Day 34

At one o'clock in the afternoon, Derrick started up the lawnmower at Gina Goldberg's house and began to push it back and forth across the expansive front yard. During a typical landscaping job, Derrick liked to get started right after breakfast so that he could beat the heat, but this one was different. He was being paid by Mr. Goldberg to mow the lawn, but he was also being paid by Jeremy Eckerd to spy on Gina.

Jeremy and Gina were both in Derrick's math class. They had been dating for five months, and Derrick had seen firsthand the enormous drama in their relationship. They mostly fought over which parties to attend and what happened at those parties—he drank too much, she flirted too much, they went home with the wrong people. As far as he was concerned, they were both self-absorbed rich kids who deserved each other. So he wasn't above earning a few extra bucks off their chaos.

Jeremy had told Derrick that he suspected Gina was cheating on him with one of the lacrosse players. Derrick's job was to be at Gina's house in the middle of the afternoon; Jeremy would be at summer school then, so he figured Gina might take advantage of his absence.

Derrick pushed the lawnmower out of the straight path he was on and instead went around the hedge toward the back fence, where he could stand on his toes and peek over to survey the land. From his quick glance, he could see Gina lying on a lawn chair beside the pool. She wore sunglasses and a bikini, and the sun bouncing off the water shined in waves across her legs. He took a second glance, then began to push the mower back toward the other side of the lawn. As he did, he saw a car pull up and park along the curb. Lowering his baseball cap so as not to be recognized, he continued to mow as he watched the car. Three people got out, and walked toward the other end of the house where the gate to the yard was. Not surprisingly, they took no notice of the guy in shorts and ratty t-shirt mowing the lawn. Derrick, however, recognized Shayna, Eric, and Michail. Eric and Michail were on the lacrosse team. Bingo.

Derrick didn't break stride as the new arrivals disappeared around the corner of the house. He spent the next five minutes mowing; he figured they would settle into their false sense of security. Then he turned off the motor and, picking up the hedge clippers, headed toward the fence where he could take another peek. The hedges near the fence were tall—nearly six feet—and trimmed to make them rounded at the bottom and come to a point at the top. Derrick thought they looked like soft-serve ice cream after it had been licked all around and the layers no longer showed. He stood beside the first hedge, trimming and listening. There were hardly any branches sticking out, so he pantomimed the trimming when there was nothing left to cut. From the pool he heard splashing and then laughter. One of the girls was yelling "Michail!" as if admonishing him and one of the guys, presumably Eric, was countering her with a congratulatory "Dude!" Derrick took a quick peek and saw Michail doing a cannonball from the far side of the pool, splashing the girls in their lawn chairs. Shayna, like Gina, was wearing a bikini. But while Gina's bikini top resembled a blue bra that mostly covered her and only revealed the pale tops of her breasts, Shayna's top was comprised of two red triangles connected by strings, which revealed glimpses of her breasts from all sides. Derrick took a second, longer glance.