Waking Up to Boys (8 page)

“Thanks.” Todd leaned over her to get a towel, and his hair fell forward, dripping water onto her arm.

“Sorry,” he murmured, smiling almost shyly as he offered her the towel to dry off.

“It’s cool.” Chelsea could barely meet his eyes. “I’ll be soaked in a minute anyway.”

“True,” Todd acknowledged. “Hey, did you see that triple handle pass I pulled earlier? How’d it look?”

“All right,” Chelsea said, smiling.

Todd playfully rolled the towel into a rattail and swatted it at her butt. “All right, yourself,” he grumbled. “You get out there and try to top me!”

Plunging into the cool, clean lake water after a long day in the sun was almost more refreshing than her easy banter with Todd.
Maybe he really does like me after all,
Chelsea thought as she swam out into the wake and found her footing atop the board.
Maybe we can be more than just competitors…maybe we can even be more than just friends.
But wait…what was she thinking? She already
had
a boyfriend, and Sebastian was great. He was certainly nicer to her than Todd had ever been—even when she and Todd were getting along, it was more because those were the times she could tolerate his rough teasing. He treated her more like a kid sister than like a potential girlfriend, so why did her hormones always go into overdrive when he was around? Chelsea shook her head and wished she could eliminate boys from her mind. This was her precious time out on the water, and she intended to make the most of it.

Instead of launching straight into her usual gonzo tricks, Chelsea tried to emulate Todd’s smooth, reserved movements, concentrating on the way her body flowed with the water. She picked up momentum and tried a backside 360 spin, Todd style. She landed perfectly and gave a thumbs-up to Todd. After a few more tricks, though, she gave up trying to board like Todd and rode full-out Chelsea style, pulling out the big guns and trying all her favorite tricks.

Seeing that she was on a roll, Todd maneuvered the boat in a big circle, obviously trying to challenge her. But Chelsea was always up for a challenge. She eased away from the wake as Todd brought the boat back
through it, giving her a double-up that would create a wake twice the size. That meant more air if she timed it right. As the boat passed through the wake she started to edge in, her stomach already clenching deliciously at the thought of the kick-ass whirlybird 540 she was about to throw down. She’d put Todd’s arrogance to shame forever with this next move.

She hit the wake hard with the nose of her board and flew into the air, higher than she was used to, twisting her body into an invert as the wind rushed past her ears and the blue sparkles of water nearly blinded her. She was upside down in the air when she looked down and realized she had timed the jump wrong: She was still high enough in the air that if she didn’t flip over one more time, she was going to have a lot of dead time to get off balance and probably fall on her butt—unless she added another turn.

She had never gone for a whirlybird 720 before. In fact, very few wakeboarders had
ever
actually landed one. But she had adrenaline and talent on her side—well, that and an overwhelming desire to show Todd how good she could be when she was at the top of her game.

Just as she went into the final leg of her invert, though, she looked down and realized that the water was rushing toward her much faster than she had thought. Had she miscalculated just how high she was
in the air? She flailed her arms, hoping to break her fall, and the toeside edge of her board caught the water.

For a moment, the entire world seemed to stop moving. And then Chelsea pitched forward into what may very well have been the
absolute worst
face-plant in all of wakeboarding history.

E
verything was blurry when she surfaced a moment later. She shook her head, and the blue and green smudges finally separated out into a lake, trees, and mountains. Someone was yelling her name.

“Chelsea!” Todd still looked a little hazy as he cut the motor, dropped anchor, and leapt off the side, his face a mess of worry and concern. Before she knew it, he was at her side in the water. He slid his hand under her armpits and dragged her back to the boat.

“I still know how to swim!” Chelsea tried to wriggle free from his grasp. But suddenly she wasn’t so sure. Her arm hurt where it had hit her bindings. Like,
really
hurt. Like, hurt so much that if she thought about it too long,
she might start to cry. And there was no
way
she was going to start crying in front of Todd.

He didn’t say anything, just dragged her over the side of the boat, deposited her in the passenger’s seat, and frantically began pulling up the anchor.

“How many fingers am I holding up?” He quickly turned back to Chelsea.

“Four,” Chelsea said. “Todd, you’re being ridiculous. I’m fine.” But her voice shook as she said it, and her arm pulsed with pain.

“I’m getting you back to shore and to the hospital
now
,” Todd insisted. He started the boat and began speeding across the water, continually looking back at Chelsea every few seconds. For a while there was only the sound of the boat’s motor and the wind. Chelsea looked at Todd and noticed that his jaw was set in a sharp, angry line. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“What’s
wrong
?” Todd exploded. “You were acting like an idiot out there! What the
hell
were you thinking, trying for a seven-twenty? Half the pros can’t even get that move!”

The bolt of adrenaline that shot through her was almost enough to eclipse the pain in her arm. “Are you trying to say I’m not good enough?” she snapped back in defense. “I’ve never seen
you
try anything more challenging than a three-sixty, so don’t even go there.”

“That’s because I’m not stupid!” Todd screamed
back. Chelsea had never seen him so angry. “I know my limits, and I don’t go trying tricks that are way out of my league.”

“I’m not stupid! And if you didn’t want me to try something new, why the hell did you give me a double-up?” Chelsea asked.

“I wouldn’t have if I’d known you were going to do that,” Todd said through clenched teeth. “I wanted you to have fun—I didn’t want you to break your neck.” Todd looked like he was disgusted with her. “I can’t believe your dad is even letting you teach, if you’re going to go pulling dumb-ass stunts like that.”

“Teaching has
nothing
to do with it!” Chelsea yelled back at him. Tears stung the corners of her eyes, but she willed herself to keep them at bay. She tried to speak calmly. “I may not have landed that trick, but that doesn’t mean I can’t. You’re just jealous because you
never
will.”

Todd’s knuckles turned white on the wheel, and the muscles in his jaw twitched. He wouldn’t even look at her now. He opened his mouth to scold her back, but nothing came out.

Chelsea gritted her teeth against the pain in her arm and looked out over the water. The pain was getting so bad now, she could barely keep her eyes open. She clenched them shut, leaning against the side of the boat.

Chelsea awoke in the hospital. She vaguely remembered Todd carrying her off the boat. But he was gone now.

“See that?” A doctor who had just entered her room slapped an X-ray of Chelsea’s arm onto the light-box. “Fractured in three places. You’re going to need a pretty big cast for that to heal.” He was a roly-poly, jovial Santa Claus type in tiny wire-rimmed glasses, and his chuckle made Chelsea’s skin crawl. Her arm was killing her, but the last thing she wanted was a cast the size of a small European country. It would totally throw off her balance while she was on the board.

“Can you please at least cut out the fingers so I can still hold the towrope?” she asked.

The doctor’s laugh came from deep in his sizable belly. “I don’t reckon it matters that much, sweet pea,” he said.
Sweet pea?
“You’re going to have keep that thing well away from the water for the next six to eight weeks.”

“Six to eight
weeks
!” Chelsea’s entire summer flashed before her eyes. “But I can’t wait that long. There’s the Challenge! I still have a ton of practicing to do. Plus what about teaching? I have to teach—it’s my
job
!”

“But your health comes first.” The doctor gave her a kind smile. Chelsea wanted to strangle him.

“Now you just sit here with your mother,” he said, speaking to her as if she were five years old, “and a
nurse will be in soon to get you prepped and put on the cast.”

“There’s no way you can keep me off the water!” Chelsea looked around in a huff to see her mother standing in the doorway, giving her a distressed look. “What?” she asked.

“Could you please try to be more polite?” Patty asked.

“But he’s trying to tell me I can’t compete in the Challenge!” Chelsea protested. “There’s no way that’s happening—there is just
no way
.”

Patty’s distressed look deepened, and her brows creased. “I wish you weren’t so stubborn,” she sighed. “Because with your safety and health involved, you can’t ride until that cast is off.”

“What? I can’t believe you!” Chelsea exploded. “Oh, right, if you had it your way, I’d spend all my time putting on pretty dresses and chasing after plants like Sara.” She hardly knew where all this anger was coming from—it just kept bubbling out.

“Honey, I know you’re upset, but you don’t have to take it out on your sister,” her mom said.

“Half sister,” Chelsea snapped automatically.

“I wish you’d stop saying that,” Patty said. “It’s hurtful, you know. She’s your family, too,” Patty continued. “Even though you don’t know her that well and are living with her for the first time, you should treat her like a sister.”

“Oh, you mean the way you treat her like a daughter?” Chelsea asked, thinking of all the times her mom had gone with Sara to the designer outlet mall and the two of them had returned gossiping and hauling shopping bags. Her mom
never
did stuff like that with her. Never mind that Chelsea hated shopping.

“I’m just trying to make her feel at home,” Patty said through compressed lips. She was clearly surprised by what Chelsea had said. “Sara hasn’t had the easiest time of it, you know.”

Chelsea was about to ask what was so awful about Sara’s seemingly perfect life when the nurse bustled in, pushing a squeaking silver cart piled high with blades, bandages, and sterilizing sprays. She shaved Chelsea’s arm and began to wrap it in plaster, and Chelsea watched her mother out of the corner of her eye. Whatever it was that her mom thought was so great about Sara, Chelsea knew that
she
didn’t have it.

Her mom leaned over and kissed Chelsea on the forehead. “Does it hurt, honey?” she asked.

Chelsea nodded and bit her lip. It hurt a lot. Not just her arm, but her whole life.

C
helsea’s mom maneuvered her Camry up the resort’s long, curved gravel driveway and Chelsea could hear music and voices coming from the deck outside the main lodge overlooking the lake. As they drew closer, she could see her father strumming a guitar, and Sara and Leo sitting next to him.

Instead of pulling the car around to the small private driveway by their house, her mom drove into an empty parking space in the public lot around the lodge and got out, motioning for Chelsea to follow her.

Chelsea sighed as she got out of the car. She wasn’t really in the mood to socialize, and the cast on her arm seemed to weigh about a thousand extra pounds. She
felt like it was dragging her to the side so that she lumbered like an ape instead of walking upright.

Her mom pushed open the sliding glass doors to the deck, and Chelsea stepped through. Suddenly everyone stopped talking and burst into applause.

Chelsea looked around, disoriented and confused.

“Welcome home!” everyone yelled. “Get well soon!”

Chelsea glanced from the crowd to her cast and back again. She had been gone for only a few hours, but people were acting as if she had just returned from a decade-long foray into the third world. Before she could even ask what was going on, she had been hustled into a chair, and a plate with a burger, potato salad, and corn materialized in front of her. Someone else handed her a tall glass of lemonade, and then Sienna came over and thrust a greeting card in her hands. It had a picture of a sad-looking dog with a hot water bottle on its head and said, “Don’t be a sick puppy—get well soon!” When she opened it, the inside was a mess of signatures and get-well wishes in different-colored ink.

“But all I did was break my arm,” she said dazedly, looking up at the sea of faces.

“Well, your mom called your dad from the hospital and told him how upset you were that you wouldn’t be able to compete in the Challenge,” Sienna explained. “And a bunch of us were there and we felt really bad for
you, so we figured we’d have a little party to try and cheer you up.”

Chelsea felt her face go hot. Panic was rising in her throat.

“Who says I’m not competing in the Challenge?”

“Me,” a deep voice above her head said. She turned around to see her father staring down at her with his hands on his hips and a don’t-mess-with-me look in his eyes. “The doctor told you to stay off the water and he meant it. Your mother and I mean it, too. From now on, no practicing until you’re better. You can still teach, but you need to stay in the boat. That’s as close to the water as you’re going to get.”

“But…” Chelsea realized she was about to start whining in front of everyone and stopped. She figured that going against her dad was maybe not the best idea she’d ever had, considering she was still in trouble for the pool party. It seemed like she couldn’t do anything right anymore. She stared down at her blue Puma running shoes.

“There will be other chances, honey,” her mom said, appearing at her side and rubbing her back.

Then Sara emerged through the sliding glass doors, struggling under the weight of two trays of freshly baked, newly frosted, pastel-colored cupcakes. She even looked a bit like a cupcake herself, in a lemon-yellow sundress and low white peep-toe pumps. The crowd that
had been gathered around Chelsea a moment ago now turned and buzzed toward Sara, reaching for cupcakes even before she had set them down on the table. Everyone exclaimed over the cupcakes: how perfect they looked, how delicious they tasted, how moist and fresh they were. Sara had even decorated them with botanically correct Tahoe region wildflowers done in frosting.

“I had no idea Sara could bake!” Chelsea’s mom said to her dad as they stood by the railing, his arm around her as they each munched a cupcake and looked out over the lake.

“Sara has a lot of talents,” her dad said proudly. “I just wish Olivia had done more to encourage them. It seems like all she’s ever cared about is Sara landing a rich boyfriend.”

They were talking quietly, and Chelsea could tell they didn’t intend for her to hear. They probably thought she was hovering over by the food table with everyone else instead of still sitting shell-shocked in the same chair she’d been herded into when she arrived.

“Well, we can try
our
best.” Patty rested her head on Mark’s shoulder. “It’s been so nice having her here this summer.”

“I agree,” Chelsea’s dad said. “Maybe we can have her back next summer, too.”

“I’d like that, Mark,” Patty said, lovingly nestling closer to her husband.

Chelsea’s head drooped. Sara was the good, sweet daughter who stayed out of everyone’s way and always did the right thing, and she, Chelsea, was the bad daughter who threw illegal pool parties and got in accidents doing daredevil stunts. She watched Sara throw back her head and laugh at something Leo had said, her legs and neck and chest a series of perfect smooth lines, her hair and dress complementary shades of the same color. Most of the rest of the summer staffers gathered around Leo, who was telling another of his famous stories. Chelsea knew she should join them, but she felt too sad. She felt like something was missing. And then she realized what it was: Todd wasn’t there at the party. He was probably still angry about what she had said on the way back to shore. And she didn’t blame him, either. Things had actually been going well between them for once. Just thinking about it made the back of her throat feel scratchy and hot. Why did she have to go and mess it all up?

She wondered where he was.
Probably off with Vanessa or some other tourist chick,
she thought miserably.

“Hi, sweetie.” Sebastian approached her and held out a plate with a pink-frosted cupcake decorated with a daisy. “I brought you one, since you’re injured.”

“Uhm, okay…,” Chelsea said, taking the plate as Sebastian pulled a chair close to hers and sat down. She looked nervously toward her parents, but luckily, they
weren’t looking in her direction. “My arm’s broken, not my leg.”

“Sorry,” Sebastian muttered, looking hurt. She felt bad. It was like her own personal say-the-wrong-thing day.

“No, I’m sorry. It’s not you. I’m just depressed. But thanks for the cupcake,” she amended, taking a bite. It actually
was
pretty good.

“How’s your arm?” Sebastian asked, his big dark eyes full of concern.

“Hurts,” Chelsea admitted. “And this cast is huge. I hate it.”

“I’m sorry. I was so worried about you when I found out. I know how much wakeboarding means to you. And competing in the Challenge.”

“Yeah, it sucks,” Chelsea said. Just thinking about it made the world feel huge and empty. “A lot.”

“Well, maybe this will help.” Sebastian grinned mischievously as he pulled a red Sharpie marker from the pocket of his plaid Bermuda shorts. He reached out and took hold of her cast, gently trailing his fingers down the part of her arm that was still exposed in a way that made her shiver and look around nervously to see if anyone had noticed. By the time she ascertained that the other partygoers were too involved in their own conversations to notice anything going on with her and Sebastian, Chelsea looked down at her cast to see that he had scrawled his name with a winking face underneath.

Chelsea forced herself to smile as she realized she would now have to think about Sebastian every time she looked at her arm. But what was wrong with that? She should
want
to think about Sebastian…. He was still her boyfriend, even if her dad had forbidden her to see him. In a way, that made everything even more romantic and exciting. So why did seeing his name on her arm just make her more unhappy?

“Oooh, let’s all sign Chelsea’s cast!” Sienna cried from the other end of the deck, seeing what Sebastian was doing. Before she knew it, Chelsea was surrounded again, this time with people brandishing colored Sharpies. Soon her cast was a mess of smiley faces, names, flowers, animals, and cute little messages in every color of the rainbow. The whole time, Sebastian stayed at her side, a pleased smile on his face. She could tell everyone thought they were doing a great job of cheering her up. Too bad the only thing she could think of was the one person whose name was missing from the cast.

“Come on, Chelsea, time to go home,” her dad said. Embarrassment washed through her as she turned quickly to see if anyone had heard her father speaking to her like she was a little kid. Most of the staff were busy clearing away the remains of the party, but Sebastian waved at her. He looked sad that she was leaving.

“Stay here,” she mouthed to him when her dad
wasn’t looking. Then she began following her parents down the gravel path.

“Oh no!” she said when they were halfway home.

Her mom turned, the branch of a pine tree throwing her face into shadow.

“What’s wrong, honey?”

“Oh, nothing…I just left my sweater at the lodge,” Chelsea said. “I’m going to run back and get it, okay?”

“Hurry home,” her father warned.

“I will,” Chelsea promised, turning and jogging back toward the lodge. The rest of the staff had gone, but Sebastian was still sitting in the wooden rocking chair that overlooked the lake, waiting obediently for her. She approached him silently, and he took her good hand, drawing her close. She could smell traces of lemonade and frosting on his breath as their lips met. He helped her onto his lap, wrapping his arms around her back and stroking her hair softly. Chelsea thought to herself that this was the perfect moment: quiet, romantic, forbidden. The two of them were alone with the dark resort and lake spread out before them, and she was nestled in his arms. Maybe it was the way her arm itched inside her cast that was making her feel tense and irritated instead of filled with passionate bliss.

“I’m sorry your arm hurts, Chelsea,” he said, kissing her neck in a sexy way that made her toes curl inside her sneakers.

“Me, too,” she whispered. “Let’s make it stop.”

She moved her face closer to his and looked into his eyes while she snaked her good hand under his shirt, exploring the warm, smooth skin of his chest with her fingertips.

“What can I do to make it better?” Sebastian asked. “What do you want?”

“I don’t know,” Chelsea sighed. What
did
she want? She wished she knew.

Sebastian cupped her chin in his hand and looked deeply into her eyes. “It will get better soon. I promise,” he assured her before drawing her in for a long, sweet kiss.

Chelsea told herself that she was lucky to have Sebastian, that everything between them was perfect. So why couldn’t she hurry up and fall in love with him already? Kissing him felt nice, even kind of sexy…but it didn’t set off fireworks in her brain.

Sebastian bent to kiss her neck and Chelsea opened her eyes and looked out over the dark, silent lake. His words echoed in her head:
What do you want?