The Boys Next Door (The Boys Next Door 1)

My dad saw me coming and knew exactly what was going to happen. He jumped from his chair and jogged up the stairs, toward the shore, so I wouldn’t ruin his business suit. His tie flapped over his shoulder. He didn’t warn Mr. Vader, who took a sip of beer as I slid past, spraying water probably fifteen feet in the air behind me.

The wall of water smacked right on top of him. I didn’t want to turn my head to look, lose my balance, fall, and ruin the effect (chicken salad on bikini, hello). But I saw him out the corner of my eye, T-shirt and shorts soaked, beer halted in midair.

Sean probably heard me cackling all the way up in the boat. Sex-y. I tried to calm myself and concentrate. I wanted to try an air raley, which I’d been working up to last summer but never landed. If there was one good reason for Sean never to ask me out, it was that he couldn’t shake the memory of me wiping out after an air raley. Done correctly, I would hang in the air behind the boat for a few seconds with the board above my head. I would then sail down the opposite wake and land sweetly. Done incorrectly, it was a high-speed belly flop.

When I busted ass (or tummy), Sean and the other boys would make fun of me for the rest of the boat ride, and would spread it around their party that night. But they were so far away in the toy boat, and the drone of the motor was like a bubble around me. Nothing could hurt me in here.

I gestured upward, which told Adam to tell my brother to speed up. Adam knew what I planned to do and shook his head at me. What a pain, to stop the boat and argue with him about it. He didn’t consult anyone before he tried a trick and busted ass. If we stopped, Sean would insist my turn was over, and I’d be done for the day. I wasn’t done. So I nodded my head vigorously. Adam shook his finger at me, scolding. Then he turned around and spoke to my brother.

The drone pitched higher as the boat sped up. I relaxed, relaxed, relaxed and let the boat and the wave do the work for me. My muscles remembered what they’d tried to do last summer, and this time they were able to do it. I caught miles of air, a huge thrill, and one glance at the boat: four boys with their mouths open. Then I almost panicked as I lost my balance when my board hit its high point behind me. Almost—but I kept myself together. I rode gravity down the opposite wave.

Immediately I arced out and back to pick up speed, and did a 360 with a grab. Landed it. Then a 540. Landed it.

I thought I might be pushing my luck. I’d probably break my leg climbing back into the boat. Also, I didn’t want my arms to be so sore the next day that I couldn’t ride at all. I signaled to Adam that I was stopping and dropped the rope. The handle skipped away from me across the surface of the lake.

As the echo of the motor faded away and I sank into the warm water, I could hear them clapping for me. All four of them, standing up in the boat, facing me, applauding me and cheering for me. “Yaaaaaaay, Junior!”

I had never been so happy in my life.

And it got better.

4

I bent over in the water to loosen the bindings, slipped my feet out, and kicked my way back to the boat with my board floating in front of me. As I pulled myself up on the platform, Sean put out one hand to help me—totally unnecessary, since I’d climbed up on the platform a thousand times before with no help.

“I taught her everything she knows,” he said loudly enough for the other boys to hear, but looking only at me. He gave me his beautiful smile, a secret smile for the two of us to share, and sat down again.

“That’s bullshit,” Cameron said.

“I was the one who helped her most with the air raley last summer,” my brother said.

“Tough act to follow,” Adam told me, shrugging on his life vest. I would have treasured this comment forever if I hadn’t been high on Sean.

But I was. So I peeled off my life vest and dropped it on the floor of the boat, sat daintily in the seat where Adam had been, and crossed my legs. Like my fingers had a mind of their own, they bent inward and rubbed my palm where Sean had touched me. I tingled all over again at the thought. Or maybe I tingled because my body was still jacked from how hard I’d worked my muscles out on the water. Either way, I felt so lovely and sated just then, with the sun in my eyes. I wished Adam weren’t jumping in for his turn.

Because watching Adam wakeboard was not relaxing. He wasn’t careful when wakeboarding. Or in general. He was the opposite of careful. His life was one big episode of Jackass. He would do anything on a dare, so the older boys dared him a lot. My role in this game was to run and tell their mom. If I’d been able to run faster when we were kids, I might have saved Adam from a broken arm, several cracked ribs, and a couple of snake bites.

Knowing this, it might not make a lot of sense that Mr. Vader let us wakeboard for the marina. But we’d come to wakeboarding only gradually. When we first started out, it was more like, Look at the very young children on water skis! How adorable. One time the local newspaper ran a photo of me and Adam waterskiing double, each of us holding up an American flag. It’s okay for you to gag now. I can take it.

But Mr. Vader was no fool. He understood things changed. After the second time Adam broke his collarbone, Mr. Vader put us under strict orders not to get hurt, because it was bad for business. Customers might not be so eager to buy a wakeboard and all the equipment if they witnessed our watery death. To enforce this rule, the punishment for bleeding in the boat was that we had to clean the boat. Adam cleaned the boat a lot last summer.

At the end of the rope, Adam signaled that he was ready to go. I told Cameron, who was driving now. He started too slow, and Adam tried to get up too fast. “Down,” I called.

“Come on, LD,” Sean muttered as if Adam were right in front of him. Even though I’d heard this joke one billion times and didn’t think it was funny, I made sure to look over at Sean and laugh until he saw me laughing. He laughed too.

Adam had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. This was why I didn’t see a lot of him during the school year. I was in all the advanced classes, and he definitely was not. Sean had lots of fun with this. The boys actually called Adam ADD to his face. They called him LD (for Learning Disability). They called him SAS (for Short Attention Span) and Sassy and Sassafras. They told him the short bus was coming for him. He had a prescription to help him concentrate in school, but he refused to take it because it made him feel dead. In other words, he was perfectly happy with ADHD. Or he would have been, if the boys had left him alone about it.

Sometimes I thought he took stupid risks to make up for being slow in school. Or maybe he was just like that. The skull-and-crossbones pendant was perfect for him. The boys told him if he improved his grades, when he graduated he could apply to pirate school.

Cameron brought the boat around and straightened the rope. I told him Adam was ready to go. This time they got it right. Adam got up. Immediately he told me to speed up, and I told Cameron. Adam did a tantrum to blind, which meant he backflipped where he couldn’t see and ended with his back to the boat. He preferred tricks with a blind landing. He told me to speed up again, and I told Cameron. Adam did a turn to blind, touched down on the edge of his board, and miraculously managed not to fall.

“Good save!” McGillicuddy shouted from the front of the bow.

“Dumb luck,” Sean said.

I smiled at Sean. I would feel guilty later about laughing, as I always did when I laughed at Sean’s mean jokes. But while I was there with him, he was so charming, and I couldn’t help but laugh.

When I looked back at Adam again, he was in the middle of a 540 to blind, which was fine, but for the love of God, he hardly had time to land before he hit the rails on the pontoon boat. I waved to get his attention, then swiped my finger across my throat: cut it out. He signaled for me to speed up.

I told Cameron, “Adam would like to spend this summer in traction. Speed up.”

I turned back around in my seat to watch Adam again. Sean was leaning toward me in his seat, watching me. “Cold?” he asked me.

Pardon? Yeah, the ninety-degree afternoon and ninety-percent humidity always gave me a chill I couldn’t shake. But one delicate, haughty brain cell in the back of my mind told me he was flirting with me and I should feign helplessness.

“I’m freezing!” I squealed. And just like that, Sean Vader moved across to my side of the aisle and scooted against me in my seat until I made room for him. He put his hot bare arm around my bare shoulders. And I fainted.

No, I didn’t really. But I did feel dazed, perhaps from the hyperventilation. Suddenly I realized Adam had been gesturing wildly at me for several seconds without it even registering with me. He signaled me to slow down. I told Cameron.

Adam did a front flip. Sean said in my ear, “Gosh, I’ve never seen anyone do that before. Makes me want to buy a wakeboard from Vader’s Marina!” I giggled. Adam signaled me to slow down more, and I told Cameron.

Adam did a back roll with a grab. Sean put his free hot hand on my bare knee and whispered, “You don’t believe Adam’s bigger than me, do you?”

This time I missed a beat. I was used to locker room humor. But Sean directing locker room humor at me, flirting with me? It seemed unlikely that Stage Two: Bikini had worked so quickly. Was I reading him wrong? Adam gave me the thumbs-down, and I told Cameron to slow the boat one more time.

Just as I turned back around, Adam launched into what could only be an S-bend, which was absolutely impossible to land with the boat going this slowly.

Sean, McGillicuddy and I all swore at once, and watched Adam’s long, slow death-splash with interest and resignation.

“Down,” I called to Cameron.

Sean gave me the funniest look that said no shit. I laughed out loud. He smiled again as he found his board and slipped over the back of the boat to the platform.

Adam emerged from the depths, vaulted over the side of the boat, and stood close to my seat so he dripped on my formerly comfy, sun-dried self. He commented, “S-bend or what?”

“Or what?” Cameron said. “What the hell were you doing, trying it that slow?”

“Sometimes I want to try new things,” Adam said. “Sometimes I want to do things I know are bad for me, just for fun and profit. Don’t you, Lori?”

I gazed way up at him and gave him a look that said, Stay out of my net, little dolphin. He grinned right back at me, defiant.

“Yeah, Adam,” I said. “Sometimes I like to stick my finger in a light socket to see what will happen.”

He pointed at me. “Exactly.” Without another word to me, he took off his life vest and handed it to Sean.

Sean got up on his first try without any trouble. He never attempted any tricks he couldn’t do perfectly. We always ended the exhibitions with him. We could count on him to do impressive moves, but nothing he couldn’t land.

That’s why I watched in disbelief when, after a few textbook flips, he launched an air raley. Surely he wasn’t doing it just because I’d landed one. Or maybe he was, and this was his way of teasing me. Anything I could do, he could do better.

Except he couldn’t. He panicked at the peak of the trick. Overcorrecting, he did lose his balance. He face-planted in the lake, rocking the pontoon boat with the splash.

“Down,” called Cameron, who was spotting.

“I’ll say,” agreed my brother.

Adam, who was driving now, brought the boat around. When he cut the motor and the Nickelback, he, Cameron and McGillicuddy hooted and clapped for Sean almost as hard as they’d clapped for me. I wished they would quit. I didn’t want Sean mad. Flirting with him was turning out to be a lot harder than I’d thought.

Sean grinned at them from the water. Even though his turn hadn’t been very long, clearly he’d had enough. He took off his life vest and tossed it up into the boat. Then he disappeared under the surface.

“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 bryozoa 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 fingers.

“Sean,” came McGillicuddy’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.