“There’s a pill for that,” Sean’s voice echoed.
Normally I wouldn’t have let the comment pass. Sean loved to jab at me because I didn’t take my medicine for ADHD. If I didn’t respond, he’d jab at me harder. When I was little enough to complain to my mom about Sean constantly ragging on me, she always told me to ignore him and he’d stop. at might have worked with a normal brother. Sean was not normal.
is time I hardly felt the sting. I watched Lori push her boat away from her dock with one long leg, toes pointed, and hop in at the last moment before she lost her balance.
e other guys must have been as interested as I was in what was going on in the other boat. Sean had dated Rachel until she broke up with him a few days ago. ere were some people in the world besides me who saw through Sean’s pretty-boy act. McGillicuddy and Tammy had gone out for the first time last night—and, judging from the fact that he was not grounded from her, I assumed their date had gone better than mine had with Lori. We managed to speed up the equipment line and launch our own boat a few seconds later.
And when I neglected to crank up the rock music, not one of them said a word. We preferred to hear girls.
Manning the wheel first, I steered the boat into the middle of the lake—far enough from the girls for safety, but close enough that I could hear Lori explaining to Tammy the starting stance for boarding. McGillicuddy strapped on his life vest and board and hopped over the side. I would drive him in a couple of big circles on this section of the lake, then Sean would board, then Cameron. Lately they wanted me to board last. at way, if I had to go to the emergency room, they’d already taken their turns.
All three of them boarded better than they had all summer, which didn’t take much, since Lori had been putting us all to shame lately. At least, they looked good as far as I could tell. I was driving, not spotting, so the only glimpses I caught of them were in my rearview mirror as they hung upside down in mid-trick.
And the whole time, I had one eye on the girls’ boat. ey were never hard to spot. ey stayed in one place, with Tammy and then Rachel in the water trying to pull up, and Lori driving and instructing them at the same time. I should have been over there helping her.
Or Cameron should, I thought bitterly.
Lori did not have one eye on me. I didn’t know how long I could stand this panicky feeling as I watched her across the water, waiting and wishing for her to glance in my direction. Now I knew how my friends on the football team felt when they drove around town on the slim chance they might cruise by the cute girl they liked in the parking lot of the movie theater. I’d never felt that desperate about Lori. Ever since we were kids, she’d sat right beside me in the boat. We might not have been officially together until yesterday, but at least she’d always been nearby.
Now I couldn’t even tell what she was saying to the other girls. The topic had better be boarding. It had better not be dumping me for the next Vader brother on her list.
Or for Parker Buchanan. As if it weren’t enough for my brothers to talk to Lori when I couldn’t, Parker roared past in a ski boat with some of his rich, spoiled friends from Birmingham. His grandparents owned the snooty private yacht club a few miles downriver. Our marina had banded with the others to host the festival on the lake yesterday, but the yacht club topped us all every year by putting on an enormous Fourth of July fireworks show over the lake.
I’d known Parker for a while. He showed up to our parties sometimes, and rumor had it he was blazing a trail through the ladies. He had dark hair and dark eyes and a habit of staring through people with his eyeballs wide open and unblinking like an owl. Girls thought this was sexy. ey said it was like he could see right through them into their souls. I thought it was one of the first signs of hyper-thyroidism, but I kept it to myself.
I had no reason to dislike him. I’d never considered him a threat before. Usually he water-skied on the yacht club side of the lake. Usually he didn’t venture this far from home. Usually he didn’t slalom through our wakeboarding course while waving to my girlfriend. Usually she did not wave back. ere was a first time for everything—
everything awful, that is—and every bit of it was happening to me today.
Finally it was my turn to board. Parker disappeared around the bend. I had nobody left to take out my aggression on but my brothers. Instead of buckling on my board in the boat and flipping backward over the side like a scuba diver, as I normally would have, I waited for Cameron to crawl out of the water onto the deck in back. I pretended to slip while getting in, and I shoved him with my shoulder.
“Oh, man, you have pushed the wrong brother,” he told me. I thought this was more of a jab at Sean than at me. I’d whipped Sean a couple of times recently.
Then Cameron pushed me so hard, my board slid all the way across the deck, and I smacked into the water on my ear.
I shook off the pain underwater and surfaced. Now Lori watched me from her boat. She was waiting for me to come up, either because she was concerned or because she was simply paying attention to me at the precise moment I didn’t want it. She gave me a thumbs-up.
“Sunglasses.” McGillicuddy stretched his open hand toward me.
“I won’t lose them,” I said. If I’d managed to keep them on during that dramatic entrance, they weren’t in danger of falling off.
“Right,” Cameron said. “You never lose them.”
“Adam’s sunglasses are piled up like buried treasure on the bottom of the lake,” Lori giggled as her boat prowled slowly by ours, headed for shore. All three girls waved to us like beauty queens on a parade float. They must have been done for the day.
Her boat sped up then. Over her motor, McGillicuddy and Sean must not have heard Cameron murmur, “Talk about buried treasure,” still looking straight at Lori.
I kicked off my board, pushed it ahead of me, and caught our boat in five strokes, just as McGillicuddy started the engine. All three of the guys snapped their heads in my direction in surprise as I pitched my board into the boat and pulled myself dripping over the side. Then I punched Cameron in the jaw.
It would have connected if I hadn’t been wet and Cameron hadn’t slathered himself in sunscreen. As it was, my fist slipped right off his face. I lost my balance and fell on the floor of the boat. Then he was on top of me, and I knew I was in trouble. But when he tried to pin my arms behind me, his hands slid right off too.
Before he could come after me again, a second set of flip-flops approached my nose and scuffled with Cameron’s pair. McGillicuddy was pulling Cameron off me. And then Sean caught me in a headlock.
“We’re taking impulsive to a new level, aren’t we?” Sean shouted in my ear, over the noise of the motor.
“He called Lori buried treasure!” I meant this for McGillicuddy. Since Sean held my head down, I had to yell as loudly as I could. “Cameron was looking at Lori and he said, ‘Talk about buried treasure!’”
“You did?” I heard McGillicuddy say. All I could see was the boat’s carpet. I could only imagine the look on his face.
“I wasn’t talking about her!” Cameron bellowed.
“Then who the hell were you talking about?” Sean shrieked.
Sean had a point, for once. Cameron had been talking about my girlfriend and McGillicuddy’s sister, or McGillicuddy’s girlfriend, or Sean’s ex-girlfriend, who Sean was very touchy about. ere was nobody else in the girls’ boat. e four of us guys used to comment on girls we saw drive by on the lake (with Lori in our boat too, rolling her eyes at us). Cameron had picked the wrong girls this time.
Furious as I was, I realized something else was wrong. Even though Sean still held my head down, I was the only one who thought to ask, “Who’s driving the boat?” Over the motor, I heard girls screaming at us the instant before we crashed.