"Right." I wasn't going to lie to her. She wasn't a dumb blonde, but the way she acted, you'd have to know her since birth or look at her SAT scores to figure this out.

"Well, I inherited it from somewhere." She turned her back on me. I watched her go, staring at her tanned back and her perfect a.s.s in that pink bikini. She pa.s.sed Sean, walked up the dock, and continued through the gra.s.s to the starting place for the obstacle course.

I hadn't run the course yet-I would take my turn last because I was always the most likely to get hurt-but I felt like I'd run it already, the way my heart pounded.

Sean gave up trying to squirt Mom with the hose. He held it almost straight up, adjusting the stream for the slight breeze. The water cascaded on top of my head before descending to earth.

I didn't even hit him. For one thing, I was used to Sean. For another, my dad had warned me to display one iota of self-control. This was more than an iota. This was a kappa and perhaps even a lambda, the longer this went on. The cold water soaked my hair and splashed onto my T-shirt.

As if it were perfectly normal for him to annoy me for no apparent reason, which I supposed it was, I asked him, "Are you going out with Rachel tomorrow?" I didn't expect him to say yes. If they were going out, Rachel would have called me to ask my advice on how to act-as if I could advise anyone on how to deal with Sean. I just thought I would plant the seed in his head to ask her out, in case he'd forgotten about her already. He'd seemed crazy in love with her last week, which was the first time any of us had ever seen Sean act that way. But if she'd escaped his mind already, that would be a lot more like him.

He said, "You wish."

The water was so cold that my head ached. I didn't dare glance at him. That would certify how much I cared. But I was astonished he saw through me. He knew that I was worried about him dating Lori, and that I'd be relieved if he dated Rachel again. I tried so hard to be conniving and still wasn't nearly as devious as Sean when he seemed off his game.

Abruptly, he pointed the hose away from me, into the lake. Lori was about to start. I wiped the football on the only dry section of my shirt that was left.

"Girl power!" called Frances. She might have been a little drunk.

Lori dashed down the gra.s.s and hurdled the cooler, clearing it by a foot. Sean sprayed her with the hose, catching her square in the left b.o.o.b. I almost cried foul. I put my hand over my mouth.

Lori just laughed. She kept running to the end of the lawn, across the sand, and leaped for the rope. She swung way out over the lake, and I threw the football.

Thinking back on it later, I didn't remember being angry with her for flirting with Sean. I would never hurt her for that, or for any reason, on purpose.

Still, there had to be some explanation. The football hit her in the chest so hard that I heard the smack where I was standing. She dropped into the water with the ball and disappeared under the surface. The smack echoed once across the lake.

"Nice arm, son," my dad called to me. He gave me a thumbs-up.

"Why are you egging him on?" my mom complained. "You never threw a football at me that way."

"I didn't bother. You catch like a girl. Watch, Lori will come up in a second with the ball." A second came and went. Two seconds. I watched the spot where Lori had disappeared.

Sean said, "You've killed her."

The football popped to the surface. By itself.

I jumped into the water and swam toward the spot. At the same time, McGillicuddy and Cameron sprang from under the tree and ran into the lake. I'd only managed a few strokes by the time they dragged her up the beach, one on each side, along with half the water in the lake.

I swam after them as fast as I could and ran up the beach. She was on all fours, face white. Her ribs pulsed like she was trying to cough but she couldn't get any air in or out.

Everyone surrounded her now in a tight circle. "Lori!" her dad shouted.

"Pound her on the back," Frances suggested.

She shook her head, eyes closed, and held up one hand.

I'd seen that face plenty of times before, when we were kids. "I knocked the wind out of her," I explained.

She nodded, sucking in small breaths. She looked like she might laugh, but she didn't have the air to laugh.

My mom leaned down toward us. "Breathe," she told Lori unhelpfully.

Lori nodded again. She sat back in the sand and moved her hands in circles in front of her to show us she was trying. The skin on her chest between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s was bright red where the football had hit her. Her gasps got longer and longer. Finally she had enough air in her lungs to cough out, "Quarterback or what?" The whole circle around us laughed-brothers heartily, adults nervously. I stood up, soaked T-shirt dripping on the sand, and put out a hand to help her up.

Her dad glared at me. I put my hand down and stepped back two paces. He extended his hand to help her, then pulled her away from the group.

Now everybody stood around in knots in the fading light, talking about other times when Lori had gotten the wind knocked out of her. So I wasn't the only one who remembered this. My mom mentioned the time Lori ran into the dock on water skis and broke her arm. Frances brought up an episode even I had forgotten about, when Lori fell out of my tree house. Frances watched me as she said this, trying to gauge my reaction.

Maybe it was just me, but it seemed like none of us knew what to do until Lori's dad finished talking to her. I only half paid attention to the stories of Lori losing her breath. Underneath the laughter, I tried to hear what her dad was saying.

I couldn't catch most of it. Finally she started to walk away from him, and he raised his voice. "You're always getting hurt when Adam is around."

"That's because I'm always getting hurt," she said huskily, "and Adam is always around." She skipped back down the hill and stopped between Frances and me, careful not to look me in the eye.

"I'm really sorry," I said as quietly as I could without whispering and attracting even more attention. "I forgot you were a girl." I'd also forgotten Lori did not like to hear this. Anyway, it wasn't exactly true. I never forgot Lori was a girl. I just never treated her any differently from the guys when we played games, because that's what she wanted.

Maybe I should start.

Sean walked by, tossing the wet football from hand to hand. "Forgot she was a girl?" he mused. "Didn't seem like it last weekend." With one hand I shoved him hard enough to send him reeling into the lake. He sprang out of the water and yanked me in before I could dodge him. He pushed me way underwater and held me there. I wanted to punch him, but I knew from experience that it was hard to do any damage in the water anyway. And I kept repeating to myself that I was already in enough trouble. For myself, it didn't matter so much, but Lori was at stake.

I stayed quiet under his hands, waiting for him to let me up. He didn't. I ran out of breath and still he didn't let me up. I scrambled past him toward the surface. He tried to hold me down in the darkness. I had an inch of height on him, but he had quite a few pounds on me. With all the strength I had left, I broke past him and gasped before he could dunk me again. I deserved this for knocking the breath out of Lori, but I'd had enough. "Uncle!" I yelled.

Above the surface, Lori and Frances and my mom were yelling too, hollering at Sean to let me go. He didn't listen to them, but he listened to me. Poised to put his hands on my shoulders and shove me under, Sean paused and c.o.c.ked his head at me. "What?"

"Uncle," I repeated. "Isn't that what people say when they give up?"

"I don't know. You've never given up before."

McGillicuddy and Cameron splashed through the shallow water toward us, wearing familiar looks on their faces that told me they thought they were saving the day, separating Sean and me. McGillicuddy reached Sean first and dunked him.

"I already said uncle," I told Cameron just as he reached me, but this meant as little to him as it had to Sean. He turned me around and pinned my arm behind my back.

He was still mad at me for trying to punch him in the boat last weekend.

We were even, then, because I was still mad at him for flirting with my girlfriend. I tried to jerk out of Cameron's grasp. He held me so hard that even the water didn't help me slip free. Then he pulled my arm higher behind my back until it hurt.

"That's my throwing arm," I yelled. "Get the monkey off me, Cameron."

"Isn't this fun?" my mom called in a voice bright enough to be a cartoon. "I'm so glad we've gotten the families together again. We should do this more often. Who's ready for homemade ice cream?"

At the same time the next night, I crouched in my tree house, scoping out Lori's house. Yes, I felt ridiculous, but the woods between her house and mine weren't thick enough for stealth. If I was going to watch her driveway unseen, there was nowhere else to hide except in the bushes, and I absolutely refused to hide in the bushes. That would make me a creep.

The taillights of her dad's car blinked on. She backed out of the garage and drove down her driveway, then turned toward town and disappeared.

I jumped from the tree house, ran across her yard, and burst through her front door. Maybe I should have rung the doorbell. Possibly I was no longer welcome in her house. However, I'd never rung the doorbell when I'd come to see McGillicuddy before, so it didn't seem right to start now, just because I was persona non grata.

Luckily I didn't have to deal with this. Mr. McGillicuddy didn't notice I was there. Through the gla.s.s door in the den I could see him out on the screened porch, his favorite place lately. He was reading and didn't look up. I dashed up the stairs. With only a glance into Lori's disaster of a room-disappointing as usual, wakeboarding posters on the walls, books strewn everywhere, no underwear in sight-I ducked into McGillicuddy's room.

He sat at his desk, pecking on his computer keyboard. He didn't look around at me either, but he asked, "Yes?"

"Let's go," I said.

"Go where?"

"On Lori's date with Parker."

Now he looked at me over the nerdy spectacles he wore for reading. "I wasn't aware it was a double date. And you're not my type."

"Cut the bulls.h.i.t and let's go. We've probably lost her already. We won't be able to chase her to Parker's. We'll have to intercept her at the movie and hope she was telling the truth about where she was going on this date."

He opened his mouth.

"Bill!" I hollered. "Come on."

He kept his mouth open and raised his eyebrows. When it became clear to me that he was not going anywhere until I let him talk, and clear to him that I was not going to interrupt him again, he finally said, "I have a date with Tammy."

"Go over to her house later," I said. "That's when the good stuff happens anyway. Come on." He sighed at me, then turned back to his computer and moved the mouse.

"What are you doing?" I asked. "Shutting it down? You don't have to shut it down. n.o.body is going to touch your computer while we're gone. Come on." He kept moving the mouse and tapping on the keyboard like I was not standing there breathing down his neck. "There might be a fire. I don't want to lose my data."

"It's summer," I said. "There is no data. And there will be no fire. The only person who sets fires around here is me, and I will be gone. With you. Following Lori. Come on."

I swear it took me another fifteen minutes to forklift him out of his freaking data center. By then Lori had picked up Parker and made it all the way to the movie theater, I hoped. It would be just my luck that now she would decide running away to Montgomery was a good idea. Or Birmingham, where Parker was from. Birmingham would be worse.

And after I extracted McGillicuddy from his room, he slowed us down even more by sticking his head out into the screened porch and telling his dad where we were going. I couldn't hear his dad's end of the conversation, but I could hear McGillicuddy's. "Adam.... Why not? I didn't stay out all night with him.... If he's with me, he's not with her."

"Come on," I grumbled under my breath.

The only reason I was able to get him through the trees, into my driveway, and into the pink truck was that he called Tammy on his cell. The second he'd ended the call with her, climbed into the pa.s.senger seat, and slammed the door of my truck, he was arguing with me again. "Why are we going on Lori's date?"

"To make sure Parker doesn't try anything with her." I cranked the engine and raised my voice over the motor. "To make sure she doesn't try anything with Parker.

When she makes a plan, she gets carried away." I backed out of the driveway.

"Jesus, Vader, n.o.body's going to give you a prize for backward racing." McGillicuddy gripped the window frame with one hand and the edge of the seat with the other.

He didn't relax until I'd reached the street. Apparently, speeding forward was not as frightening as speeding backward. He sighed, then said, "So basically, you're stalking her."

"I am not stalking her." I insisted. "That's where you come in. If I followed her by myself, someone who did not understand the situation and did not realize that I am so responsible-"

McGillicuddy snorted.

"-might mistake what I am doing for stalking. However, her big brother is with me. Therefore we are protecting her." Suddenly thinking I might have forgotten some equipment, I raised the lid of the console, felt around in the compartment, and came up empty. "Are you sitting on my dad's binoculars?" He pulled them out from under him and handed them to me. I stuffed them against my thigh, where I could grab them at a moment's notice.

"You would not believe this dream I had last night," McGillicuddy said.

"I'll bet I would." I'd heard about a lot of McGillicuddy's dreams over the years. "Try me."

"I was being interrogated by the Gestapo."

This was already funny. When we were kids and we played World War II, my brothers and I were the Americans, and we made McGillicuddy be the German because he was big and blond and Aryan. In fact, I used to be afraid of him, which was ridiculous because, judging from his last name, their family was Scottish.

Anyway, he made a very scary Gestapo agent. Cameron was always the American general. Sean was the c.o.c.ky captain who went against orders and saved the day. I was the private infiltrating the enemy in a suicidal sneak attack. I got killed a lot. And Lori... my brothers always wanted Lori to be some sort of damsel in distress, and she always refused, and then they wouldn't let her play, and she would stomp up to her house. I wanted to go after her. I knew what it felt like to be the odd one out. But my brothers would have died laughing at me for caring about her. Kind of like now.

Or, occasionally when Sean was feeling generous (Cameron did not have an opinion one way or another) and McGillicuddy defended her, she would get her way. She would be a member of the German Resistance, a.s.sisting me in the cause by sneaking me ammunition (in reality, sparklers). I understood that a day Sean let her play was a sparkling jewel in the sandbox of her childhood. I saw why she treasured every bit of attention that Sean gave her now. But just because I understood it didn't mean I had to like it.

"I was tied up," McGillicuddy said.

"Of course you were," I said.

"And then the interrogating officer came around the corner," he said. "Guess who it was."

"Tammy," I said.

"No!" he said, offended. "Natalie Portman."

"I'm not buying it. Not when you've been going out with Tammy and you haven't been banned from her." I didn't want to buy it. Surely to G.o.d somebody had a girlfriend and appreciated her! Otherwise all my own torture was for nothing.

He reached up and ran his thumb across the seam of the headliner, which was beginning to come loose from the roof of the truck and sag into the cab, as if it were full of water. "Tammy may have bandaged my wounds to ready me for more torture."

I shook my head. "I hate to be the one to tell you, but real girls do not want threesomes." Like I knew. He was the one in college.

He looked at me in horror.

I shrugged. "Sorry." Then I asked, "Was Miss Portman wearing leather?" I was just making conversation. I could predict the answer.

"How did you know?"

"I am very sneaky." I pulled into the movie theater parking lot, stopped my truck in a s.p.a.ce nose-to-nose with the Beamer, and cut the engine.

The summer twilight was fading fast. The sky was pale pink behind the theater. Streetlights flickered overhead but couldn't quite commit to glowing at full power. The parking lot was packed full of cars and pickup trucks-it was Alabama, after all-but a lot of them were still occupied. High school kids pulled up next to each other and talked through their rolled-down windows. They held miniature tailgating parties in their trailer beds. A roving band of football players stopped at truck after truck, spreading rumors and stirring up trouble. At least, that's what I figured. I couldn't hear them, but I'd spent a lot of time in this parking lot.

"I can tell you're sneaky," McGillicuddy said sarcastically. "That's why you parked right in front of her. I hope you wanted her to know you're following her. And I'm warning you, I don't think she's going to like it."

"I don't care whether she likes it or not," I lied. In reality I was trying to figure out where she'd gone. It was common for guys from my high school to say they were going to the movies with a girl. This did not necessarily mean they were going into a movie. There was a lot to do at or around the movie without paying to sit indoors for an hour and a half in the dark while enormous heads talked at you and the explosions were few and far between. Often there was more violence outside the movie than inside. Possibly more s.e.x. Almost certainly more shots fired.

Naturally I a.s.sumed that when Lori said she and Parker were going to the movies, she meant they were driving into the vicinity of the movie theater, parking in the lot, and showing off her new driver's license and her dad's Beamer to whoever drove by. That was bad enough. But she was inside the theater? In the dark? With Parker? I looked through the binoculars. The movie theater lobby was empty.

"Let me ask you something," McGillicuddy said. "Your short-term goal here is to monitor Lori's date with Parker. If you ruined her date with Parker, that would be okay with you too."

"Duh."

"And then what?"

I put the binoculars down on the window frame and turned to look at him. "What do you mean, 'And then what?'"

"Lori's going out with Parker because she's trying to convince Dad to let the two of you date again. If you mess up her plan, you won't get to date her and she'll be mad at you."