My Life Next Door (10 page)

“Get a jacket and your bathing suit, then.”

“What are we doing?”

“You’re supposed to make yourself scarce, right? Come get lost in the crowd at my house, then we’ll figure something else out.”

As always, the contrast between the Garretts’ yard and ours is extreme—Dorothy walking out of black and white and into Technicolor. Alice is playing Frisbee with some guy. Little shrieks and screams are coming from the pool. Harry’s whacking away at a T-ball stand, but with a tennis racket. Alice wings the Frisbee at Jase, who catches it easily and throws it to the guy—not Cleve-who-knew-the-score, but a hulking football-player type. I hear Mrs. Garrett saying loudly from the pool area, “George! What did I tell you about peeing in here?”

Then the screen door bursts open and Andy charges out, carrying about five different bathing suits. “Alice! You
have
to help me.”

Alice rolls her eyes. “Just pick one, Andy. It’ll be fine. It’s only a date.”

Andy, a pretty fourteen-year-old with braces, shakes her head, looking near tears. “A date with Kyle. Kyle! Alice. I’ve never even been asked on a date and now I have. And you won’t even help.”

“What’s up, Ands?” Jase walks over to her.

“Kyle Comstock. From sailing camp? I’ve practically capsized the boat looking at him for three whole summers now? He asked me to go to the beach and then the Clam Shack. Alice is completely and totally no help whatsoever. All Mom says is to wear sunscreen.”

Alice shakes her head impatiently. “C’mon Brad, let’s get wet.” She and the football-player type march off toward the pool.

Jase introduces me to Andy, who turns anxious hazel eyes on me. “Can
you
help? No one should have to have a first date in a bathing suit. It’s unfair.”

“You’re right,” I say. “Show me what you’ve got.”

Andy spreads the bathing suits out on the ground. “Three one pieces, two bikinis. Mom says the bikinis are out. What do you think, Jase?”

“No bikinis on a first date.” He nods. “I’m sure that’s a rule. Or should be. For my sisters anyway.”

“What’s he like?” I ask, surveying the other suits.

“Kyle? Oh, well, you know. Perfect?” She waves her hands.

“You need to be more specific, Ands,” Jase says dryly.

“Funny. Sporty. Popular. Cute but doesn’t act like he knows it? The kind who makes everybody laugh without trying too hard.”

“That one.” I point to the red Speedo.

“Thank you. What about after we swim? Do I change into a dress? Do I put on makeup? How do I even talk to him? Why did I agree to do this? I hate clams!”

“Get a hot dog,” Jase advises. “They’re cheaper. He’ll appreciate it.”

“No makeup. You don’t need it,” I add. “Especially after the beach. Throw some conditioner in your hair so it keeps the wet look. A dress is good. Ask lots of questions about him.”

“You have saved my very life. I shall be indebted to you for all eternity,” Andy says fervently, and streaks back into the house.

“I’m fascinated,” Jase observes in an undertone. “How did you decide which suit?”

“She said sporty,” I respond. The skin at the back of my neck gives this little twitch at the sound of his voice so close to my ear. “Plus her dark hair and tan skin with red. I’m probably jealous. My mom says blondes can’t wear red.”

“Here I thought Sailor Supergirl could do anything.” Jase opens the door to the kitchen, motioning me in.

“Sadly, my powers are limited.”

“Can you make sure this Kyle Comstock is a good guy? That would be a useful power.”

“You’re telling me,” I say. “I could use that one with my mom’s boyfriend. But no.”

Without saying anything further Jase heads for the stairs, and, snake-charmed again, I follow him up toward his room, to be met in the hallway by a very wide-eyed Duff. He has the family chestnut hair, slightly long, and round green eyes. He’s huskier than Jase, and a lot shorter.

“Voldemort has escaped,” he announces.

“Hell.” Jase sounds upset, which, considering that info about Harry Potter is old news, seems odd. “Did you take him out of his cage?” Jase is at the door of his room in two strides.

“Just for a minute. To see if he was gonna shed his skin soon.”

“Duff, you know better.” Jase is on his knees, peering under the bed and the bureau.

“Voldemort is—?” I ask Duff.

“Jase’s corn snake. I named him.”

It takes all my self-control not to leap onto the bureau. Jase is rummaging in the closet now. “He likes shoes,” he explains over his shoulder.

Voldemort the corn snake with the shoe fetish. Wonderful
.

“Should I get Mom?” Duff is poised in the doorway.

“Nope. Got him.” Jase emerges from the closet with the orange, white, and black snake twined around his arm. I back up several paces.

“He’s very shy, Samantha. Don’t worry. Completely harmless. Right, Duff?”

“It’s true.” Duff regards me seriously. “Corn snakes are really underrated as pets. They’re actually very gentle and intelligent. They just have a bad reputation. Like rats and wolves.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” I mutter, watching Jase uncoil the snake and slip it into its cage, where it lies curled like a big, deadly-looking bracelet.

“I can print out something on it from the Internet, if you like,” Duff assures me. “The one thing you have to be careful with about corn snakes is that sometimes they defecate when they are stressed.”

“Duff. Please. Go,” Jase says.

Duff, face downcast, leaves. Then Joel stalks into the
room, wearing a tight black T-shirt, tighter black jeans, and an irritated expression.

“I thought you got it working. I have to pick up Giselle in ten minutes.”

“It
was
working,” Jase says.

“Not now, bro. Take a look.”

Jase looks at me apologetically. “The motorcycle. Come with me while I check it.”

Once again, it takes only a few minutes of Jase jiggling something and unscrewing and rescrewing something else for the motorcycle to purr to life. Joel hops on, says something that might be thanks but is impossible to hear over the motor, and speeds off.

“How did you get so good at everything?” I ask Jase as he wipes his greasy hands on a rag from his tool kit.

“At everything,” he repeats thoughtfully.

“Fixing things—” I gesture at the motorcycle, then at my house, implying the vacuum cleaner.

“My dad runs a hardware store. It gives me an unfair advantage.”

“He’s Joel’s dad too,” I point out. “But you’re the one fixing the motorcycle. And taking care of all those pets.”

Jase’s green eyes meet mine, then his lashes lower. “I guess I like things that take time and attention. More worthwhile that way.”

I don’t know what it is about this that makes me blush, but something does.

Just then Harry comes charging up, saying, “Now you’ll teach me to back dive, right, Sailor Supergirl? Right now. Right?”

“Harry, Samantha doesn’t have to—”

“I don’t mind,” I say quickly, happy to have something to do besides melt into a puddle on the driveway. “I’ll get my suit.”

Harry’s an enthusiastic student, although his front dives are still at the making-a-steeple-of-his-hands-and-belly-flopping-into-the-water stage. He keeps insisting I show him and show him again and again how to back dive, while Mrs. Garrett splashes in the shallow end with George and Patsy. Jase swims a few laps, then treads water, watching us. Alice and her Brad have evidently gone elsewhere.

“Did you know that killer whales don’t usually kill people?” George calls from the pool steps.

“I’d heard that, yes.”

“They don’t like the way we taste. And did you know that the deadliest sharks to people are great white, tiger, hammerheads, and bull sharks?”

“I did, George,” I say, holding my hand in the small of Harry’s back to get him at the proper angle.

“But there are none of those in this pool,” adds Jase.

“Jase, do you think we should all go to the Clam Shack for dinner, just to check on Andy?” Mrs. Garrett asks.

“She’d be completely humiliated, Mom.” Jase leans back against the side of the pool, elbows on the concrete surrounding it.

“I know, but honestly, fourteen and dating! Even Alice was fifteen.”

He shuts his eyes. “Mom. You said no more babysitting for me this week. And Samantha’s not on the clock either.”

Mrs. Garrett wrinkles her forehead. “I know. But Andy’s
just…very young for fourteen. I don’t know this Comstock boy at all.”

Jase sighs, shooting a glance at me.

“We could drop by the Clam Shack and check him out,” I offer. “Subtly. Would that work?”

Mrs. Garrett beams at me.

“An espionage date?” Jase asks doubtfully. “I guess that could work. Do you have a uniform for that one, Samantha?”

I flick water at him, with a jolt of happiness that he’s calling it a date. Inside, I am no more suave than Andy.

“No Lara Croft look, if that’s what you’re after.”

“Too bad,” he says, and splashes back at me.

Chapter Thirteen

Kyle Comstock’s father, a tall handsome man with a long-suffering expression, pulls up in a black BMW soon after this. Kyle gets out and walks into the backyard, looking for Andy. He’s cute, with brownish-blond curly hair and an infectious smile, undiluted by the braces.

Andy, in the red bathing suit with a navy terry cloth cover-up over it, hops into the car, after giving Jase and me a quick isn’t-he-something look.

When we get to the Clam Shack an hour later, it is, as usual, completely packed. The shack is a small, shabby building on Stony Bay Beach, approximately the size of my mom’s walk-in closet, and all summer long there’s a line outside. It’s the only eatery on the beach and Stony Bay is the biggest and best public one, wide and sandy. When we finally get in, we see Andy and Kyle over at a corner table. He’s talking earnestly, and she’s toying with her French fries, blushing as red as her bathing suit. Jase closes his eyes at the sight.

“Painful to watch when it’s your sister?” I ask.

“I don’t worry about Alice. She’s like one of those spiders that bites the guy’s head off when she’s done with him. But Andy’s different. Teenage heartbreak waiting to happen.”

He looks around to see if there are any available seats, then asks, “Samantha, do you know that guy?”

I look over to find Michael sitting alone at the counter, glaring moodily at us.
Both ex-boyfriends in one day. Lucky me.

“He’s, um…we…um, went out for a little while.”

“I guess.” Jase seems amused. “He looks like he’s going to come up and challenge me to a duel.”

“No. But he will definitely write a hostile poem about you tonight,” I say.

There’s no place to sit, so we end up carrying Jase’s hamburger and my chowder outside and over to the breakwater. The sun’s still high and hot in the sky, but there’s a cool breeze. I pull on my jacket.

“So what happened with emo dude? Bad breakup?”

“In a way. High drama. That was Michael. It’s not like he was madly in love with me. At all. That was the thing with Michael.” I chew an oyster cracker, staring out at the water, the waves blue-black. “I was just sort of the girl in the poem, not myself. First I was the unattainable object, and then I was some golden girl who was supposed to save him from sorrow forever, or the siren who was luring him into having sex when he didn’t want to—”

Jase chokes on a French fry. “Um. Really?”

I can feel myself flush. “Not like that. He was just very Catholic. So he’d make a move and suffer over it for days.”

“Fun guy. We should hook him up with my ex Lindy.”

“Lindy the shoplifter?” I reach for one of his French fries, then snatch my hand back. He hands me the container.

“That’s the one. No conscience at all. Maybe they’d balance each other out.”

“Did you actually get arrested?” I ask.

“Escorted to the station in a police car, which was quite enough for me. I got a warning, but as it turned out, it was not Lindy’s first offense when we were caught, so she got a big fine, which she wanted me to pay half of, and community service.”

“Did you pay half?” I gobble another of Jase’s fries. I’m trying not to look at him. In the honeyed evening light, the green eyes and tan skin and the amused curl of his smile are all just a little much.

“I almost did because I felt like an ass. My dad talked me out of it, since I had no idea what Lindy was doing. She could sweep a dozen things into her purse without blinking an eye. She’d practically cleaned out the makeup counter when the security guard came over.” He shakes his head.

“Michael wrote angry breakup poems, a few a day for three months, then mailed them to me, postage due.”

“Let’s definitely set them up. They deserve each other.” He stands up, crumpling the waxed paper from the hamburger and stuffing it into his pocket. “Want to walk out to the lighthouse?”

I’m chilly, but I want to go anyway. The breakwater that leads to the lighthouse is strange—the rocks are perfectly flat and even until about halfway, then get jagged and off-kilter, so walking all the way out involves a certain amount of climbing and clinging. By the time we reach the lighthouse, the evening
light has turned from golden to pinkly golden with the sunset. Jase folds his arms on the black pipe-metal railing and looks out at the ocean, still studded in the distance with tiny triangles of white sailboats headed home. It’s so picturesque that I half expect orchestral chords to swell in the background.

Tracy’s a pro at these things. She’d stumble and bump up against the boy, looking at him through her lashes. Or she’d shiver and press herself a little closer, as if unconsciously. She’d know exactly what to do to get someone to kiss her just when—and how—she wanted him to.

But I don’t have those skills. So I just stand next to Jase, leaning on the rail, watching the sailboats, feeling the heat of his arm resting next to mine. After a few minutes, he turns to look at me. That look of his, unhurried, thoughtful, scanning my face slowly.
Are his eyes lingering on my eyes, my lips?
I’m not sure. I want them to. Then he says, “Let’s get home. We’ll take the Bug and go somewhere. Alice owes me.”