The Boys Next Door (11 page)

He jogged to catch up with me, and held my arm to balance me as I slipped my heels on. I knew better than to wear heels on the dock. I’d seen too many girls wear them at the boys’ parties. Heels got caught between the planks and arrested forward motion, yo.

“Why didn’t you tell your dad we’re hooking up?” Adam asked. “I told my mom we’re hooking up.” He sounded almost hurt, like he thought I was embarrassed of him.

“Would you come off it? You shouldn’t have told your mom. She gave me the third degree this morning, like she knows something’s up between you and Sean. You tried to get her to
ground
him? How am I supposed to go out with him if she
grounds
him?”

Adam shrugged and said with a straight face, “If you really loved him, it wouldn’t matter what you did when you went out, as long as you were together.” He pressed his lips together.

“You are so full of it. Anyway, I told Dad you were giving me a lift to town to buy an eyelash comb tonight, and we might hang out for a while. I figured he’d stage an intervention if I told him the whole truth. And if I told him you and I were hooking up for real, he’d give me the
fourth
degree about it, and you, and
sex
, and… oh.”

Adam nodded. “Whereas if you didn’t tell him, he’d give
me
the
fifth
degree.”

“I guess I didn’t think it through. It didn’t seem worth the trouble, since we’ll only be together a couple of weeks.” Truth was, I’d focused on how our diabolical plan would help me get Sean. With an emphasis on
Sean
. Not that Adam’s relationship with my dad didn’t matter, because they
did
have to live next door to each other for several more years, but come on. What were a few fake dates between friends?

We walked up the hill to Adam’s driveway. I opened the passenger door of the pink truck and climbed inside—and I do mean
climbed
, because when I stood on the ground, the seat was even with my head. Adam sat in the driver’s seat, weirdly. He’d driven McGillicuddy and me home from tennis the night before, but I was used to sitting in the backseat with Adam while someone older drove. I wasn’t used to seeing him as a driver himself.

Sean’s new truck had already left the driveway. He had to drive all the way across town to pick up Rachel. No worries. We’d see them at the movies. Our biggest problem would be deciding whether to sit on the back row with the other couples who planned to make out, or further down where Sean and Rachel could see us. Then maybe there would be the additional problem of the making out. But I was getting ahead of myself. We could solve that problem when we came to it, and we hadn’t even reached the movie theater yet. We were taking a detour at the dirt track, probably to show some of Adam’s friends the new (to him) pink truck. And the hot prize of a girl inside! Yeah, probably not.

Instead of parking in the dirt track lot, he drove around to the mud field. It was just a huge pit of mud that the owners of the dirt track lovingly sculpted into valleys and bumps, and watered daily. Build it and they would come. Boys loved to splash across the mud pit in their pickup trucks. They didn’t do this with their girlfriends, though. Girls wouldn’t put up with this.

And yet here we were, perched on the lip of the pit. Scooter Ledbetter pulled up behind us in his jacked-up F-150. We couldn’t even back out.

I ventured to ask, “Is this our date?”

“In all its glory.” With one arm, Adam made a sweeping motion across the mud field before us.

“Great. We’re trying to make Sean and Rachel jealous, besides which it’s my first date in real life, and you’re taking me mud riding.” I’d been with the boys and Mr. Vader to the dirt track countless times to watch races. I’d always thought my first date would be with Sean. Adam wasn’t too far off. But I’d never imagined my first date would be with Sean’s stand-in
at
the dirt track. “You’re bringing sexy back.”

He stuck out his bottom lip. “Where did you want to go?”

“Didn’t Sean and Rachel go to the movies?”

“Yeah, but I’ll bet she made him take her to the new Disney cartoon. That’s his punishment for stealing her from me. That and MTV. Endless reality shows on MTV.” He cracked his knuckles.

“Adam, I don’t care if it’s
Mickey and Minnie Bust a Move
. We need to be there.”

“We want to make them jealous,” he agreed, “but we can’t follow them around. We don’t want to
admit
we’re trying to make them jealous. And that’s exactly what we’ll be doing if we set foot in
Mickey and Minnie Bust a Move
.”

I started to protest. But as I thought about it, I remembered every time I’d watched a DVD with the boys, Adam had left the room after thirty minutes, asking Cameron to call him back in for the juicy parts. And we were always telling Adam to be quiet. We couldn’t hear the movie over his CD player, or his drum set, or the roar of the blender as he made milkshakes in the kitchen. I asked, “You can’t sit through a whole movie, can you?”

He frowned, which made cute little lines appear between his brows. He fished the lighter out of his pocket and flicked it, studying the flame.

Either he couldn’t sit through a whole movie, or it hurt him too much to be around Rachel while she was with Sean. This wouldn’t help us make them jealous. But it
was
only the second night after the freaking shock of seeing Sean and Rachel together for the first time. Adam’s heart must be breaking every time we talked about Sean and Rachel, yet he’d come with me this far. I could be more understanding and give him a few days for the wound to scab over.

“We don’t have to go to the movie,” I sighed, “but we need to go somewhere girls will see us. There’s no one here but boys. It’ll never get back to Sean and Rachel that we were together. Boys don’t gossip.”

“Pah! You don’t know us as well as you think.”

This was a disturbing prospect.

He stuffed his lighter back in his pocket. “Here’s an idea. Call me crazy, but what if we actually
enjoyed
hooking up?”

“Whoa, Nelly,” I said. “You scare me, thinking out of the box.”

“What if we made hooking up
productive
?”

“That’s what I’m talking about. Producing envy, with or without big fat teardrops.”

“Forget about that, Lori. It’ll come without us trying so hard.” He took the box of fishhooks out of his pocket and rattled it. “You’re turning sixteen in less than two weeks.”

That was a low blow. “You don’t have to rub it in that I forgot your birthday,” I protested. “You remember mine because yours is first.”

“And didn’t your dad stop taking you for driving lessons after you ran his Beamer into the woodpile?”

“Only because he told me to back to the left, and I thought I did. I would have done fine if he’d pointed instead of telling me the direction. Again, you don’t have to rub it—”

“I’ll teach you to drive.”

I blinked. He
was
a daredevil. “Around town?”

“No, right here. It’s safer.”

I pondered the mud field. “I might wreck the pink truck.”

“Who could tell?”

“I might hit somebody else.”

“If they’re here, mud riding, they’d probably get off on it.”

As if in agreement, Scooter Ledbetter chose this moment to start honking his horn in time to his stereo blasting Nine Inch Nails.

“Oh, what the hell,” I said, spitting my petrified gum out the window. It had turned more of a metamorphic flavor anyway. I scooted into the driver’s seat as Adam crawled over me. Nose close to his shirt, I caught a whiff of his cologne.

And then, too soon, he was on his side of the truck and I was on mine. “Is it in first gear?” he asked. “Are your feet on the brake and the clutch? Look both ways and make sure no traffic is coming before proceeding carefully into the mud hole.”

I screamed like a girl as the edge of the pit fell away under us. Then I bit my scream off short as we bounced over a little hill and then a big hill that sent us flying. Now I was giggling.

Adam grinned and fastened his seat belt. “Put the truck in first gear again,” he said in an amazing imitation of the calming announcer voice from the films we watched in driver’s ed. “Press harder on the gas to scale the side of the mud hole. As you reach the top and circle back around for another turn, don’t forget to signal.”

Later, waiting in line for our seventh time through, he told me, “You drive fine.”

“Really?”
I squealed.

“Yeah. Of course, I haven’t told you to turn left or right.”

“Right,” I said, disappointed. I thought I’d been driving fine, too. But I’d done well only because he hadn’t asked me to do anything hard, like tell left from right. And let’s not even
think
about starboard and port.

“When you’re driving by yourself, it won’t matter,” he reasoned. “You’ve lived in this town forever. You know how to get around. Your dad won’t be sitting in the passenger seat, telling you to turn left or right. The only time anyone will do that is when you take your driving test.”

“That’s also the only time a person taking her first road test will be banned from driving in Alabama for life.” I edged the pink truck forward as a Dodge Ram dropped into the mud field in front of us.

“I have ADHD,” he said. “I’m the master of cheating on tests. Just put your hands on the wheel like this.” He placed his hands on the dashboard with his first fingers up and his thumbs in, pointing toward each other. “
L
is for left.”

“Won’t the chick giving me the test notice I’ve got my fingers in an
L
on the steering wheel?”

“Hold your hands like that while she’s examining your car,” he said. “By the time you start driving, she won’t think anything about it. She’ll think you have arthritis and it’s none of her business.”

I looked over at him. “You’re a lot sneakier than I thought.”

He smiled.

I said, “Frances hasn’t forgiven you for exploding her homemade cheese.”

His laughter rang out at just the moment I plunged the truck into the pit. He’d given me the confidence of Dale Earnhardt Jr. on holiday. I veered off the very beaten path and into uncharted mud puddles. I kicked up splashes so high, Adam rolled up his window and asked me to roll up mine to save what was left of the ancient interior. We bounced from corner to corner and were bouncing our way back again when the truck dipped lower than I expected, sending a wave of muddy water across the hood and up the windshield. I pressed the gas and heard a ripping sound.

I turned to him in horror. “I broke your truck.”

“We’re just stuck. It happens.” He unfastened his seat belt. “Switch back.”

I started to crawl over him. He’d crawled over me last time, and I figured this time he’d slide under. But he started to crawl over, too. We met in the middle, laughed, and both moved to slide under at the same time.

“Do you want to be on top or on bottom?” he asked.

“Either way,” I heard myself saying. I had to remind myself that this was Adam, not Sean. This was the baby of the Vader family, who had always been the littlest, up until two days ago. At least in my mind.

He picked me up and, before I could wiggle, removed me to the passenger side. “There.” He slid into the driver’s seat and pressed the gas, harder than I’d pressed it, with a longer and louder ripping noise. He opened the door and stepped out, sinking much farther than he would have on solid ground. “They’ll call a tractor from the racetrack to pull us out, but it might take a while. Let’s wait by the concession stand. You’ll ruin your shoes, though. Here, get on my back.”

He stood outside the open driver’s side door. His back was waiting. I hadn’t been on a boy’s back since… hmm… a free-for-all fight with girls on boys’ backs at Cathy Kirk’s pool party in middle school. If I’d been included, obviously there hadn’t been enough girls to go around. And in middle school, the girls and boys were about equal in height and weight, so I’d worried I would crush the boy I rode on.

Not so with Adam. My shoes were dainty things you shoved your toes into with nothing to hold them on. I kicked them off and held them in one hand. I slid across the seat and onto his strong, solid back, feeling like a feather. A snowflake! A dainty snowflake surrounded by an acre of mud.

He nudged the door closed with his hip. I looked down. His feet had disappeared. “What about
your
shoes?” I asked. “Your mom will kill you.”

“They’re Sean’s. I’ll put them in his closet just like this.”

I felt a momentary pang for Sean. Then almost laughed out loud, picturing the look on his face. They were his shoes, and he would have a right to be mad. But if anything could ever make me dislike Sean, it was how much he cared about his clothes. I cared about my own clothes only through great effort.

Sean’s shoes made a
schlep
sound every time Adam took a step. He struggled getting up the hill to the lip of the mud hole, and I thought I would have to dismount after all.

He felt me start to slide down. “No!” he said, catching my legs more tightly. “We’re fine.” With one last
schlep
we made it to the top. The prize was a tiny Airstream trailer blowing smoke out an exhaust fan. The air smelled like fried food. “Are you hungry?” he asked.

“No, but that never stopped me before.”

“Me too.” He stepped up to the window and looked in. “What’cha got?”

The clerk/cook/janitor looked up from a NASCAR talk show on TV. “Cheese fries, homemade doughnuts.”

With me on his back, Adam couldn’t turn his head around enough to look at me, but he turned it enough to let me know I should choose from this array of delicacies.

“Strangely,” I said, “I have a taste for cheese fries.”

Adam reached into his pocket to pay. Putting me down on the bench beside the concession stand would have been miles easier. I was beginning to understand that he liked having me on his back. Holding my shoes in one hand, I grabbed the cheese fries with the other, and he carried a soda.

He walked to the bench, put the soda down, then put me down. I was still holding the cheese fries and my shoes. I tossed my shoes on the ground (oh well, so much for dazzling rhinestones) and picked up the soda so he could sit down, then handed it to him. It was like one of those problems on a standardized test at school. If Sean hooks up with everyone in school on Wednesday and Rachel on Friday, and Adam hooks up with Rachel on Thursday and Lori on Sunday, on what day does the nuclear war commence? One of those problems Adam would just draw an
X
through because he
thought
he would never encounter anything like it in the real world.