The Boys of Summer (The Summer Series) (Volume 1), Page 3

  ***

  Lunch and the rest of the day passed with surprisingly little drama. Scott's banana-rised locker stayed like that for the rest of the day; I think he was trying to prove a point or something. The typical boy mentality of not caring, though the look he had thrown me had been chilling. If I knew Scott, it would be eating him alive.

  Ellie and I walked in mirror image, our thumbs hooked into our backpack straps as we pushed our bodies forward to balance the weight of our textbooks on our backs. I had made sure I had packed up all my valuables from my locker in case there was a mysterious attack overnight.

  Adam circled us on his bike.

  "Sooo, have you thought about my business proposition?"

  He wasn't addressing Ellie, he was addressing me. I knew he was, because I automatically cringed every time he asked the question, which had been every damn day for the past semester. I also knew it was directed at me because Ellie, from the very get-go, had squealed and said, "Count me in!" Traitor!

  Adam must have read the look on my face.

  "Aw come on, McGee! It's gonna be awesome!" His circling was making me dizzy.

  "I just don't think I would be any good."

  He rolled his eyes at Ellie. "I thought you promised to talk some sense in to her?"

  "Hey! I've been on operation 'get a rocket under Tess' for weeks. I even got her parents involved."

  "Yes, about that." I stopped walking abruptly to confront Ellie, nearly causing Adam to fall off his bike.

  Ellie gave me her fluttery-eye blink of innocence, the very one that probably fooled all the boys. Well, it didn't fool me.

  "Mum has been giving me hell, saying, 'It will be good for your confidence, Tess' and, 'It will give you some extra pocket money for the holidays' and 'You might meet some new people'." I repeated every Mum-saying with enough exaggerated whining to sound almost authentic. Even to my ears.

  Ellie folded her arms. "And all that is so bad because?"

  I paused. Because it was out of my comfort zone. I was not good in foreign environments. I wanted to spend the summer with Ellie and Adam riding down to the lake, watching the fireworks at the show and eating ice cream at the Sunday markets. I wanted to regain that same essence of past summers and how wonderfully lazy it had all been. Not slaving away at the Onslow Hotel.

  "It's not rocket science, Tess," Adam said. "Come on, it'll be the three amigos. No parentals. We can play pool all summer long and get paid for it."

  "It will be so fun," Ellie said, "serving drinks to hot guys." Boys were never far from her thoughts.

  "Yeah - and cleaning up sticky messes and dirty dishes; sounds like a riot," I said. "Can't we just hang out at the lake?"

  "We ALWAYS do that."

  "Not last year."

  "Correction - YOU didn't do it last year; you were attached to Snotty's face the whole holidays. WE went to the lake and the market and stuff, and this year we want to do something different, don't we, Adam?"

  "Yes, yes we do, and we want to do it with YOU."

  The Onslow Hotel was almost like a tiara of Onslow in that it was positioned at the very peak of a hill overlooking the entire town. Ellie and I painfully walked up there a few times, agreeing that 'Coronary Hill' was an appropriate name dubbed by the locals. We had learned our lesson and chose for future reference to trek the long way around the back roads on bike, swinging around the imposing hotel structure to the quick trail home. Our bikes had blazed a path downhill as we screamed, our feet on our handlebars. So Adam was predicting awesome times ahead at the Onslow Hotel? I seriously doubted anything with the word 'Onslow' in it could ever be connected to awesome.

  It was obvious that the fore-founders of our grand community severely lacked in the imagination department. Onslow was a small town, population of less than three thousand, nestled in the valley of the Perry Ranges. It would be more in line with being a retirement village if the rolling hills weren't the backdrop to Lake Onslow, a sprawling mass of man-made lakes that swept as far as the eye could see. Local legend claimed that it was bottomless, and Lord knows we had tested the theory. So far, it checked out: we could never touch the bottom.

  As students of Onslow High finished up from school, we would cut through Onslow Park, walk past Lake Onslow where the Onslow Hotel overlooked the town of ? oh, what is it called? Oh yeah, Onslow!

  They looked at me with their pathetic, pleading doe-like eyes.

  Even after a full three weeks of having to endure 'that' look, I still felt my heart race in anxiety at the thought. I had never had a job before, even though my parents had nagged and nagged me to get one.

  I knew all the answers to the questions I was about to ask, but I tentatively asked again, anyway.

  "So how many hours?"

  "Weekend lunch, twelve to two, and dinner, six to nine."

  I didn't need to calculate, I had done it a thousand times. Adam was good, he didn't smile or even show an ounce of excitement. He was serious and business-like, knowing that if he was any other way it would scare me off.

  "Ten dollars an hour?"

  He nodded. "Cash in hand."

  I definitely didn't need to calculate that either. I'd had all of my hypothetical money spent for the past three weeks.

  Ellie wasn't as diplomatic as Adam, and started to bounce on the balls of her feet.

  Adam inched closer, maneuvering his bike right up to me. "Come on, Tess. My uncle wants me to be dish pig for the holidays, doing it without you guys would make it what it is, a pretty shitty way to spend my weekends. But I don't know, I thought if you guys were with me it would be a blast. We always make our own fun, and just think of it. We can go and blow all our money together on Big Ms and dirty deep-fried chicken wings at the Caltex afterwards."

  That had me frowning in disgust more than anything. He'd been doing so well until now, but suddenly it seemed like he'd totally forgotten who he was talking to. But I now saw something new in Adam's pleading eyes. He had made it sound like an awesome adventure because his uncle and dad had given him little choice for the weekends but to slug it out in dirty dishwater for a good chunk of his holidays. He had sold it to us on the angle of money, free soft drinks and an array of cute boys. Admittedly, it did definitely have its perks.

  But the bigger reason my icy facade had started to thaw was because if I didn't do it, I would barely get to see my best friends on the weekends, and I wouldn't be able to join in on all the 'in-jokes' they would share from all that time together over the summer without me. Plus, Ellie would no doubt snag a cute, new, Onslow-Hotel-visiting boyfriend for the summer, and Adam would be buying everyone chicken wings at the Caltex and where would I be? At home, doing chores because my parents wanted to drill some sort of work ethic into me, in some other torturous way as a form of revenge for not getting a summer job with my work-savvy friends. There would be no ten dollars an hour for the displeasure either. I thought of one of my mental purchases, a cute little summer dress I had spotted in the window of Carters' clothes shop, and smiled.

  I re-adjusted the weight of my backpack as I looked down at my foot, tracing a circle in the dirt. I squinted back up at Adam who was waiting intently.

  "Does the restaurant have air conditioning?"

  Adam broke into a broad smile, like a cat that got the mouse.

  "Like a freakin' igloo."

  Smug bastard, he didn't need to look so satisfied with himself. I fought not to smile and looked from him to Ellie, who was acting as if she had a brigade of ants in her pants.

  I sighed in defeat. It wasn't the summer I wanted, but it was the summer I was stuck with. "Alright."

  "Sorry?" Adam questioned.

  "Alright, I'll do it."

  "Sorry, I didn't hear you. Can you repeat that?"

  "I'll do it!" All air was knocked from me when a squealing Ellie body slammed me into a bear hug.

  Bloody hell.

  "Okay. Well, hopefully Uncle Eric will think it's okay. He is pretty desperate, but I can't pr
omise anything. If you're lucky, I guess ?" Ellie and I set in on him, giving him a dual beating in the rib cage, but he preempted the attack and sped off on his bike, our textbook-filled packs preventing us from giving chase.

  Adam called back, flashing a winning smile.

  "You won't regret it! We are going to have the best summer!"