Endless Summer: The Boys Next Door; Endless Summer by Jennifer Echols Page A

explosions around your house?”
    I glanced at my watch. “Not this early.” I passed through my bedroom, into my bathroom, and found the mascara in the drawer. Poised with wand to eye, I realized Tammy hadn’t followed me. I leaned through the bathroom doorway.
    She stood in the middle of my bedroom, gazing around with wide eyes. I hadn’t made my bed. In three years. And the walls were plastered with wakeboarding posters and snowboarding posters and surfing posters (I was going to learn to snowboard and surf someday, too). It all might have been overwhelming at first—not exactly House Beautiful.
    “Is this McGillicuddy’s room?” she asked.
    “What! No. McGillicuddy’s a neat freak. Also he collects Madame Alexander dolls.”
    She turned her wide eyes on me.
    “Kidding! I’m kidding,” I backtracked. Why did I have to make up stuff like that? My family was weird enough for real.
    She stepped over to my bookshelf to peer at the stacks of wakeboarding mags and sci-fi novels. Well, let her stare, the bi-yotch. I didn’t need her damn help. I swiped the mascara across my lashes and popped back out of the bathroom. “Ready?”
    She looked up at me guiltily like she’d gotten caught thumbing through my issues of Playboy (stolen from McGillicuddy, and more useful for learning what not to wear than teen fashion mags). But she hadn’t found those yet. Standing at my bedside table, she held the photo of my mother.
    She set the photo down and narrowed her eyes at me. “You’re not ready.” She came into the bathroom and explained the aesthetic we were going for was not clumps of lashes honed to points and sticking out from my eyeballs like the tentacles of a starfish. Somehow in the purchase of my fine cosmetics, I’d missed out on the idea of an eyelash comb. She used a regular hair comb to tease my lashes apart.
    We stomped back down the stairs (no cowbell, but I made air-raid siren noises to warn my dad) and waded across the yard. Adam and Rachel were still making out behind the tree, like they hadn’t seen each other for a year. Jeez, we’d just gotten out of school yesterday.

    I tried to look without really looking and letting on to Tammy I was looking. Both Adam’s hands were on Rachel’s shoulders, holding her in place while he kissed her.
    Both her hands were under his T-shirt, on his stomach—his stomach hard with muscle, his smooth tanned skin… I couldn’t see this, of course, but I knew it was there.
    It had never occurred to me to be jealous of Rachel before. Suddenly I was burning with jealousy, sweating in the humid night. It must be that I saw Rachel as an understudy for Holly and Beige and all the girls at my school who knew what to wear and how to act or, if they didn’t, hid it well. I could totally see a third-grade girl feeling inferior to Rachel and wanting to be Rachel when she grew up. That third-grade girl was thinking someday maybe she could have a boyfriend like Adam, who loved her like Adam—
    “Argh!” I bellowed as I pitched face-first onto the pine needles. I must have gotten my heel caught in a snake hole.
    “Are you okay?” Tammy asked, holding out a hand to help me up. “Nice trick. You should put that in your wakeboarding routine.”
    “What? And steal Adam’s thunder?” I brushed myself off. Did I need to go home and change? I was new to this idea of a “wardrobe,” and my supply of Slinky Cleavage-Revealing Tops was limited. Fortunately, my denim miniskirt was made to look dirty. It was very me. And the wild pattern in my top probably concealed any decayed-leaf stains. Satisfied, I walked on with Tammy. I didn’t look back to see whether Adam had watched me fall. I hadn’t forgotten that stare of his.
    “Want to play tennis tomorrow night, after it’s cooled off a little?” she asked.
    “Sure,” I said before I thought. Tammy and I played tennis all the time in school. Why not out of school, too? After I’d answered, I realized that of course Sean