Sorry about the long wait guys. It's been a crazy couple of days since I last posted.

I have discovered this wonderful story that only has one review! It's a crossover between Skins and The Hunger Games and it's really well written. Go check it out and review, it's called The Skins Games.

Katie had the nerve to smile down at me. She shouted above the drone of the boat motor, "Naomi, when we're old enough, I want you to be my girlfriend."

I tried to speak, spluttered, and spit out a lock of my hair the wind had blown into my mouth. I was nothing if not glam. "You're old enough," I told her. "And if Mandy is old enough, I'm old enough."

She bent closer and said, "I'll pick you up at seven."

What a thrill! She'd asked me out! I was going out with Katie! Only, those were the words I'd heard. What she'd mouthed was something different. Like on one of those kung fu movies Cook loved to watch, with English words dubbed over the Chinese sound, and the characters' mouths never quite matching up.

"Bollocks!" I sat straight up in my cold, wet bed. I wiped and wiped with my palms, but I could not get all my hair out of my mouth. Then I realized what I'd said out loud. "Sorry, Mum," I told her sweet sixteen photo on my bedside table. My alarm clock blared Bon Iver, "Holocene."

Right! I vowed to move things along with Katie that day at work. I would make sure she knew I was part of the hot scene. Unfortunately, the instant I stepped into the marina office, I was presented with an obstacle to this goal in the form of a seething matriarch with pinstriped hair.

"Naomi!" she roared, spinning around in her office chair.

"Good morning, boss!" I said brightly, giving her a wave.

She narrowed her eyes at me. "It was bad enough when Emily told me yesterday that Katie stole Mandy from her. She wanted me to ground Katie, or take away her xbox."

"Ground her for how long?" If Katie was grounded, she wouldn't even be able to pick Mandy up and drive her back to her own house. She could only see her if Mandy's mom dropped her off. Talk about embarrassing. Katie didn't like to be embarrassed. Instant breakup! On the other hand, if she were grounded for the whole summer, even after she broke up with Mandy, she could never go out with me.

"I can't ground her," Jenna squealed. "I can't ground one daughter for stealing the other's girlfriend. But I've got to do something. Emily's cheekbone is blue. Katie is holding her jaw at a funny angle and won't let me look at it. The physical fights are bad enough. They can't torture each other psychologically, too!"

Of course they could. They'd been doing it for years. Obviously Katie was careful not to call Emily ADD when their mother was around. Somehow I didn't think pointing this out would help my current situation, so I nodded like I understood her plight. "Do I have gas?"

She folded her arms. "And this morning Emily told me she's going out tonight. With you."

"Don't say I didn't warn you," I sang, sweeping my hand down my body in the all this can be yours gesture.

"You were after Katie," she spat.

"Who, me?" Yes, I actually said, Who me? I was beginning to see Emily's point about me never winning an Oscar. "I was after Emily."

"You were after Katie. You watched her moonily all day Friday. You took an hour and a half for lunch, waiting for her to show up."

I raised my chin haughtily. "You people are slave drivers. Can't I have a break to watch What Not to Wear?"

"Besides," she said more calmly, examining me too closely for comfort, "if you and Emily really were about to start going out, Emily wouldn't have complained to me just yesterday about Katie stealing her girlfriend. She'd be happy to have you, and she'd forget all about her."

Good point. Where was Emily to take some of this heat? I looked around futilely for her. Then I told part of the truth. "It's the principle of the thing. Emily's also mad Katie broke her remote controlled Hummer that she got for Christmas six years ago."

She went limp with exasperation. "Emily broke that! Emily said Katie broke it on purpose, Katie said Emily broke it, and I believed Katie."

"Exactly."

She stared me down, waiting for me to crack, while I tilted my head this was and that way and fluttered my eyelashes at her. Finally she nodded at the door and said, "You're in the warehouse. With Katie."

A torture worse than death, ho ho. A second chance to move things along. Katie and I helped the full time workers take boats out of storage. Mostly we found the boats that needed to be brought down, cleaned the seats, and topped off the fluids in the engines. As we finished each boat, Effy and Cook delivered it across the lake. Emily had gas. More than throwing me with Katie for spite, I think Jenna was trying to keep Katie and Emily away from each other.

I did my best with Katie, but it wasn't good enough. She treated em exactly like she always had, except for two days before in the boat. She would do things that were so, so sweet, like get me a soda from the office when she got one for herself. But then she spoke to an old lady customer in the same loving tone she'd use on me. Also her mother.

Maybe she didn't know that Emily and I were going out. I couldn't imagine that Jenna had shared this tidbit with her if she thought it would add fuel to the fire. So Katie didn't understand she was supposed to realize I was girlfriend material and feel jealous. Skilled though I was in the womanly arts of manipulation and talking smack, I couldn't quite figure out a way to pass this info along to her without coming out and telling her, which would blow my cover. So I was super sweet right back to her and traipsed around the warehouse in my singlet and generally acted like her and I were just friends. Ha!

Late in the afternoon we went wake boarding. Yesterday we'd skipped team calisthenics for the first time ever, and we had no taste for them today either. Cook didn't announce it was time for calisthenics, and neither did Effy. Katie and Emily just glared at each other as they threw life vests at each other to pitch into the boat.

I think we all were a bit on edge by the time we launched. But Katie spotted first and Emily sat way up in the bow, so we began to relax. After all, Katie and Emily weren't likely to get into it on the boat. Effy and Cook were there to pull them off each other. Cook was stronger than any of the girls.

As for me, I wanted so badly to sit across the aisle from Katie. She might scoot over and share my seat with me, like two days before. But no, she would never do this and mess up her "relationship" with Mandy - not while it was having the desired effect on Emily.

Subtlety and patience were not a couple of my strong points. Perhaps you have figured this out. However, I managed to keep my eyes on the prize, which meant bypassing Katie and hunkering down against the wind in the bow with Emily. Problem was, Katie's seat faced backward so she could spot for Cook wake boarding. She didn't even see the knee-weakening look Emily gave me as I sat down.

But Effy in the driver's seat could see us, and Katie might be so gracious as to turn around once in awhile. I wondered what Emily would want to do with me. Whether she would try to touch me, and where. Maybe she was thinking the same thing I was thinking: it was a bit early for PDA in our faux couplehood. If we suddenly fell in love after seventeen years of being friends, it would be obvious we were faking to show Katie we didn't care about her and the treacherous Mandy.

For whatever reason, Emily didn't touch me. She was content to watch me, darkly. I had no idea why she was looking at me this way. Clearly we were not thinking the same thing after all.

Then I had another problem. Emily had told me two days before that I'd screwed my chances with Katie by taking her place in the wake boarding show. Maybe I should face plant an air raley so Katie wouldn't think I was rubbing it in. But you know what? I was still so thrilled with my great runs two days in a row, I wasn't willing to throw it for a girl. Even a girl this important. Maybe this was something I could work on as I matured.

Katie had another bad run. Emily did too but at least she enjoyed it. I had another run so fantastic, I decided I'd work on a S-bend the next day. Ideally this would involve landing the S-bend, unlike some adrenalin junkies I knew.

And Katie didn't seem to mind I did well and she didn't. She was her usual pleasant self, a bit too distant for my taste, same old, same old. She must be really basking in the fact that she'd gotten Emily's goat. I mean, girlfriend. That was okay. I would get Katie in the end.

I was feeling very hopeful about the whole situation when we docked at the marina. Maybe it was the sun again, or the lingering glow from my good run. But when Emily helped me out of the boat and we did the secret handshake, I didn't even care it was a complete waste of handshake because Katie had already gone into the warehouse and didn't see it happen. Doing the handshake made me feel like somebody valued me enough to do a secret handshake with me.

"By the way," I said during the high five, "What was up with the look you kept giving me in the boat?"

"What look?" Emily asked, blushing. She knew what I meant.

"This look." I showed it to her.

She squinted at me. "I'm not a doctor, but I'd either say indigestion or a stroke."

We laughed, touched elbows, and parted ways on the wharf. I sauntered to my house, taking big sniffs of the hot evening air scented with cut grass and flowers, not minding too much that I had to spend a few minutes blowing a gnat out of my nose. I wish Katie had asked me out like she was supposed to. But if I had to go on a fake date to get her, there was no one I'd rather go on a fake date with than Emily. I might even enjoy it, as friends.

After supper with Dad and Cook, and a luxe beauty routine that included teasing my mascara-coated eyelashes apart with the comb attachment to Cook's electric razor, I was ready. An hour early. I peered out my bedroom window at Emily's house and wondered what she was doing right now. Getting ready herself? Taking a shower?

Even thought the picture of her in the shower was all in my head, I took a step back from the window at the force of the picture, and the realism. I must be picturing Katie in the shower, because the girl in the shower wasn't wearing the skull and crossbones.

Emily wore the skull and crossbones while wake boarding and swimming. She must wear it in the shower too. Or did she? In all the times over the years we'd worked together at the marina, when she'd bent down and the pendant had swung from the leather string, I'd never noticed a dirty patch in the shape of a skull and crossbones on her neck. Okay, I couldn't stand another hour of torturing myself this way.

I said bye to my dad and waded in my high heels down my yard to the dock. Then I untied the canoe and set off across the lake. Crossing the lake in a canoe, a sailboat, or anything without a motor could be harrowing. The lake was about half a kilometer wide at this point, and a canoe crossing the traffic pattern was likely to get T-boned by a speed boat driven by someone who didn't understand boating laws and was drunk to boot. But the busiest part of the day was over, and I paddled fast.

On the other side, I tied up to the Jones' dock. Funny that the kids weren't swimming. They'd probably been swimming all day and had brained each other several times with plastic shovels and nearly drowned once, and Kieran was about damned tired of it and made them get out of the water. I was all too familiar with this scenario.

I dropped down on their side of the fence, walked over, and sat on the edge of the sandbox. "Whatsamatter?" I asked the kidlet. "You've never seen such a vision of loveliness?"

"There's a gate, you know," Kieran said.

"I didn't notice."

"It's on the other side of the house, off the driveway, where people usually put gates."

"I got in, didn't I? God, you always want me to do things your way." This was sort of unfair. Kieran had been pretty hands-off as babysitters went. Like I had anybody to compare him to. "Well this time I've definitely done something that isn't covered in the child care manual. Go ahead, ask me what happened at the party. Ask me what happened the night after the party. Ask me where I'm going now, dressed to kill."

"Something else is going on with those girls," he said after I explained the situation to him.

"Like what?"

"I'm not sure. It's been years since I gave Emily or Katie or Effy or Cook the evil eye. You're the only one who comes to visit... Jeremiah, we do not eat the sand." He scooped up the boy and took him inside. The boy didn't protest. The children had been drugged or lobotomized.

I turned to the other boy. "Don't you ever protest?"

He shook his head.

"Hold strikes? Write letters of complaint? He always told us we had permission to do anything if we could write a convincing argument for it. We tried."

He intoned in a cute little zombie voice, "We do not eat the sand."

Kieran came back out and deposited Jeremiah in the sandbox again. He examined some nearby dried leaves hungrily. "I guarantee you something else is going on there," Kieran repeated. "Yours isn't the only plot."

I laughed until I choked. The children studied me with serious eyes. They were adapting to the Montessori method a lot better than Cook and I had.

"I always loved Emily," Kieran said.

I sniffled. "You did?" Kieran wasn't too free with the professions of love.

"But Emily had room to grow. Sounds like she still does."

Feeling strangely defensive of Emily all of a sudden, I said, "Everybody has room to grow."

"And I don't want you to be on her field." He gave me a stern look.

"What am I, a crop of rutabagas?"

He glanced at the kids and said through his teeth to me, "Do you understand?"

"Not really. Are you forbidding me to see Emily?" This was actually sort of romantic, though ridiculous. I forbid you to see the girl next door!

"Ever since your mum died," he whispered, "your dad has been terrified for you kids. But he's gone out of his way not to be overprotective do that you don't live life afraid. And those were the instructions he gave me as your caregiver." He reached over and patted my knee. "No one's going to forbid you anything, Naomi. Just... watch out around those girls."