But the festival would be no fun at all if we kept wakeboarding like this! None of us had been out on the water since Labor Day last year, but come on. I never expected Cameron and my brother to be quite so awful on their first time out. And since Sean would be watching me now, I hoped I broke the cycle.
I strapped a life vest over my bikini. Such a pity to cover my shapely body (snort). en I tied my feet tightly into the bindings attached to my board. I hopped into the water, wakeboard and all, and assumed the position. I wished my brother would putter the boat away from me a little faster. e wakeboard floated on its side in front of me as I crouched behind it with my knees spread. Talk about needing to close my legs! e embarrassing stance had caused me to get up too quickly and face-plant more times than I cared to count, just to save myself a few seconds of the boys cracking jokes about me that I couldn’t hear.
Not today. I relaxed in the water. Anyone care for an eyeful? I parted my knees and gave Adam the okay sign. He was spotting. Sean and Cameron watched me, too, as concerned as I was that we all sucked and Mr. Vader would pull the plug on our daily outing. No pressure. When my brother finally got around to opening up the engine, I let the boat pull me up and relaxed into the adrenaline rush.
Wakeboarding was pretty simple. I stood on the wakeboard like a skateboard, and held onto the rope as if I were waterskiing. e boat motor left a triangular wake behind it as the boat moved through the water. I moved outside it by going over one of the small waves. en I turned back inward and used one wave as a skateboarding ramp to take off. I sailed over the wake, and used the opposite wave as a ramp to land.
After a few minutes I mostly forgot about the boys, even Sean. e drone of the motor would do that like nothing else: put me in this different zone. Even though I was connected by a rope to the boat and the outside world, I was all alone with myself. I just enjoyed the sun and the water and the wakeboard.
My intention all along had been to get my wakeboarding legs back this first day. Maybe I’d do tricks when we went out the next day. I didn’t want to get too cocky and bust ass in front of Sean. But as I got more comfortable and forgot to care, I tried a few standbys—a front flip, a scarecrow. ere was no busting of ass. So I tried a backroll. And landed it solidly.
Now I got cocky. I did a heelside backroll with a nose-grab. is meant that in the middle of the flip, I let go of the rope handle with one hand, reached down, and grabbed the front of the board. It served no purpose in the trick except to look impressive, like, is only appears to be a difficult trick. I have all the time in the world. I will grab the board. Yawn. And I landed it. This was getting too good to be true.
My brother swung the boat around just before we reached the graffiti-covered highway bridge that spanned the lake. Cameron had spray-painted his name and his girlfriend’s name on the bridge, alongside all the other couples’ names and over the faded ones. My genius brother had tried to paint his own name but ran out of room on that section of bridge.
McGILLICUDD
Y
Sean wisely never painted his girlfriends’ names. He would have had to change them too often. For my part, I was very thankful that when most of this spray-painting action was going on last summer, I was still too short to reach over from the pile and haul myself up on the main part of the bridge. I probably had the height and the upper body strength now, and I prayed none of the boys pointed this out. Then I’d have to spray-paint LORI LOVES SEAN on the bridge. And move to Canada.
It was kind of strange Adam hadn’t spray-painted his name with Rachel’s in the past few weeks. Maybe he didn’t consider it daring enough, if Cameron had managed to do it. Adam had painted in red letters in the very center of the bridge, WASH ME. e bridge was a big part of our lake experience. Wakeboarding underneath it would have been cool. But driving the boat under the bridge while towing a wakeboarder was dangerous. Adam had been the one to discover this (seventh grade).
My brother pointed the boat for the rail. A few summers ago, the boys had pulled the guts out of an old pontoon boat that also said VADER’S MARINA down the side.
ey anchored it near the shore and built a rail sticking out from it, topped with PVC pipe. You could really hurt yourself on this contraption (Adam: eighth grade) but my ride was going great, and I was in the groove. I zoomed far out from the wakeboarding boat, popped up onto the rail, slid across it on the board, and landed nice and soft in the water on the other end.
Adam raised both fists at me. (Nice, but no love from Sean?) If Adam yelled, I couldn’t hear him over the boat motor. What I could hear as my brother paralleled the shoreline was the ompsons and the Foshees, our neighbors hanging out on their docks. ey came out to watch us practice a lot of afternoons. Cha-ching! Two sales we’d as good as made for Vader’s Marina when their kids got a little older.
en came my family’s dock, the Vader’s dock at their house, and finally the marina. Dad had gotten home from work, I saw. He and Mr. Vader sat in lawn chairs on the marina dock, holding beers. I really shouldn’t have done this if I was trying to be ladylike. But the opportunity was too perfect to resist, and old habits died hard. I arced way out from the wake, aiming for the dock.
My dad saw me coming and knew exactly what was going to happen. He jumped from his chair and jogged up the stairs, toward the shore, so I wouldn’t ruin his business suit. His tie flapped over his shoulder. He didn’t warn Mr. Vader, who took a sip of beer as I slid past, spraying water probably fifteen feet in the air behind me.
e wall of water smacked right on top of him. I didn’t want to turn my head to look, lose my balance, fall, and ruin the effect (chicken salad on bikini, hello). But I saw him out the corner of my eye, T-shirt and shorts soaked, beer halted in midair.
Sean probably heard me cackling all the way up in the boat. Sex-y. I tried to calm myself and concentrate. I wanted to try an air raley, which I’d been working up to last summer but never landed. If there was one good reason for Sean never to ask me out, it was that he couldn’t shake the memory of me wiping out after an air raley. Done correctly, I would hang in the air behind the boat for a few seconds with the board above my head. I would then sail down the opposite wake and land sweetly. Done incorrectly, it was a high-speed belly flop.
When I busted ass (or tummy), Sean and the other boys would make fun of me for the rest of the boat ride, and would spread it around their party that night. But they were so far away in the toy boat, and the drone of the motor was like a bubble around me. Nothing could hurt me in here.
I gestured upward, which told Adam to tell my brother to speed up. Adam knew what I planned to do and shook his head at me. What a pain, to stop the boat and argue with him about it. He didn’t consult anyone before he tried a trick and busted ass. If we stopped, Sean would insist my turn was over, and I’d be done for the day. I wasn’t done. So I nodded my head vigorously. Adam shook his finger at me, scolding. Then he turned around and spoke to my brother.