Page 39 of Rules for Rule Breaking

“Hey!” Winter kicked water at him, but it didn’t go far. She endedup throwing herself off-balance and landing on her butt, completely soaking herself.

Bobby snorted. “Good job!”

Winter said nothing as she charged past him to the car. She returned moments later in a yellow one-piece, and Bobby felt the immediate urge to look away. But he didn’t want to make it weird. Not knowing what to do or where to look, he got up and went back to the water.

Winter assumed his previous post and grabbed the bag of gummies. “Your turn!”

She spiked one right into his mouth, and they both whistled and cheered. Bobby stuck his hands up in the air and started chanting, “USA! USA! USA!”

“Wait, I can do better. Let me try again.”

“You got it into my mouth. How could you do better?”

“Just open your mouth!”

This was the neurotically competitive girl he knew—the one who came to school with strep throat because she couldn’t stand to let him be the Republic of Equatorial Guinea’s sole delegate at their ninth-grade Model UN conference. Now she was chasing him around the water, trying to jam gummy bears into his mouth. She got him on his back, and he writhed around like a beached whale. Bobby’s shorts were sticking to his legs.

“Mercy!” he cried as he struggled to stand.

“That’s what you get for going through my bag.”

“Oh, relax. The gummy bears were sitting on top.”

Bobby splashed her, and she splashed him back with a wave that’d make Poseidon blush. He brandished a mimed white flag, and she helped him up. They walked along the water’s edge together as Winter collected sea glass.

“Any other dumb laws in Maryland we can... circumvent?” Bobby asked.

“There are some really wild ones here,” Winter replied as she counted her findings in her hand.

Bobby walked backward so that he and Winter could talk face-to-face. His feet squished into the wet sand and left perfect molds. “Like what?”

“Well, in the entire state of Maryland, oral sex is illegal.”

Bobby stopped in his tracks, and Winter crashed right into him, causing her to drop all her sea glass.

“You okay?” he asked, trying to pick up her fallen sea glass.

“Yeah, amazing,” she said, straightening out her swimsuit. She took out her hair elastic and flipped her hair over her head before piling it on top again. It always fascinated Bobby how quickly girls could do that. Bobby Bae enjoyed an orderly life, but he was a sucker for a messy bun.

“What was that?” Winter asked, pulling out the sides of her bun so she had hair sticking out in every direction.

“Huh? Oh...” Bobby bowed his head. “It was nothing. I tripped.”

“Did you think I was offering to...” Winter said slowly. “Bobby Bae,” she continued, with scandal in her voice, her lips curling into a dark smile. “Keep your hands and Freudian slips to yourself.” She laughed hard at his expense.

His face got hot. “Come on, stop it. You promised to be nice to me.”

“How nice were you expecting?”

“I yield. You win this one,” Bobby said, throwing his hands up in surrender.

“But, Bobby—”

“I’m calling a moratorium!”

Winter hung her head to the side. “You can’t be serious. You’re getting moratorium-happy.”

“Doesn’t matter. I called it. You have to honor it,” he said, marching ahead.