The Six Rules of Maybe

guys loved the Pleasure Way,” I said. Something was going on there. If I saw a sign on their house next, I’d really get worried.
    “Love,” he scoffed. “Maybe you want to take a tour? You know someone who might like all the comfort of home on wheels? Leather seats? It has more storage than you’d think.” He reached over the front tire, where I knew he kept the key. He waved it around at me enticingly.
    “I’ll spread the word,” I said.
    “I’m going to get her shined up,” he said. He patted her side. Bamp bamp .
    I could hear the far-off cheerful, tinkling music of Joe the ice-cream man, at an hour when no one would yet want ice cream. Whenhe passed, he looked morose and hungover and had a cigarette dangling from one corner of his mouth.
    “Good luck,” I said to Mr. Martinelli. I got into Mom’s car. When I drove down the street, I saw Kevin Frink in his Volkswagen, a few doors down from the Saint George house. In the small dome of the car, I saw him lean forward and blow out a lit match. I felt a strange but strong uneasiness, a wrongness that seemed silly and paranoid. Information from our most important guide ever, our instinct, too often bumped up against our favorite belief that everything was fine and under control. I headed to Nicole’s house. I put every warning sign of all that might happen right into the garbage can of my self-deceptive brain. Then, I turned the music up.
    Nicole’s mom, Theresa, dressed in more fashionable clothes than Nicole did. Short skirts, tight layered tops. You could tell she wanted to be seen as “the cool parent”—at least, cooler than Nicole’s dad, whom she called Jack even though his name was Dennis. Jack, as in jackass. Nicole lived in dual-personality divorce land, where at one house (Theresa’s) there was every junk food possible and lax rules and “fun,” and in the other (Dennis’s) there were rules for everything and an insistence on a “healthy” lifestyle, which meant you were a shameful, weak loser if a Dorito passed your lips. If Theresa wanted to be cool, Dennis wanted to be … a jackass.
    “You girls going to hang out by the pool and check out all the cute guys?” Theresa asked. This was another box to check on Theresa’s internal cool list—talking about “guys” and more specifically “cute guys.” Maybe she thought this was a way to be one of us, even though it didn’t work for me. I never really understood the general discussion of “cute guys” as if they were all interchangeable, as if their cuteness mattered more than any other quality. She didn’task us if we were going to the pool to check out nice guys, or smart guys, or funny guys. It made you understand how she had ended up with “Jack,” who looked a little like he had stepped out of a men’s magazine, but whom you really didn’t want to spend more than five minutes with. It made you also understand the shoes she herself had on—high narrow heels that looked good but that probably killed her feet.
    “I only have eyes for one,” Nicole said. “The sole and only reason I’ve spent half my summer at the pool when I don’t even like to swim that much.”
    “You’ve given up on Jesse?” I asked. I was surprised and maybe a little relieved. I couldn’t see him hanging out at the pool. If he didn’t even want to stay in our cafeteria, he wasn’t likely to be found straddling some deck chair next to Evan O’Donnell and Jake Tafferty as they flung their wet heads around trying to splash girls.
    “Give up? Giving up is for pansies. At least that’s what my father says.”
    Theresa snorted the snort she gave whenever Nicole’s dad was mentioned. It was like in the psychology books, the way Pavlov’s dogs salivated whenever they heard the bell ring. Theresa fingered one of the many stacks of legal documents on their dining room table, as if her fingers couldn’t bear to be away from the conflict for long.
    “Jesse doesn’t go to the pool,” I said. I was guessing.
    “Doesn’t go . He works there. He’s a lifeguard.”
    “A lifeguard?” A lifeguard? I had one of those moments where your thoughts seem to freeze and race at the same time. A lifeguard. A rescuer of things maybe. Maybe even someone who apologized to dogs.
    I didn’t have time to think about this, because Jasmine arrivedthen, and after a flurry of lunch packing and towel finding, we all got into Mom’s car and drove to the pool. It was pretty much what I pictured. Leo Snyder