“Shhh,” I said.
“Why shhh?” asked Camden.
“Not you. I was talking to my sister. You can talk all you want.”
His laugh was like bells ringing.
“You sound busy. I’ll talk quickly. James wanted me to ask you if you could bring your friend when you come over later. He’ll be here. He was too shy to ask himself.”
I smiled. “I’ll let her know that her presence has been requested.”
We said good-bye and hung up. Dani narrowed her eyes at me.
“Who was that?” she pressed.
“Just Kendall,” I lied, then looked up at the gleaming case of frozen dinners my mom always forbade us to buy. If it has an ingredient you can’t pronounce, don’t get it. To hell with that. I wasn’t going to have time to cook. “Pick out something for tonight,” I said, pointing to the packages designed with begging seven-year-olds in mind.
“Daddy likes chicken nuggets,” said Dani. “He brings them home from McDonald’s sometimes, when he knows Mommy’s not going to be there.”
“Chicken nuggets it is,” I said, opening the case. “Want the ones shaped like dinosaurs or the little smiley faces?”
That evening, I read a long chapter of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to Dani, then sang her a lullaby. Her glossy blond head in the crook of my arm, her fingernails digging into my side. I loved the pressure of her need and want, its lack of shame. She was mostly asleep when I kissed her good night and left the room. On my way out of the house, I rapped on the door of the bathroom, into which I’d recently seen Richard disappear with the new issue of National Geographic.
“You should check on her in a bit,” I said. “I’m taking off. Thanks for the car.”
“You’re going out with Kendall?”
“Yeah. To another friend’s house.”
He paused. “I’m supposed to ask you if there will be parents there, right?”
“Yes, you’re supposed to ask.”
There was another pause. Leave it at that, leave it at that.
“Have fun,” said Richard’s knowing voice through the door. “Back by eleven.”
“Of course. See you then.”
I was glad to be the one driving tonight. It was Kendall’s night off from Scoop-N-Putt and that felt like kismet, that we could go back to the Barn together under completely new circumstances. It didn’t seem possible that Camden’s party had been only four days ago.
“How many emails have you and James sent back and forth since Sunday?” I asked Kendall after I picked her up.
“Four. No, five. He signs off as ‘Jamie.’ Should I call him that now?”
“Yeah, I think you could live on the edge and start calling him Jamie.” Kendall punched me in the shoulder. “So, is this, like, a romantic thing? Or a friend thing?”
“I can’t tell,” said Kendall.
“What do you want it to be? Considering you’re leaving for Europe in two months.”
“Well, duh, of course I’m taking the romantic option. I don’t need a boyfriend per se. I just need something to happen to me for once, and a freaking lot can happen in two months.” Kendall paused, and her demeanor changed. “What about Camden?”
“What about him?”
“What do you like about him, now that you actually know him a little? Now that you semi-kissed.”
I pictured Camden. Lying in his room, his arms behind his head, staring at his skylight. He looked small in my mind, like something I could pick up and hold.
“He’s different from anyone I’ve ever met,” I said.
“Well, that much is obvious. But in a good way?”
“It feels like a good way. I mean, aren’t you tired of meeting basically the same person over and over again? We’ve been talking forever about finding something new and fresh. And now, here it is.”
I could feel Kendall examining my face as I drove. I didn’t turn to look at her.
“I’m happy for you, Ari,” she said after a while. But I sensed it was something she felt she was supposed to say. It had been hard for her, when I got together with Lukas. That I was inching ahead in some imaginary race. I knew it was one of the reasons why she’d drifted away toward her newspaper friends.
“You’re next,” I said. That was the thing I was supposed to say.
“Hope so,” sighed Kendall. “I’m not going to hang out with these weirdos if you’re wrong.”
“In here,” called a voice I recognized as Eliza’s.
We walked into the Barn to find her sitting at the farmhouse table in front of a sewing machine. James was sitting across from her with his laptop open.
“Hey,” Kendall said to him.
“Hey,” he said, and pulled out a chair for her. “I’m editing some photographs I took yesterday. Come see.”
She did.
I sat down next to Eliza to watch her work. She was sewing feathers onto something that looked like it was going to be a wing.
“Is this for a cosplay outfit?” I asked.
“Mmm-hmm.”
“What else do you cosplay, besides Silver Arrow?”
“I have some favorite characters from a graphic novel series. Three completed. Another in progress. Another two sketched out for the future.”
Eliza opened a notebook and slid it toward me. I flipped through the pages, which were full of well-drawn figures with no hair or faces, just clothing. I didn’t recognize the characters until I got to several different versions of Satina Galt. One was from the infamous episode where Satina got trapped in an ancient Greek brothel and had to wear a sheer white, flowing gown.
“‘Temple of Love, Temple of Death,’” I said to Eliza.
She smiled. “In the cosplay world, this here is known as ‘See-Thru Satina.’ No convention is complete without at least one of them.”
“Blech.”
“Most guys who attend these things feel differently.”
“I hated that they made her so sexy in that season.” My mother had felt this way, too. She was a purist.
“I guess that was ‘character development’ back then,” said Eliza.
“Are you going to dress up like that?” I asked.
“I was thinking about it. But then I got a better idea, from the creek yesterday.” She looked down at my feet and indicated my boots. “And from those.” Eliza then grabbed her notebook and flipped through the pages until she found the sketch she was looking for.
It was a drawing of the Season Three Original Satina. The Satina who had finally come into her own, powerful and quick and courageously honest, always. She wore light brown shimmery leggings and a white shirt under a purple tunic-length vest that tied together with a belt. And the boots, of course.
“The Ulster County Fair’s coming up,” said Eliza.
“Next week, yeah.”
“Remember the carnival episode?”
“‘Ferris Wheel.’” God, I was such a nerd.
“Wouldn’t that be a perfect opportunity for a photo shoot? You, me, Camden, and Max could cosplay the crew, and we could re-create a few of the best scenes. Jamie would work his photographic magic. I’ll post the pictures on my AlternateArt page and watch it light up with comments!”
I looked at James/Jamie, who saluted me. I noticed Kendall’s raised eyebrows.
“You want me to be part of it?” I asked. “Who would I be?”
“Take a flying guess, Boot Girl,” said Eliza.
“What? No. That’s not . . . really my thing.”
“You don’t think so, but it seems to me very much your thing.”
“I just have a good memory for the details.”
“Exactly! That’s what would set us apart, as a cosplay group. How we’d make a real name for ourselves. Accuracy is currency with this stuff.”
“I’m happy to help you get the costumes right, if that’s what you need. And I could probably get you some discounted supplies through Millie’s.”
“We need a great Satina. I’m a lot of
things, but I’m not her.” Eliza scanned me up and down, much like the first time we met, but this time with something that felt like respect. “Promise me you’ll think about it,” she said.
The door opened. Max and Camden came in from outside, each holding a bottle of wine.
“Hi,” said Camden, hanging his head so his bangs fell across his eyes, then looking at me shyly through those thick eyelashes. I wasn’t sure which of these things wrecked me more.
“Hi,” I croaked.
“Sorry, Max and I went out to the garage to get something to drink with dinner.” He held up his bottle. “He’s making linguini with clam sauce. Did you eat?”
I thought of the dinosaur nuggets I’d inhaled before leaving, the ketchup and canned peas. “No.”
The sewing machine suddenly made a grinding noise. “Fuck!” shouted Eliza. “Sorry. It’s this thread, it keeps breaking.” She turned to Camden and batted her eyelashes. “Cam, do you know where I might find some good thread?”
Camden sighed. “You’ll buy her a replacement, right?”
“Sometime before she comes back, absolutely.”
He turned to me. “Want to see my mom’s studio?”
I nodded. He put the wine bottle on the table and motioned for me to follow him.
We left the house and walked across the lawn to the outbuilding. He opened a sliding screen door, then made an after you motion with his arm. I stepped inside and he closed the screen behind me, then turned on the lights.
I’d expected to see a chaotic space, free-flowing and abstract like Maeve’s art. But everything in the room had sharp corners and clean lines: a large storage unit with carefully folded textiles of a hundred different hues and patterns, a bookcase filled not with books but large spools of yarn arranged by shade. Stacked plastic bins held tufts of dyed something—maybe cotton or wool—in another tumble of color. One large table held a sewing machine; another was empty with a black surface so clean and shiny, it reflected light from the moon outside.
“It’s the only part of our lives she’s able to keep clean and organized,” said Camden. “When my thoughts get tangled up, I come here to think. I look at all the colors and pretend it’s the thing I’m worried about. Anything makes more sense when you look at it sorted like this.”
Camden slid a large plastic case from underneath the sewing machine, opened it, and pulled out a spool of thread. He held it daintily with two fingers, slid it into the pocket of his jeans.
“So,” he said, turning back to me. “Did Eliza do the cosplay ambush on you yet?”
I laughed. “Ambush is a good word for it.”
“Don’t do anything you don’t want to do.”
I couldn’t read his expression. “Do you want me to do it?”
“Uh, yeah. But that shouldn’t matter.”
He said that like it was the most obvious, most simple thing in the world. Then he drew a deep breath, took a step closer, and leaned toward me.
Yes. This. Please.
His expression, I could read now. Is this where we left off? Okay to pick up from right here?
Then there was a new sound in the room, and it took me a second to realize it was my cell phone buzzing in my pocket. I turned from Camden to check it. This was habit: if I wasn’t with Dani, I always checked it. “Sorry,” I said.
It was a text from Richard.
I’m feeling guilty. Just tell me there’s an adult there and I’ll leave you alone.
“Everything okay?” asked Camden.
I stared at the text and what it implied, the different levels of trust between Richard and me and Mom and me. The shifting loyalties and alliances. Sometimes I wondered if Richard bending the rules for me was his way of sticking it to Mom. Which, for the record, was totally fine by me.
“Would any of you be eighteen years old, by chance?”
Camden looked puzzled for a moment, then seemed to get it. “Actually, yes. Max turned eighteen last month. He took a year off to live with some relatives in California; that’s why he’s still in school.”
“Excellent,” I said. Then I answered Richard’s text.
Yes, there is one adult here. All good.
Camden watched me put my phone back in my pocket, bemused.
“My stepdad,” I said by way of explanation.
“Is he a good one?”
“Top of the line.”
Camden leaned against the worktable. “Two times, my mom came close to getting married. To guys who just plain sucked. Then there were the boyfriends, of course, and the not-even boyfriends. Who I won’t even honor with a mention.”
My mother had had a few dates before she met Richard on a matchmaking website. Each one seemed to destroy her in tiny ways. I remember her telling a friend she wasn’t cut out for that stuff.
“What happened to keep your mom from getting married those two times?” I asked, starting to move around the room, taking in every color and texture.
“I talked her out of it. They weren’t right for her.”
“She trusts you,” I said.
“When she’s thinking clearly, yes. When she has her priorities in the right order.”
“And what about your dad? Is he remarried?”
Camden’s face flickered with something dark and complicated.
“I don’t know who my dad is,” he said after a few moments.
I stopped and turned to face him. “You mean, like, in a metaphysical sense? Or you literally don’t know his identity?”
“That second thing,” said Camden. “My mom got knocked up during some music festival in New Mexico. She hung out with a few different guys that weekend, but never got their last names. So she had no way of determining who made, you know, the donation. And no way of contacting them.”
“Wow,” I said, and instinctively moved closer to him. “That’s really . . .”
“Crazy? Slutty?”
“I was going to say . . . actually, I have no idea what I was going to say.”
Camden laughed, but it was a sad laugh.
“I thought maybe I’d try to track him down, but that’s impossible,” he said. “It’s weird, not knowing where half of you came from. I’ve always read a lot about other cultures, thinking maybe something would click. I mean, look at me. Odds are, my dad was not white. But so far, I’ve felt nothing.” He dropped his head back and took a deep breath.
I wanted to bring him out of this sadness. “You know, there’s a rumor that your father is really Ed Penniman.”
Camden was silent for a moment, then raised his head. I watched a smile grow across his face.
“Excellent,” he said. “I started that rumor.”
“You did?”
“What can I say? I was twelve and really tired of people asking me about my father. My mom and Eddie are friends from way back. He stops by for dinner whenever he’s in the area. So, you know, there’s some believability there.”
“Well, I have to hand it to you. Good choice with the fake father.”
“What about yours? Your real dad?”
My real dad. Who felt less real and more imaginary every year. Like a cardboard cutout fraying at the edges, starting to droop.
“He and my mom split up when I was two. I haven’t talked to him in years.”
“Wow. That sucks almost as much as my story.” He reached out and tucked some of my hair behind my left ear. I felt an electric current going down that side of my body.
As much as I wanted to kiss him again, I wanted this more. Him looking squarely at me, me looking back at him without any fear or shame or awkwardness. Both of us understanding that we shared something besides Arrow fandom, and it was a big something.
Kendall must have been outside waiting to hear voices because suddenly we heard her shout, “Is it safe to come in there?”
“Board the bridge!” answered Camden, and we both grinned at the Arrow reference—it was one of Atticus Marr’s trademark lines.
She poked her head in the studio, loo
ked around. “Whoa. Nice.”
“Dinner?”
“Yup. And Eliza wants her thread.”
Camden ushered us out of the studio, turned off the lights, and gingerly slid the door shut. As we walked back up the hill to the Barn, I reached out for Kendall’s hand. She grasped it back.
Inside, we sat down at the farmhouse table, where James had poured wine for us all. There was a giant bowl of pasta and another giant bowl of salad. Garlic bread on a wooden cutting board, steam rising off of it.
“This looks amazing,” I said, then turned to Eliza. “Max did this? You’re lucky.”
“We’re all lucky,” she said. “It’s summer. Anything can happen.”
“To summer,” said Camden, raising his glass.
“To anything,” added Max.
We clinked glasses, then I watched everyone else take a sip of their wine while I put mine back on the table. The food, the drinks, the rising swell of chatter among the six of us made us all appear to be, you know, people in the world who led lives. Every fantasy I’d ever had about being grown-up and independent and real—it looked a lot like this. But this was happening now, and it didn’t even feel like cheating.
Camden took my empty bowl and filled it to the top. I didn’t ever want to leave.
After dinner, we ate mini Hershey bars out of the bag and talked until it was time for Kendall and me to get home by curfew. Camden and James walked us to the car.
James opened the passenger door for Kendall and she paused for a second before climbing in. He leaned into the open window and said, “Thanks for coming. I’ll send you those links tomorrow,” before turning to walk back to the house.
I hovered by the driver’s side. Camden took my hand and I realized it was the first time all night he’d really touched me.
“Can I kiss you good night?” he asked confidently. So sure I’d say yes.
I simply nodded. Once again, those familiar lips, which now tasted like garlic and wine. With Kendall in the car, the others probably watching from the house, it didn’t feel like we should kiss for longer than a few moments. Each millisecond of it was precious.
I got in the car and turned to Kendall, expecting her to give me some kind of look, but she was staring out the window at the moon.
Neither of us said a word on the way home.
What Happens Now Page 11