The Boys Next Door (12 page)

He crossed one leg over the other casually, as if he weren’t coated with mud up to his knees. Then he took a sip of the soda, handed it to me, and pulled out a cheese fry. I took a tentative sip of soda. Not that I thought he had germs—or really bad germs, anyway—but we’d never shared a soda before. We’d shared popcorn, of course, while we watched DVDs with the other boys. Once the scoop from my ice cream cone had plopped into the lake, and he’d shared his ice cream with me. This was probably kind of gross. Mrs. Vader and Frances had rushed at us when they saw me about to take a lick. I shouldn’t read too much into sharing a soda now, though. It was something people did when they went out.

“Mmph!” he hummed with his mouth full of cheese fry. Swallowing, he grabbed my bare foot and pulled it into his lap. “You painted your little toenails.”

I opened my mouth to explain proudly that the toe-nails in question represented hours of meticulous work. Well, maybe forty-five minutes while watching reruns of
Deadliest Catch
. I’d put the polish on and taken it off three times because it tended toward gloopy. Who knew beauty regimens would be so complex?

But when I looked up, my mouth just stayed open. He was staring at me with those light blue eyes. A chill hit me from nowhere. It made the hair on my arms stand up. It raced down my body to my toes, which he was stroking with one rough thumb. And so the chill moseyed back up my body again.

I took a slow, shaky breath through my wide open, ridiculously gaping mouth. Then I realized what the problem was. His resemblance to Sean was eerie sometimes, especially the light blue eyes. I managed to say, “You’re giving me the look again. Don’t look at me like that.”

Stubbornly he gave me the look for ten more seconds, so there. I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the look. I
really
enjoyed what it did to my skin. He was a superhero with Massage-O-Vision. I enjoyed it too much for comfort. He was just going to turn his Massage-O-Vision on Rachel when he got her back, so the pleasant pricklies
I
felt were pricklies on loan. He’d be horrified to know he was giving them to me. Besides, I wasn’t going to sit there and let him give me the look when I’d asked him not to give me the look.

Just as I was about to either pinch him or find the strength to look away, he let my toes go and turned away himself, gazing out over the splashing trucks. The mud sparkled in the artificial light. At first glance it might have seemed about as romantic as watching cement being poured, or a building being demolished by a wrecking ball. Nothing said
romance
like the scent of burning rubber. But to me, it started to seem very romantic. I almost wished Holly and Beige could see me now. Well, not really, because mud had splashed up on my calves. I scratched at a spot with my fingernail, and it smeared.

He asked, “Why does it have to be Sean?”

I snapped my head up and tried to gauge what he’d meant by this. I couldn’t tell, because he wouldn’t meet my gaze. Which was probably a good thing. I could feel myself flushing as my heart pounded.

I was attracted to Adam. Not as much as I was attracted to Sean, of course. That would never happen. But Adam had been so sweet and so fun, teaching me to drive. Tangling with me as we switched places in the truck didn’t hurt either. Or carrying me on his back. I really enjoyed him carrying me on his back.

Did he mean,
Why does it have to be Sean instead of me?
And if he did…

Good God, what was the matter with me? Adam didn’t like me that way. He just hated Sean. He wanted to know why I was so stuck on
Sean
, of all people.

And I didn’t like Adam that way, either. Not really. Flirting with him was fun, but that’s all it was, and I was getting carried away. I needed to remember I was on a mission. I would tell him the whole truth about the mission. I owed him that much, since he’d agreed to help me by faking a relationship with me.

I munched a cheese fry and thought about Sean sashaying his way through the school lunchroom last spring, Beige on one arm, Holly on the other. Everyone turned to watch as he passed. People called out to him from the tables. All he needed was the paparazzi behind him. Also Beige or Holly needed a very small dog that got sick when it ate too much protein. I said simply, “Sean lights up the room.”

Adam still wouldn’t look at me. He tried to shake one fry loose from a cheesy clump. “I can see why you’d want to watch him, listen to him. Not why you’d want to
get together
with him. He lights up the room so bright that you would just be sitting there blinking, blinded.” He gave up on freeing the fry and stuffed the whole cheesy clump in his mouth. Immediately he started picking through the pile for another, like he needed something to do with his hands.

“I’ve always wanted to be with him,” I said. “Yeah, logically I can see the drawbacks, but I don’t think you or anyone could argue me out of it. I need to find out for myself, because I’ve wanted this so long.”

“Always,” Adam muttered, tossing up a bit of fry and catching it in his mouth.

“Almost always. Actually, I can remember the very day it started.” The mud field in front of us dissolved into a sun-splashed view of the lake through shady branches. The roar of monster trucks faded, replaced by birds chirping, and my mother’s voice. “It was before Mom died. We were all really little. But I remember it so clearly. Your whole family was at my house for a cookout in the summer. I was with Mom and your mom up on the deck. I’d wanted to play with you boys, but Mom wouldn’t let me.

“Your mom said I was such a lovely little girl, so ladylike and polite. That’s what pricked my ears up, of course: the praise. But I kept playing like I wasn’t listening in. Then your mom said I didn’t always have to stay home. I was welcome to come over to your house to play whenever McGillicuddy came over. She called him Bill. Whatever. Now I was really paying attention, and holding my breath to see what Mom would say. All I’d dreamed about my whole little life was playing with y’all.”

“Why?”

I snapped out of my daydream. I’d almost forgotten Adam was sitting there.

He put one hand on my knee, watching me, and didn’t even turn to look when Scooter purposefully spun his tires, coating one side of the pink truck in mud. “Why did you want to play with us?” Adam asked. “At that age, we were basically squirting each other in the face with water guns.”

“Compare this to sitting in my room by myself, dressing and undressing the Barbie.”

“Oh.” He nodded.

“Anyway, of course I was disappointed, as always. My mom said your mom was so nice to offer, but she didn’t want me playing with four boys very often. I’d grow up to be a tomboy.”

“What’s wrong with growing up to be a tomboy?”

“I think it’s fine until a certain age. When you’re young, being a tomboy may even give you a certain advantage. You can always beat girls like Holly Chambliss and Beige Dupree and, ohmyGod, Rachel in Little League softball. You can catch four fish in the Girl Scout fishing rodeo while they’re still refusing to bait their hooks because worms are icky.”

“Rachel will actually bait her own hook,” Adam defended her.

I didn’t want to hear it. I talked right over him. “After a certain age, people don’t know what to make of a tomboy, and you don’t fit in. You end up feeling empty and lost.”

Those frown lines appeared between his brows. He moved the plate of cheese fries behind him on the bench, slid over until his leg touched my leg, and put his hand on my knee again.

Strange how his touch made it easier for me to talk. I went on, “Just as Mom was telling your mom no, Sean came up the stairs crying. You and the other boys had dared him to stick bread between his toes and put his foot in the water. A fish mouthed him and he freaked out.”

“Er—,” Adam started.

I waved him off, because this was the most important detail. “My mom took his chin in her hand, turned his face toward me, and said, ‘Just look at those eyes. He’s going to be a heartbreaker.’” I found myself smiling at the memory. But when I turned to Adam and saw the look on his face, I stopped smiling.

“That sounds like a
bad
thing,” he grumbled.

“People mean it as a good thing,” I said, suddenly not as sure of this as I’d been for the last twelve years. But I couldn’t really expect him to understand. Talking about Sean around Adam was like throwing Evian on a fire. “And then Mom said, ‘Lori, just
wait
until you’re sixteen.’ She was stuck on the sixteenth birthday. We made a scrapbook with pictures of all my baby events, and spaces for when I would turn six and eight and ten and twelve, and a super-mondo sequined space for when I turned sixteen. She wanted me to have what she’d had, a great sixteenth birthday, exactly what any teenage girl would want. Her parents gave her a special grown-up ring, and she wore a groovy dress that’s hanging in my closet.”

We’d moved away from talking about Sean. Predictably, Adam took a deeper breath and relaxed against the bench. “Are you going to wear the dress on your birthday?”

“Are you kidding? It was 1979. White polyester, baby. Highly flammable. Burn baby burn, disco inferno. Unsafe. Uncool.”

“I’ll bet it’s pretty. You could wear it wakeboarding on your birthday, during the Crappy Festival show.” He was back to his old self.

I chuckled. “Unfortunately, you and I are the only two people in the world who would think that was funny.”

“What does that have to do with Sean?”

I squirmed a little under the gaze of the intense blue eyes. I felt his disapproval even though I hadn’t told him what he should disapprove of yet. But he was helping me with Sean, and I’d committed to telling him the whole story. “Mom died not long after that. I took it as a free ticket to Disneyworld. Yay, Mom wasn’t around to stop me! I got to play with the boys! Only I always felt guilty about being the least bit happy she was gone, even when this was the one good thing about it. And I felt guilty I didn’t tell Dad or Frances that Mom wouldn’t have wanted me over at your house. It went against her wishes for me. I promised myself I’d clean up by the time I was sixteen. And if I could finally convince Sean to ask me out by my sixteenth birthday, I would know I’d turned out okay after all.”

Adam nodded. “Because you think your mother picked Sean out for you.”

“No, not exactly—”

“Like an arranged marriage,” Adam interrupted. “That’s very forward thinking.”

“No, not like that. Mom knew what was best for me, and if she were still around, she would have taught me how to get it. She’s not around, so I have to figure this out for myself. I’m transforming myself from an ugly duckling into a beautiful swan. There’s much preening to be done. It’s actually pretty time-consuming. I have to run my beak down every single feather to distribute the oil evenly and make myself waterproof.”

“Lori—”

“And I’ve almost perfected my Holly/Beige imitation. At least, I
thought
I had, until the mud riding started.”

“You think going out with Sean will turn you into Beige Dupree?”

“Sort of. If I hooked up with Sean, everyone would treat me differently. Everyone loves Sean. If Sean chose me, they’d think they’d always overlooked something special in me. Then maybe I really could become that girl. I know you hate Sean, but you understand why everyone else loves him, right?”

I took Adam’s stony silence as a yes.

“Girlfriend/boyfriend love is totally different from brotherly love. But the effect would be the same. Like standing in his aura. Haven’t you ever wondered what it would be like if Sean loved and valued you as a person?”

“I’d know Armageddon was coming. I’d brace myself for the locusts.”

“I’m serious. If he just looked at you the right way, that alone could probably carry you through for a month. But if he
loved
you…”

Adam shifted on the bench. I thought he was standing up to stalk away, disgusted. Instead, he placed his arm around my shoulders. Lightly his finger stroked valentines on my arm, which gave me the shivers all over again.

“Every word out of Sean’s mouth is meant to hurt me,” he said. “And it’s always been like that. Cameron says Sean changed after I was born. When I was a baby and Mom wasn’t looking, Sean threw blocks at my crib.”

I almost laughed. The idea was so ridiculous. It was even more ridiculous for Adam to be angry about something like that when he was sixteen years old.

I managed not to laugh. I believed him. I knew Sean.

“But that’s you,” I said. “I’m sorry he treats
you
that way, but I’m the one who’s going to get together with him, and he doesn’t treat
me
that way.”

“He will,” Adam said. “If you ever let him get close to you, he will.” The valentines he traced on my arm had turned to shapes with lots of sharp points, like in comic books when the superhero punches the villain. Ker-POW!

The tractor arrived then to pull the pink truck out of the mud. Adam took his hands off me—which I regretted more than I should have. He leaned forward to watch and make sure the driver didn’t attach the chain to the loose side of the front bumper.