My first thought when I saw them was, Why are they walking together? Frances was supposed to be my dad’s employee. I was used to seeing them talking, but never touching. en I remembered Frances had not been my nanny for years, and she and my dad were dating as of yesterday. My second thought was, Why are they walking in this heat? Nobody in their right mind would be out exercising in this heat. And—by now you are figuring out I am a little slow on the uptake—only my third thought was, Busted.
The instant I saw Lori’s dad and Frances across the hot asphalt road, I spun around, hoping Lori was still hidden by the trees.
She stood right behind me, in full view. And if my expression matched hers, we couldn’t have looked more guilty.
I turned back around. Her dad’s face was even worse. Glaring at me, he worked his jaw like he was going to say something, but he wanted to make sure he’d thought of the worst possible insult first. He turned redder and seemed to swell, like all his holes were plugged up and the pressure had nowhere to escape.
He opened his mouth.
“It was my fault,” I said quickly.
“I know!” he roared.
At the same time, Lori stepped in front of me and muttered, “Wrong thing to say, Adam.”
“Right.” I put my hand on Lori’s shoulder and pushed her an arm’s length away so it wouldn’t look like I was hiding behind her. “It’s nobody’s fault, because we didn’t do anything wrong.”
Her dad brought his hands together and popped a knuckle.
“Trevor,” Frances said soothingly, rubbing her hand on his back. But she was looking hard at me over her glasses, telling me upstanding citizens did not act this way.
When we were kids, that look from Frances could make Lori and her brother behave, and sometimes even my brothers, but I never seemed to get the message.
“I saw you coming out of the woods,” Lori’s dad shouted at me. “Together!”
“We weren’t rolling in the leaves or anything. Look, no evidence.” I put my other hand on Lori’s other shoulder and turned her around backward, hoping against hope she didn’t have scratches from the tree on her bare back, or bark on her butt.
“Get your hands off my daughter.”
Either I jerked away from her at the force of his words, or she started out from under my hands. I wasn’t sure which. She and Frances and I stared at Lori’s dad in horror.
He was excitable, yes, and he had yelled at me before, yes, but always about safety issues. He thought I was going to set his house on fire with bottle rockets or run my four-wheeler into his Beamer again. When he hollered at me about that stuff, his voice pitched into a whine like a woman.
This was not that voice. This was a full-bodied boom that meant business. He looked and sounded like a big dog defending his territory.
“Here’s what you did wrong, Adam,” he barked. “I told your parents to make it clear to you that you were not to see Lori again. You did it anyway. at’s what you did wrong.”
“But—,” I started.
“Shhh,” Lori said beside me.
“That’s—,” I started again.
“Shut up,” Lori muttered.
“—ridiculous,” I finished.
“Adam, stop talking,” Lori said.
“Adam, stop talking,” Frances repeated.
I knew I was only getting myself in more trouble. Lori’s dad unballed and balled his fists, daring me to talk back. I was beyond caring. I was right and he was wrong. I said, “Of course I’m going to see her. I live next door.”
“Not for long,” he shouted. “Lori, go with Frances. Go home.”
I balled my own fists then. Now it sounded like Lori was a dog.
Lori gave me a wide-eyed warning look, then obediently jogged a few steps forward and walked with Frances toward her house.
Her dad turned to me. “You. Follow me.”
“Woof,” I said.
Lori and Frances both stopped under the trees and looked back at me. We all half expected Lori’s dad to really blow his top this time.
He didn’t. His balled fists expanded into claws that wanted to strangle me. Then he turned without a word and headed for my house.
Lori widened her eyes at me and nodded after her dad, urging me to go on. Frances pointed at him and gave me the stern nanny look.
I followed. But I let him get a good thirty feet ahead of me so he’d worry. at far away, he couldn’t hear my footsteps across the pine needles. He kept looking over his shoulder to make sure I hadn’t escaped. We continued past my house, all the way down to the marina. He waited for me outside the office door with his arms folded. When I caught up with him, he swung open the office door, ready to feed me to my parents.
But the office was empty. He pointed me inside. I slouched past him and collapsed into my mother’s desk chair. I’d been so keyed up for a shouting match, I was almost disappointed it was delayed. For a few minutes, anyway.
“Stay.” He glared at me a moment more, then closed me inside the office while he went to look for my parents.
I stared at the painted metal door. Sean had drawn a smiley face on it in WD-40 when I was eight and he was ten. He blamed it on me, and Mom believed him. e huge greasy smile in the faded paint never would wash out—believe me, I’d tried. I’d been forced to try. Now it taunted me. Going in the woods with Lori had been my idea. Going parking with her last night had been my idea, too. I knew that, and yet all my troubles pointed back to Sean.
On impulse, I rolled the chair closer to the desk, snagged the phone, and punched in Rachel’s number. If it hadn’t been for Lori, I could have been into Rachel. As it was, I’d only gone out with her last month for the same reason I went out with any girclass="underline" to have some fun, but also hoping that Lori was watching and that she would finally get jealous. I liked Rachel, though. I felt bad about using her until she cheated on me with Sean. Afterward, I figured she deserved whatever she got, because of her infidelity and extremely poor taste.
She must have recognized the marina office number on her cell phone and thought it might be Sean, because her voice sounded tight, like she could hardly contain herself. “Hello?”
“It’s only me.” I hadn’t meant to disappoint her.
“Hey, Adam!” she squealed. She didn’t want me to feel bad for making her feel bad. Which was cute and all. Rachel was a really nice person. But if I’d gone into the woods with Rachel and then called Lori, Lori would have answered with a cackle and a “So, did you get some?” I missed her already.
“Hey,” I said. I was lucky Rachel had answered her phone. Now that I had her, I needed to get what I wanted from her as quickly as I could. Lori would call her soon for a girl talk about what an idiot I was for not going along with her plan. I had to get Rachel on my side now, before my dad came in and grabbed me. “What’s up with you and Sean?”
“What do you mean?” she snapped. “Did he say something about me?”
Just as I’d suspected. “He didn’t say a word,” I admitted.
She let out a little huff of frustration. “Then why do you think there’s something up between us?”
“Not between you,” I said. “It’s all one-sided. You got mad at him and broke up with him last week. He came groveling back to you but you blew him off. You expected him to crawl back again. He hasn’t. He talked to you at the festival yesterday but he didn’t ask you out. Am I right?”
“Well.” Her voice pitched even higher as she got upset. “I broke up with him because it seemed like he only wanted to date me to make you mad. After we broke up, I thought he would take a few days and realize how wrong he’d been, and then he’d beg to have me back and he’d appreciate me more. I never thought I would break up with him and he would shrug and say, ‘Okay’!”
“I can tell,” I said. “You pranced around in your bikini at the lake this afternoon and he still didn’t ask you out. He is not acting like the boys you’ve dated before at all.”