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But I didn’t feel happy for her. I felt jealous. “I wanted to be the one to take you to get your license.” She nodded. “I know. I’m sorry. I would have loved to take my street test in your pink truck, but I didn’t know when my dad would let me see you again, and I didn’t want to wait forever. Sean drove me.”
I looked at her. I knew my dad was watching us, and I didn’t care. A soft breeze blew the white-blonde hair around her face into her eyes. With both hands she gathered all her hair into a ponytail in back, twisted it, and pulled it forward over one shoulder. I wished she would magically produce a clip from her bikini bottoms and pin it up.
All of this would have been so much easier if I had an ugly girlfriend.
I knew she felt guilty when she went on. “My dad had a big case this week, and of course Frances was keeping the Harbarger kidlets. I begged your mom to let somebody off from the marina—anybody. Finally she said Sean could take me because he was just hanging around the showroom and hitting on the customers anyway.” I thought, Better them than you. I looked angrily toward Sean.
He stood on the grass with his hands on his hips, surveying the course. He didn’t want McGillicuddy to show him up. “McGillicuddy and Cameron wet the grass when they came out of the lake,” he complained. “It will be slippery.”
“Oh, come on!” I hollered.
At the same time, Cameron yelled, “Pussy!” and quickly covered his mouth, looking around stealthily in the hope that Mom wouldn’t know who’d said it.
“Teams don’t get extra points for field conditions,” Lori pointed out. “Take it like a man.”
“Best two of three,” McGillicuddy suggested.
?ese words weren’t even out of McGillicuddy’s mouth when Sean started forward, hoping he’d catch Lori off guard and avoid the hose. He hurdled the cooler neatly and ran face-first into her stream of water.
“Good one,” I told her.
He continued blindly down the yard, caught the rope, and swung anemically over the lake. I threw the ball. He grabbed at it and missed, dropping into the lake empty-handed.
Everyone moaned.
He surfaced, spluttering, and pointed at me. “You were high.”
I called, “You are high if you think that was high.” Actually it had been a bit high, because I’d aimed for his head.
“My turn,” Lori said. “Who’s manning the hose?”
“I will,” Sean said. He waded toward her with his hands out.
She squirted him, a hard spurt square in his belly button.
“Oh,” he cried, doubling over. “You’ll pay for that.” He hopped up onto the dock.
“Will I?” she asked, handing over the hose.
It was a good thing I trusted her. Otherwise I might think she was flirting with him.
He slapped me on the back. “You should have seen her taking her driving test. I fastened my seat belt and took all the sofa cushions with me just in case—”
“You did not.” Lori poked him in the ribs. Grrrrr.
“But you knew your left from your right?” I asked, because I wanted to know, and because I wanted to distract her and stop her from touching Sean.
“I sat in the backseat,” Sean said. “When the tester told her to turn right, I tapped on the right side of her seat. When the tester told her to turn left, I tapped on the window.”
This was very kind of Sean. I wanted to kill him.
Lori laughed along with him, but she kept her eyes on me. “I didn’t believe you, Sean. I wouldn’t put it past you to steer me wrong just for fun.”
“Who, me?” He tried to squirt Mom all the way across the lawn with the garden hose.
“I used a trick Adam taught me. I put the fingers of my left hand in the shape of an L on the steering wheel.”
“But why are you driving on the date with Parker tomorrow night?” I asked. “Why can’t Parker drive you? I was hoping your first date driving would be with me.” Now I sounded selfish and I knew it, but I couldn’t help it.
Lori nodded. “I thought about that. My dad knows I’ve been bluesing for my license. If Parker drove instead, my dad might figure out this is all a set-up.”
“Lori, he’s going to know it’s all a set-up anyway.”
“He isn’t. Look at me.”
It was a testament to how much I’d missed her that I breathed a little faster just from looking deep into her green eyes. For a second my as**ole brother wasn’t standing right next to us and our nosy parents weren’t watching us. Lori and I stood alone together on the dock, as we had a thousand times before, when it didn’t matter.
“I’m clueless,” she said. “Right?”
“Right.” I wasn’t going to lie to her. She wasn’t a dumb blonde, but the way she acted, you’d have to know her since birth or look at her SAT scores to figure this out.
“Well, I inherited it from somewhere.” She turned her back on me. I watched her go, staring at her tanned back and her perfect ass in that pink bikini. She passed Sean, walked up the dock, and continued through the grass to the starting place for the obstacle course.
I hadn’t run the course yet—I would take my turn last because I was always the most likely to get hurt—but I felt like I’d run it already, the way my heart pounded.
Sean gave up trying to squirt Mom with the hose. He held it almost straight up, adjusting the stream for the slight breeze. ?e water cascaded on top of my head before descending to earth.
I didn’t even hit him. For one thing, I was used to Sean. For another, my dad had warned me to display one iota of self-control. ?is was more than an iota. ?is was a kappa and perhaps even a lambda, the longer this went on. The cold water soaked my hair and splashed onto my T-shirt.
As if it were perfectly normal for him to annoy me for no apparent reason, which I supposed it was, I asked him, “Are you going out with Rachel tomorrow?” I didn’t expect him to say yes. If they were going out, Rachel would have called me to ask my advice on how to act—as if I could advise anyone on how to deal with Sean. I just thought I would plant the seed in his head to ask her out, in case he’d forgotten about her already. He’d seemed crazy in love with her last week, which was the first time any of us had ever seen Sean act that way. But if she’d escaped his mind already, that would be a lot more like him.
He said, “You wish.”
?e water was so cold that my head ached. I didn’t dare glance at him. ?at would certify how much I cared. But I was astonished he saw through me. He knew that I was worried about him dating Lori, and that I’d be relieved if he dated Rachel again. I tried so hard to be conniving and still wasn’t nearly as devious as Sean when he seemed off his game.
Abruptly, he pointed the hose away from me, into the lake. Lori was about to start. I wiped the football on the only dry section of my shirt that was left.
“Girl power!” called Frances. She might have been a little drunk.
Lori dashed down the grass and hurdled the cooler, clearing it by a foot. Sean sprayed her with the hose, catching her square in the left boob. I almost cried foul. I put my hand over my mouth.
Lori just laughed. She kept running to the end of the lawn, across the sand, and leaped for the rope. She swung way out over the lake, and I threw the football.
Thinking back on it later, I didn’t remember being angry with her for flirting with Sean. I would never hurt her for that, or for any reason, on purpose.
Still, there had to be some explanation. ?e football hit her in the chest so hard that I heard the smack where I was standing. She dropped into the water with the ball and disappeared under the surface. The smack echoed once across the lake.
“Nice arm, son,” my dad called to me. He gave me a thumbs-up.
“Why are you egging him on?” my mom complained. “You never threw a football at me that way.”
“I didn’t bother. You catch like a girl. Watch, Lori will come up in a second with the ball.” A second came and went. Two seconds. I watched the spot where Lori had disappeared.
Sean said, “You’ve killed her.”
The football popped to the surface. By itself.
I jumped into the water and swam toward the spot. At the same time, McGillicuddy and Cameron sprang from under the tree and ran into the lake. I’d only managed a few strokes by the time they dragged her up the beach, one on each side, along with half the water in the lake.
I swam after them as fast as I could and ran up the beach. She was on all fours, face white. Her ribs pulsed like she was trying to cough but she couldn’t get any air in or out.
Everyone surrounded her now in a tight circle. “Lori!” her dad shouted.
“Pound her on the back,” Frances suggested.
She shook her head, eyes closed, and held up one hand.
I’d seen that face plenty of times before, when we were kids. “I knocked the wind out of her,” I explained.
She nodded, sucking in small breaths. She looked like she might laugh, but she didn’t have the air to laugh.
My mom leaned down toward us. “Breathe,” she told Lori unhelpfully.
Lori nodded again. She sat back in the sand and moved her hands in circles in front of her to show us she was trying. ?e skin on her chest between her br**sts was bright red where the football had hit her. Her gasps got longer and longer. Finally she had enough air in her lungs to cough out, “Quarterback or what?” The whole circle around us laughed—brothers heartily, adults nervously. I stood up, soaked T-shirt dripping on the sand, and put out a hand to help her up.
Her dad glared at me. I put my hand down and stepped back two paces. He extended his hand to help her, then pulled her away from the group.
Now everybody stood around in knots in the fading light, talking about other times when Lori had gotten the wind knocked out of her. So I wasn’t the only one who remembered this. My mom mentioned the time Lori ran into the dock on water skis and broke her arm. Frances brought up an episode even I had forgotten about, when Lori fell out of my tree house. Frances watched me as she said this, trying to gauge my reaction.
Maybe it was just me, but it seemed like none of us knew what to do until Lori’s dad finished talking to her. I only half paid attention to the stories of Lori losing her breath. Underneath the laughter, I tried to hear what her dad was saying.
I couldn’t catch most of it. Finally she started to walk away from him, and he raised his voice. “You’re always getting hurt when Adam is around.”
“?at’s because I’m always getting hurt,” she said huskily, “and Adam is always around.” She skipped back down the hill and stopped between Frances and me, careful not to look me in the eye.
“I’m really sorry,” I said as quietly as I could without whispering and attracting even more attention. “I forgot you were a girl.” I’d also forgotten Lori did not like to hear this. Anyway, it wasn’t exactly true. I never forgot Lori was a girl. I just never treated her any differently from the guys when we played games, because that’s what she wanted.
Maybe I should start.
Sean walked by, tossing the wet football from hand to hand. “Forgot she was a girl?” he mused. “Didn’t seem like it last weekend.” With one hand I shoved him hard enough to send him reeling into the lake. He sprang out of the water and yanked me in before I could dodge him. He pushed me way underwater and held me there. I wanted to punch him, but I knew from experience that it was hard to do any damage in the water anyway. And I kept repeating to myself that I was already in enough trouble. For myself, it didn’t matter so much, but Lori was at stake.
I stayed quiet under his hands, waiting for him to let me up. He didn’t. I ran out of breath and still he didn’t let me up. I scrambled past him toward the surface. He tried to hold me down in the darkness. I had an inch of height on him, but he had quite a few pounds on me. With all the strength I had left, I broke past him and gasped before he could dunk me again. I deserved this for knocking the breath out of Lori, but I’d had enough. “Uncle!” I yelled.
Above the surface, Lori and Frances and my mom were yelling too, hollering at Sean to let me go. He didn’t listen to them, but he listened to me. Poised to put his hands on my shoulders and shove me under, Sean paused and cocked his head at me. “What?”
“Uncle,” I repeated. “Isn’t that what people say when they give up?”
“I don’t know. You’ve never given up before.”
McGillicuddy and Cameron splashed through the shallow water toward us, wearing familiar looks on their faces that told me they thought they were saving the day, separating Sean and me. McGillicuddy reached Sean first and dunked him.
“I already said uncle,” I told Cameron just as he reached me, but this meant as little to him as it had to Sean. He turned me around and pinned my arm behind my back.
He was still mad at me for trying to punch him in the boat last weekend.
We were even, then, because I was still mad at him for flirting with my girlfriend. I tried to jerk out of Cameron’s grasp. He held me so hard that even the water didn’t help me slip free. Then he pulled my arm higher behind my back until it hurt.
“That’s my throwing arm,” I yelled. “Get the monkey off me, Cameron.”
“Isn’t this fun?” my mom called in a voice bright enough to be a cartoon. “I’m so glad we’ve gotten the families together again. We should do this more often. Who’s ready for homemade ice cream?”
At the same time the next night, I crouched in my tree house, scoping out Lori’s house. Yes, I felt ridiculous, but the woods between her house and mine weren’t thick enough for stealth. If I was going to watch her driveway unseen, there was nowhere else to hide except in the bushes, and I absolutely refused to hide in the bushes. ?at would make me a creep.
