She scooched close to her pillows and hugged her knees close.
“Do you think he liked me?” she asked.
“Uh, yeah.”
“Because they always seem like they like me, at first. But then something changes. I can’t figure out what.”
“It’s not you,” I said, not sure if that were completely true. Kendall usually clammed up and got so shy, so nervous. The more she liked someone and the closer they got to something sparking, the weirder she started acting. I could easily see how a guy could misinterpret that as her pushing him away. But I’d never been able to tell her this. Especially after Lady Bic Night, and after Lukas. Our lives had diverged too much in this department.
But right now, we were at the same point, hovering on the edge of something with someone. This changed everything.
“I guess we’ll see,” said Kendall.
“You’ve been lying here, writing a rough draft in your head, yes?”
“Oh, yes.”
I passed her the laptop. “Okay, show me.”
Kendall pulled up to the curb in front of Millie’s. We’d pressed Send on her email to James and jumped on the air mattress for a few minutes. I was convinced that light rays of nervous energy were about to shoot out of our fingers.
“You’ll keep me posted?” I asked.
“You’ll turn on your goddamn phone at some point?” she shot back, pointing with her chin at my bag. I hadn’t yet dared switch it on. If it wasn’t on, I couldn’t not get a call.
“Yes, yes.”
“Do it now. I want to watch you do it.”
I gave her a dirty look. “Fine. But there won’t be anything. It’s too early.”
I fished out my phone, held down the Power button, and the screen lit up. We waited for a few seconds for it to tell me I had a voice mail.
It didn’t tell me I had a voice mail.
“Too early, like you said,” said Kendall.
We both stared at the phone as if it might offer a more expert opinion. According to my data, the average turnaround time for a “call me” request to a potential love interest is 18.5 hours. If at all.
After Kendall drove away, I turned to see Richard standing in the window of the store, holding up two coffees.
“Fun night?” he asked as I came inside and took one of the coffees from him.
“Amazing,” I said, realizing it was true regardless of what happened next.
What happened next was that I made myself busy for an hour. Max’s yarn had come in the previous afternoon, and I packed it up in a crisp brown paper bag with handles.
Two people came into the store during that time, and neither of them bought anything. I watched Richard watch the FIND VERA! flyer as the door closed behind each one, until it stopped fluttering and finally became still.
“Aren’t Sunday mornings always slow?” I asked, waving my hand in front of his face.
“Yes, yes,” he said, snapping out of it.
“It’ll be okay,” I offered, even though I wasn’t sure what it was. Maybe that didn’t matter. It was a fill-in-the-blanks thing to say.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. My breath caught. My adrenaline surged.
It was not a number I recognized.
“Hello?” I said, my voice shaking.
“Ari?” asked Camden. He sounded far away. Fainter, and quieter. Tired, or nervous.
I swallowed hard, to make sure my throat was even working.
“You found my note.” I’d discussed this with Kendall, and we’d decided this was the best opening line. It came out okay. Almost regular.
“Eliza found it and stuffed it in my pants while I was sleeping.”
“Oh. That’s . . . sweet?”
“The Eliza version, yes.”
We both laughed, then fell quiet. I felt like we’d traveled successfully up the ramp to this conversation and were now cleared for takeoff. Richard looked up at me from where he sat at the counter.
“Can I have a few minutes?” I whispered to Richard, dropping the phone to my side. Richard smiled and nodded. “Hang on,” I then told Camden.
I went through the storeroom and then out the back door, where I sat down on one of the three wooden steps that led into the alley. It was the most privacy I was going to get anytime soon.
“Where did you take me?” asked Camden.
“To the alley behind Millie’s Art Supply.”
“What are you looking at?”
His voice now. Throaty and curious. The soft curve of interest in it, painfully lovely.
I paused. “Two dumpsters. A blue Ford pickup truck that’s been parked here since last winter. A pair of sneakers hanging from the telephone lines.”
“What color are the dumpsters?” he asked.
“Black,” I said.
“Ah, okay. Got it. I can see you.”
Can you, Camden? And what do you see in me that I can’t see in myself?
“What about you?” I asked.
“I’m in my room,” he said. “I’m looking up at my skylight. It’s a perfect rectangle of blue. Kind of looks like someone painted the color right onto my ceiling.”
We were silent again. Awkward. But also, not. I wondered where he was in his room. I wondered if he were lying on his bed, but didn’t want to ask him any questions that had the word bed in them. I wondered if he was in pajamas or had slept in his clothes, the Atticus Marr costume’s T-shirt and pants. I pictured the combat boots sitting on the floor, the flight jacket hanging over the back of a chair.
“I’m sorry I had to leave last night,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t ask for more explanation.
“I am, too.”
Silence again. I heard him take a deep breath, and it sent a flush of heat down the side of my neck, how loud and close it was in my ear. How person-like it made him. “I can’t talk long,” he said after a few moments. “I’m leaving in a bit for Vermont.”
I felt something inside me lurch to a stop.
“Oh,” I said. “How long are you staying?”
“I’m not,” he said, and the lurching sensation dissolved into relief. “I’m just driving my mom up there and dropping her off. She’s spending the summer at an artists’ colony outside Burlington.”
“The word colony always makes me think of the Revolutionary War,” I said, “but I’m guessing it has nothing to do with that.”
Camden snorted. “Think more leper colony. They give her a studio and she makes her art, and then hangs out with other artists. I’m not sure how that’s different from what she does here, but whatever.” He paused. “No, I know what the difference is. The difference is that I’m not there. You know, to distract her. Or judge her.”
“Is someone staying at the Barn with you while she’s gone?”
“Just Max and Eliza, when they can. Some other friends will probably drop in and out. But if you mean a legal adult there every night, then no.”
“Wow.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time.”
I thought for a second about what that might be like, to be left to live alone for an entire summer. A slice of heaven, is what it might be like.
But I didn’t tell him I was thinking that. Instead I asked, “How do you manage to NOT turn that situation into a bad eighties movie?”
Camden laughed. Hard. It made every hair on my arm stand on end to hear it.
“Well, we did have the wild party before my mom even left,” he said.
“That’s true. You know how to buck the clichés.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. A car raced down the alley, too fast, the roar of it filling the pause and making it feel like something planned. I tried to picture Camden again, tried to imagine what he was looking at on his end. How tightly he was holding his phone, what he was doing with his other hand. Whether he was still trying to picture me.
“So do you,” said Camden.
“So do I what?”
“Know how to buck the clichés.”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” I said, keeping my voice light and teasing. Giving him no inkling that inside I was pleading Tell me! Tell me more about what I know!
“I guess you seem . . . not like the other Fitzpatrick kids I’ve seen around. Maybe more serious. More mature. Like you’ve been through something and changed.” He paused. “I’m sorry, I don’t want to be making assumptions about you. It’s those damn Satina Galt boots.”
I had no response, stunned that he’d glimpsed me so clearly in such a short time. Camden must have taken my silence for being insulted.
“Anyway,” he said quickly, nervously. “Speaking of Satina Galt. Can you meet me at the lake tomorrow? I want to show you something.”
I thought about my calendar. My mom was working, which meant I’d have Danielle with me. But Tuesday . . . Tuesday I’d have to myself.
“I can meet you the day after,” I said. “I work at the store until two o’clock, but then I’m free.” The thought of having to wait two whole days to see him . . . well, that sucked.
“The day after,” said Camden. “We’ll say two thirty.”
It felt like the conversation was over. I knew it had to be. I had to go inside. He had to drive to Vermont. I was torn between not wanting to hang up, ever, and desperate to do so while it still felt perfect. You know, before I said something stupid.
“See you then,” I said.
“Okay, bye, Ari.”
“Bye,” I said, but he was already gone. The phone felt warmer than usual in my hand, the screen glowing a little brighter, I was sure.
One of the sneakers hanging from the telephone line was slowly turning in the breeze. I waited for it to do two complete circles before standing up and going back into the store.
9
It had been a long two days, but now I was leaning against a tree at the reservoir parking lot, watching Camden glide toward me on his bicycle.
Seeing his face in person again and not pressed into the blackness behind my eyelids, I couldn’t decide if it looked the same. Was it going to be this way from now on? Every time I saw him, would I have to reconcile the Camden I was looking at with the Camden I’d been thinking about?
He was wearing a cranberry-colored button-down shirt and navy blue swim trunks, sneakers with no laces or socks. I saw the skin of his right ankle as he pedaled and had a sudden urge to lick it.
“Hey,” he said, braking to a halt in front of me. “You came.”
“Why wouldn’t I come?”
Camden stared blankly for a second, then laughed. “I don’t know why I just said that.”
Before I could respond, Max’s SUV pulled up. Eliza waved from the passenger window, then jumped down from the car.
“You came,” she said.
“Why wouldn’t she come?” asked Camden.
When Max appeared from his side of the SUV, I held out the paper bag with the yarn in it. “I come bearing the makings of a Bramscarf.”
Eliza squealed and snatched the bag from me, peeked inside.
“Perfection!” she proclaimed.
“It’s not quite the color of the swatch you gave me. It’s actually a little darker, but more accurate.”
She looked up at me, her eyes wide and serious. “You’re good. You’re good at this.”
“I’m good at Silver Arrow.”
Max turned to Camden and said, “She’s going to guess it right away.”
“Shhh,” snapped Camden. “I want it to be a surprise.”
“You want what to be a surprise?” I asked.
“The surprise,” he said, smiling with delicious mischief. I could taste it even from where I stood.
He gestured for us to walk toward the Crapper, where he paid for my admission. Julian was there again, and it was fun to watch the slow dawning of his expression as he realized I was with Those Dashwood Kids. I followed them toward the beach, but before they got to the spot where the trees stopped and the sand started, they suddenly veered to the left, toward the entrance to that trail I knew led into the woods.
“We’re not going to the lake,” I said stupidly.
“No,” said Camden, hanging back so Eliza and Max could walk in front of us. “We’re going to the surprise.”
Camden let me go first as I stepped onto the trail, almost a tunnel with its canopy of branches arced above our heads. We walked for a minute in silence, and I thought of all the times I’d watched him and Eliza and Max disappear into these woods. How I’d wondered what they did there, and how the wondering itself burned up inside me. Was this going to be about drinking or smoking something? Whatever they offered me, I wouldn’t take it. Was there a way to explain why, without ruining everything?
Ahead of us, Max slid his hand into Eliza’s.
“There’s dog hair on your sleeve,” he said to her.
She reached down and pulled something off herself, flicked it away. “Sorry. I thought I’d thoroughly de-furred.” Then she glanced over her shoulder at me and said, “My pet-sitting business and Max’s allergies make us a little like Romeo and Juliet, don’t you think? But I can’t give it up. Cosplay is not a cheap hobby, and you can only get so much raw material from dumpsters.”
“You’re star-crossed,” I said.
She smiled a smile that showed her teeth before turning back around. Did that mean she liked me? Did that mean it mattered?
“What about you, Max?” I asked, suddenly wanting more of all of them and not just Camden. “Are you working this summer?”
“I’m helping my dad at his computer programming firm. I’d explain exactly what I do there, but it’s so boring, you might nod off and fall and injure yourself.”
“Thanks for the safety considerations,” I said with a laugh.
“You wouldn’t know it to look at him,” said Camden, “but Max is a coding genius.”
Eliza glanced back proudly at Camden. “And Camden’s volunteering with the youth hotline at Family Services. He wants to save the world.”
“I don’t need to save the world . . . ,” said Camden softly, shyly. “But maybe one or two people would be cool.”
I’d never experienced this before, friends talking as if they were a collective.
“What do kids call the hotline about?” I asked, trying to hide how Camden’s job impressed me. Was it wrong that this made him extra attractive?
“All the fun stuff,” said Camden sarcastically. “They’re being abused, or they want to run away. They realize they’re addicted to drugs or alcohol and they don’t know how to get help. They’re depressed or even suicidal, and they want to hurt themselves but also they don’t.”
I paused for a second, missing a half step, before continuing. Back when I couldn’t stop thinking about opening up my skin, it had never occurred to me to call a youth hotline. What if it had? What if I’d called and talked to someone like Camden? I felt oddly happy for the kids who did.
Eliza and Max suddenly stopped walking. The trail had opened up, running parallel to a rocky creek about thirty feet wide.
“Wait. Where are we?” I asked.
“I think it has a name,” said Max. “Something Falls. But we call it . . .”
“Hush!” said Camden with a meaningful look at Max.
“I’ve been coming to the lake my whole life,” I said, watching the water travel busily downhill, oblivious to us. “I had no idea this was here.”
“We only found it by happy accident,” said Max. He stepped into the water and held out a hand for Eliza. Together they made their way through the ankle-deep creek and across some smaller rocks to a large one, flat and wide, lit by the sun. There, they crumpled together and started to kiss. Not kiss, really. More like, try to crawl inside each other’s faces.
“Come this way,” said Camden, touching my elbow as he stepped past me on the trail. “We have to go a little farther down.”
After we fell into step together, curiosity overpowered me and I asked, “Does it bother you? That Eliza and Max are so . . . PDA-o
riented?”
Camden frowned. “Why would it bother me?”
“Because you and Eliza used to go out, right?”
He paused for a second, then started walking again. “How did you know that?”
“I saw you together last summer. At the lake.” I said it as casually as I could, as if I were just remembering it now.
“We only went out for a few weeks, and I was the one who broke up with her. I actually encouraged things to happen with Max. I’m happy they’re happy. I’m happy we found a way to still all be together, because I would have hated to lose that.” He suddenly sped ahead. “We’re almost there,” he called over his shoulder.
I followed Camden another few yards and around a bend, until he stopped. The creek ran over a rock face here. It was steep, and I could see the rock was covered in green moss. The movement of the water made the moss appear as if it were moving on its own, a bubbling entity under the surface.
Camden pulled his shirt over his head and hung it on the branch of a nearby bush. Even though I’d seen him shirtless before, I found myself glancing away. He didn’t speak, but simply made his way from the trail and down the bank. It wasn’t until he stepped into the water that he turned, finally, to face me.
“Does this remind you of anything?” he asked, spreading his arms wide and fanning his fingers.
We had so little shared experience. I knew he must be talking about Silver Arrow, and then it suddenly seemed so clear.
“‘Do No Good,’ Season Four.”
Camden threw his head back and practically crowed, Peter Pan–style.
“Do No Good” was an episode set on a planet populated by sentient rocks. (Yes, it was one of the sillier ones. Which probably explained why I loved it so much when I was seven years old.) Azor Ray communicated telepathically with the rocks while Satina and Marr set out to find the largest rock on the planet, known as the Great Mass (the silliness, remember?), for help getting the Arrow One back in action. They had to cross a river filled with guardian rocks to reach this big one.
The creek, the rocks, even the way the trees on the bank bent and bowed toward the water—it all looked eerily like that scene.
“This is freaking me out a little,” I said.
Camden grinned and held out his hand to me. “Come down here.”
What Happens Now Page 9