“Lori’s father will calm down,” Mom said. “He always does. When that happens, your father and I will talk to him about letting you see Lori again. But in the meantime, you must exercise some restraint. Stay away from her, just as he wants, or we won’t be able to put in a good word for you.”
“Okay. I’m about to work with her for eight hours at the marina, but I’ll take a blindfold.”
“You will work on opposite ends of the marina until further notice,” Mom said. “You may not go out with her. You may not date her. You may not be her boyfriend.
Clear enough?”
Damn. Lori was right. Only it was worse than her being grounded from going out. I was grounded from her.
I stared at Mom, the embodiment of evil sitting across from me in a red bathrobe. Sean had told me since we were kids that I was adopted. He and I looked a lot alike, unfortunately, so I’d assumed he told me that just to be mean. Now I knew he’d told me the truth. A real mom couldn’t be that cruel.
“You can’t do that,” I breathed. “No.”
“I can,” she said, “and I am. Lori’s father informed me at about three thirty this morning that if we found the two of you alive, you would not date each other again. I have to agree with him until you show us more maturity.”
I turned to my only chance left. “Dad,” I pleaded, “this is so [cuss word you never, ever say in front of your mother] ridiculous.” Mom gaped at me. So did Sean. e difference was that Sean was half smiling, and Mom looked like she might climb over the table in her bathrobe and stab me with the butter knife.
Even Dad shook his head and said, “Consider yourself lucky. Lori’s pop wants you to go to jail.”
“But for now,” Mom seethed, “go to your room.”
Like I was five! Punished for this made-up adult behavior like I was in kindergarten. “No,” I said. “I have to get ready for work, and I’m hungry.”
“Go to your room!” Mom and Dad yelled at the same time.
Just as well. I was beginning to feel sick to my stomach. I scraped my chair back from the table as loudly as I could, stepped over Sean’s leg, which he’d positioned to trip me, and stomped through the den to the stairs.
As I rounded the corner, I almost collided with Cameron crouching on the bottom step. His eyes widened at me. I’d caught him listening.
He recovered and said, without missing a beat, “I thought you were going to pull it off until you said [cuss word you never, ever say in front of your mother].”
“Thanks for your support,” I grumbled. “You left me there to bleed out.”
He held up his hands. “I don’t have a dog in this fight.”
I elbowed him as I passed him on the stairs. “If you were in this shit, I would have helped you.”
“How?” he called after me. “By setting the curtains on fire to create a diversion?”
At least Sean couldn’t follow me. He and Cameron shared a room when Cameron was home from college. I’d had my own room since I was five and Sean wrote on my face with permanent marker while I was asleep. I reached the top of the stairs, stalked into my room, and slammed the door hard enough to bounce every football trophy on my shelves.
I leaped across the room to catch last year’s tenth grade player-of-the-year trophy, presented to me at a ceremony that Sean had laughed all the way through. I carefully set it back on the shelf. But I was thinking that Sean and Cameron had a point. I was a loser. If Cameron had stayed out until morning with his brand-new girlfriend-who-was-like-a-daughter-to-Mom, Mom would have thought that was fine. Her firstborn could do no wrong. And if Sean had done it, he could have talked his way out of it.
Whereas I’d dug my own grave. I couldn’t do anything right.
I fished my cell phone out of my pocket and pressed the button for Lori’s house. Her dad might answer, but that was okay. We couldn’t get in any worse trouble.
One ring. We should have run away after all. Two rings. I’d saved a couple thousand dollars of my money from working at the marina over the years. I had known it would come in handy someday. I’d always suspected I’d end up on the run from the law sooner or later, since I was forever getting blamed for things I didn’t do. ree rings. e money would tide us over until we both got jobs at a marina in a different town. Of course, we would need references from our previous employer. I doubted Mom would cooperate.
“Hello,” Lori answered. She was hoarse.
“Lori.”
“Adam,” she whispered. “I can’t talk long or my dad will catch me. He is insane. He thinks we spent the night in some kinky love grotto. It’s so unfair. He has no idea what dorks we are.”
“My parents are the same.” In defeat, I flopped backward onto my bed. e bed Lori should have visited sooner or later. But considering the last half hour, that would never happen. “Now you can cry.”
After a shower, I took extra time to dry my hair. Despite the fact that Adam and I had gotten each other in so much trouble—or maybe because of it—I wanted to make sure I looked as pretty for him as I had last night with my Ominously Good Hair.
Of course, this was ridiculous. All my efforts would be for naught. If Mrs. Vader stuck me in the warehouse, my blonde crowning glory would be full of boat grease and spiders by nine a.m. Also, I didn’t want to be late for work. Not this morning.
I did, however, want my dad to embark on his Sunday morning routine of going back to bed before I got downstairs. I had never seen him as angry as he was when I came home an hour ago, and I did not want a recap.
No such luck. When I popped into the kitchen, my dad and my brother leaned against the counter with their arms folded. Dad still looked red, but at least he wasn’t yelling anymore. I stepped through the doorway just in time to hear him say, “You take care of your sister today.” McGillicuddy gave my dad a two-finger salute. “Ayeaye, cap’n.”
Dad turned to me. “And you.” Every morning that I’d gone to play with the boys when we were little, or I’d gone to work at the marina this summer and last, he’d told me, Watch out around those boys next door. This time he couldn’t muster the words. Focusing on me, he opened his mouth, breathed in, breathed out.
He turned to my brother and repeated, “Take care of your sister.”
My brother and I closed the door behind us—softly, so as not to startle an already shell-shocked father—and walked through the garage to the yard, heading past the Vaders’ house to the marina. As soon as we were out of Dad’s earshot, I said, “Well! It’s a good thing you’re not serious about taking care of me. Dad can keep me from going out with Adam, but he’ll never see me on the lake. He won’t know about anything I do at the marina, because you won’t tell him. Hold up a minute.” I’d been limping behind my brother on one bare foot and one flip-flop, scanning the yard for a flash of pink as we went. I remembered having both flip-flops on at the bridge. After that, it got fuzzy. All I knew was that I’d been wearing only one when I arrived home an hour ago. My dad had characterized this as my telltale state of undress.
Now I dove into an azalea and brought out my flip-flop. I shoved my toes into it and turned around.
McGillicuddy frowned at me.
Suddenly I realized how it looked to him and to my dad. “Come on,” I pleaded. “A flip-flop in the bushes does not mean anything. If you ever see my bikini top hanging from the bird feeder, I give you permission to raise an eyebrow.”
He cleared his throat. “Dad will see you on the lake. While you were in the shower, he went out on the screened porch, dragged the lawn chair into position, and made sure he could see the lake through the trees. After work I’m supposed to get out the ladder and clip more branches out of the way.”
“Oh.”
“And if I see you with Adam, I have to tell Dad.”