“Um… hey.” He cleared his throat twice. “You… You going swimming?”
“No, just lying out,” I said, grabbing a Diet Coke from the fridge.
“Oh. Cool.” He turned away, focusing on his hands a little harder than was required to pour milk into a bowl of cereal.
It was interesting seeing calm, collected Nathan looking a little shaken. While I’d been biting my tongue to keep from screaming at dinner every night and downing tequila alone in my bedroom to keep my mind off the awkwardness and frustration, Nathan had seemed completely unaffected. Call me cruel, but I wanted to see him squirm a little.
“Hey, Nathan?” He looked up from his cereal bowl, and I smiled as innocently as I could. “Do you know if anyone would mind me sunbathing topless? Would the neighbors see?”
And here I thought his blush couldn’t get any deeper.
“Because,” I continued, holding the can of Diet Coke in one hand and tugging lightly at the cord that held my iPod around my neck with the other, “it’s just that the tan looks so much… smoother.”
Nathan took a deep breath in through his nose and let it out slowly before answering. “There’s a chance the people next door might get offended.”
“Oh.” I sighed. I could see Nathan’s eyes following the progress of my hand as I tucked my earbuds into my ears, letting my fingers slide across my neck just a little. “Fine. I guess I’ll just get tan lines. Thanks anyway, Nathan.”
“Yeah… no problem.”
With a smirk, I turned and walked out the sliding glass door.
As far as I could tell, there was no cute pool boy, which was kind of a bummer, but whatever. The look on Nathan’s face would have to last me for a while. I slid into a lounge chair, kicking up my bare feet and scrolling through my iPod. I was in the mood for some Madonna. Not her new stuff, but old-school Madonna. Back before the Kabbalah and the MTV make-out with Britney Spears. So I skimmed through my playlist until I found “Like a Prayer,” then closed my eyes, letting the sound and sun wash over me.
I lay there for a while, listening to a shuffled mix on my iPod. As a rule, I didn’t listen to anything released after 1999, so every song that came on was pretty awesome. Midway through the chorus of “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” I got the distinct impression that someone was watching me.
Wondering if maybe a cute boy really did live next door, I opened my eyes.
Gross.
Someone next door was watching me though the gaps in the fence, but he wasn’t cute, or remotely close to boyhood. This gray-haired old dude was totally ogling me. When he saw me glaring at him, he immediately went back to pulling the weeds in his pathetic little garden. I guess his wife refused to do it. Good for her. If her man was eye-raping teenagers, he ought to be doing the hard labor. Pervert.
I got up and turned my chair around to face the other direction so the perv couldn’t look at me. Any enthusiasm I’d felt earlier for tanning was pretty much gone. Having Nathan mentally undress me was one thing. I mean, I guess it was technically kind of weird, since we were going to be stepsiblings, but at least he was my age, and hot—and with Nathan, I’d wanted him to do it. This dinosaur was just a creep.
I sat back in the chair and put on some Joan Jett. She always helped me work through my anger. I had this feeling that if we met in real life, Joan would have loved me. We were kindred spirits. If anyone could make me feel better, it was her.
It was scorching hot. I was barely clothed and still felt like I’d been put in an oven to bake. I squeezed my eyes shut again, deciding to think about something else. If I wanted a decent tan, I’d just have to deal.
I couldn’t help thinking of the place where I should have been tanning. A big-ass lake with sunlight gleaming off the surface. A striped beach towel stretched out across hot sand. Surely there were disgusting old guys lurking around there, too, but I’d never caught them spying on me.
Everything about this place was wrong, like a fun-house mirror distorting the reflection of what my summer was supposed to be. On the surface, some parts looked the same; I was still with Dad, the way I wanted. But the details were altered beyond recognition. The people, the location, even this goddamn swimming pool—none of it was right.
I groaned and rolled onto my stomach, laying my iPod next to me on the lounge chair. The next song on my playlist was Bananarama’s “Cruel Summer.” How appropriate. This summer was more than cruel, though. It was a nightmare. And I just wanted to wake up.
Whit… Whit, wake up.
If only it were that easy. If only someone could just shake me a little. I wanted to open my eyes and be back at the condo, in the old bed with the creaking frame, wrapped in the neon-green and orange comforter Dad bought me the first summer we spent there, the smell of charcoal from the grill wafting in through my bedroom window.
A hand on my shoulder, sending me back there, shaking me out of this summer, this bad dream.
For a dazed moment, it was like God had heard my prayers. I felt a cool palm pressed against my bare back, nudging me gently.
It took a minute for reality to sink in, and my first coherent thought was that the gross old guy had hopped the fence and was trying to molest me or something. So I flailed onto my side, slapping at my attacker with the back of my hand.
“Aah! Shit,” he groaned when I felt my class ring collide with some part of his face.
“Serves you right,” I muttered.
“For what?”
I paused for a second, then rolled onto my back. It wasn’t the creepy dude at all.
“Nathan? What the hell were you doing?”
“Trying to wake you up,” he said, clutching his cheek. “You fell asleep. You’ve been out here for, like, two hours, and you were getting sunburned.”
“What?”
I twisted my head around to look at the back of my shoulders. Red. Very red. I pressed a finger to my skin and watched as it turned white under the pressure. Ouch. I was seriously scorched, and only on my back, so I wasn’t even icky red all the way around. Sunburns are bad, but uneven sunburns are the worst.
“Goddamn it.”
“Come on. We have some aloe vera inside. It looks like you’ll need it. You’re a lobster.”
“Shut up,” I snapped. I jerked out my earbuds and stomped toward the back door with Nathan trailing behind me. He was laughing under his breath, and I thought about backhanding him again.
“Follow me,” he instructed, moving in front of me and leading the way down the hall. Bailey was sitting on the couch watching the Disney Channel. Wasn’t thirteen, like, way too old for that? She switched it off quickly when she heard us coming, and then turned around on the couch to look at me, her eyes widening. But before I could say anything, Nathan grinned at her. “Whit took a little nap outside. Isn’t red her color?”
“Whitley!” I shouted.
Bailey tried to hide her giggles but failed. “Are you okay?” she asked me.
“No,” I grunted. “Not at all.”
I followed Nathan into the bathroom and waited as he pulled open the bottom cabinet. “I think Mom put it in here.” After a second he found the bottle of green gel. “Here you go,” he said, holding it out to me.
“Can you put it on my back?” I turned, pulling my hair over my shoulder.
“Uh…”
I glanced over my shoulder at him. He was eyeing me uneasily, his cheeks turning just the slightest bit pink. “Oh, please, Mr. Cool and Collected. Don’t pick now to go all awkward on me. I’m not trying to seduce you or anything; I just can’t reach it myself, and it’s not like it’s anything you haven’t touched before.”