“Where are we going?” On the starlit road in front of me, Will stands up to press his full weight into the stiff pedals of the fat-wheeled Huffy bikes that we stole from Penny’s garage. “If I’d have known we were making a cross-country road trip, I would have worn real shoes,” he says. Like mine, Will’s feet are sliding around in a pair of flip-flops.
I listen to the sound of chinking metal and the whir of spokes. We’re following Penny’s lead, each chasing the flutter of her white-blond hair like it’s a comet. The air is warm and dry. I’m still wearing my bathing suit top and jean shorts from this afternoon. Specks of sand stick to my legs and between my fingers and toes. It’s the end of our first summer together. Next week I’ll be turning fifteen and Penny and Will have already been bugging me about what I want to do for the big day. But I don’t care as long as it’s with them.
“On life’s journey, faith is nourishment!” Penny calls back.
“Is that from Star Wars?” Will asks.
“Buddha, you idiot!”
“Well, I don’t think Buddha banked on having to ride on a banana seat,” I say, trying to ignore my chafing thighs.
Our laughter fills the darkness of the empty road. My skin is electric. We told Penny and Will’s mothers that we were staying over at my house tonight and we told my parents we were crashing at Will’s. Nobody bothers my parents on account of the fact that they think my mom and dad have their hands full enough with Matt. But Penny stuffed blankets in the basket on the front of her bike and she tied a cooler with a bunch of snacks to Will’s, which is probably why he’s whining so much.
We’re biking away from shore, uphill, so that sometimes we have to get off our bikes and walk beside them. “Did I tell you I used to have asthma?” I say to them, still huffing and puffing.
Penny scrunches up her forehead. A gauzy tunic covers up her bikini. “What do you mean ‘used to’? Asthma doesn’t just, like, go away.”
I shrug. “Mine did.”
“Weird.” And then she comes to a full stop. And Will nearly runs his front wheel over the back of her ankles. She lets her bike crash on the side of the road. Will and I share a look. “I think this is it,” she says. “My dad used to take me here as a kid to camp.” This surprises me a little, since Simon Hightower is a tech-nerd who works at a fancy tech company and treats the family’s gadgets like the FBI or internet hackers could be trying to survey them at any moment. In other words, he doesn’t exactly scream outdoorsy.
But I suppose he does scream good dad.
I feel jealous of Penny because I used to have a dad like that too, but the jealousy is gone in an instant. Only a silvery sheen of light cascades over the rocky landscape that butts up against the road. A ragged wooden sign reads: Cat Mountain State Park. “Do you see that?” she asks, tilting her face up to the sky.
“Ummmm…” Will scrunches up his eyes and stares up in the same direction, spinning around like a dog after his own tail. “I’m gonna go with no?”
“It’s a full moon.”
“So?” I say.
“So, it’s the last full moon of the summer. That’s when dreams are born.” Her eyes are shining, filled with excitement and light, both of which are contagious. “We had to do something.”
Will and I learn that the something involves gathering up by the armful the small stash of supplies we’ve brought and tramping off the road into the baked terrain.
The ground is uneven. Penny takes out a battery-operated lantern and I trudge after it to the sound of crickets. Will and I walk shoulder to shoulder. He’s still shirtless from our day spent scouring the beach for sharks’ teeth to add to Penny’s collection, and the light bounces off his chest.
Weeds strangle the path and get caught on our flip-flops. Will catches me by the arm more than once to stop me from face-planting. It’s not until we’re nearly on top of it that I see the cave. A low rocky cliff, pierced by a dark opening, forms an open jaw in the stretch of landscape before us.
Penny’s lantern swings as she turns to face us. “It’s an old cougar den,” she says. “Don’t worry, it’s been abandoned for, like, a billion years. My dad said most of the bones are fossilized.”
I pick my way over the rocks to the opening. The seeds of adventure and the unexpected are blooming inside. “Cooool.” The word blows out, long and amazed. “Bring the light over here, Pen.”
I stare at the ground until the light pools around my feet. There, a pair of curved white ribs lies in the red dirt. I bend down and run my hand over the length of bone. The cave is shallow. The glow of the lantern easily reaches the back wall of stone and we drop our belongings at the cave opening.
Will shows us half a paw print preserved in the mud, and he shows a gopher skull that he finds to me but not to Penny, because he thinks it might upset her. Ever since Will’s dad moved out, Will’s started to go quiet for a few hours, sometimes even a day, at a time. If I watch him closely, I can tell that he wants to go dark now, which is the name I have in my head for this mood of his. When the words run out and we have to wait for our Will to come back.
I think maybe that’s why Penny wanted us to come out here. So I hope that she’s right and there is something magical about the full moon.
Meanwhile, Penny is spreading out a threadbare blanket on the ground. She sets it in the center and makes us sit around it cross-legged, like we’re in kindergarten. I wonder about the time and whether it’s after midnight yet. “Now.” She lingers on our faces individually for a couple of seconds each. “You guys have to promise not to laugh.” The backs of Penny’s hands are resting on her knees, palms up to the cave ceiling. A choked giggle sticks in my throat and I put my fist over my mouth to clamp it in. Penny shoots me a Penny version of a sharp look, which is sort of the same as being scolded by a cartoon version of a baby bunny.
“How about we promise to try not to,” Will says for the both of us. The dimples in his cheeks deepen in the lantern shadow.
“We’re here for a friendship ritual,” Penny presses on, and fishes in her bag.
Will holds up a finger. “Let’s make that a tentative promise, then.” There’s a crackly smile in his voice that makes me glad Penny believes in the effects of things like lunar phases and gravitational pulls on people.
She straightens her posture and stares at Will as sure and steady as if she were queen of the cave. “Are you in this trio or are you out, William?”
“I’m in,” I say, quickly.
“See? Lake gets it.”
“But she started it.” He points to me.
I push his hand away. “Real mature, William.”
Penny tugs her tunic down over her thighs. “You guys already know this, but you two are my best friends.” Uh-oh, Penny is already starting to tear up. This could be rough. “Will, we’ve been friends forever and, if it wasn’t for you, I’m pretty sure everyone at school would just think I was a weird hippie or witch or something, but no offense, it’s nice having a girl around.”
“A little offended,” he says, cocking his head.
I shove his shoulder and he topples over onto the blanket. “Penny, continue,” I say.
“Right.” She holds a knife out to us. “So this.”
“Christ, Penny,” Will says, dramatically dusting off his elbows and reseating himself. “If you’ve been doing all of this to murder us, I have to give you credit, you’ve really been running the long game.”
“I’m not planning to kill you, but if you don’t cut it out I reserve the right to change my mind.” She flashes a sweet smile. “Anyway, as I was saying, ancient civilizations have been doing blood rituals to seal relationships for, like, thousands of years.” Her voice lowers to nearly a whisper. “The rituals are sacred, for only the deepest bonds. I don’t have a brother or a sister,” she says. “You guys…are my blood.” I can see the ropy veins in her throat tighten. Her eyes are shining.
And all I can think is that I used to have a brother that I tried hard to keep until it burned me up insi
de, and when he finally wanted me—if he finally wanted me, because I’ve made my choice and now I’ll never know—there was nothing left of our relationship but ash. I swallow down the memory of Matt’s face after he recited the movie times to me, after he told me about the pelican. I swallow down my own broken heart, rough and jagged as if made out of glass, chipped to pieces every time I reached out to him. I wonder if it could have been different between us. If he had tried sooner and I had tried longer. I…just wonder.
“Then let’s make it official,” I say at last, voice catching on one of those glass shards.
Will doesn’t even make another joke. He offers us each a hand to pull us up. Penny’s gone all trembly and the knife is shaking in her hands.
“Are you sure about this?” Will asks, and he’s instantly the Will I’m used to, the one I like best. When I had to watch Will and Penny from afar, I noticed how he cared for her gently, the way he would a baby bird, scooping her into the nest. I didn’t quite understand it until I knew Penny too. She’s strong and brave in her own way, but if Penny is to be Penny, sometimes Will and I have to be there to hold the world at bay. Now that I’m no longer watching from the outside, I’ve noticed something about Will. He’s at his most magnetic when he’s doing things for other people, and I wish that I didn’t feel what I’m feeling when he gently presses his hand between her shoulder blades and looks Penny squarely in the eyes.
She nods. “It’s just the thought of the blood.” She laughs softly at herself. “Probably should have considered that.” Her eyes close and she must mentally travel to a different place, because her features ease. “I wish sometimes that I was as brave as you.” And then her piercing green eyes are staring straight at me.
I wonder what it must be like to feel the whole world stampeding around inside your heart. “You’re braver,” I say, and mean it.
She pinches my cheek like an old grandma, teasing me. “You’re pretty even when you’re lying,” she says.
Will goes first. “Cheers,” he says. He holds his hand up in salute. After that, he takes the tip and drags it across one palm straight through the crease that fortunetellers call the lifeline. He scrunches his nose, then closes his hand into a tight fist and wipes the blade over his shorts.
I take the knife from him. I don’t have to think about it. I dig the metal straight into my flesh until I feel something hot rise to the surface, and I fold my fingers into a matching mushed-up ball, same as Will’s.
Last is Penny. Her teeth dig into her lip. She holds the knife all limp so that it couldn’t cut a wet a noodle if it had to.
“Pen,” Will says so tenderly, it microwaves my insides into a puddle. “Pen, you don’t have to do this. It’s just symbolic.”
I’m not sure what makes her do it, but she resolves then and there to. She cuts the line the worst way—while staring at it. Then she drops the knife in the dirt and looks at us, wide-eyed. “I did it,” she says. “I did it.”
My own hand stings, even worse when I try to open it so that the breeze can touch the open gash. I close it right back up and hold it close to my heart.
“We have to make the covenant,” she says. “Now, before our cuts dry up.”
We grow still and watch Penny swipe her shoe to smooth a spot in the dirt. “Swear,” she says, “that no matter what, the three of us will always be friends. Swear that we’ll be there for each other. Even if in college I go through some weird pixie-haircut phase and move to Mumbai or Lake starts hanging out with the skaters and grows dreadlocks.”
“Hey! That’s not me,” I interject, but Penny shushes me.
“Once our blood mixes, we’ll be bound forever,” she says. “Swear.”
“Swear,” I say.
“Swear,” says Will.
Penny stretches her arm out over the ground and lets two drops of her blood drip onto the dirt. Will and I both follow suit. Our blood mixes, forming a damp blotch on the ground.
“Make a wish,” she says, like she knows something magical about full moons for sure and not just for maybe. “Make a wish on the moon, but don’t tell a soul.” She returns to her bag and pulls out scraps of paper and pens, Mary Poppins–style. She hands me one, and each of our bloody thumbprints appears on the page. “That was for us, now this is for you.” Will gets a scrap too. “The universe demands balance.”
I stare at the page and think about balance and how a year ago I was losing it all, crumbling away piece by piece like a sandcastle built too close to the sea. Somehow the events of the last few months have led me to a cave of bones where I can sit beside my two best friends and watch them worry over their wishes. I rest my chin on my knee, hoping to lock down the dorky swell of emotion. But I can’t help feeling that if I’m a sandcastle, I’m finally being built farther up on land by Will and Penny together.
I write my wish and don’t tell a soul for fear that it won’t come true.
“What’s so wonderful,” says Dr. McKenna, the sound of her voice snapping my attention on like a light switch, “is how present your love for your friends still is. I want you to try to think about that bolstering feeling of overarching love in your life when you feel yourself getting bogged down with grief, okay?”
I blink and look up from my fingers, which I’ve been knitting together in my lap. How long have I been talking? I glance up at the clock.
She waits several beats, and when I say nothing else, she closes her notebook gently and presses it into her lap. “Thank you, Lake. I believe that’s all we have time for today.”
“Oh. Yeah. Sorry,” I say, a little bit embarrassed, but her smile is warm and unbothered. I haven’t told her about the scavenger hunt or about how I know the wishes, even my own forgotten one, are waiting at the end of it. She might have understood why I needed them, but then again, she might not have. In any event, she briskly ushers me out of her office.
Time is money after all, I think drily, before realizing this is something Matt would say to me when I was a kid. Back then he’d lean over and share these quick observations and it made me feel grown-up, the way the two of us both knew something that no one else in the room did. Of course, he still makes the side comments, it’s just that now they’re mean and I’m often the punch line.
On my way out of Garretson, Smith & McKenna, the door opens abruptly before I can reach for it, and the edge knocks me in the forehead. I yelp, clutching the center of my skull.
Strong hands grasp my shoulders and steady me. “Lake? Whoa, are you okay?”
I lower my hand and stare up into a face cut in half by a strawberry birthmark. “What’s the saying? Adding insult to injury?” My laugh is forced and limp. As though my month could get any worse.
Ringo chuckles. “Sounds like you’ll live.”
He lets go of my shoulders and, for a hairsbreadth, I have a quick pang of wishing that he hadn’t.
I miss Will, I remind myself. It’s the missing Will that makes me crave contact. Any human contact.
I rub again at the spot where the door knocked me. “Do I have a mark?” I ask, without widening the space between us.
He squints, one eye shut, and studies me. “I think you have quite a ways to go until you can compete with this.” He gestures around the side of his face.
Despite myself, I smile. “I thought you’d already left today. Later appointment?”
He shakes his head. “No, I just went for a walk. Finished up an hour ago.”
“Still with the late ride?” I ask. I imagine his mom on the couch watching her soap operas and sipping out of her Big Gulp and it makes me angry.
He folds his hands dramatically over his chest. “My cross to bear.”
Another person comes through the door. Ringo and I press our backs against opposite walls to let them through, and I have this annoying sensation, like an adult has just caught us making out. I clear my throat and nod toward the exit. Ringo follows me out into the waning sunlight.
“So how are you feeling?”
I to
uch the tender spot on my head. “Fine, fine—I was just being dramatic. I mean, I seriously doubt I’m concussed or anything.”
“I meant about your decision.”
“Oh, right, that.” I bite my lip. “Swinging wildly between heaving into a paper bag and total denial. Honestly, it feels like I’m living in, like, a great big hourglass and the little granules are falling on me faster and faster until I’m pretty sure I’ll suffocate.”
“Healthy.”
“Yeah, well, my cross to bear, right?” I mean it to come out as a quip, but the moment the phrase leaves my lips I can tell it sounds more like a jab at Ringo.
“You…” He takes a sudden and deep interest in his tennis shoes. “Haven’t texted or anything since the coffee shop. Did I do something?”
“You?” I can’t help it, I laugh. “No! God, you’re, like, the only sane person I know right now.” What with my parents, who I can hardly look at, I feel so guilty—even though I shouldn’t feel guilty, but I do feel guilty—and then, of course, there’s Matt and Will’s parents and Penny’s too: if I had to spend time in a room with one living person, it would be Ringo. I determine not to study the implications of that too hard.
“Sane?” he says. “You might want to take a look at where we’re standing.” He glances back in the direction of Dr. McKenna’s office.
“That’s just geography,” I say. “I’ve been kind of busy.”
“Oh, then…” Apparently there is more territory to cover with those shoes, since Ringo goes for another look.
“Matt told me the first clue.”
Creases form in his forehead as he looks up at me. “So you’re on your way. Good for you.”
“Sort of,” I hedge. It feels good to be having a real conversation, one without a hidden agenda, but it’s been nearly forty-eight hours and I still haven’t opened the second clue. I thought that starting the scavenger hunt would make me feel better. And it did, visiting Taterelli’s, remembering the early days of my relationship with Will, only it hasn’t drowned out the other needling worries swirling around in my head. The words I read kept surfacing at all the wrong moments.
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