The Summer List. Amy Doan Mason

You” by Mazzy Star. We’d both bought the CD the weekend before. But she didn’t name the tune. I smiled at Alex apologetically.

      “I’ll listen for the title after I drop you off.” Alex grinned at me—don’t mind her—but quickly turned her eyes back to the road.

      Alex was a cautious, nervous driver, never going more than a few miles over the speed limit, her hands always gripping ten and two o’clock on the wheel. She’d only gotten her license a few years before. Her parents hadn’t let her take driver’s ed when she was in high school, Casey had said, so Alex hadn’t gotten around to learning until recently.

      When we pulled into the parking lot and Casey and I scrambled out, Alex called a little too cheerfully, “I want a full report.”

      I watched her leave by herself like all the other mommy chauffeurs. “She so wanted to skate with us,” I said. “And that was kind of mean about the song. You’re really that mad about some jeans?”

      Casey shook her head. “She was flirting with this boy at the car wash who squeegeed our windshield. He was like sixteen.”

      “I get that it’s annoying but she’d never—”

      “Don’t. Don’t even defend her. I know it’s not her fault. Her parents screwed her up royally. But she has to learn she’s not in high school anymore.” Casey swung open the door to the Silver Skate, releasing throbs of music.

      I tugged at her jacket, suddenly nervous. “Case. Don’t you want to hang out at your house instead? Cookie dough and Grease 2?”

      “We can do that any night.”

      “If Pauline’s here I’m going to kill you.”

      “Repeat this to yourself. ‘I’m not that girl anymore,’” Casey said as we stepped into the dark, disco-lit world of the rink.

      “What girl am I?”

      “You’re Laura Christie. Sophisticated Mystery Woman,” Casey shouted over the music, pulling me into line.

      “Say that three times fast.”

      The woman behind the register sealed circlets of glow-in-the-dark pink plastic around our wrists and we shoved through the turnstile.

      “My tracking bracelet, so I can’t escape,” I said.

      Casey laughed but stopped abruptly, clutching my arm. “Oh, no no no. It’s too good. Look.”

      There he was. The famous Boy Behind the Counter, handing out skates. The rental counter was elevated, and by a trick of the overhead fluorescents, it seemed he was under a spotlight. His black hair caught the light as he glided between the counter and the shelves of skates behind it. Our small-town god. On wheels.

      Morgan Schiffrin and some of her friends (girls we called the Hair Petters because they compulsively ran their hands down their long hair) were clustered near the rental counter, even though they already had their brown-and-orange skates. It was like an altar.

      “He’s obviously loving the attention,” I whispered as we lined up. “That is the tightest T-shirt I’ve ever seen.”

      “Maybe he accidentally shrank it in the dryer.”

      “Please.”

      “Maybe he had a late growth spurt and can’t afford to buy a bigger one.”

      “He’s rich. Related to the owner, supposedly.”

      “No offense, Laur, but you’re nobody to judge someone by the fit of their shirt.”