With a last withering look at me, Mrs. Vader disappeared up the stairs. She passed Cameron bounding down. “Party time!” he called to no one in particular. en he saw me. “What in the world is up with you now?”
I swallowed. “I do hope you are referring to my glamorous updo and not some bombshell you are about to drop on me about Adam.” Cameron shrugged. “Just that he went to pick up Rachel.”
I nodded manically. “But not for a date, right? Just as friends, right?” I chose a pizza roll from the spread and popped it into my mouth with a shaking hand.
Mmmmmm, cheese.
“I thought it was a date,” Cameron informed me. “He was dressed like Sean. He shaved off his beard.” I put one hand over my heart, which was pounding in protest. “Don’t you think he was just trying to make me jealous?”
“I asked him about that. He said no, he really asked out Rachel. He said you’re obviously done with him.” Cameron angled his head in the direction Sean had gone.
“Now he’s done with you. He said it was a relief because you’re more trouble than you’re worth. Which…”
“Made sense?” I shrieked.
Cameron spread his hands: If you say so. He walked into the living room and high-fived some of his friends.
Sean came back into the kitchen, leading five or six people who snagged hors d’oeuvres, jumped over the couch into the living room, and turned the stereo to full volume. I stepped up to Sean and grabbed him by the neatly ironed front of his shirt. “Adam saw us!” I shouted over the music. “He went to get Rachel! Cameron says he shaved for her and it’s a real date. Please tell me you think Adam’s only trying to make me jealous!” Sean lost his natural smirk and looked concerned for once. “Sounds like they’re really together.”
“I don’t think so.” I couldn’t think so. e possibility was too awful. I released Sean’s shirt and smoothed it. “Adam just saw us kissing and got angry. He was always opposed to the plan. He specifically told me not to go forward with the plan. But he’ll be over it tomorrow.” I thought about how long Adam held grudges against me lately. “Or next week.”
Sean shook his head. “ey’re really together. And I was going to talk to her!” His usual debonair grin was gone. He looked so morose that I lost all confidence I could explain my way out of my predicament with Adam.
I patted Sean on the back and said with more assurance than I felt, “We’ll sit in the front window and watch for them. e instant they arrive at the party, we’ll see them and we’ll talk to them just like you planned. They’ll listen to reason.”
ree hours later, Sean and I still shared the window seat that looked out over the Vaders’ front yard. is gave us a view of anyone coming or going from the driveway and the front door. But we were afraid of giving Adam and Rachel the impression we were together, so we sat side by side on the cushions, awkwardly, and without touching, looking through the glass like eager puppies waiting for their masters to come home.
Surely they were only riding around town before the party because they knew we were waiting for them. I’d tried to call Adam and Sean had tried to call Rachel, but they weren’t answering. Surely they were only punishing us. They would show up here sooner or later and we could fix everything.
“Why were you always so mean to Adam when we were kids?” I demanded. I wanted to comfort Sean in theory, but I was getting frustrated with the wait for Adam. It felt good to take out some aggression. “If you hadn’t been mean to Adam, he wouldn’t be so quick to lose it. For that matter, why were you always so mean to me? You never let us play with you. Or if you did, you made it seem like you were doing us this huge favor.”
“Junior,” he said gently, “you were really little. And really cute.” He tweaked my nose. “And I didn’t want to babysit. I wanted to play with Cameron and McGillicuddy.
is is hard for me to remember, but at one time I felt, like, honored to be allowed to play with them because they were older than me.” He leaned closer so I could hear him better over the booming bass line. “If hanging with the big dogs made you so miserable, why didn’t you and Adam go hang by yourselves?”
“We did, once.” I searched my memories of that summer day, the sunlight glinting off the points of waves on the lake, filtering through moving spaces between the leaves of a tall tree, threading itself into Adam’s curls as we nailed a sign to his tree house that said KEEP OUT JERKS. “Normally it didn’t occur to us that we could do that.”
“Until now,” Sean said, “when it’s too late.”
“Ha ha. Not funny.”
“I don’t think it’s funny either,” Sean said. “I think Rachel and Adam are really together.” He glanced behind me. “Speak of the devil.” In my excitement to see Adam, I whirled around and fell off the window seat. A shadow loomed overhead, blocking out the tiny bit of strobe light that made its way through the bodies dancing in the center of the room. My brother stood over us with his hands on his hips.
I reached up and slapped Sean’s leg. “I thought you meant Adam!”
Sean focused on McGillicuddy instead of me. “It’s okay.” Sean put up his hands. “I didn’t kiss her in the warehouse when she was eleven.” McGillicuddy shook his head. “Adam and Rachel just left.”
I leaped up from the floor before Sean had even made it off the seat. “We never saw them drive up! Did you tell them Sean and I aren’t together?” All our assorted brothers and close friends had been instructed to tell Adam and Rachel they were wanted for a conference at the window seat.
“Apparently they never came inside,” McGillicuddy shouted over the music. “I heard this from some people coming in from the dock. ey said Adam and Rachel shot bottle rockets into the lake and left again.”
“That’s my date!” I turned to Sean and pounded on his chest with my fists. “Your girlfriend stole my date night!”
“Oh, God,” Sean breathed.
I relaxed my fists and pressed my hands on his chest, holding him steady. Then I asked McGillicuddy, “Did they ‘leave’?” I made finger quotes, which would indicate that they had put on a big show of acting like they were driving elsewhere to make out. At least, this is what the finger-quotes indicated to me. “Or did they leave?” He frowned at me. “They left.”
Tammy danced over with a big grin on her face, the kind of grin one wears when one is at a party with one’s boyfriend and one’s life is not going to hell in a handbasket.
She grabbed McGillicuddy and pulled him onto the dance floor before I could ask him whether he’d understood the whole finger-quote concept.
“Rachel and Adam are together,” Sean wailed. “I mean, really together. ey’ve left without standing outside this window and mooning us”—he gestured to our view of the driveway—“or even waiting until we looked up at them. I’m telling you, Lori, Adam was dating Rachel in the first place. I stole Rachel from Adam. After less than two weeks, she broke up with me because of the way I treated Adam. They’re not kidding. They’re back together now.”
“at’s impossible.” In my heart I knew this could not be true. Illogical as it sounded, Adam only blew up at people he loved: his parents, many times over the years; Sean, constantly. He had blown up at me quite a few times over the past few weeks. He had never blown up at Rachel. If he always got along great with somebody, it was a sure sign that he didn’t really care what that person thought.
But I could not shake the feeling that everything we’d done together for the past month was a lie. Just as Sean had said, the first night I got an inkling that I had feelings for Adam, he was dating Rachel and he caught her making out with Sean. Why couldn’t he be in love with her still, fighting to win her back? at made a lot more sense than what I’d believed for a month, that he’d dated her but he’d loved me all along. ere was too much evidence that he wanted her instead of me. I suspected he’d taken her to his Secret Make-Out Hideout first, since he’d acted so suspiciously when I’d asked him about it last weekend. He’d talked her into inviting everyone over to her grandparents’ house, which meant he’d been calling her. And tonight he had said he was with her, flaunting her at his own party. I had no good reason not to believe him.