Page 1 of Crazy for this Girl

The sun has already set, allowing the blanket of stars to twinkle and glimmer across the dark sheet of night. With my headphones in and Avril Lavigne blaring in my ears, probably making me half-deaf, I sit cross-legged on my family’s boat dock and relax.

Mom and Dad excitedly wanted to play Monopoly tonight, but I’ve been avoiding my mother like the plague after her cucumber demonstration of how to put a condom on.

I don’t even want to think about her purposely going to the town store to buy it.

Also, I don’t want to ponder why she even has a condom to begin with, because seriously, no thanks.

It all started when she saw my new magazine clippings of Justin Timberlake taped to my red notebook and freaked. How she thought doing her little one-man show in front of Dad was going to keep me from bolting out of our summer cabin and still look at her straight is beyond me.

I’ve been through Sex-Ed. I know about the birds and the bees and where babies come from. Little do my parents know, I’m way too shy to even get kissed by a boy right now, and I find none of them cute at the private school I went to from kindergarten to eighth grade. I grew up with all of them, listened to their voices change, and watched their faces break out with acne. I was far from interested in dating any of them, let alone dance with them at one of our school functions.

I also don’t need my mom showing me things I’m not going to be experiencing in the next decade.

The threat of me going to a public high school next year must be wearing on her because she really wanted me to attend the all-girls Catholic school instead. No boys would’ve meant no weird conversations about intimate relations and peer pressure, so maybe I should’ve caved and agreed to go. But the awful forest green uniforms and white blouses that I’ve had to wear for eight years made the decision pretty easy.

Unless I wanted to be like my best friend, Hannah, and get sent down to the principal’s office for wearing way too much makeup and hiking her skirt up a little too high. It’s such a common occurrence that she makes time in her week to serve it.

The heavy thuds of something hitting the wooden dock startle me, and I whip my head over my shoulder to see a lean figure walking toward me.

My fight or flight skills activate, having watched way too many horror flicks to make the mistake of looking over my shoulder every two seconds and trip while running. Except, I have a lake behind me, and drowning isn’t on my to-do list tonight if my alleged attacker is a faster swimmer than me.

Tugging one of my earbuds out of my ears, I watch as the tiki torches that Dad has attached to the dock start to bring the trespasser into view. I only have the closest one to me lit, but it’s all I need.

It’s an outline of a boy who looks to be the same age as me, with what looks to be dark brown hair and a friendly smile. His white tee makes it appear like he’s swimming in it, and his gray sweatpants do the same exact thing as he stops within a few feet of me, generating my mind to come up with a way to shove him into the water so I can run back up to my cabin.

“Hey,” he says, shoving his hands into the pockets of his sweats. “Sorry if I scared you. I saw you out here and wanted to introduce myself.”

“In the middle of the night, though?” I can’t help the question and how accusatory it sounds. It just blurts through my lips like I have diarrhea of the mouth. Something I’ve been trying to reel in for years now.

I clearly suck at it.

However, this is weird and creepy, and too much like the movie Scream to me.

Stranger Boy doesn’t falter from my comment and shrugs. “Yeah, well, I just unpacked. Looked out the window, and here you were.” He quickly extends a hand. “I’m Cal.”

Fight or flight.

Fight or flight.

“Laynee.” I hesitantly return his gesture because one of his hands is still held hostage in his pocket.

He jerks his thumb to my family’s cabin. “You rentin’ this place out?”

“No, we own it.”

Which means people know us here. I disappear, you’re number one suspect, new boy.

He turns his head and points to the blue-sided house next to mine. “We’re at that one. We’re not renting either; my father bought it this year.”

I immediately frown and feel my shoulder slump in disappointment. “What happened with Miss Litwa?”

He shrugs again. “Dunno.”

“Oh.” I can’t help the letdown of that fact fill in with my words. Miss Litwa was a really cool lady in her mid-thirties, who would invite me over to bake, hang out with her girlfriends when they came up from Florida, and she’d even do my makeup when I was feeling courageous against another talk with Mom.

We’d speak about all sorts of things, music and movies, and I felt more comfortable with her than I did my own parental unit that likes to hound me on every little thing I do.

“Friend of yours?”

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