The Boys Next Door by Jennifer Echols Read Free Book Online

until further notice.”
    Which meant, Until you screw up . That was okay. He’d told me I was better than the boys at something for once in my life! I turned to Sean and beamed so big that my cheeks hurt.
    Sean squinted into the sun, wearing that strange, fixed smile. Even my brother and Cameron gave each other puzzled looks rather than congratulating me again. Only Adam met my eyes. He shook his head at me.
    Oh, crap. Crappy. Holy Crappie Festival! I had upset the natural order. After Adam had already upset the natural order in team calisthenics. I should have thought all of this through better.
    Sean began, “But I didn’t even get a chance to—”
    “I saw what happened,” Mr. Vader told him. “You had your chance. The Big Kahuna has spoken.”
    “Race you to the wharf,” Adam called. Mr. Vader said something to my dad, put down his beer, and tried to hurl himself up the steps to the marina faster than Adam idled the boat. The boys were doofuses, and it was genetic. Adam let Mr. Vader win by half a length, touching the bow of the boat to the padded edge of the wharf just after Mr. Vader dashed past. The boys howled, and someone threw a couple of dollar bills at Mr. Vader. He picked up each bill like it mattered and limped back down the stairs toward my dad.
    Then Sean jumped out of the bow to tie up the boat. He, Cameron, and my brother tried to trip each other as they took armfuls of equipment into the warehouse with them. No one gave me a single backward glance.
    Adam cut the engine. “Now you’ve screwed up.”
    “How?” I asked casually, stepping out of the boat. “You think Sean won’t want to go out with me now that I’ve taken his spot in the show?”
    Adam just looked at me. That’s exactly what he thought. I was getting tired of his warnings about Sean. I gathered my clothes and my backpack, turned on my heel, and flounced away. Which was fairly ineffective with bare feet, on a rough concrete wharf.
    “You’ll see at the party tonight,” Adam called after me.
    “No, you’ll see,” I threw over my shoulder. Sean and his pride would prove no match for Stage Three: Slinky Cleavage-Revealing Top.

    As I walked home, balancing on the seawall that kept the Vaders’ yard and my yard from falling into the lake, my cell phone rang. I pulled it out of my backpack without hurrying. The only people who ever called me were my dad, my brother, assorted Vaders to tell me to come early or late to work (including Sean, but he always sounded grumpy that he had to call me, so it wasn’t as big a thrill as you’d think), Tammy to tell me to come early or late to tennis practice, and Frances. I glanced at the caller ID screen and clicked the phone on. “What’s up, Fanny?”
    From the time Mom died until I was eleven, Frances the au pair had hung out in the background of my life. Once Sean overheard someone calling her Fanny, which apparently is a nickname for Frances. We found this shocking. I mean, who has a nickname that’s a synonym for derrière? Who’s named Frances in the first place? So the boys started calling her Fanny the Nanny. Then, Booty the Babysitter. Then, Butt I Don’t Need a Governess. This had everything to do with the nickname Fanny and the fact that she tried not to get upset at being addressed in this undignified manner when she was trying to raise compassionate, responsible children. It had nothing to do with her having an outsized rumpus. Frances had a cute figure, if you could see it under all that hippie-wear.
    “I’m on the dock,” she said.
    I peered the half-mile across the lake and waved to her. I could hardly make her out at that distance, against the trees that sheltered the Harbargers’ house, where she nannied now. I could only see her homemade purple patchwork dress, which was probably visible from Mars.
    “The children and I watched the last part of your wakeboarding run,” she said. “You’ve improved so much since last year!”
    “Thanks! But that’s not