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Thing was, the trees, shrubs, and bushes that I’d intended to use for cover as I snuck up Darren’s backyard to the pool area were on the
opposite
side of the property from where I was freaking out now. In order to get there, I’d have to pass right in front of her, and there was no way in hell I could do it without her seeing me.
Shit
. Worse than that, if I tried to follow the hedgerow on this side and wriggle between its branches somewhere further up, I’d not only make a buttload of noise breaking through, but the ruckus I made would also announce my presence to any-and everyone within a good fifty yards in all directions, even with the music on.
Shit
.

It had
never once
occurred to me that someone might be down here by the water, blocking my way.

I had to stay calm. My head and stomach were reeling, I was having trouble breathing, and I would’ve licked the condensation off a garbage truck’s exhaust pipe just to wet my whistle, but I had to stay
calm
. I had to come up with my next move and execute it. Right now my biggest problem was Stacy. What could I do about her? She was alone, so I could go in hard and fast, leaving no witnesses, and bump her off without so much as ever having said hello to her. Yeah, right, that plan
sucked
. What else? I could create a diversion, like throw a rock or something so she’d turn her head at the moment I slipped by. Maybe, but if I threw a rock into the water, it’d only make her lift her head up so she’d be looking right at me. I could throw one into the woods behind her, sure, but would the slight sound of something clicking in trees and bushes attract her attention long enough for me to jet past? I was fast, sure, but not that fast. No one was.

I was stuck. I realized that with Stacy blocking my path, I’d come
to a dead end, but it struck me that I hadn’t heard the
plip
or
plunk-slap
sound for a while. Maybe she’d just walked away; it was a party after all, and down here was far away from all the action. I crab-walked in the mud to the edge of the bushes, peeked my head around, and saw Stacy sitting on the rock, just like before, only she was bouncing her heels against it now, and taking a swig out of what looked like a glass soda bottle, but fatter at the neck.
Shit, shit, shit!
I crept back, squatted on my haunches, and heard the
ploop-slap-slap
sound again.

What the hell was she doing here?
Okay, I got that one. Stacy might not have been the prettiest girl in town, but she had that
thing
and it was
hot—
scorching—and everybody knew it, and even though it was a high-school party and she was just going into junior high like I was, one of the older scavengers buzzing around her had probably asked her to go, and she’d said what she always said, which was “Okay,” only he’d gone to do a keg-stand or a bong hit or some shit and left her alone and she’d wandered down here to be on her own, because she was like that.

Wait a minute—that was it! The word I’d heard Stacy say more than any other was
okay;
she was
always
saying it, no matter the situation. So if I just walked around the bushes, down the peninsula, over to where she was sitting, and said,
Hey, what up
, real deep-voiced and suave, nodding my chin at her, and then told her not to tell anyone she’d seen me as I went on my way, chances were she’d say
okay!
What else would she say?
Nuh-uh, that’s your ass, dickhead, I’m telling everybody
, and scream? No, I couldn’t see that happening, Stacy was too laid-back for that. So all I had to do was play it cool, act chill, take my time, and it might just work.

Then again, it might not. But I couldn’t come up with anything else, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to let a
girl
scare me off the case, or keep me from saving my sister. All I had to do was go over and
try
to talk to her for the very first time in my life, whether I wanted to or not, because there was no other choice. I cleaned my hands off in the
reservoir, patted some water quietly on my face, straightened my clothes as best I could, tried to fix my hair, sighed heavily, gave up on it, and walked around the bushes so I could totally destroy any chance I’d ever have with Stacy. Nobody ever said being a detective was easy, and I was glad nobody ever said that, because this was the hardest thing I’d ever tried to do.

SEVENTEEN

On my way down the other side of the peninsula, I
figured out the second rule for my new top-secret detective manual: never attempt to strut—you know, put a little swagger and tilt in your walk—if your legs are shaking uncontrollably. You shouldn’t even
think
about trying it, because you’d just wind up lumbering through the night like Frankenstein or the Creature from the Black Lagoon toward the chick who drove you nuts, and the first time she lifted her head and caught sight of you, she’d flinch, jerk back, and tense up, ready to bolt, like a cat sprayed with a garden hose, and that was
not
the reaction you wanted when you were trying to make a cool entrance, or a good first impression. No, it sure as hell wasn’t, but that’s what happened, and there was nothing I could do about it, so I kept stiff-legging it toward her.

When I was about ten or so feet from the rock, Stacy whispered, “Genie?”

The sound of
my
name in
her
high, soft voice caused my heart to sizzle from my chest and burst in the nighttime sky like fireworks. There was only one problem—that wasn’t my name anymore. But if
I’d learned anything from being surrounded by three females all my life, it was that chicks
never
liked to be contradicted, especially when they were wrong, so I whispered back, “Yeah?”

“Ohmigod,” she sighed heavily. “It’s Stacy, Stacy Sanders, from sixth grade? You like totally scared me for a second.”

“Sorry, I didn’t me-uh-ahn to.”
No!
That squeaky, gasping sound could
not
have been my voice. I felt the blood rising in my face. I wanted to die.

“That’s okay,” she said.

It was okay; everything was
okay;
the sky lit up again. I was getting closer, and Stacy was still seated on the rock, the same way as before, but her head was up now and slightly tilted, like it usually was, and she was looking at
me
, with her black bangs hanging to one side while the rest of her face was lit by moonlight, her hazel eyes widening, her nose bunching, and smiling, so that the little gap between her front teeth showed like two slightly parted knees.
Liquefied
was probably the closest word for what I felt, and I stopped to catch my breath.

“You wanna sit down,” Stacy whispered, still smiling, tilting her head, and slapping the rock with her left palm, “and keep me company?”

I could hardly believe it—she’d invited me into her bubble,
holy shit—
but that didn’t mean it was part of my plan. I was supposed to walk by—cool, real cool—tell her not to tell anyone she’d seen me, and get on with it. On the other hand, I’d made a promise to grandma that I’d be a gentleman, and a gentleman always obliged.

“Okay,” I said, in what was far closer to my normal voice. But my throat was so dry at this point that sooner or later it would split open and I’d bleed to death all over her.

“Cool,” she peeped as she tossed a small pebble from a pile on her right into the reservoir
(plip)
, and then swatted her legs three times in rapid succession
(slap, slap, slap)
. “The mosquitoes are totally killer, though,” she warned.

As I sat down on the rock next to Stacy
, I felt the warmth of her next to my frantic limbs, the lumps in my pockets pressing against my thighs, and then I remembered.

“I have some bug spray,” I said, and felt, for a second, as if I ruled the world.

“Ohmigod! You’re like an Eagle Scout. That’s so cool!”

No, I wasn’t any goddamn Cub or Boy or Eagle Scout or fucking Weeblo either; I was a
detective on a case
, goddamn it, but I didn’t want to blow my cover, so I tried to play it cool.

She took the cap off the bug spray and squirted it on her arms, neck, and collarbones, then
untied her shirt, took it off, and handed it to me
, so she was wearing nothing but her yellow tube top, and sprayed the rest of her shoulders and stomach. I looked at the stars, the half-moon, the water, the dock, the faraway trees on the other shore, the mud and pebbles well below our feet, but the only thing I saw was Stacy rubbing bug spray on her stomach. I almost wiped my drool with her shirt, blouse, or whatever it was, but I turned my head and used my wrist instead. Not like that made me any more composed when she bent forward and sprayed her feet and ankles, one at a time, going around the straps of her flip-flops and her anklets, then the front of her tanned shins, knees, and thighs, up to the edge of her too-short, too-tight, orange-and-yellow tie-dyed skirt.

I felt fluttery and warm, pressed my eyes shut to stem the giddiness in my head, and the next thing I knew I was on my feet, facing Darren’s lawn, with my back turned to Stacy. I could’ve told myself that I’d stood up because I was still on the job and that I’d taken the opportunity to case the joint while she was occupied. But that would’ve been a lie. Maybe it was instinct that got me off that rock, or a reflex, like when the doctor tapped you in the knee with a rubber mallet and your leg jerked forward automatically, no matter how hard you tried to keep it from moving. Whatever it was, I’d put a couple of feet between us, wiped the sweat off my palms, steadied my breathing, and shifted my gaze toward the party.

With the way the ground sloped upward, the white-yellow glow from the back of Darren’s home was visible maybe fifteen yards above my head but two hundred and fifty or more yards away. The music was a bit clearer now, because I heard some treble and guitar licks along with the bass (although I couldn’t make out the song); there were sounds of splashing in the pool to the left, as well as shouts, hollers, and blips of elevated voices throughout; and the tiny backlit forms of maybe a hundred teenagers could be seen darting everywhere to and fro—dancing, standing, running, diving, tumbling, embracing.

“Hey, Genie,” Stacy beckoned, snapping me out of it, “could you like put some bug spray on my back?”

She was facing me when I turned around, and her hazel eyes glowed above her cheeks like a lynx’s in the night. Not that I’d ever seen one. She handed me the bug spray and our fingers touched, just for an instant, like a single brush of a hummingbird’s wing. She turned around, and I exhaled shakily but deeply, getting it all out, pumping the bug spray dispenser with my index finger toward her upper back, and then wiping the burning metallic mist from the corner of my mouth. I should probably point it at
her
, I thought, and tried again.
Pshhht, pshhht
, it went across her shoulder blades as I held her white blouse in my left hand and tried to think of cold and distant places with no hot chicks in them, like Vermont or Maine. Somehow, I didn’t know how, but somehow I managed to spray her lower back without fainting, which was a major accomplishment.

“The back of my legs, too?”

The back of her legs, too? The question almost didn’t make sense at first, but I was a gentleman, so I was obliging. The only problem was that Stacy had stood up, leaned slightly forward, bent over a little, and presented before my gaping mouth and disbelieving eyes a heart-shaped miracle in orange-and-yellow candy wrap. Steady, boy steady. I had to play it cool, like it was no big thing—no big thing at all, just round and tight and shimmering and perfect and close
enough to touch.
Aw, Christ!
She shouldn’t be
allowed
outside with something like that for
everyone
to see! Why the hell wasn’t she home with a babysitter or something? Shit, why wasn’t
I?
No, Stacy was independent, she did her own thing, and she probably didn’t listen to her mom either; she was a bad girl who’d snuck out at night, and what bad girls needed more than anything else was a good spanking. I was sick, perverted and sick, and I was going to jail or the asylum, simple as that.

“Hur-ry
, the mosquitoes are way brutal.”

Duty called, and I rallied to it despite my mental illness. I turned my head to the left as I squatted down, looking at the shore and glistening black water, until I’d safely cleared the source of all temptation, then turned my head back to see what I was doing and sprayed bug spray on the backs of Stacy’s priceless knees and calves. I didn’t touch them or anything else, though, because I hadn’t been invited to and it was wrong to touch without asking or being asked, so I didn’t. Then I stood up and realized that I’d done it,
I’d really done it
, without making an ass out of myself, passing out, or committing a crime. I felt great. My whole body was trembling and I’d collapse any second, but I felt great.

Stacy plopped back on the rock, took her shirt from me, put it back on, tied it at the bottom, and said, “Thanks, Genie; that totally saved me.”