The Boys Next Door (22 page)

I watched him for a little longer. Yes, I could tell him from Sean, even at a distance, even in the dark. The way he moved his head, the way he tapped his fingers on the ground in that fidget I’d fallen in love with. That could have been me instead of Sean, sitting with Adam in the dark. But there wasn’t a way to fix this.

Ten years from now, I’d be married to someone I’d met at college. Adam would be married to someone he’d met on the bomb squad. We’d all come home to visit our parents at Thanksgiving. Adam and I would see each other out on the docks. We would feel obliged to talk for a few minutes and laugh uncomfortably about this one summer that had ruined our friendship forever. And then we’d walk away.

I looked at the clock on my bedside table behind me. 12:02. I closed the window shade, blocking out the party and Sean and Adam. I slipped off the disco dress and folded it into a big box with the scrapbook Mom and I had made to fill in with pictures of my sixteenth birthday. Standing in a chair precariously balanced on books, mags, and Mr. Wuggles—God only knew what was under there, really—I slid the box onto a shelf in the top of my closet. Where it belonged.

I woke to Kelly Clarkson’s “Breakaway.”

My body had gotten used to waking at this time. I didn’t remember my dreams.

I would miss them.

But I tried to shake it off. I tried not to wish Adam would show up with a birthday present for me—even though I’d forgotten to get one for
him
! I would have the usual birthday breakfast with Dad and McGillicuddy, just like every year, and then I’d try to get through my first-ever day of avoiding my ex-best friend. While I worked at his parents’ marina. And he worked there too. Easy.

For breakfast, Dad made me pancakes with blueberries in the shape of smiley faces, because he was a dork. Between the butter and the syrup, McGillicuddy handed me a long tube-shaped present. Actually it was just a wrapping paper tube with the wrapping paper still on it, and something rolled up inside. Boys were like that. He saw my look and shrugged. “It would have been a waste of perfectly good wrapping paper. This worked.”

Still giving him the look, I pulled out the contents of the tube and unrolled a wakeboarding poster. “Dallas Friday!” I exclaimed. “Dallas Friday shattered her femur doing a whirlybird.”

“I thought it was perfect for the occasion,” McGillicuddy said. “Fearless.”

Dad cleared his throat and pushed a little box across the table to me. It was beautifully wrapped with an intricate bow that most girls would keep on their bulletin boards. Obviously wrapped in a store. I slipped the bow off intact and tried to unstick the paper without tearing it. It tore by accident and then, what the hell, I ripped it off.

I flipped open the velvet ring box. Inside was a silver ring with pearls and diamonds. It looked real. Was I supposed to bite it to make sure? No, that was gold coins in cowboy movies. It also looked vaguely familiar. “You didn’t get this at the store.”

“I had them check the settings,” Dad said. “They cleaned it and wrapped it for you.”

I examined the ring more closely. “It belonged to Mom.”

“Her parents gave it to her for her sixteenth birthday.”

I looked into his eyes, so full of concern. We had a touching moment. Then of course McGillicuddy dropped his fork and went under the table to hunt for it, and it was hard to keep the touching moment going while McGillicuddy sat on my toes. “Ow!” I kicked him.

“When you were younger,” Dad said, “I thought you’d never wear it, because it wasn’t your style. Lately, I’m not so sure. I thought I should give you the choice.”

I freed it from the box and slipped it onto my finger. It was a crazy ring, diamonds glinting in contrast with the smooth pearls. And it was heavy. If I ever got in a fix in a dark alley, I could use it as brass knuckles. Or if I was cornered on a rooftop, I could hook it onto a clothesline and slide to freedom like James Bond. Don’t try this at home.

“I’ll wear it because it’s a part of me,” I said. “Thank you, Dad.” I walked around the table and hugged him. Then I sat back down, took another bite of pancake, and stared straight ahead at the empty chair.

And I realized for the first time ever that we kept an empty chair at the table. There were three of us. You would think we would have three chairs normally, and bring in a fourth when Adam came to dinner, which clearly wouldn’t be happening anymore. It wasn’t like the table was square, and a chair missing from the fourth side would be conspicuous. The table was round, and could have three chairs as easily as four or five or eight.

I was swallowing my pancakes in order to point this out when Dad said, “I need to tell you something, Bill. I don’t want you to see me on the bank during the wakeboarding show and wipe out because of the shock. We’ve had enough wakeboard falls for one lifetime.” He took a sip of coffee. “I have a date for the Crappie Festival.” He took another sip of coffee. “It’s Frances.”

I sat still, thinking back to that talk I’d had with Frances. She’d said,
You’re the only one who comes to visit. Except—

McGillicuddy didn’t budge, either. Dad must have taken our nonreaction as disapproval. “I never said anything while she worked here,” he hurried on. “I never did anything. We were coping so well, for a grieving family—”

“Except for when you sent me to the shrink,” I pointed out.

He continued more loudly, “—and I was terrified of messing that up.” He turned to McGillicuddy. “But now you’ve got a foot or two out the door.” He turned to me. “And you’re—” He sighed. “Grown. I thought it would be okay now.” He took still another sip of coffee, nonchalant, but his eyes darted to McGillicuddy and me in turn. “Even if it’s not okay, I’m still going out with her.”

We sat in silence a few moments more. Then McGillicuddy hollered, “Fanny the Nanny!”

“It’s all very
Jane Eyre
of you, Dad,” I said. McGillicuddy had read
Jane Eyre
in ninth grade English, and then
I’d
read it in ninth grade English. We’d wished we had Frances back just so we could make
Jane Eyre
jokes.

McGillicuddy snorted. “Hide the lighter fluid.”

“Check the attic,” I said.

Dad sat back in his chair, relaxing a little.

“No wonder she used to get so mad when Sean sang to her from
The Sound of Music
,” McGillicuddy said.

“Does this mean we have to start drinking soy milk again?” I asked Dad.

“I’m glad we’ve gotten this settled,” Dad said. “Bill, what’d you dream about?”

McGillicuddy blinked at the change of subject. “I can’t tell you.”

“Why not?” I grinned.

“She’s a real person.”

I took this as my cue to head for the marina. Dad would probably coax the dream out of McGillicuddy—Dad was a lawyer, after all—and I didn’t particularly want to hear just then about Tammy beating McGillicuddy at wrestling in chocolate pudding.

But McGillicuddy stood when I did. Dad looked up at him and said, “You take care of your sister today.”

McGillicuddy shrugged. “How?”

Dad looked at me. “And you watch out for those boys.”

It was way too early in the morning for a breakdown, so I squeezed my eyes shut to hold back the tears and stepped out the door, calling, “I’m afraid I have nothing to be afraid of.”

In the garage, balanced on the handle of the seed spreader, looking out of place between the lawn mower and the tiller, was a long-stemmed pink rose.

McGillicuddy passed me. I called, “Tammy left you a gag gift.”

He hardly glanced at the rose on his way out the garage door. “Pink isn’t my color.”

Frances must have left it as a joke for Dad, then. I should take it into the kitchen before it wilted. Almost wishing it were mine, I ran my finger across a soft petal. My hand found a pink ribbon tied around the stem, then a tag hanging from the ribbon. The tag said in Adam’s scrawl, “YES it’s for you.” I let a little laugh escape even as my eyes filled with tears.

He’d called me a bitch. I wasn’t running back to him when he left me one rose. On the other hand, there was no need to stuff it down the garbage disposal. Maybe Adam and I could be friends again after all. Someday. Besides, I adored the scent of roses: perfume and dirt. I put the blossom to my nose, inhaled deeply, grinned, and headed to work.

Another rose lay atop the woodpile.

A third was tied to an oak tree with a hangman’s noose fashioned from kudzu vine.

A fourth stuck out of a broken brick in the seawall.

A fifth lay across the handles of the doors into the marina. They all smelled so lovely, my blood pressure hardly went up when Mrs. Vader shrieked at me, “Where have you been?”

She must have freaked out because the marina was already swamped with customers. The Crappy Festivities today were divided among the town swimming park and the three biggest marinas on this section of the lake, including ours. We got the crowning of the Crappy Queen. I wished we got a more interesting event, such as the Crappy Toss. I could have thrown a dead fish as far up the beach as anybody. The Crappy Queen contest was just a bunch of high school girls parading up and down the wharf as Mr. Vader called their names and announced the weights of the biggest fish they’d caught all year, and what bait they’d used. At least the event did its job of bringing customers in.

Well, if Mrs. Vader wanted me there sooner, she should have told me the day before. “Where have I been?” I repeated. “I get asked that a lot for some reason.”

She took the roses from me without comment and shoved me into the showroom, where a small crowd of people in shorts and flip-flops milled between the displays. “It’s been a revolving door in here since we opened this morning,” she hissed. “People want to buy wakeboards, and they want to buy them from
you
.”

“Wow! Really?” I’d feel a little guilty selling people wakeboards, considering my experience two days before. But after all, my wreck was caused by a brain cloud and a broken heart, not equipment failure. I patted my head to make sure my bangs hung down over my stitches.

“Yes, really!” Mrs. Vader said. “Adam’s been covering for you, but he just mumbles at customers.”

“Where
is
Ad—,” I started to ask. Then I saw his broad back, and the door to the warehouse closed behind him. Where he’d stood, a rose protruded from behind a Liquid Force on the wall.

He’d called me a bitch. I wasn’t running back to him when he left me six roses. But I did extract the new rose carefully and put it with the others in the vase Mrs. Vader set on the counter. Then I found another rolled up in the boat twine, and still another lying across the containers of worms.

In the late morning, as I manned the cash register (after pulling out the rose inside), Dad and Frances came in. My heart pounded when I saw Frances. I wanted to vault over the counter and throw my arms around her. Instead, I asked her in a British accent, “Please, marm, are you to be my new mother?”

“Lori!” my dad burst out. Flushing red, he realized he desperately needed a new slalom ski
right then
, and bolted for the display.

Frances watched him go. “Very funny,” she told me through her teeth. Then she leaned across the counter, kissed me on the forehead, and gave me a grudging smile. “Happy birthday.”

“Thank you, marm.”

She reached for my hand. “What a beautiful ring.” She moved my finger back and forth so the ring glittered under the fluorescent lights, and smiled at me again. “Your mother would be proud of you.”

“What a pretty dress,” I said. “Is it hemp?”

Holding her chin high, she said self-righteously, “It’s organic cotton.” She took a long whiff of the roses. “You and Adam have gotten yourselves in a mess, I hear. ‘Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!’ Sir Walter Scott.”

I patted her hand. “That’s nice, dear.”

“‘An honest man’s the noblest work of God.’ Alexander Pope.”

I squinted across the showroom. “I think I have a customer.”

My dad recovered and decided he could put off that slalom ski purchase after all. He came to the counter, put his hand on Frances’s back, and asked her, “Is Lori giving you lip?”

“She’s making fun of me!” Frances exclaimed in mock astonishment. “I’m offering her aphorisms and she’s making fun of me!”

“They do that.” Dad turned to me and said, “We’re going to wish Bill luck before the show. Aren’t you at least riding in the boat with the boys?”

“Ha! I’d rather go shopping.” Snort.

As Frances pushed open the door into the sunshine, she said something in Russian. Something long that she was determined to get out in full. Dad stood in the doorway and waited for her with a look of pure luv while she finished.

I didn’t need any sage advice on honesty and I
definitely
didn’t need any from Dostoyevsky. “
Do svidanya
,” I muttered. Then I realized the customer from across the showroom was approaching the counter. “Yes ma’am, may I help—” It was Tammy.

She slid a candy bar onto the counter. “Hook me up, would you? Now that I have a boyfriend, I’m trying to maintain my girlish figure.”