protected by overhanging trees, the water was clear and calm. Miniature whirlpools stirred around my oar. I dragged my hand in the warm water, and minnows nibbled my fingers.
I docked at the Harbargers’ and ran up to the house. It was such a relief to feel the grass on my bare feet! Every toe had a blister from a different pair of high-heeled sandals. I slid open the glass door and stepped into the den.
Frances and the kids looked up. ey were sitting on the floor around the coffee table. Frances didn’t sit on furniture if there was a floor available. A copy of Mother Earth News lay open in front of her. She had stuck lengths of uncooked spaghetti into balls of Play-Doh. e kidlets were busy sliding Froot Loops onto the spaghetti, sorting by color. I couldn’t believe they’d fallen for that old trick. Frances could convince children anything was a game, for about five minutes. Obviously some children were more gullible than others.
I walked into the kitchen and looked in the refrigerator. No surprises there. e meat loaf was made with tofu. Frances’s strong points as a nanny included a master’s degree in early childhood education and a PhD in Russian literature, but nothing approaching cooking skills, unless it was some weird hippie experiment like drying fruit on the roof. Mmmmm, rubbery apricots with a hint of tar. I filled a bowl with Froot Loops, poured soy milk over them, and joined the powwow on the floor.
Between bites I asked, “What did you mean when you said mine wasn’t the only plot?”
Without looking up from the magazine on the coffee table, Frances said, “I told you. I don’t know.”
“What would be the metaphorical firecracker in the metaphorical homemade cheese?”
She shrugged.
“Like, Sean dared Adam to hook up with me because I’m so oafish and dog-looking?”
“You are not dog-looking,” Frances said sternly. “Besides, a plot like that would involve a high level of organization. They would have to think it through carefully. None of you do that. Except Bill, of course, who thinks things through so carefully that he can’t take action. Like his father.” My spoon stopped in my mouth at the mention of my dad, who’d been the farthest person from my mind. I swallowed and shouted, “en what the hell kind of plot are you talking about?”
Frances didn’t even react when I cussed in front of her charges. She reasoned that making a big deal out of curse words drew attention to them and caused children to use them more. So she ignored them. I’m not sure this ploy worked, but then, she’d had an uphill battle with McGillicuddy and me. We lived next door to Mr. Vader, who could have written a dictionary of filth. She asked, calm as ever, “Have you thought Adam might really like you?” The hair on my arms stood up, just as if Adam were sitting behind me with his hand on my shoulder.
“No, I haven’t.” at would be seven kinds of awful, if Adam had agreed to pretend to get together with me because he really wanted to get together with me. My ploy to get Sean would be ruined. I might finally land Sean, like in my dreams. But knowing I’d broken Adam’s heart would be a downer and a distraction. Like making out in the movie theater, knowing the pink truck in the parking lot was on fire. My mother wanted me to be with Sean, but didn’t she want me to be happy?
Frances turned the page. “Open your eyes. And watch out for those boys.”
Wakeboarding that afternoon, I watched the boys until my eyeballs hurt from the sun glinting off the water. I could have sworn there was nothing to watch out for. Sean was a little warmer to me than usual—the way he always acted after he’d insulted me, like some friendliness here could make up for a lack of friendliness elsewhere.
Adam was very warm to me. While Sean drove, my brother wakeboarded, and Cameron spotted, Adam pulled me into his lap in the bow. He set his chin on my shoulder and rubbed his hands up and down my thighs. e best part of this, for the purpose of making Sean’s blood boil, was that Adam did it without comment, without expecting me to comment, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for him to act like my boyfriend.