“You’re Tracy Reed’s sister?

Of course. Naturally he would not have overlooked Tracy. While I’m blond, Tracy is A Blonde. That is, I’m straw and sort of honey-colored with freckles from Dad, while Tracy’s tow-headed with pale skin. She, unfairly, looks like she’s never seen the sun, although she spends most of her summers on the beach.

“Yup.” Then, suddenly, I wonder if my sister too has secretly interacted with the Garretts. But Joel isn’t blond, Tracy’s chief boyfriend requirement, right up there with a good backhand, so probably not. Just to be sure, I ask, “Do you play tennis?”

Joel looks unfazed by this non sequitur, no doubt used to flustered girls making no sense.

“Badly.” He reaches out for Patsy, who’s apparently decided at this point that any breast will do. Her little fingers keep returning determinedly to my top.

“Yeah, the leather jacket probably slows down your return volley.” I hand him the baby.

He gives a mock salute. “Sailor Supergirl and smartass. Nice.”

Just then a Jeep pulls into the driveway, very fast. Alice slams out, reaching back to disentangle her purse strap from the gearshift and yank the purse to her. Her hair at the moment is electric blue, pulled into a side ponytail. She’s wearing a black halter top and very short shorts.

“You knew the score, Cleve,” she snaps at the driver of the car. “You knew where you stood.” She straightens, stalking over to the kitchen door and slamming it behind her. Unlike her brothers, she’s small, but that does nothing to deflect from her unmistakable air of authority.

Cleve, a mild-looking guy in a Hawaiian-print bathing suit and a PacSun shirt, does not look as though he’d known the score. He slumps behind the wheel.

Joel hands Patsy back to me and goes over to the car. “Bummer, man,” he says to Cleve, who tips his head in acknowledgment but says nothing.

I return to the sprinkler and sit down. George plunks down next to me. “Did you know that a bird-eating tarantula is as big as your hand?”

“Jase doesn’t have one of those, does he?”

George gives me his sunniest smile. “No. He useta have a reg’lar tarantula named Agnes, but she”—his voice drops mournfully—“died.”

“I’m sure she’s in tarantula heaven now,” I assure him hastily, shuddering to think what that might look like.

Mrs. Garrett’s van pulls in behind the motorcycle, disgorging what I assume are Duff and Andy, both red-faced and windblown. Judging by their life jackets, they’ve been at sailing camp.

George and Harry, my loyal fans, rave to their mother about my accomplishments, while Patsy immediately bursts into tears, points an accusing finger at her mother, and wails, “Boob.”

“It was her first word.” Mrs. Garrett takes her from me, heedless of Patsy’s damp swimsuit. “There’s one for the baby book.”

Chapter Nine

With Mom and Tracy both out, the house is so quiet at night that I can count the sounds. The whir-clunk of ice dropping from the ice machine into the freezer bin. The shift of the central air from one speed to another. Then a noise I don’t expect as I’m lying in my room at about ten o’clock that night, wondering if I should say anything to Mom about that woman with Clay. It’s this rhythmic bang, bang, bang sound outside, below my window. I open it, climb out, looking down to find Jase, hammer in hand, nailing something to the trellis. He looks up, nail between his teeth, and waves.

I’m happy to see him, but this is a bit odd.

“Whatcha doing?”

“You have a loose board here.” He takes the nail out of his mouth, positions it on the trellis, and begins hammering again. “It didn’t seem safe.”

“For me or you?”

“You tell me.” He gives a final knock to the nail, puts the hammer down on the grass, and, in seconds, has climbed up the trellis and is sitting next to me. “I hear you’ve been engulfed by my family. Sorry about that.”

“It’s fine.” I sidle back a little. I’m again in my nightgown, which seems a disadvantage.

“They’re the best thing I’ve got, but they can be a little”—he pauses, as though searching for a definition—“overwhelming.”

“I’m not easily overwhelmed.”

Jase gazes at me, those green eyes searching my face. “No. You wouldn’t be, would you?” It strikes me, sitting there, that I can be anyone I want to be with him. Then I notice something move on his shoulder.

“What’s that?”

Jase turns his head to the side. “Oh, you mean Herbie?” He reaches up and pulls a squirrel—a rabbit—something furry—off his shoulder.

“Herbie?”

“Sugar glider.” He extends his hand, now containing a fuzzy thing that looks like a flying squirrel, with a big black stripe down its back and black-shadowed eyes.

I stroke its head uncertainly.

“He loves that. Very tactile.” Jase moves his other hand over so Herbie’s cradled in between two palms. His hands are rough and capable. So much about Jase Garrett seems like a man, not a boy.

“Are you…like…Dr. Doolittle or something?”

“I just like animals. Do you?”

“Well, yeah. But I don’t have a zoo in my room.”

He peers over my shoulder, in my window, then nods. “No, you sure don’t. What a clean room. Is it always like that?”

I feel defensive, and then defensive about feeling defensive. “Generally. Sometimes I—”

“Go a little crazy and don’t hang up your bathrobe?” he suggests.

“It’s been known to happen.” He’s sitting so close, I can feel his breath on my cheek. My stomach flip-flops again.

“I hear you’re a superhero.”

“Yup. A few hours with your family and now I have supernatural powers.”

“And you’ll need ’em.” He leans back, resting Herbie on his stomach, then slanting onto his elbows. “Plus, you do back dives.”

“I do. Swim team.”

Jase nods slowly, looking at me. Everything he does seems so thought-out and purposeful. I’m used to boys just sort of hurling themselves through life, I guess. Charley, who was basically all about hoping for sex, and Michael, at the mercy of his moods, either elated or in deep despair. “Want to go for a swim?” Jase finally asks.

“Now?”

“Now. In our pool. It’s so hot.”

The air is muggy and earthy, almost thick. Let’s see. Swimming. At night. With a boy. Who’s virtually a stranger. And a Garrett. It’s dizzying how many of my mother’s rules this is breaking.

Seventeen years of lectures and discussions and reminders: “Think about how it looks, Samantha. Not just how it feels. Make smart choices. Always consider consequences.”

Less than seventeen seconds to say:

“I’ll get my suit.”

Five minutes later, I’m standing in our yard beneath my bedroom window, waiting nervously for Jase to return after changing into his trunks. I keep peering toward our driveway, afraid I’ll see a sweep of headlights and it’ll be Clay driving my mother home, finding me standing here in my black tankini, so not where she expects me to be.

But instead, I hear Jase’s quiet voice. “Hey,” he says, walking up my driveway in the dark.

“You don’t still have Herbie, do you?”

“Nah, he’s not a water fan. Come on.” He leads me back down and around my mother’s six-foot barricade, up the Garretts’ driveway to their backyard, and over to the tall green chain-link fence that encircles their pool. “Okay,” he says, “are you a good climber?”

“Why are we climbing over? It’s your pool. Why don’t we just go through the gate?”

Jase folds his arms, leaning back against the fence, smiling at me, a flash of white in the dark. “More fun this way. If you’re breaking the rules, it might as well feel like it.”

I look suspiciously at him. “You wouldn’t be one of those thrill-seeking-get-the-girl-in-trouble-just-for-kicks types, would you?”

“I would not. Climb over. Need a boost?”

I could use one, but would not admit that. I stick my toes in a hole of the chain link and climb up and over, clinging to the other side before dropping down. Jase is beside me almost immediately. A good climber. Naturally, I think, remembering the trellis.