He raised the sail, saying, “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay!” I shouted over the noise of the rain and the deafening echo of rain under the bridge. “Not your fault.”
“It wasn’t supposed to rain tonight.”
“Storms pop up in the summer.”
Pushing the sail into the wind just long enough to give the boat momentum, and pointing the sail out of the wind again before we blew over, he steered us toward shore.
Two piles spanning the width of the bridge stood between us and the bank. Twice, we both put our hands on the piles to pull the boat out into the rain and around to the other side. I bent my head under the cold deluge. Big, hard raindrops beat the back of my neck.
We made it to shore and climbed partway up the slanted concrete embankment under the bridge. Adam brought one of the ropes from the boat with him. He curled it around his ankle so the howling wind didn’t blow the boat home without us. I curled it around my ankle, too, for good measure.
We both stared forward at the swaying sailboat, red sail puddled on the hull, and the pile beyond it. Rain cascaded off both sides of the massive bridge in sheets. My bikini bottoms didn’t provide much padding between the rough concrete and my ass. e rain had chilled me. I moved imperceptibly (I hoped) toward Adam to bask in his heat.
The noise and echo of the rain filled my ears, but Adam’s voice beside me sounded even louder. “Why’d you go to the shrink?” I looked down. My palm was bleeding. I must have scraped it on the pile.
“Was it because of your mom?”
I wiped my palm on my other hand. Great, now I had blood on both hands. Helpful. I wiped them on the back of my bikini bottoms. Blood stains came out in cold water, and we had plenty of that.
I could feel Adam watching me.
“It wasn’t right after my mom died,” I said. “Actually it wasn’t until sixth grade, when Frances left because McGillicuddy and I had gotten too old to need keeping during the day while Dad was at work. Frankly, I think she was glad to go. Sean calling her Butt I Don’t Need a Governess probably got tiresome.”
“Sean gets tiresome in general.” Adam didn’t meant to change the subject—he just couldn’t help making this comment. He tapped my knee with his knee, prodding me to go on.
“It wasn’t like I did anything so crazy,” I said. “ough that’s probably what crazy people always say, right? I just didn’t want to sit in class anymore. e teachers were fine and the kids were fine. I just couldn’t picture myself sitting in a desk in a straight line of desks for another seven hours.”
“Ha!” Adam said. “You had ADHD.”
“It must have been catching. So when Dad dropped me off at school in the morning, I started checking in at homeroom, then disappearing into the basement, or into the attic. I could stand over the ductwork at one corner of the attic and hear everything the principal said in her office. I could crawl above the auditorium, where the janitor went to change the spotlight bulbs, and listen to rehearsals of the school play. I was seeing this whole side of the school that other people didn’t know existed.” Lightning flashed, thunder clapped. e rain pouring off the bridge into the lake sounded like static. at’s what sitting in class back then had been like. Where there had been a channel before, now there was only static. I couldn’t tune in, and even if I could, there was nothing to see.
“Eventually the school called my dad to say I’d missed so much school, I was going to flunk the sixth grade. My dad threatened a lawsuit because it was the school’s fault they’d lost me. The upshot of it was that I went to a shrink for a while, and took some pills—”
“Pills,” Adam said in utter disgust, like I would say bryozoa or gelatin salad. I hated gelatin salad. It was so ambiguous. What was it made of?
“ese pills weren’t bad,” I said. “ey helped. I only took them for a while. I went back to class and everything was fine. Really I think it never would have happened if you’d been in my class, if I’d had someone to talk to. The other kids didn’t even notice I was gone.” We listened to the rain for a few moments. He said, “Lately I’ve been thinking about going back on my pills.” I thought he was saying this to make me feel better about spilling my secret. I hoped he was just saying this. Adam on his pills was no fun. He was serious and levelheaded and cautious. Like everybody else. But if that’s what he wanted, I should support him.
“Sean makes me…,” Adam said slowly, balling his hands into fists, “… so… mad.” He flexed both hands with his fingers splayed. Like the anger was so great, he needed to shoot it out his fingertips before it caused him to burst into flames.
“I know,” I said. “Me too.” This wasn’t exactly true. Sean didn’t make me mad at him. He made me mad at myself.
A cool blast of wind made the chill bumps stand up higher on my arms. e sailboat rope tugged at my foot. I crossed my arms in front of me, covered as much skin as possible with my hands, and contracted into a ball.
“Hey. Come here.” Adam slid his bare arm around my bare shoulders. Assuming we were both 98.6, I didn’t understand how he could be so much warmer than me. His skin felt like he’d been standing in front of a fire. I slid my arm around his waist, too, and relaxed into his toasty goodness. I leaned my head against his shoulder. His fingers moved a little on my arm. I thought I heard his heartbeat speed up, but I wasn’t sure.
Eventually the rain dwindled like someone turned down the volume of the static on TV. e thunder moved far away, and what was left of the sunset flung pink and orange on the scattering clouds. I hardly shivered as we edged down the embankment to the boat. Now the problem was finding any wind at all to get us home in the calm after the storm. Sitting on the hull, we both ducked as he wound the boom all the way around the mast and finally caught a little breeze.
We emerged from darkness under the bridge, into the golden light, and looked back. Partly because rain had battered the wet paint, and partly due to Adam’s atrocious handwriting, the bridge didn’t say ADAM LOVES LORI. I cocked my head to one side, then blurred my eyes, neither of which helped. I read out loud, “AOAN LOVES
LOKI.”
“They’ll know what I meant.” He was so proud. “Let Sean top that.”
And he did.
The party had started. It was hard to see in the twilight, and with the mist rising off the water around us after the rain. But the gray twilight and gray mist made colors pop. Bright T-shirts and Slinky Cleavage-Revealing Tops dotted the Vaders’ lawn and concentrated at the end of the dock. e faint bass beat of the music across the water was punctuated by the occasional foop of a bottle rocket.
Just as Adam had been waiting for me on my dock last Sunday when I canoed to see Frances, Mr. Vader was waiting for us on the marina dock. It was awkward generally for someone to wait for you on the dock like this, because you realized they were waiting for you and watching you when you were still ten minutes from reaching them.
With Adam, I’d felt compelled to wave and make faces at him the whole return trip. With Mr. Vader, it was worse. He stood on the dock with his feet planted and his arms folded.
“I’m in trouble,” Adam said.
“I know.” I was sitting across from Adam on the hull. I didn’t sit on the bow, and I didn’t want to. It seemed inappropriate and frivolous now that Adam was about to get grounded.
We sailed past Mr. Vader on the dock. He followed us up the stairs and around the wharf. He helped us pull the mast and sail and then the hull out of the water and carry them, dripping, into the warehouse, all in complete silence. Mr. Vader’s jaw was set. In the twilight, Adam’s expression had already settled into darkness.
Finally Mr. Vader closed the door of the warehouse, locked it, and turned to face Adam with his hands on his hips.