Mom spends several minutes expounding on Clay’s expertise and dedication, while I pass them hoping she’s only speaking professionally. Though she’s not. He leaves clothes and keys and things around our house all the time now, has a favorite chair in the living room, has tuned the radio in the kitchen to the station he likes. Mom buys his favorite brand of soda, some weird Southern cherry drink called Cheerwine. I think she’s actually having it sent up from below the Mason-Dixon Line.

When we’re finally home, climbing out of the car in silence, I hear a rumble, and Joel’s motorcycle heads down the street. But it’s not Joel riding it. It’s Jase.

I say a quick prayer that he’ll wheel into his own driveway, but he sees us, circles into ours, stops. Pulling off his helmet, he wipes his forehead with the back of his hand, giving me his warmest smile. “Hey, Samantha.”

Mom looks at me sharply. “Do you know this boy?” she asks under her breath.

“Yes,” I say emphatically. “This is Jase.”

Ever polite, he’s already extending his hand. I pray he won’t mention his last name.

“Jase Garrett, from next door. Hi.”

Mom gives his hand a perfunctory shake, shooting an unreadable glance at me.

Jase looks back and forth between us, pauses, then pops the helmet back on. “Just going for a ride. Wanna come, Sam?”

I wonder exactly how much trouble I’ll get in if I do. Grounded till I’m thirty? Who knows? Who cares. I find, suddenly, that I don’t. I’ve been stuffed inside a crowded room for hours, pretending, badly, to be the daughter my mom wants. Now the sky overhead is dazzling blue, the horizon wide. I feel a sudden rush—like the wind, but instead it’s the blood whooshing in my ears, like when Tim and I were little and would go plunging headlong into the huge waves at the beach. I fling my leg over the back of the motorcycle and reach for the spare helmet.

We rocket off. I bury my head in Jase’s shoulder, determinedly not looking back at my mother, but still somehow expecting sirens or helicopters with SWAT teams to overtake us. Soon, sheer sensation carries me away from all that. The wind flips my hair and my hands tighten around Jase’s waist. He drives along the sandy, sea grass–lined Shore Road for a while, then through town, such a contrast with its neat red and white saltbox houses and evenly spaced maples. Then back to Shore Road near the beach. He cuts the engine in McGuire Park, near a playground I haven’t been to for years. It used to be the stop on the way home from half-day kindergarten.

“So, Samantha.” Jase takes off his helmet, hanging it on a handlebar, and reaches out a hand to help me off the seat. “Guess I’m from the wrong side of the tracks.” He turns away, knocking down the motorcycle kickstand with the side of his sneaker.

“I’m sorry,” I say reflexively.

He still doesn’t look at me, kicking at the pebbles. “First time I’ve met your mom. Thought she was just strict. About you. I didn’t realize this was actually about me. Or my family.”

“It’s not. Not really.” My sentences are coming out short and choppy. I can’t seem to catch my breath. “It’s her. She’s…I’m sorry…She is—she can be one of those people who make comments at the supermarket. But I’m not.”

Jase lifts his chin, looks at me for a long moment. I stare back, willing him to believe me.

His face is a handsome, indecipherable mask he’s never offered me before. Suddenly, I get angry. “Stop that. Stop judging me by what my mom did. That’s not me. If you’re going to decide what I’m like because of how she acts, you’re as bad as she is.”

Jase doesn’t say anything, nudging at the ground with his sneaker. “I don’t know,” he says at last. “I can’t help but notice that…well, you’re in my life…at our house, with my family, in my world. But am I really in yours? Things got pretty awkward when I saw you at your club. You never even told your best friend about me. I’ve never…” He runs both hands through his hair, shaking his head. “Had dinner at your house. Or…I don’t know, met your sister.”

“She’s away for the summer,” I point out in a small voice.

“You know what I mean. I mean—you’re all over the place with me. In my room and at the store and helping me train and just…there. Where am I with you? I’m not sure I know.”

I get that thick feeling at the back of my throat. “You’re everywhere with me too.”

“Am I?” He stops kicking the dirt and advances, heat radiating from his body, hurt from his eyes. “You sure about that? Seems as though the closest I get is your roof—or your room. Sure you’re not just…I don’t know…slumming?”

“Slumming? By seeing my next-door neighbor?”

Jase looks at me as though he wants to smile, but can’t. “You’ve got to admit, Sam, your mom wasn’t exactly looking at me in a neighborly way. Not like she wanted to send over a casserole or something. More like a restraining order.”

Relieved that he’s joking, I take off my helmet. “It’s my mother, Jase. Nobody’s good enough for me. In her mind. My first boyfriend, Charley, was a deviant sex fiend who wanted to use me and discard me. Then Michael, that emo guy you saw, he was a druggie loner who was probably going to lure me into addiction and then go assassinate a president.”

“You’d think I’d look good by comparison. But I guess not.” He winces.

“It was the motorcycle.”

“Oh yeah?” Jase reaches out to take my hand. “Remind me to wear Joel’s leather jacket next time.”

He gestures toward the bushes at the end of the cul-de-sac, away from the seesaw and the monkey bars and rusty swings. McGuire’s a town park all neatly laid out, nothing left to chance, but once you leave the playground behind, the grassy hill slowly dips low through the cluster of low wild-raspberry bushes into a long labyrinth of stones that lead into the river. You can leap from one to another and wind up sitting on a large flat granite rock, well out in the water.

“You know about the Secret Hideaway?” I ask.

“I thought it was just mine.” He grins at me, a little reserved, but still a grin. I smile back, thinking of Mom. Smile, Samantha. No one needs to prompt me now. We brush through the tangle of bushes, swatting the tiny thorns away from our faces, then jump, stone by stone, out to the raft-like rock in the river. Once there, Jase sits, knees up, arms around them, and I land next to him. I shiver, remembering how much cooler it always is with the breeze blowing up river. Without a word, he takes off his hooded sweatshirt and hands it to me. Afternoon light pours down, the river smell surrounds us, warm and brackish. Familiar and safe.