"And then I told him I would never forgive him!" Whoops. I was still wrong about being all cried out. I found some more tears and cried them into my hands.

Frances waited until I was done. Again. "So you're not crying over what Adam did. You're crying because you told him you couldn't forgive him?"

"I guess!" I wailed.

"Does that mean you can forgive him?"

"I might, if he would never do that to me again."

Frances put her hand on my knee. "I think he's going to do it again."

"Why?" I demanded.

"All the years I've known you, you and Adam have been consistent. You seem alike in many ways. No wonder you've always gotten along so well. But you arrive at that similar place from opposite directions, which is why you argue. You want the best for everyone, Lori. You want everything to work out. You fix things. You have no malice."

"Adam doesn't fix things," I said ruefully. "He has a lot of malice."

"Adam feels much more deeply than you or I can understand," Frances said. "He will find your b.u.t.tons and push them. He will hurt you. I think it's a defense mechanism he developed growing up behind Cameron and Sean."

I felt guilty talking about him this way, though I knew it was true. "He's not always mean like that," I said.

Frances nodded. "He can also be the sweetest, most thoughtful young man I've ever met. His highs are very high, and his lows are very low. For an even-keeled person like you, it's fine to be friends with someone like that. It's harder to be in love. Then you're on the receiving end of the lows as well as the highs." I laughed. "n.o.body's ever accused me of being even-keeled."

"In comparison with Adam," Frances clarified.

"The t.i.tanic while sinking was even-keeled in comparison with Adam."

She smiled. "The next time you hurt him, he will turn around and hurt you again. Maybe when he's done that to you enough times, you will get tired of it, and you really won't be able to forgive him. You'll walk away for good. I don't think you're there yet." I ran my hands through my wreck of an updo. My fingers found more beggar lice. I flicked them behind my head and put my hands down before Frances saw. "How do I fix it?"

"You don't fix it, Lori," Frances said. "Stop trying to fix it. You're liable to do more damage, because you're both still angry. Let him cool down, and when the time is right, you'll know."

My brother knocked on the doorframe. "Just came from the party. Eventful night. So! Sean and Rachel are back together." He nodded at Frances's happy exclamations and follow-up questions, but he watched my reaction.

"Good," I sighed, meaning it. I bore Rachel no ill will. Or maybe some, but not enough to begrudge her her relationship with Sean. Sean was an excellent kisser, which I had always suspected. He was also a halfway decent guy, which had never crossed my mind.

My brother cleared his throat. "Lori, did you and Adam have a fight? I mean, another fight? A humdinger?" I snorted. "No, I'm sobbing in Frances's lap because she will marry our father someday and bring back the vegi/soy mayonnaise."

"What's the matter with vegi/soy mayonnaise?" Frances asked.

McGillicuddy wrinkled his nose at the memory. Then he said, "Adam asked me to call him if you weren't home safe. And he's trying to put a hole through the warehouse door with his football."

I hopped out of Frances's lap and rushed to open the window. I couldn't see the big door from this angle, but I heard the BANG of the football on metal, and then Mr.

Vader hollering, "Adam! It's eleven thirty at night! Put that football away! [Cuss word you never, ever say in front of your mother]!" I shut the window. "I have to go!"

Frances shook her head at me.

"Right," I agreed. "I have to stop trying to fix it."

But after she and my brother had left my room, I opened my window again. I thought about Adam and let the periodic BANG of his football lull me to sleep.

Chapter 18.

My mom tapped at my door. I knew it was her because she had this special way of drumming her long fingernails on the wood.

She wanted to talk to me about Lori. I did not want to talk to her. But after being banished to military school and then reinstated as a member of the family all in the s.p.a.ce of twenty-four hours, I decided now was not the time to insist on privacy.

"Just a minute." I rolled off my bed, where I'd been lying facedown for an hour with a book about living with ADHD balanced on the back of my head. I checked myself in the mirror. I hadn't cried, but I looked like it anyway, all haggard and kind of green. Or maybe that was from lying down with a book on my head. I crossed the room and opened the door.

Sean stood there with a mischievous grin, hand still forming a claw. He'd tapped on the door with his fingernails to fool me.

I slammed the door in his face.

Before the latch caught, the door bounced open again. Cameron stood just behind Sean with the rubber toe of his shoe blocking the door from shutting. "You look like h.e.l.l," Cameron said.

"I look like Sean." This was a joke from my darkest memory. If Sean told me I was ugly, I could deflect the insult easily, because he was calling himself the same name. If Cameron told me I was ugly, he was also insulting Sean, and Sean would get revenge on him without me having to do a thing.

Sean smiled briefly at me to show I wasn't funny. Then he said, "I came to apologize."

"What's the punch line?" I asked. "Did Rachel put you up to it?"

"Rachel didn't tell me to say this. But she does make me see myself differently." He leaned against the doorframe and managed to look cool and collected, even when debasing himself. "I'm sorry I said you weren't my brother, because you are. I was just so shocked when I saw you with Rachel. I've never gotten naked with her like that." I glanced nervously down the hall. My parents' bedroom wasn't far. I didn't want them to overhear the word "naked." I stepped out of the way and let my brothers into my room. They belly flopped onto my beanbag chairs. As I closed the door behind us and crossed the room to sit on my bed again, I told Sean, "You broke the pact first."

"I did break the pact," Sean admitted, "but only because your wheeling, dealing girlfriend convinced me you'd want it that way."

"That's exactly what she did to me at Chimney Rock!" Cameron exclaimed. "We pushed her around for years, and now she's finally morphed into a more powerful creature bent on revenge! Reooouur!" He held up his paws, bugged out his eyes, and imitated a giant she-creature stomping across the marina. Sean made noises like fighter planes strafing the creature with machine-gun fire.

I rolled my eyes. "Guys. h.e.l.lo. I'm sorry too."

That got their attention. They put down their hands and looked at me.

"I know I fly off the handle," I said. "I'm going to try really hard not to do that before I lose everything." Probably it would help if I read the book on ADHD rather than just balancing it on my head, but at least I'd found it on the shelf, which was a start.

"You're two years younger than I am, and you've always been able to do stuff I can't do. I mean, this is fine." Sean slid the book from my bed and hefted it in his hand.

"Know thyself, or whatever." He tossed it across the room. "But a lot of guys would kill to be more like you. I think you should embrace it. I mean, you will jump off Chimney Rock. That's got to look good on a job application, if it's the right job, and if you can figure out how to explain it." I nodded. "Are you sorry for calling me ADD my whole life?"

"No, it's funny."

Oh well. I couldn't expect Sean to make a complete one-eighty. I turned to Cameron. "What are you here to apologize for?"

"Nothing," he said. "I'm here to make sure you're not really going to ask out Giselle."

I'd never had any intention of doing this. However, I decided to let Cameron sweat it for a few more minutes. I leaned back against my headboard, put my hands behind my head, and crossed my ankles. "You could have prevented this, you know. If I were still dating Lori, I'd have no interest in Giselle. But when I first got in trouble, I wanted your help, and you said you didn't have a dog in this fight."

"You can't date Giselle!" he exclaimed. "You can't be with her. You would ruin her life. Screw what Sean said. n.o.body is going to employ you for jumping off Chimney Rock. What kind of job are you going to get when your professional football career flames out? How are you ever going to get life insurance? n.o.body is going to give you life insurance when they look at your health record and see you broke your arm four times before you were sixteen."

"I'm not messing with Giselle," I a.s.sured him. Then I moved my arms and bounced my head against my headboard. "I just want Lori back. I don't know what to do."

"Nothing," Sean said. "I would not suggest doing nothing for three weeks and waiting for the girl to make a move. This didn't work out well for me, at least not at first.

But I would suggest doing nothing for a few days and thinking about it."

"The entertainment value for us will be much reduced." Cameron looked at Sean and they both cracked up. Then Cameron turned to me again. "But it will be better for you."

"And Lori," Sean added.

"What the monkey!" My dad slammed through my door and burst into my room wearing nothing but his bathrobe.

We all looked up at him in surprise. "You tell us," I said.

"Oh." My dad actually looked sheepish. "It's one o'clock in the morning and I was going to tell you to shut the monkey up and go to bed. I didn't realize what was going on in here."

"What's going on in here?" Cameron asked suspiciously.

"Maturity." My dad backed out of the room and closed the door.

Chapter 19.

"Lori is quiet."

I looked up at Tammy sharing a seat with McGillicuddy in the back of the boat. Even in the starlight before the fireworks, the whole distance of the boat away from her, I could see she was poking her bottom lip out, feeling sorry for me. McGillicuddy leaned around her to watch my reaction too.

I appreciated their concern. Theirs and everybody else's I knew. That morning I'd discovered that even the regular workers in the warehouse had heard about the big blowup between Adam and me and were rooting for us to get back together. McGillicuddy had come into the showroom a million times and given me a play-by-play of the lovelorn noises Adam was making in the warehouse-the one time I didn't want to know. Rachel had driven over in her grandparents' boat to eat lunch with Sean, and they had grilled me about my plan to get Adam back, as if they couldn't stand for us to be apart now that they were together.

In fact, every molecule of my body wanted to do something to fix this. I could feel my molecules like a full stadium at a football game, standing up and cheering me on and dancing to a fight song.

But Frances was somewhere out there in the enormous crowd of boats gently bobbing in the darkness. She was with my dad on the Vaders' pontoon boat, and they were in love. She must have fallen in love with him while she was my nanny, but she never did anything about it. She was patient, and now she had her reward.

Actually, as I thought about this, I realized it wasn't much of a reward, waiting around for YEARS to hook up. I was not down with that. But I had been content to spend my Fourth of July pa.s.sing Adam quietly at work, watching him bust a.s.s in a spectacular failure of a dis...o...b..bulator during the wakeboarding show, and generally letting some more water flow under that bridge.

I took a deep breath through my nose and pictured the water flowing, calming myself as I tried to be one with the water. It was a good thing I didn't have to pee. "Lori is meditating," I said.

"Lori has picked a strange place to meditate," Cameron called from behind the wheel of the boat.

I sighed again, and this time it wasn't because I was one with the lake. "Lori would like to be left alone."

"Lori has picked a strange place to be left alone," Sean commented. He sat in the bow with me, on the other side of Rachel, holding her hand in a death grip like their lives depended on it.

He did have a point. I was glad they'd finally gotten together. Again. And I wouldn't have missed Adam's fireworks for the world. Just thinking about him doing something he loved-setting off explosions-made me smile. But I did wish there were some way for me to see this show that did not involve proximity to other people, especially people determined to pick on me and draw attention to the fact that I was not myself.

I sighed yet again, a looooong sigh that encompa.s.sed my extreme fatigue exacerbated by being stuck in a boat with boys. "Lori has had a bad day."

"Lori's day is over." Rachel reached over and patted my knee.

And just what the h.e.l.l did THAT mean? On the one hand, it sounded soothing. There was a comfort in knowing your bad day was coming to an end, and all you had left to do was watch fireworks, ride back home in someone else's boat, brush your teeth, and go to bed.

On the other hand, it sounded ominous, like Adam and I had already enjoyed our day in the sun, and now Rachel was signaling me to move over, Rover. When she'd come to the marina for lunch with Sean, she and I had talked a little. We'd told each other we were sorry for last night's Xtreme Dating. But I could tell it would take a while for us to truly forgive each other.

And now she had that look in her dark eyes that she'd gotten a couple of times in the last few weeks when I'd asked her about Adam. The one that said she knew more than she was telling.

I didn't want to go ballistic on her while all of us waited patiently and contently for the explosions, but G.o.d! "What do you mean," I started, my voice rising over the eerily quiet lake, "my day is o-"

BANG!.

We all jumped in our seats at the first explosion. Because the sound was delayed, we looked up to see the bouquet of golden light already spreading across the black sky.

In the pause before the next explosion, the crowd in the boats actually said, "Oooooh."

More rockets snaked trails of smoke through the gold, then exploded green and blue. The percussion of their explosions reached us at the same time the strings of "My Country, 'Tis of Thee" waltzed through the loudspeakers.

"Wow," Rachel said. I looked over at her and Sean, gazing up at the sky with their heads close together, fireworks reflecting in their eyes. Everyone in the boat was gazing up. Everyone on the whole lake was gazing up. It would have been a great time to be a pickpocket. But only Adam would think of something like that, or the girlfriend of Adam who had gotten used to him over the years and missed him awfully.

Rocket after rocket zipped into the night sky, paused, then turned itself inside out in a rain of light. "My Country, 'Tis of Thee" ended and "America the Beautiful" began. "America the Beautiful" gave way to "You're a Grand Old Flag." I would have time enough to pine away for Adam when I lay awake in bed tonight, but right then I enjoyed the beauty of the fireworks and the fact that Adam was helping set them off from the gra.s.sy hill next to the yacht club and having the time of his life.

I jumped again-not at an explosion this time, but at my cell phone buzzing in the back pocket of Adam's cutoff jeans. Maybe my dad was texting me that he and Frances were staying out later than me-but couldn't he wait until the fireworks were over? I glanced at the screen to see who'd sent the text.

Adam.

I suppressed the urge to look around and make sure n.o.body was watching. Adam and I might not be together anymore, but the ban had been lifted. He was free to text me if he wanted. Again, his timing was not good, but then again, he might be asking me to call him an ambulance. I opened the message.

This one's for you.

"You're a Grand Old Flag" ended. The next song over the loudspeakers wasn't a patriotic tune at all but a new rock song Adam and I both liked. A love song.

A smaller rocket cut across the sky, trailing smoke. It exploded in a red heart.

"Awwwww!" said the crowd.

"Upside down," said Sean.

The heart was, indeed, upside down. It grew and grew, upside down, until its lights trailed and faded.