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My Life Next Door(20)

By:Huntley Fitzpatrick


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.

He snaps on the underwater pool lights. The pool contains several inflatable toys, something Mom’s always lamenting. “Don’t they know you’re supposed to put those away every night or the filter doesn’t work? God knows how unsanitary that pool is.”

But it doesn’t look unsanitary. It’s beautiful, glowing sapphire in the night. I dive right in, swim to the end, come up for air.

“You’re fast,” Jase calls from the middle of the pool. “Race?”

“Are you one of those competitive beat-the-girl-in-a-race-just-to-prove-a-macho-point types?”

“You seem,” Jase observes, “to know a lot of annoying people. I’m just me, Samantha. Race?”

“You’re on.”

I haven’t been on the swim team for a year. Practices started to take too much time away from my homework, and Mom put her foot down. I still swim when I can, though. And I’m still fast. He still wins. Twice. Then I do, at least once. After that we just paddle around.

Eventually, Jase climbs out, pulls two towels from a big wooden bin, and spreads them on the grass. I collapse onto one, staring up at the night sky. It’s so hot, the humidity pressing down on me like fingers.

He lies down next to me.

To be honest, I keep expecting him to make a pass. Charley Tyler would have been reaching for the top of my swimsuit faster than Patsy. But Jase just folds one arm behind his head, looking up at the sky. “What’s that one?” he asks, pointing.

“What?”

“You said you were into stargazing. Tell me what that one is?”

I squint where his finger is pointing. “Draco.”

“And that?”