Caitlin

  He laughed and got up. “No, thanks. I think I know Robyn well enough.”

  I didn’t know why, but it was as though a little jolt went through me. A little reality shifting. I knew he and Robyn were hanging out together —

  “Do you really think of her as your girlfriend?”

  He furrowed his brow. “Well, yeah. You didn’t know that?”

  I shrugged. “I guess I thought … I don’t know. It’s just weird.”

  “Yeah, I know. I liked her for a long time. It’s just that she was your friend.”

  “Is my friend,” I emphasized.

  “Are y’all hanging out tomorrow?”

  “Yep.”

  “Doing what?”

  “I have a feeling we’ll end up doing whatever Whitney wants to do.”

  After supper, I was in my room taking a test in one of my teen mags: Does your guy friend know you like him? Not that I had a guy friend that I liked, but if I ever did, I wanted to be prepared to make the right moves.

  I also thought that knowing the key to letting a guy know that I liked him might also provide the key to making sure that a guy realized that I didn’t like him.

  My cell phone rang. I grabbed it, glanced at the display, and grinned. “Hey, Robyn. What’s up?”

  “I’ve been thinking about tomorrow, about what we want to do.”

  “Yeah?”

  “It sounds insane, I know it does, but —”

  “You want to go to Paradise Falls.”

  I heard her gasp. “How did you know?”

  I laughed. “Because I’ve been thinking the same thing. Every summer, where did we go if we wanted to have fun?”

  “Paradise Falls.” She groaned. “But we work there. My mother doesn’t hang out in her office on the weekends.”

  “Her office doesn’t have awesome slides.”

  “True. Then we have that silly committee meeting tomorrow night.”

  “Silly? I thought you wanted to be on this committee.”

  “Only because of Whitney.”

  “Speaking of Whitney, will she be okay with your plan?” I asked.

  “Since she’s moved to parties and entertainment, she hasn’t really had time to work on her tan. I bet she’ll go with us.”

  “Great.” And I almost meant it sincerely instead of sarcastically.

  “It’ll be fun,” Robyn said.

  “Of course.”

  Since Robyn and I hitched a ride with Sean, we got to the water park before it opened so we were able to choose the best-placed lounge chairs. Sean was shocked that we wanted to spend the day at the water park.

  “Don’t you get enough of it?” he asked.

  “Working here, yeah, playing here, no,” I told him.

  Robyn and Sean were going to meet up when he took his lunch break. Right now, Robyn and I were stretched out on the lounge chairs, soaking up the rays, waiting for the park to open so we could head for the slides.

  I was wearing a red bikini that I’d bought earlier in the summer. It was actually a little embarrassing because my tummy was so pale and my tan lines didn’t match on my shoulders.

  “I hadn’t considered I’d look like some sort of strange jigsaw puzzle,” I said.

  Robyn laughed. “Yeah, I know.”

  She was wearing a bikini, too. Hers was black and white.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t have waited so long to do this,” I said.

  “I don’t think anyone will notice.”

  I heard the park coming to life, the water start rushing over the slides in the distance. It was even better listening to everything when I knew I wasn’t going to have to be responsible for anyone today.

  “I have a confession to make,” Robyn said.

  I slid my gaze over to her. She was watching me. She looked so serious.

  “I wanted to come here today because I wanted to spend a little time with Sean. Isn’t it awful? That I don’t want to go hours without seeing him?”

  “That’s what I figured. I’m not totally clueless about relationships.”

  Robyn sat up. “We need to find you a boyfriend.”

  “When school starts.”

  “Isn’t there anyone you like? Even just a little?”

  “I like you.”

  Even though she was wearing sunglasses, I knew she was rolling her eyes. “You’re hopeless.”

  Not totally hopeless. I was sorta hoping that maybe Romeo would be here today. And maybe I’d see him and maybe —

  “I can’t believe this is what you guys wanted to do today,” Whitney said as she dropped her bag beside a lounge chair and sat on it. “I was thinking spa. Complete treatment, head to toe.”

  Robyn laughed. “Not on my budget.”

  “I would have treated. Or my dad would have anyway. But too late now. I already sent the chauffeur on his way. So we’re stuck here.”

  “Not a problem,” I said. “This is really what I wanted to do.”

  “And why is that?” Whitney asked.

  “No reason.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  The bells clanged signaling the park’s opening. I almost jumped up to head to my station. Habits were hard to break.

  “I’m going to head to Screaming Falls,” Robyn said.

  It was an awesome ride. The guest went up several flights of stairs, stepped into an elevator, and the floor dropped out.

  Of course so did the guest. Down the slide he plummeted.

  “I’m up for that,” Whitney said.

  “Think I’ll lounge around here for a while,” I said. “See if I can tan my tummy just a little.”

  “Just in case ‘no reason’ shows up?” Whitney asked.

  She could be so irritating.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

  “Whatever.” She stood up, then leaned down. “I saw him waiting in line.”

  I almost said “who?” but what was the sense in dragging this out? I grabbed her arm. “What do you know about him?”

  “Him?” Robyn asked. “Who are we talking about?”

  “Michael Romeo,” Whitney said, grinning like the Cheshire Cat. “Right?”

  “You like him?” Robyn asked me. “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “I don’t know if I like him. I just … I don’t know. He seems nice. But he and Jasmine were eating ice cream together so … I don’t know.” It seemed like I didn’t know much.

  “You’re way cuter than she is,” Whitney assured me.

  Shock of shocks. A compliment for me from Whitney. The earth might stop spinning.

  “Thanks, but other factors are in play here. Tanner kissed her. So maybe Romeo is interested in her, too.” I waved all that away. “What do you know about him?”

  “Just what you know — he’s helping his dad with the light shows. I also know he takes care of his younger brothers while his parents are working. That’s about it.”

  “You’re not much help.”

  “Excuse me, but I’m not matchmeup dot com.”

  “I don’t want to be matched up.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  I almost protested again, but like I said, we’d studied Shakespeare in English last year so I knew that it was suspicious if someone protested too much. So I let it go.

  Robyn and Whitney headed for the slides and I stayed where I was. I caught Tanner looking my way once. I took some satisfaction in that, wondered what he thought. Then I realized that my being there with two girls probably wasn’t going to make him regret kissing Jasmine instead of me. Wondering why I cared what he thought, I closed my eyes. Maybe coming here today had been a mistake.

  “You took my lounge chair again.”

  I opened my eyes. Romeo was sitting on the chair beside mine.

  He grinned and pointed. “My Birks, right there.”

  “I’ve heard that before.”

  “Honest. These are my Birks.”

  I looked down and laughed. His Birks were under my chair. His feet
were still in them.

  He leaned forward. “What are you doing here today? You’re not in uniform.”

  “My day off. Where else can I get fun, sun, and lots of water? Do you come here every day?”

  “Pretty much. We have season passes so we want to make the most of them. Keeps my younger brothers out of trouble.”

  “Do they get into trouble a lot?”

  “Sometimes.”

  He looked around the area at the tote bags, towels, and flip-flops scattered over the chairs. “So you’re here with someone.”

  It was a statement that sounded a little like a question.

  “Whitney and Robyn. They headed to Screaming Falls,” I told him.

  “Why didn’t you go? Does it scare you?”

  His voice held a challenge. And I wasn’t going to tell him the real reason that I hadn’t gone. That I’d hoped he would show up. I wasn’t even sure I had realized that was the reason until he did show up. I was really glad to see him.

  “Noooo, it doesn’t scare me.”

  “Prove it.” He stood up. “Go ride it with me.”

  I popped up off the lounge chair and gave him a cocky grin. “Anytime.”

  He slipped off his Birks and tucked them under my lounge chair.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  Before I could say anything, he took my hand and led us toward Thrill Hill.

  * * *

  The line at Screaming Falls was way too long. It was at least an hour and a half wait so we headed over to Blackout. It was a twisting, turning tube, dark on the inside. The inner tubes were two-seaters so people could go down in pairs if they wanted. I’d never gone down it with a guy before. I was trying not to be nervous.

  “So what do I call you?” I asked as we were standing in line.

  “Cute.”

  I laughed. “What?”

  “Exactly. What kind of question was that? ‘What do I call you?’”

  “Well, I mean, I hear people calling you Romeo and no one calling you Michael so … I know you said Romeo was kinda embarrassing, but did you mean it?”

  “Yeah, I really like Michael better.”

  I was a little disappointed, because Romeo had started to grow on me.

  As we stood there, not talking, I was feeling sort of out of my element. I’d gone down some of the water park slides once with a guy. With Tanner. I didn’t want to keep thinking about him. I didn’t want to compare Michael to him. Whitney was right. I shouldn’t judge Michael based on my experience with Tanner.

  “What grade will you be in?” I asked.

  “Eleventh.”

  “So you’re sixteen?”

  “Yep.”

  “Have a car?”

  He grinned. “Why do girls always ask that?”

  “Do they?”

  “Yeah. Like that girl I met the other morning, the one who sat on my shoulders? She asked me my name, then asked if I had a car. I think she wanted me to drive her someplace — but I couldn’t leave, because of the twins. I think that’s the reason she stopped hanging out with me.”

  “That must have hurt,” I said.

  “Not really. I mean, she was fun, but I don’t know. We didn’t connect.”

  The line was moving up slowly. We talked about school a little more. We went to the same high school, but with more than two thousand students, surprise, surprise, we’d never seen each other. Then we were at the front of the line.

  “You go first,” Michael said.

  I sat on the front of the inner tube. Michael got on behind me and put his arms around my pale stomach. I looked down. He was so tanned. His arms were so warm that I thought I might actually get a tan from them. My mouth went dry, which was kind of crazy with all this water rushing down the slide. We were at the top of the tunnel, staring into the black abyss. A red light was blinking at the top of the tunnel.

  I took a deep breath —

  The light turned green and an attendant shoved us down.

  I screamed as we hurtled down the tube. Michael laughed and his laughter tickled my ear and made me laugh, even while I was screaming. It was such a rush.

  We emerged into the sunlight and skidded across the water. We toppled over. Then we got up and waded out of the pool. Michael was pulling the inner tube behind him. Then he tossed it onto the conveyor belt that carried it back up to the top of the slide.

  “That was awesome,” he said.

  “You say that like you’ve never ridden it before.”

  “I haven’t. I usually hang out at Tsunami so the twins can find me if they need me.”

  I was stunned. “Is this the first year you’ve come here?”

  “Yep. First year I’ve had a car. My parents were never around to bring us, so you know …”

  There was another “you know” that I really didn’t know. My mom or Robyn’s mom would usually bring us on the weekends. Sean was always there to make sure that we were okay. I’d never really thought about how much he actually looked after us. Then when he got his license he started to bring us. I really was going to have to stop seeing him as evil.

  “Well, in that case,” I said, “I may have to insist that you do Screaming Falls.”

  “But the wait is at least an hour.”

  “It’s worth it. And I know all sorts of jokes.”

  I didn’t really. As we stood in line, I tried to remember what sorts of clues the test I’d taken the night before had indicated would let a guy know I liked him. One was to smile whenever he touched me, even if it was accidental. The problem there was that we weren’t touching.

  We talked about movies, we talked about music, we talked about TV shows. We were almost to the top when we heard an announcement:

  “Michael Romeo, please come to the Castaway Hut. Michael Romeo, please come to the Castaway Hut immediately.”

  That was so not good. The Castaway Hut was where lost or frightened kids — or terrified parents who couldn’t find their kids — went.

  “I’ve got to go,” Michael said.

  He started making his way back down the stairs. I followed him. Oddly, people weren’t moving aside, not until he said, “Excuse me.”

  A few people said, “Hey, you’re going the wrong way, dude.” Some laughed.

  I think they thought he’d chickened out at the top. It happened. This ride was probably the scariest in the park. But I knew he wasn’t scared. He was just being a good brother.

  He was moving really fast, and I could barely keep up.

  Once he got to the bottom of the stairs, he finally looked back. “You don’t have to come.”

  “Sure I do. It’s probably nothing,” I said. “One of them probably just got lost.”

  Only it wasn’t one of them. It was both of them. And they hadn’t gotten lost. They’d gotten hungry.

  “You don’t have to hang around while I feed the munchkins,” Michael said.

  We were sitting at a table in the food court while his brothers scarfed down cheese dogs — which were basically corn dogs except they had cheese instead of meat inside. Quite honestly, they were gross, almost as bad as the blue hot dogs.

  “What are friends for?” I asked. According to the test I’d taken, I was supposed to say something else that hinted that I wanted to be more than friends. But I couldn’t remember what it was. Maybe because being this close to Michael was distracting. He really had the most mesmerizing eyes. I always thought of blue eyes as being gorgeous. But his were so different that I couldn’t stop staring at them.

  He’d taken his sunglasses off before we’d hit the rides. He’d gone to his guest locker to get some money, but the sunglasses were back where I’d left my things by the lounge chair. Fortunately, the table we were sitting at had an umbrella that provided shade.

  “I’m supposed to stay at Tsunami if I don’t want to follow them around. So they can find me easily.” He grimaced. “And it’s the place Mom worries about the most so she never wants them playing there without me watching them. I guess I
’m lucky it was just hunger pains and not something serious that had my name being announced across the park.”

  At least now I knew why he hung around Tsunami. I’d started to think that maybe I was the attraction. I really needed to stop giving myself so much credit for attracting guys. “My granddad is always telling me not to borrow trouble. You should take his advice. Nothing bad happened. So we can hang out with them —”

  “You’re going to hang out with us?” one of the twins asked.

  “Only if we stop at the tattoo booth and get your names tattooed on your foreheads so I know who is who.”

  The boys giggled. I really couldn’t tell them apart.

  “But it’s your day off. You watch kids all week,” Michael said.

  “I don’t play with them.” Then I remembered that old Shakespeare saying about protesting too much. “Unless you don’t want me hanging around.”

  “No, that’d be great. Seriously.”

  “Can we go on the forbidden rides then?” one of the twins asked.

  I laughed. “The forbidden rides?”

  “The red rides,” Michael said. “They’re not allowed on the red rides.”

  The park had a rating system. Each slide, tube, or ride had a border around its sign to indicate the thrill level. Green was mild — - slow and easy. Yellow was moderate — a little faster, some turns, a rush. Red was warning — fast, high, drops, dips, strong swimmers only, screams anticipated.

  “We’ll do one,” Michael said. “Then we’ll see how you feel after that.” He looked at me. “So what would be a good starter ride for boys who want to experience an adrenaline high?”

  * * *

  We headed to Whirlpool — after we had the twins’ names tattooed on their arms in a medieval-looking font. The temporary tattoo booth provided water-resistant tattoos, so they lasted a little longer than regular face painting.

  “This is awesome,” Tony said.

  “I’m not going to scream,” Tommy said. He looked at me. “Will you scream?”

  “Definitely.”

  The boys were cute and having them with us chased away any awkwardness that Michael and I might have felt while we were waiting in line. Of course, having them around also stopped him from holding my hand. Probably because he didn’t want to hear them singing about us sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S …