Waking Up to Boys (5 page)

C
helsea was high on life during dinner that night. She’d landed her best jump to date. Todd was jealous. It was exactly what she wanted. Well, that and maybe to feel his soft hair in her fingers just once more. As she chewed the last of her broccoli, she felt something nudge her foot. Sebastian, who’d sat down across from her, was apparently trying to play footsie with her. She smiled at him but felt weird. They were in the
dining hall
—not exactly a turn-on. Plus, anyone might see. He was chatting with Sienna, who sat to his left, but he kept looking at Chelsea.

As soon as she finished her frozen yogurt, Sebastian gave her a sly wink from across the table before he got up to leave. She knew what
that
meant. Twenty minutes
later they were on the cool grass behind the tennis shed and Chelsea was sighing softly as Sebastian’s expert tongue circled her ear.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered before moving down to plant a series of soft, slow kisses on her neck. She closed her eyes and ran her hands through his hair, which, despite the clean, soapy scent that had become so familiar to her, was surprisingly rough and dry compared with Todd’s.

Stop thinking about Todd!
she commanded herself.
You’re kissing Sebastian—who happens to be a total hottie, in case you haven’t noticed.

Still, she couldn’t strike the image of Todd in the middle of the water, his jaw squared and his hair fluttering in the wind as he straddled the wake.

Thinking about Todd while she was making out with Sebastian felt weird, but once she started, it was hard to make herself stop. Why did he have to look so good but act so distant? Was he as good a kisser as Sebastian? Maybe he was even better.

“What’s wrong?” Sebastian removed his hand from around her waist and lay back on the grass, grasping her hand in his.

“Nothing!” Chelsea exclaimed. “Where’d you go?” Chelsea leaned over, trying to get them kissing again.

“I don’t know,” Sebastian said, resisting. “You seem a little…preoccupied.”

Chelsea thought about all the things that
had
been preoccupying her: how she had made Mikey McCullough cry, Sara’s clothes, and the boat ride with Todd.

“Let me guess,” Sebastian said, playing with her hand. “You’re jealous because Sara is getting so much attention, and you feel like you can’t live up.”

“What?” Chelsea yelped. Was that how it looked? She didn’t feel like going into it with Sebastian. She would rather be making out.

“Is being a teacher harder than you thought?” Sebastian prodded. He was hitting all her sore points.

“That’s mainly it,” she said, relieved to finally be talking to someone—even if it was only about
one
of her problems. “I had these two boys today and…well, I made one of them cry.”

“Ouch,” Sebastian said. “Do you think you’re being too hard on them?”

“I was just trying to help!” Chelsea protested. “You wouldn’t believe what murder these kids are. They won’t listen to anything I say. I’m trying to teach them, but my butt is on the line if they get hurt.”

“Just don’t freak out about it so much.” Sebastian moved closer to her. He took her into his arms and started smoothing her hair. “If you make it fun, they’ll be on your side.”

“Thanks. I know,” Chelsea muttered. She couldn’t
imagine ever actually being on Matt McCullough’s side. Nor could she figure out how to make the boys annoy her less so she could even
think
about how to make things fun. She broke away from Sebastian’s caress and turned over to face him, giving him a weak smile. “Now, enough talking.” She reached for him again and lost herself in the blissful feeling of his lips. Sebastian pulled her down on top of him, and Chelsea prayed that he wouldn’t stop again.

Y
ou don’t need to be so scared of the water,” Chelsea urged Britney, the sweet-tempered twelve-year-old who was that morning’s wakeboarding lesson. Chelsea chuckled a little at how different Britney was from the McCullough brothers she’d had the day before. “All you have to do is go out there, keep your feet on the board, your knees bent, and hold on to the rope.”

“But what if I fall?” Britney’s big brown eyes widened with worry.

“You’re not going to drown,” Chelsea assured her. “You have a life vest on, remember?”

“Are you sure I’ll be okay?” Britney asked.

“I promise,” Chelsea assured her. “I wouldn’t let you go out there if something was going to happen to you.”

“But my bindings feel loose….”

Chelsea sighed again as she leaned down to look at the bindings on Britney’s rented board. She frowned. The bindings were as tight as they’d go. “They look fine to me,” she assured Britney. “Why don’t you just give it a try, okay?”

“All right.” But Britney still sounded dubious. Chelsea helped her out of the boat, calling after her to crouch down low until she was sure she had her balance. She wasn’t even positive that Britney heard her as she paddled out until the rope was slack.

“All right, now crouch low, low, low, and then stand up and turn around!” Chelsea screamed over the noise of the boat’s motor. Britney looked panicked. Her head bobbed up and down in the wake as she struggled to hang on to the towrope. She screamed something, but Chelsea couldn’t hear her.

“What, Britney?” Chelsea yelled. The little girl hollered something incoherent again as she struggled in the water.

“Just get your weight on top of the board!” Chelsea called.

“I can’t do it!” Britney wailed, very loudly and clearly this time.

Exasperated, Chelsea jumped off the side of the boat and paddled out to where Britney was floating in the water. “All right, I’m here,” she said. “Now, I’m going to
hold on to you and I want you to focus on getting all of your weight on the board.”

“Noooo, I can’t do it!” Britney sputtered again helplessly.

“Just try it one more time.” Chelsea tried to sound calming. “We’re going to do the exact same thing, only this time don’t lean forward so much. Are you ready?” She put her hands back on Britney’s waist.

“No!” Britney said, wriggling free. “I want to go back on the boat.”

“Come on, one more time,” Chelsea coaxed. “Don’t be a quitter, Brit. Give it another shot, okay?”

“I am
not
a quitter!” Britney insisted, treading water.

“Then try one more time.”

“All right,” Britney said. But she didn’t look happy about it. Not one bit.

Chelsea squinted in the bright sunlight and moved in toward her again. She put her hands on Britney’s waist and counted off. “One, two, three, go!” Chelsea said, a little gentler this time.

This time, instead of pitching forward, Britney leaned back too far and plopped backward into the wake on her butt.

“That’s it!” she screamed when she resurfaced. “I don’t want to do this anymore. Let me get back in the boat or I’ll tell my dad you kept me out here and he’ll sue you for reckless endangerment.”

“Okay, fine,” Chelsea said. Since when did twelve-year-olds know so much about lawsuits and reckless endangerment? She swam back to the boat with Britney and helped her climb in, even wrapping a towel around her shoulders.

“You seemed a little scared out there,” she observed as they headed back to shore. She meant to sound sympathetic, but Britney took offense.

“I was
not
,” she insisted. “You just pushed me before I was ready.”

“But learning to get up is the very first thing you need to figure out when you start wakeboarding,” Chelsea explained. She remembered how easily she had gotten it the first time. Todd had taken her out on the boat, explained the basics, and told her to keep her weight balanced. After just two tries, she was standing up in the wake, laughing into the wind. Within days she was cutting back and forth across the wake, and after a month of almost daily practice she was getting air on most of her jumps and learning basic handle passes. It had been so easy for her—her body had taken to the sport almost immediately, and as soon as she tried it, she hadn’t wanted to do anything else. As much as she wanted to empathize with Britney, she just couldn’t understand why it would be so hard—or so scary. “You just have to keep trying.”

“Well, I’m never going to get it if you keep pushing me so hard,” Britney grumbled.

“I’m sorry, Brit,” Chelsea said. Should she admit that she was new to this whole teaching thing and still learning the ropes? She didn’t want Britney to report back to her parents—who had rented one of the deluxe cabins complete with fireplace and private outdoor Jacuzzi—that Glitterlake hired amateurs. “We’ll take it easier next time, okay?”

“If there even
is
a next time.” Britney turned away and stuck her nose in the air.

Chelsea chewed her grilled Swiss-and-tomato sandwich and glanced around the lunch table, where most of the summer staffers continued to linger over big glasses of iced tea, sharing irate-vacationer war stories.

“So, dude, get this one,” Leo said as he leaned back in his chair. “I’m slinging brews up at Snowmass late one Saturday night…about to close up shop and starting to chase everyone out. There’s this couple over in the corner playing darts—been there all night, drinking beers and shots of JD, tipping well. But I guess they got in an argument or something—honestly, I didn’t even see, I was cashing out—’cause next thing I know, the guy comes over to me and he’s got a dart sticking out of his head.”

The entire table laughed and some of the girls giggled.

“No shit,” Leo continued. “Right there in the outside corner of his left eye. And I’m like, ‘Uh, you okay, man? You want me to call 911?’ And the guy’s just standing there like he’s trying to think what to say next. So I take him down to the ER and they’re all freaking out trying to get an eye specialist in, when the orderly who was supposed to prep him comes out holding the dart in his hand. The guy is fine—it missed the nerve by, like, millimeters. The next day I saw him out on the slopes.” Leo shrugged amidst a chorus of guffaws of protest. Chelsea glanced over at Sara, who was smiling at Leo and shaking her head in disbelief. As usual, she looked like she’d just stepped out of the pages of
Teen Vogue
. Her hair was swept back in a tight bun that made her cheekbones stand out, and she wore a plaid Ben Sherman dress offset by a simple pearl necklace and matching earrings. It was a cute, preppy look that Chelsea could never have pulled off in a million years. Everything about Sara seemed to sparkle: her eyes, her skin, even her laugh. No wonder everyone thought she was so great. Too bad the only sparkling Chelsea ever did was behind a boat.

Chelsea suddenly realized that everyone at the table was looking at her expectantly.

“So what do you think, Chels?” Leo asked.

“Huh?” Chelsea felt ridiculous with so many eyes on her.

“Hello—what have we just been talking about for the
past ten minutes?” Nina joked. “Earth to Chelsea…the party?”

“Party?” Chelsea’s ears perked up. If she was getting invited to yet another staff party, she was definitely making progress.

“
Pool
party,” Leo corrected. “Soft lighting, cold beers, hot chicks in bikinis”—he glanced sideways at Sara, then quickly gave Chelsea a winning grin—“unprecedented fun in the spa building. What do you think?”

“I don’t know.” Chelsea was sure that if her parents found out about a party like that, they’d be furious. She had always suspected that they knew about the island parties but turned a blind eye because they weren’t on the resort’s property and didn’t affect business. But the spa building…that was only about a five-minute walk from the main lodge. Plus, it was state-of-the-art, designed by a famous architect, and had been really expensive to build. Chelsea knew that her parents had needed to take out a bank loan just to fund the embedded speakers and underwater lighting. She certainly didn’t
want
to say no to the other staffers, but…her dad would never forgive her if something happened.

“We totally won’t trash the place,” Mel said, as if reading her mind. “I mean, come on, I work there—I care about keeping it clean as much as you do!”

“And we’ll only drink out of plastic cups so we don’t
have to worry about broken glass,” Leo assured her. “I’ll even run the bar if you want.”

Chelsea looked around the table at all the summer staffers staring at her expectantly. She knew the decision was up to her—she was the only one who knew where her parents kept the keys to the building.

“I think it’s a lame idea,” a low voice said from down the table. Chelsea turned toward it and found herself looking straight into Todd’s eyes. “Why would we want to hang by the pool when there’s a lake right there? Besides, Little McCormick would never do something that could get her in trouble.” He had his signature smug grin as he looked at Chelsea.

Chelsea’s face flushed with humiliation and anger. “Well, I think it’s an amazing idea,” she said. “Let’s do it on Sunday night, after the Fourth of July weekend when tourists have gone home.” She couldn’t believe she had just said yes. But there was no way she was going to let Todd get the best of her in front of everyone.

A round of cheers broke out, and Sebastian gave Chelsea’s knee a more-than-friendly squeeze under the table. Todd shrugged, lifted his tray, and walked off.

Chelsea went into her bedroom after lunch and lay down on the bed, looking up at the posters she’d
plastered to the walls, showing her favorite pro wakeboarders suspended in the air in the midst of tricks she dreamed of mastering someday. But for once, boarding wasn’t the first thing on her mind. Instead, her thoughts were a jumble of anxiety over the pool party, confusion over what was going on with Sebastian, and jealousy over how easy Sara seemed to have it and how well everyone treated her.

Maybe the pool party would be her chance to show the world that she could be as girly and feminine as Sara after all. Chelsea went to her swimsuit drawer and rifled through its contents: one-piece practice Speedos, lots of board shorts, and one navy blue tankini—which, she realized to her dismay, was the sexiest piece of swimwear she owned. Even though it showed off only a tiny sliver of stomach and practically came up to her collarbone.

She heard Sara’s footsteps descending the stairs and then the front door swing shut behind her, followed by a long wash of silence. Chelsea’s parents were probably up at the main lodge, and if Sara really planned to hike the ponderosa trail like she’d told Chelsea she was going to on the way back to their house, she’d be gone for a good long time.

This is for research purposes only,
Chelsea said to herself as she opened the door to Sara’s room and headed toward her closet. And this time, she’d pay attention.