“You can lose the superior tone, Adam Vader,” she said sternly. “e last boy I dated before Sean was you.” She paused. “Of course, you only asked me out to make Lori jealous.”
I laughed. Not a desperate-about-my-girlfriend laugh, but a cavalier laugh like Sean’s. I felt ill. “That’s why I’m calling.”
“You want to make Lori jealous again?” Rachel guessed. “The two of you have enough problems.”
“Tell me about it.” e sick feeling grew. I winced at another of those pangs in my stomach, just like this morning when I found out I was banned from Lori. en I said, “Lori still likes Sean.”
“She does not!” Rachel squealed. I heard her swallow. She said more calmly, “She does not, Adam. She likes you. You should have heard her talking about you on the boat this afternoon.”
You should have heard her talking about Sean in the woods, I thought. “Here’s the thing. She’s forming this plan—”
“Uh-oh,” Rachel said.
“—to date other guys until I don’t look so awful to her dad.”
“But she’s not dating Sean,” Rachel said.
“Not yet,” I admitted. “But she will. If this goes on long enough, I promise you she will.”
“I don’t believe it,” Rachel said. “And even if I did—”
I had her.
“—what could I do about it?”
“Nothing yet,” I said. “But when the time comes, I want you to be prepared. I may ask you to do something that would help me keep Lori interested or to send Sean your way.” I felt guilty as I said this. Sean and I had promised to stay out of each other’s way when it came to Lori and Rachel.
I talked myself out of it. I could count on one hand the number of promises to me that Sean had kept.
In fact, upon further reflection, I couldn’t think of a single one.
“I don’t know,” Rachel said. “Lori and I haven’t been friends very long. I wouldn’t feel right, going behind her back like that.”
“She’ll forgive you,” I said. “She’s very forgiving. And you’d be doing her good. You want to keep her away from Sean, don’t you? He’s bad news.” Rachel giggled at this. She’d always giggled at pretty much everything I said—another thing I liked about her. She was easy to please. is went a long way toward explaining her infatuation with Sean. I chuckled along with her, even though I was dead serious.
She quieted down and asked, “You think I’m an idiot for liking him, don’t you?”
“No. I think you have the same taste as every other girl at our high school. I don’t understand that big belt over the long shirt, either.”
“It’s called a tunic.”
“It’s called ugly. And one more thing.”
She sighed. “What.”
“Don’t tell Lori you’ve been to my secret make-out hideout. If she asks you about it, tell her that you and I never went there.”
“Why would she care?” Rachel asked. “You and I went there when we were dating, before you and Lori got together.”
“Yeah, but she thinks she was the first, and I didn’t tell her otherwise.”
Rachel was quiet for a few moments. In the background I could hear her little sisters yelling at each other about something. If she was trying to figure out how boys’
minds worked, she was way out of her element. She was no Lori.
Finally she said, “I don’t want to lie to her. Like I told you, she and I haven’t been friends very lo—” I interrupted her before she went any farther down that high-and-mighty path. Time to play the sympathy card, which never worked on Lori but was a sure thing with every other girl I knew. “Lori and I are going through a tough time right now. You would be helping, not hurting. Please help me, Rachel.”
“It just doesn’t make any sense,” she said weakly. “I thought you did want to make her jealous. If you want me to conceal from her that I’ve been to your hideout, it sounds like you don’t want to make her jealous.”
“I don’t want to make her jealous yet,” I explained. “She hasn’t gone out with Sean yet. Right now I want her to feel special, like she’s the only girl I ever introduced to my secret make-out hideout. It’s only after she goes out with Sean that I’m going to pull the rug out from under her.”
“Adam Vader,” Rachel said. “I had no idea you were so sneaky.”
“Right. That makes me even sneakier. Deal?”
We hung up, and I felt guilty all over again. I was worried about Lori going out with Sean, but I was actually more worried Lori would discover she wasn’t the first to experience the secret make-out hideout. I wished she had been the first and I’d never taken Rachel there. I didn’t want to see Lori’s face when she found out otherwise.
I could have admitted this to Rachel. Maybe I should have. But I didn’t trust her after she’d cheated on me with Sean.
Of course, she was right that I’d only gone out with her to make Lori jealous. She had no reason to trust me, either. We made perfect partners in crime.
Suddenly I realized how tense I was, leaning forward and gripping the edge of the metal desk with both hands. I leaned back in the chair. is didn’t relax me any. I found myself staring up at the bulletin board over the desk. Tacked to it were business cards for boat sales reps, a diagram of an F/A-18 Hornet that Cameron had drawn when he was about ten (and I thought he was so impossibly old), the schedule for everybody who worked at the marina (Lori was under Sean, I noticed with annoyance), and a brochure for a military boarding school. I’d almost forgotten my parents were thinking about sending me away.
I’d told Lori’s dad he couldn’t keep me from seeing Lori because I lived next door. When he’d said, “Not for long,” that’s what he must have meant. at’s what he was talking to my parents about right now.
They wouldn’t do that to me. Would they?
No, they wouldn’t. Not yet. Not just because Lori’s dad told them to.
But the threat was there. Last year when I was flunking chemistry, my mom started investigating schools. She’d asked Lori’s dad about it because he had a fraternity brother who’d gone to one, and who might be able to get me into a good one for those of us with ADHD, instead of one full of actual juvenile delinquents. is was my mother’s fear—that if she sent me away to clean up my act, I’d actually become more corrupted and learn to pick locks better. It was all the same to me. Prison was prison.
I’d brought up my chemistry grade by the end of the semester, though. I hadn’t improved my test scores, but the longer the class went on, the more our grade was based on lab. I was excellent at lab. Unlike every nerdy girl in the class and half the guys, I was not afraid of the Bunsen burner.
I’d worked my ass off for that C, all for nothing.
This office had no windows.
I jumped up from the tiny chair, kicked open the door, and escaped from my cell.
Around the side of the warehouse, I fished my football out of the bushes. I jogged about ten yards up the boat ramp, aimed carefully, and fired a pass at one of the huge metal doors.
BANG.
Bull’s-eye. I ran after the ball and stopped it before it rolled into the yard and down the hill into the lake. I jogged back up the ramp with it and let another pass fly.
BANG.
If Lori’s dad had found my parents in the warehouse and they were looking for me now, the noise would notify them of my whereabouts. I didn’t care. e more passes I threw, the better I felt.
BANG.
“Adam!” my dad roared. e sun was setting now. From where I stood on the ramp, the corner of the warehouse appeared to cut the huge orange sun exactly in half. My dad walked toward me out of that orange glow, like the devil. He hiked up the ramp and stopped near me, stroking his beard.
I can’t repeat in mixed company any of what he said to me. However, I can convey the general import of the message by replacing the word I shouldn’t have said in front of my mother with the word “monkey.” I hate monkeys.