Home > Work > Endless Summer (The Boys Next Door, #1-2)
61 " While walking toward them, I dropped my backpack, then pulled my tank top off over my head to reveal my bikini.And just balled up my tank top in one hand as if it were nothing, and threw it into the boat. “Heeeeeey!” I said in a high girl-voice as I hugged Cameron, whom I hadn’t seen since he’d come home from college for the summer a few days ago. He hugged me back and kept glancing at my boobs and trying not to. My brother had that look on his face like he was going to ask Dad to take me to the shrink again.I bent over with my butt toward them, dropped my shorts, and threw those in the boat, too. When I straightened and turned toward the boys, I was in for a shock.I had thought I wanted Sean to stare at me. I did want him to stare. But now that Sean and Cameron and Adam were all staring at me, speechless, I wondered whether there was chicken salad on my bikini, or-somewhat worse-an exposed nipple.I didn’t feel a breeze down there, though. And even I, with my limited understanding of grand entrances and seducing boys, understood that if I glanced in the direction they were staring and there were no nipple, the effect of the grand entrance would be lost. So I snapped my fingers and asked, “Zone much?” Translation: I’m hot? Really? Hmph.Adam blinked and turned to Sean. “Bikini or what?”Sean still stared at my boobs. Slowly he brought his strange pale eyes up to meet my eyes. “This does a lot for you,” he said, gesturing to the bikini with the hand flourish of Clinton from What Not to Wear. Surely this was my imagination. He didn’t really know I’d been studying how to be a girl for the past year!“Sean,” I said without missing a beat, “I do a lot for the bikini.”Cameron snorted and shoved Sean. Adam shoved him in the other direction. Sean smiled and seemed perplexed, like he was trying to think of a comeback but couldn’t, for once. Off to the side, my brother still looked very uncomfortable. I hadn’t thought through how he’d react to the unveiling of the swan. I hadn’t thought through any of their reactions very well, in case you weren’t getting this. I wanted Sean to ask me out, but I didn’t want to lose my relationship, such as it was, with everybody else. "
― Jennifer Echols , Endless Summer (The Boys Next Door, #1-2)
62 " What’s he doing?” I asked, leaning over the side of the boat, searching for him beneath the water. If the tow rope had gotten tangled, he might need help. And someone would need to go in the water with him, perhaps accidentally sliding against him down where no one else could see.“Boo!” A handful of bryozoa rushed up at me from the lake.I screamed (for once I didn’t have to think about this girl-reaction) and fell backward into the boat. Sean hefted himself over the side with one arm, holding the bryozoan high in the other hand. It dripped green slime through his fingers. “Bwa-ha-ha!” He came after me.I squealed again. It was so unbelievably fantastic that he was flirting with me, but bryozoa was involved. Was it worth it? No. I paused on the side of the boat, ready to jump back into the water myself. He might chase me around the lake with the bryozoa, but at least it would be diluted. On second thought, I didn’t particularly want to jump into the very waters the bryozoa had come from.Sean solved the problem for me. He slipped behind me and showed me he was holding the ties of my bikini in his free hand. If I jumped, Sean would take possession of my bikini top. I had thought about double knotting my bikini. I’d hoped against hope that Stage Two: Bikini would work, and that Sean might try something like this. Of course, I didn’t really want my top to come off in front of everyone. Nay, in front of anyone. But I’d checked the double knots in the mirror. They’d looked…well, double knotted, for protection, sort of like wearing a turtleneck to the prom. I’d re-tied the strings normally. Now I wished I’d double knotted after all. Sean brought the dripping slime close to my shoulder. “Go ahead and jump,” he said, twisting my bikini ties in his finges.“Sean,” came McGullicuddy’s voice in warning. This surprised me. My brother had never taken up for me before. Of course, none of the boys had ever crossed this particular line.But that was nothing compared with my surprise when the bryozoa suddenly lobbed out of Sean’s hand, sailed through the air, and plopped into the lake. Adam, standing behind him, must have shoved his arm.Which meant I owed Adam my gratitude for saving me. Except I didn’t want him to save me from Sean, and I thought I’d made that clear. Saving me from Sean with bryozoa…that was a more iffy proposition. I wasn’t sure whether I should give Adam the little dolphin look again when our eyes met. But it didn’t matter. When I turned around, he was already stepping over Cameron’s legs to return to the driver’s seat. "
63 " Notice anything different?”She tucked her pinstriped hair behind her ear and squinted at the screen. “I’m using the wrong font?”“Notice anything different about my boobs?”That got her attention. She whirled around in her chair and peered at my chest. “You changed your boobs?”“I’m showing my boobs,” I said proudly, moving my palm in front of them like presenting them on a TV commercial. All this can be yours! Or, rather, your son’s. "
64 " Early in the boob-emerging years, I had no boobs, and I was touchy about it. Remember in middle school algebra class, you’d type 55378008 on your calculator, turn it upside down, and hand it to the flat-chested girl across the aisle? I was that girl, you bi-yotch. I would have died twice if any of the boys had mentioned my booblets.Last year, I thought my boobs had progressed quite nicely. And I progressed from the one-piece into a tankini. But I wasn’t quite ready for any more exposure. I didn’t want the boys to treat me like a girl. Now I did. So today I’d worn a cute little bikini. Over that, I still wore Adam’s cutoff jeans. Amazingly, they looked sexy, riding low on my hips, when I traded the football T-shirt for a pink tank that ended above my belly button and hugged my figure. I even had a little cleavage. I was so proud. Sean was going to love it.Mrs. Vader stared at my chest, perplexed. Finally she said, “Oh, I get it. You’re trying to look hot.”“Thank you!” Mission accomplished.“Here’s a hint. Close your legs.”I snapped my thighs together on the stool. People always scolded me for sitting like a boy. Then I slid off the stool and stomped to the door in a huff. “Where do you want me?”She’d turned back to the computer. “You’ve got gas.”Oh, goody. I headed out the office door, toward the front dock to man the gas pumps. This meant at some point during the day, one of the boys would look around the marina office and ask, “Who has gas?” and another boy would answer, “Lori has gas.” If I were really lucky, Sean would be in on the joke.The office door squeaked open behind me. “Lori,” Mrs. Vader called. “Did you want to talk?”Noooooooo. Nothing like that. I’d only gone into her office and tried to start a conversation. Mrs. Vader had three sons. She didn’t know how to talk to a girl. My mother had died in a boating accident alone on the lake when I was four. I didn’t know how to talk to a woman. Any convo between Mrs. Vader and me was doomed from the start.“No, why?” I asked without turning around. I’d been galloping down the wooden steps, but now I stepped very carefully, looking down, as if I needed to examine every footfall so I wouldn’t trip.“Watch out around the boys,” she warned me.I raised my hand and wiggled my fingers, toodle-dee-doo, dismissing her. Those boys were harmless. Those boys had better watch out for me. "
65 " Sean was watching me, though. And Sean wiped the bryozoa residue from his hand across my stomach. This was the third time a boy had ever touched my bare tummy, and I’d had enough.Through gritted teeth, like any extra movement might spread the bryozoa further across my skin, I told him, “I like you less than I did.” I bailed over the side of the boat-the side opposite where the bryozoa returned to its native habitat. Deep in the warm water, I scrubbed at my tummy with both hands. A combination of bryozoa waste and Sean germs: it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Leaning toward worst, because now I had slime on my hands. Or maybe this was psychosomatic. Holding my hands open in front of me in the water, I didn’t see any slime. I rubbed my hands together anyway.Something dove into the water beside me in a rush of bubbles. I came up for air. Sean surfaced, too, tossing sparkling drops of water from his hair. “You still like me a lot, though, right?”“No prob. Green is the new black.” Giving up on getting clean, I swam a few strokes back toward the platform to get out again. What I needed was a shower with chlorinated water and disinfectant soap. I might need to bubble out my belly button with hydrogen peroxide.“What if I made it up to you?” He splashed close behind me. “What if I helped you get clean? We don’t want you dirty.” He moved both hands around me under the water, up and down across my tummy.It was the fourth time a boy had touched my tummy! And it was very awkward. He bobbed so close behind me that I had a hard time treading water without kicking him. I needed to choose between flirting and breathing.Cameron and my brother leaned over the side of the boat and gaped at us, which didn’t help matters. I’d been afraid of this. Flirting with Sean was no fun if the other boys acted like we were lepers. Well, okay, it was fun, but not as fun as it was supposed to be.Obviously I would need to give McGullicuddy the little dolphin talk. I wasn’t sure I could do this with Cameron-Cameron and I didn’t have heart-to-heart convos-but I might need to make an exception, if he continued to watch us like we were a dirty movie on Pay-Per-View (which I’d also seen a lot of. Life with boys).BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-Sean and I started and turned toward the boat. Still behind the steering wheel, Adam had his chin in his hand and his elbow on the horn.-EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEDamn it! I turned around to face Sean and gave him a wry smile, but he’d already taken his hands away from my tummy. The horn really ruined the mood.-EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESean hauled himself up onto the platform. I followed close behind him, and (glee!) he put out a hand to help me. Cameron and my brother yelled at Adam.-EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP. “Oh!” Adam said as if he’d had no idea he’d been laying on the horn. He looked at his elbow like it belonged to someone else.I was in the boat with Sean now, and he was still holding my hand. Or, maybe I was still clinging to his hand, but this is a question of semantics. In any case, I pulled him by the hand past the other boys to the bow. We didn’t have privacy. There was no privacy on a wakeboarding boat. At least we had the boat’s windshield between us and the others.As I turned to sit down on the bench, I stuck out my tongue at Adam behind the windshield. He crossed his eyes at me. "
66 " The only people who ever called me were my dad, my brother, assorted Vaders to tell me to come early or late to work (including Sean, but he always sounded grumpy that he had to call me, so it wasn’t as big a thrill as you’d think), Tammy to tell me to come early or late to tennis practice, and Frances. I glanced at the caller ID screen and clicked the phone on. “What’s up, Fanny?”From the time Mom died until I was eleven, Frances the au pair had hung out in the background of my life. Once Sean overheard someone calling her Fanny, whch apparently is a nickname for Frances. We found this shocking. I mean, who has a nickname that’s a synonym for derriere? Who’s named Frances in the first place? So the boys started calling her Fanny the Nanny. Then, Booty the Babysitter. Then, Butt I Don’t Need a Governess. This had everything to do with the nickname Fanny and the fact that she tried not to get upset at being addressed in this undignified manner when she was trying to raise compassionate, responsible children. It had nothing to do with her having an outsized rumpus. Frances had a cute figure, if you could see it under all that hippie-wear. "
67 " But you don’t really think wearing a low-cut top to the boys’ party will solve all your problems, do you?” she asked.“Of course not. I think wearing a low-cut top to the boys’ part will show Sean I’m ready for him.”“Lori, no girl is ever ready for a boy like Sean. How were finals?” Clearly she wanted to change the subject to impress upon me that boys were not all there was to a teenage girl’s life. As if.“Finals?” I asked.“Yes, finals. To graduate from the tenth grade? You took them yesterday.”Wow, it was hard to believe I’d played hopscotch with the quadratic equation only twenty-seven hours ago. Thinking back, it seemed like I’d sleepwalked through the past nine months of school, compared with everything that had happened today.Time flew when you were having Sean. "
68 " He was a dork, but at least he was totally comfortable in social situations, like Dad. Comfortable, or oblivious, which amounted to the same thing. "
69 " Show me you have one iota of self-restraint.”“I will,” I said quickly.“Stay away from her.”“Okay.”“Keep your hands off her.”“I’ll try.”He scowled at me.“I will,” I said.He wiggled his fingers at me. “And it might help public relations with Lori’s pop if you put on a shirt and quit walking around here like sex on a stick. "
