The Boys Next Door (The Boys Next Door 1)

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.”

As I scanned the candy into the register, I looked over my shoulder to see whether Mrs. Vader was listening from the office. I’d told customers off before when Mrs. Vader wasn’t around, if they really deserved it. Tammy was McGillicuddy’s girlfriend. I didn’t want to be the annoying little sister she dreaded seeing when she came over to our house. But damn if she was going to follow me around and taunt me! She could have bought a candy bar at a gas station.

She must have seen I was gearing up to tell her off. She knew me better than I’d thought. Either that or she recognized the fixed killer stare I got before I served an ace. For whatever reason, she said in a hurry, “What draws me to McGillicuddy as a boyfriend is the same thing that draws me to you as a friend. You’re both so honest, to the point of being clueless. After years of being stuck at tennis tournaments with Holly and Beige, it’s refreshing.”

“Eighty-three cents,” I said. “You’re not helping yourself here.”

“And if I wanted honesty, I should have been more honest myself. When you left the party, I told McGillicuddy what I did to you. He didn’t un-ask me out, but I could tell he was disappointed.”

McGillicuddy would never un-ask a girl out. Even if he hated her guts, he’d keep his promise and act like a gentleman about it. I didn’t tell Tammy this because she was genuinely concerned about what he thought of her now. It was sort of sweet. “If it makes you feel better,” I told her, “he dreamed about you last night.”

“He did?” Her face glowed in the sunlight streaming through the showroom windows. Then she quirked her eyebrows at me. “He tells you about his dreams?”

I nodded. “Me and Dad, every morning at breakfast. Are you going to pay for that?”

She dug in her pocket, peered at the change in her palm, and picked out some coins. She had the same purse-carrying issues I had. “Anyway,” she said, “I’m sorry for using you. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I didn’t give it a thought. But I should have.”

“Maybe I’d like to be used by a girl.” As she passed me the change, I said, “I’d like to be good enough friends with a girl that we use each other without asking, and help each other without question. I’d like to know a girl always had my back.” I tossed the coins in the register and slammed the drawer shut. The nickels had slid into the dime compartment, which would drive Mrs. Vader insane.

Tammy nodded. “We’ll work on it. So, the wakeboarding show’s starting soon. You want to go watch it with me?”

“Can’t,” I said, gesturing to the crowded showroom that was my responsibility. Wait a minute—it had emptied while I wasn’t watching.

Mrs. Vader popped her head out the door of the office. She gazed suspiciously at the cash register drawer, like she just knew something was amiss in there. “Lori, why don’t you take a few hours off? You should go outside and watch the boys.”

“I don’t want to go outside and watch the boys.” Actually I did. More than anything. I’d never missed a show before. And I’d never missed Adam so much. But I wanted to watch them from the roof or a tree or somewhere else Adam wouldn’t see me watching them. He’d called me a bitch. I wasn’t running back to him when he left me nine roses.

Mrs. Vader folded her arms. “Go outside anyway.”

I folded my arms too. “I don’t want to go outside.”

“Well, I don’t want you to work.”

“I want to work.”

She pointed at me and screamed like I imagined real mothers did when their daughters turned out too much like them. “You’re fired!”

“All right!” I threw my cash register key onto the counter and stomped outside.

Then turned right back around, smacked into Tammy, stepped inside, and took the roses Mrs. Vader held out to me wrapped in a paper towel. Her lips were pressed together, just like Adam’s expression when he was trying not to laugh.

I stalked down the sidewalk outside. Tammy scampered to keep up with me. “Are you really fired?”

“Of course not,” I sighed. “She fires me about once a week in the summers. I guess I’ll take the rest of the day off, though. What’s all this for?” I slowed to a stop at the edge of the enormous crowd. The air smelled like hamburgers and funnel cakes. People stood or sat together on towels, picnicking. I could hardly see a bare patch of grass or wharf, but it wasn’t quite time for the wakeboarding show.

“They’re crowning the Crappie Queen!” Tammy said.

“If you’re going to hang around here, you need to use the correct pronunciation. It’s Crappy Queen.”

“It’s Rachel.”

Sure enough, down on the wharf, Mr. Vader was calling Rachel forward as the new Crappy Queen. There was some justice in the world.

And then I changed my mind. Instead of the evening gown I’d seen at Crappy Festivals past, Rachel skipped onto the wharf in cutoff jeans pulled over her bathing suit, and bare feet. She grinned while the outgoing Crappy Queen pinned a tiara in the shape of a fish into her hair. Maybe old Rachel was all right after all.

“Pardon,” McGillicuddy said right behind me. He shoved me off the sidewalk. I shoved him back, then realized that when he pushed me, he’d tucked another rose into my bouquet. Walking backward down the hill, he blew a kiss at Tammy. Tammy giggled and blew him a kiss back.

Another voice behind me said, “A-choo!” SOMETHING FLEW INTO MY BOUQUET. I almost dropped my beautiful roses to avoid further contact with nastiness. But it was only Cameron, pretending to sneeze another rose at me.

“Racking up, aren’t you?” Tammy asked, and I had to grin.

Right after Cameron came Sean. His nose was only a little blue. I could hardly tell it had bled the night before. Sean was like that. And he held a rose between his teeth.

I smirked at him. “Don’t tell me. You want me to come and get it.”

“Oh no,” he said through a mouthful of stem, holding up his hands in warning. “Adam would kill me.” He handed me the (spitty, ew) rose. “Did Dad crown Rachel the Crappy Queen yet?”

“Yes,” Tammy and I said together.

Sean’s face fell. “Oh!” He ran down the sidewalk. At the bottom of the hill, he caught Rachel by the arm and talked to her for a few seconds. His face fell further, and she shook her head. He walked away after the other boys, toward the wakeboarding boat. I almost felt sorry for him.

“I’m going to congratulate Rachel on her coronation,” I said to Tammy.

“You aw?” Tammy said with her mouth full of candy bar. “Uhhh—”

“Come with me, because you’re my friend and help me without question. I may need someone to call 911 if she breaks my arm.”

“I’w be wight behiwd woo.”

I maneuvered down the hill through the crowd, using the roses to clear the way in front of me. Now Rachel talked with an elderly couple, which might make her less likely to deck me. “Rachel!” I squealed, jumping up and down, spilling petals. “Congratulations!”

She stared at me like a fish out of water, but the elderly couple thanked me in the manner of clueless grandparents, which got us out of that embarrassing little moment.

“I need to tell you a couple of things,” I said, hugging the roses to my chest and putting my other arm around her.

“Come this way,” Tammy said, moving along the seawall. Rachel looked back to signal the elderly couple to save her, but I moved in, blocking her view. What a team Tammy and I made. Beyond the crowd, Tammy sat on the seawall with her legs hanging over. I did the same, and Rachel sat between us.

“It wasn’t my idea to enter,” Rachel spoke up defensively. “I caught a two-pounder, and my granddaddy said we could not let the mayor’s daughter win again this year with only a one-pounder and a plastic minnow.”

Rachel rose further in my opinion.

“I don’t need to tell you how bizarre that is,” I said. “Obviously you have a sixth sense about these things.” I nodded toward Sean cranking the boat and backing it away from the wharf. My brother was in the bow, Cameron sat further back, and Adam was bent below the side of the boat, gathering something. “I needed to tell you Sean is really in love with you.”

Now she looked toward the boat puttering across the inlet. “How do you know? You can just tell, right? You can tell by the way he acts? After the last couple of weeks, I’ll never be able to trust that again.” She tried to sound tough, but her delivery was stilted, and her eyes rolled for emphasis at the wrong place. I’d never actually talked to her before—I’d only watched her from afar—or I would have noticed this. She came off as a lot younger and more unsure of herself than I’d expected. Which made me like her even better.

“I know because he told me,” I said. The boat pointed in our direction, almost like it was heading for us rather than the open water. “I also needed to tell you your wake-board bindings came in at the showroom this morning.”

“Oooh, I forgot Sean gave you a wakeboard!” Tammy said. “I wish I could learn.”

“It’s fun,” I said. Maybe McGillicuddy could take Tammy out wakeboarding. Maybe Sean could invite Rachel again and hope she showed up this time. Of course, both Sean and McGillicuddy would have to fight the boys every step of the way. We were good together, but it would be nice to wakeboard with other people once in a while, without a freaking outcry and rumors of mutiny.

“Hey,” I said suddenly. “I have a boat.” There it was, tied on the side of the dock in front of my house. We hardly ever used it because we were always in the Vaders’ boat. I nudged Tammy. “If you want, come over after I get off work tomorrow, and I’ll teach you to wakeboard.” I turned to Rachel. “You too, Miss Crappy.” Of course, they probably didn’t have boaters’ licenses, which meant I’d have to drive. They’d be learning to wakeboard, so I’d just take them around in slow circles. Surely I couldn’t mess that up. They wouldn’t suspect a thing.

“That would be great!” Tammy exclaimed. She touched Rachel’s bare toes with her toes. “I’ll pick you up, Your Crappiness.”

In case Tammy got the wrong idea, I warned her, “McGillicuddy won’t be with us. He’ll be with the boys. This will be a girl trip.”

“I know,” she said, as if she did really know and wasn’t trying to get out of it.

“But we could cruise by the warehouse very slowly like we need to borrow another tow rope,” I said. “I have become an expert at seduction.”

Rachel snorted, then gave up suppressing it and proceeded to laugh her ass off. The Crappy Crown detangled itself from her hair and would have fallen in the lake if I hadn’t caught it for her. Finally she calmed enough to cough out, “I don’t know. I’m not very graceful.”