“Is Jase already going to marry you?”

I start coughing again. “Uh. No. No, George. I’m only seventeen.” As if that’s the only reason we aren’t engaged.

“I’m this many,” George holds up four slightly grubby fingers. “But Jase is seventeen and a half. You could. Then you could live in here with him. And have a big family.”

Jase strides back into the room, of course, midway through this proposition. “George. Beat it. Discovery Channel is on.”

George backs out of the room, but not before saying, “His bed’s really comfortable. And he never pees in it.”

The door closes and we both start laughing.

“Oh Jesus.” Jase, now clad in a different green T-shirt and pair of navy running shorts, sits down on the bed. His hair is wavier when wet, and little drops of water drip onto his shoulders.

“It’s okay. I love him,” I say. “I think I will marry him.”

“You might want to think about that. Or at least be really careful about the bedtime reading.”

He smiles lazily at me.

I need to get out of this guy’s room. Fast. I stand up, start to cross the room, then notice a picture of a girl stuck on the mirror over the bureau. I walk closer to take a look. She has curly black hair in a ponytail and a serious expression. She’s also quite pretty. “Who’s this?”

“My ex-girlfriend. Lindy. She had the sticker made at the mall. Now I can’t get it off.”

“Why ex?” Why am I asking this?

“She got to be too dangerous,” Jase says. “You know, now that I think of it, I guess I could put another sticker on top of it.”

“You could.” I lean closer to the mirror, examining her perfect features. “Define dangerous.”

“She shoplifted. A lot. And she only ever wanted to go to the mall on dates. Hard not to look like an accomplice. Not my favorite way to spend an evening, doing time, waiting to get bailed out.”

“My sister shoplifted too,” I say, as though this is some nifty thing we have in common.

“Ever take you along?”

“No, thank God. I’d die if I got in trouble.”

Jase looks at me intently, as though what I’ve said is profound. “No, you wouldn’t, Samantha. You wouldn’t die. You’d just be in trouble and then you’d move on.”

He’s standing behind me, too close again. He smells like minty shampoo and clean, clean skin. Apparently any distance at all is too close.

“Yeah, well, I do have to move on. Home. I have stuff to do.”

“You sure?”

I nod vigorously. Just as we get to the kitchen, the screen door slams and Mr. Garrett comes in, followed by a small boy. Small, but bigger than George. Duff? Harry?

Like everyone else in the family up till now, I’ve only seen Jase’s father from a distance. Close up, he looks younger, taller, with the kind of charisma that makes the room feel full just because he’s in it. His hair’s the same wavy deep brown as Jase’s, but shot with gray rather than blond streaks. George runs over and attaches himself to his dad’s leg. Mrs. Garrett steps back from the sink to smile at him. She lights up the way I’ve seen girls at school do, sighting their crushes across crowded rooms.

“Jack! You’re home early.”

“We hit the three-hour mark at the store with no one coming in.” Mr. Garrett brushes a strand of her hair away from her face, tucking it behind her ear. “I decided my time would be better spent getting in some more training with Jase, so I scooped up Harry from his playdate and came on home.”

“I get to run the stopwatch! I get to run the stopwatch!” Harry shouts.

“My turn! Daddy! It’s my turn!” George’s face crumples.

“You can’t even read the numbers,” Harry says. “No matter how fast or slow he runs, you always say it’s been eleventeen minutes. It’s my turn.”

“I brought home an extra stopwatch from the store,” Mr. Garrett says. “You up for it, Jason?”

“He has Samantha over—” Mrs. Garrett begins, but I interrupt.

“I was just leaving.”

Mr. Garrett turns to me. “Well, hello, Samantha.” His big hand envelops mine and he looks at me intently, then grins. “So you’re the mysterious girl next door.”

I glance quickly at Jase, but his face is inscrutable. “I am from next door. But no real mystery going on there.”

“Well, it’s good to catch a closer look. I didn’t know Jase had—”

“I’m going to walk her out, Dad. Then I’ll get ready to lift—that’s what I’m doing first today, right?”

As we head out the kitchen door, Mrs. Garrett urges me to visit anytime.

“I’m glad you came over,” Jase says when we reach the end of the driveway. “Sorry again about George.”

“I like George. What are you training for?”

“Oh, uh, football season. I’m cornerback this year. Maybe a shot at a scholarship, which, gotta say, would be a good thing.”

I stand there in the heat, squinting into the sun, wondering what to say next, how to make a good exit, or any exit, and why I’m bothering to make one when Mom won’t be home for hours. I take a step backward, land on a plastic shovel, stumble.

Jase’s hand shoots out. “Easy there.”

“Uh. Right. Oopsie. Well. Good-bye.” After giving a quick, agitated wave, I hurry home.

Oopsie?

God, Samantha.

Chapter Six

Flip and Tracy come home, sunburned and rumpled, with fried clams and Birch beer and foot-long hot dogs from the Clam Shack. They lay it all out on the kitchen island, stopping to grab each other around the waist, pinch each other’s asses, kiss each other’s ears.

I wish I’d stayed longer at the Garretts’. Why didn’t I?

Tim must still have custody of Nan’s cell, because this is what I get when I call:

“Listen, Heidi, it’s really not a good idea to for us to hang out together again.”

“It’s Samantha. Where’s Nan?”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake. You do know we’re not Siamese twins, right? Why do you keep asking me this shit?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because you keep answering her cell. Is she home?”

“I think so. Probably. Or not,” Tim says.

I hang up. The landline is busy and the Masons don’t have call waiting (“Just an electronic way to be rude,” according to Mrs. Mason), so I decide to bike to Nan’s house.

Tracy and Flip have moved to the living room couch, and there’s much giggling and murmuring. As I get to the hallway, I hear Flip whisper, all urgent, “Oh baby, what you do to me.” Gag.

“You make me feel so good insiiiiide,” I sing back.

“Beat it,” calls Tracy.

It’s high tide, and hot, which means the salty smell of the sound is especially strong, nearly overcoming the marshy scent of the river. The two sides of town. I love them both. I love how you can tell the season and the time of day just by closing your eyes and taking a deep breath. I shut my eyes now, inhaling the thick warm air, then hear a startled screech and look just in time to swerve around a woman wearing a pink visor and socks under her sandals. Stony Bay’s on a little peninsula at the mouth of the Connecticut River. We have a wide harbor, so tourists like our town. It’s three times as crowded in the summer, so I guess I should know better than to bike with my eyes closed.

Nan opens the door when I knock, house phone to her ear. She smiles, then puts her index finger to her lips, jerking her chin toward the living room as she says into the phone, “Well, you are my first choice, so I really want to get a jump on the application.”

I always have the same feeling when I walk through the Masons’ front door. There are happy-faced Hummel figurines all over the place, and little wall plaques with Irish blessings on them, and doilies sprinkled on top of all the armchairs and even the television. When you go to the bathroom, the toilet paper is hidden underneath the puffy pink crocheted hoopskirt of a blank-eyed doll.