The world melted, and it was just us, in the woods, our mouths pressed together as we found the kiss that had been waiting for us since we were thirteen.
“Well,” she said.
“Well,” I said.
“I guess now I have your TB,” she joked.
“I guess now I have your first kiss.”
“Took you long enough,” Sadie said, biting her lip and staring up at me. “There’s a second kiss with your name on it, too, but it’ll have to wait or we’ll be late for lights-out.”
And even though I could have stayed there forever, her hand grabbed mine, and we hurried back through the woods toward the soft, warm glow of the cottages.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
SADIE
I COULDN’T SLEEP after we got back from the woods. I lay awake under the too-warm covers, my whole body thrumming in the aftermath of that kiss. I felt the ghost of where his lips had been, and remembered the pressure of his hand on my back, the smell of his soap, the way his mouth had tasted faintly of apples.
I didn’t care that I’d promised myself I’d stay away from Latham boys, that I’d rolled my eyes whenever I saw other couples sneak off toward the woods or duck behind buildings to engage in Latham’s favorite pastime. I didn’t care about any of that. I just wanted to tiptoe over to Cottage 6 in my pajamas, and push open the door to Lane’s room, and crawl under the covers with him so the feeling of our lips touching never had to end.
Kissing Lane was like the first time you hear a song that you’ll listen to on repeat a hundred times. It was like the first spoonful of ice cream of the whole cup. But mostly, it was the strange and lovely experience of something being even better than I’d imagined.
What were the odds that out of the 150 of us at Latham, there’d be a boy whose smile did flippy things to my stomach, and who liked me back, and who made jokes about Harry Potter? And what were the odds that it would be a boy I’d known, and had wrongly despised, for years?
I’d been at Latham long enough that I no longer quite believed in second chances, but in the moments before I drifted off to sleep that night, I wondered if maybe Lane was the miracle Latham had promised, and if that miracle would be big enough.
Lane was waiting on the porch the next morning. He bounded out of the glider when he saw me, this big, goofy grin on his face. His hair was wet from the shower, and he was wearing these horrible athletic shorts with a giant Aeropostale logo on the leg.
“Really?” I said, making a face at the shorts.
“Hey, you already kissed me. No take-backs,” he joked, and then he leaped down the porch steps two at a time.
It was just a small thing, but it struck me how much healthier he looked than when he’d arrived. How the nurse never seemed to stay in his room very long when we hid our phones during lights-out, and how he rolled his eyes after a coughing fit, instead of struggling to catch his breath.
I wondered what I’d do if he left, when he left, without me. Maybe it hadn’t occurred to him, since I never seemed that sick. And I wasn’t. Month after month, my X-rays and blood tests came back the same. And I didn’t know which change would be more terrifying, the death sentence I’d been dreading since sophomore year, or the ticket home to a life I’d missed far too much of to ever fully recover, and a world that would always treat me as an outsider if they knew.
All I knew was that Lane was smiling at me, and even if it wasn’t too late to back away, I wouldn’t have been able to.
“So, can I walk you to breakfast?” Lane asked.
He looked so earnest, and so excited about walking with me to the dining hall that I had to laugh.
“This plan of yours will never work, you know,” I told him.
“What plan?”
“This plan to fatten me up and feed me to the circus elephants.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said. “In the meantime, pancakes?”
“In the meantime, pancakes.”
And then I took the porch steps two at a time, copying him, and pretending it didn’t make my chest ache.
I HADN’T THOUGHT that breakfast would be weird or different that morning, but I could feel people staring as Lane and I waited in line. Staring at us. At first, I thought something horrible must have happened, but Nick and Charlie were at the front of the line, and I’d seen Marina in the bathroom ten minutes ago, trying to even out her gel liner.
“What’s going on?” Lane whispered, confused.
“Your shorts are just that terrible,” I said, reaching for the muffin tray.
“I’ve got it.” He held it out to me with a flourish. “Mademoiselle, quelque chose du sucre?”
I melted into a puddle, and when I was done melting, he was still there, and still smiling at me from behind the platter of lopsided cafeteria muffins.
“I can’t ever tell if the droopy ones taste better or worse,” I said.
“So much better,” Lane said. “Droopy muffins for the win.”
“That would be an awesome insult,” I said. “‘Don’t go out with her, she has a droopy muffin.’”
We laughed, and behind us, someone huffed impatiently. It was Angela. She narrowed her eyes at me.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
“Take your time,” Angela said, smiling sweetly. “I just wanted to remind you both that it’s impossible to walk with the Lord when you’re lying down.”
For a second, I had no idea what she was talking about, and then I burst out laughing.
“Oh, wow,” I said. “Thank you for calling me a slut in New Testament. That’s super nice of you.”
I glanced over at Lane, who was still holding the muffin tray and trying so hard not to laugh that he was red in the face.
Angela spluttered but didn’t say anything else. I made sure to take extra long in the line just to annoy her. I caught some of the other girls from French class staring at us as well, and then I realized.
Everyone had been at the movies last night. They’d all seen Lane and me flirting and holding hands and lying next to each other in our blanket nest, and they’d watched as we’d disappeared into the woods together. I hadn’t considered what it looked like—like we’d done much more than we actually had, and like we were being obvious about it, wanting everyone to know what we were up to. And I hadn’t realized quite how many girls had been set on Lane until they were glaring at us from behind their yogurt bowls, eyes narrowed in resentment.
When Lane and I got to our table, he hesitated, then switched to the empty seat next to mine. He kept bumping my leg under the table with his, which was the cutest thing ever.
I expected Nick to sulk about it, like he’d been doing ever since the Starbucks trip, but thankfully, he was too hungover to do anything besides groan and attempt the world’s tiniest forkfuls of eggs.
“You need to drink some water,” Charlie told him.
Nick, who appeared not to have heard, swallowed thickly and lifted a forkful of eggs toward his mouth like someone had dared him to eat a snail.
And then Marina rolled her eyes and imitated him, sending us all into hysterics.
IT WAS GORGEOUS outside that morning. Indian summer. The sky was a cloudless blue, and it felt like the school year was almost over, instead of just beginning. It would have been a shame to go inside and waste one of the last warm days, so we stood around on the grass, trying to figure out what to do.
“We should go to the hill,” Marina finally suggested, so we did.
The hill was this slope on the far side of the lake with a view of the grounds. It wasn’t quite a hill, but that didn’t matter. Charlie brought his portable record player, and Marina brought a deck of cards, and we all had books in our bags, although Lane and I were the only ones who actually tried to read them.
We sat there all morning in the soft, warm grass, listening to Charlie’s collection of psychedelic pop records and teaching Lane how to play Egyptian Ratscrew.
Nick, who was apparently in agony, put his cardigan over
his face and went to sleep. Charlie and Marina took turns dropping handfuls of grass onto his stomach and laughing when he finally woke up and noticed.
It was so wonderful, the five of us sitting there, and I wanted every day to be like this. To be us, in the sunshine, in no hurry to be anywhere else.
After a while, Lane and I took a walk down to the lake. There was a single paddleboat at the water’s edge. It was chained there, half-sunken and rotting away.
“That is one sad metaphor of a boat,” Lane said, pointing at it.
“You’re right. It’s a metaphor, which is like a simile,” I joked, and he playfully shoved me.
“You’re going in the lake,” he warned.
“You’re coming with me,” I promised, even though he was so much taller he could probably pick me up and toss, like I was a Frisbee.
“I’ll take my chances,” he said, menacing toward me, and I shrieked and ran up the little slope to the nearest bench, trying not to cough.
He sat down next to me, looking contrite.
“Sorry,” he said. “I wouldn’t really throw you in the lake.”
“Except as a metaphor.” I couldn’t resist.
“Oh, you’re really gonna get it.”
And then Lane was kissing me again, his hand cupping the side of my face. They say your skin is the largest organ in your body, but I’d never really appreciated that before, the way his fingertips slowly tracing the curve of my jaw could travel down the entire length of my body, covering me in goose bumps. The way he could make me feel flushed with something that wasn’t a fever.
“Listen,” Lane said. “I want to ask you something.”
He cleared his throat nervously, and I was so afraid of what he might say that all sorts of terrible questions flashed through my brain.
“Would you go on a date with me?”
He looked so nervous about it, like he thought there was a chance I’d refuse.
“I think that would be okay,” I said.
He grinned triumphantly and scooped me onto his lap, and he was so tall and messy-haired and perfect, and he really was asking me out this time, it wasn’t some mean prank by the girls in my cabin.
“So, where are we going on this illustrious date?” I asked. “The dining hall? The library?”
“I was thinking Fall Fest,” he said. “Next Friday night?”
I had no idea what he was talking about. Latham didn’t have a Fall Fest. We had, like, decorative gourd painting and a screening of Hocus Pocus. And then I realized.
“You mean in Whitley?” I asked.
Lane nodded, holding back a grin.
“I remembered the flyers from when we were there last time.”
“What happened to Mr. There Are a Hundred Reasons Why We Shouldn’t Go to Town and I Will Stubbornly Stand Here Listing Them All?” I asked.
“Well,” Lane said, “I realized that was no way to impress a girl.”
THE REST OF the week was the way summer camp should have been. The way my life should have gone four years ago, if only either of us had been brave enough or bold enough to say hello back then. It was a week of board games on the porch, and frozen fruit bars from the commissary, and trading flash drives full of music. We read paperbacks on our stomachs in the grass after dinner, and watched the sun set over the lake, and ducked into the woods to kiss.
Every night on the phone, we’d read each other the funny parts from our books, or talk about the TV shows we’d watched as kids, or what we would do if we were really there in each other’s beds, except mostly joking. We said absurd things, like how I’d suck the back of his knee, or he’d run his toes through my hair, and pretended they sounded amazing.
The warm weather was gone by Friday, and that evening was foggy and cold. I had to abandon the cute dress I was going to wear in favor of jeans and my green parka. When Lane picked me up, he was wearing this black fleece jacket zipped up to his chin, and I joked that he looked like a Dracula.
“A Dracula?” he asked. “Like, one of the many Draculas?”
“Shut up.”
“I vont to suck your . . . type A blood. The other Dracula, over there, he is interested in type B,” Lane went on, in this ridiculous Count Chocula voice.
“Oh my God, I’m gonna kill you!” I said, laughing.
We set off into the woods. I was in charge of navigating us down to Whitley, and at one point Lane looked around, confused.
“I remembered it being that way,” he said, pointing.
We’d veered a little farther west than I’d thought and were almost at the place where I usually met Michael. He was pointing even more west, which wasn’t right.
“It’s this way,” I said, and explained where we were.
“So, you just picked a random point in the woods to meet some strange dude?”
“I didn’t pick it,” I said, and I explained about how Phillip had run the black market before Nick. I inherited it, and anyway, he and Michael were like half cousins or something.
We were almost there, and I took out my bag of cough drops and passed one to Lane.
“Do these actually work?” he asked.
“Yes, and you’re cured now,” I teased. “You’re welcome.”
“How can I ever thank you?”
Lane got this mischievous grin on his face and pulled me toward him for a kiss that tasted like cherry medicine. And then his hands were in my hair, and his tongue was against mine, and I accidentally swallowed my cough drop.
It wasn’t much farther into town, and when we got there, the main street looked so festive with lights in the trees and all the shop windows decorated for fall. The street was blocked off to traffic, and crowded with booths, and a jazz band of old dudes was playing in the old gazebo.
There were rides, too, a miniature Ferris wheel, and a giant slide, and a chair swing. It reminded me of the county fair, and how I used to go with my mom and sister, enviously watching as other girls my age roamed around in friend groups.
“Reminds me of my school carnival,” Lane said with a lopsided grin.
“Fancy school,” I teased.
He shrugged.
“I never went to the thing, anyway. They always had teachers in the dunking booth.”
I didn’t know what he meant at first, but then I remembered how he’d said his dad taught at his school.
“Then we have to make up for all the carnivals you missed,” I said, dragging him toward the line for ride tickets.
Everything was pretty expensive, so we just got tickets for the swing ride.
“You have to try and grab my hand while we’re in the air,” I said. “That’s the rule.”
“What do I win if I do?” Lane asked.
“A wish,” I promised.
It was exhilarating going on the ride and lifting into the air, my feet dangling beneath me. You could see a lot from up there, the road that led to Latham, the bell tower through the trees, and the neat yards of the houses in town. It was strange seeing both worlds at once: mine, and the real one.
The swings were pretty far apart, but Lane still tried, twisting around in his seat and looking back at me with his hand outstretched. I leaned forward, too, as far as I could. But we could never quite reach.
“Guess I didn’t get my wish,” Lane teased as we staggered off the ride.
“Don’t worry, it wasn’t a very big wish,” I assured him. “It was like a medium soda of a wish.”
“Well, now you’ve ruined it, and I know I’m missing out on a medium soda.”
“Or possibly half a plain funnel cake,” I said.
“Or possibly half a plain funnel cake,” he repeated in mock despair.
Lane held my hand as we wandered through the booths, and then he bought us apple ciders. They were too hot to drink, so we sat on the hay bales outside the pumpkin patch, waiting for them to cool off.
It felt strange being in town, but it always did. I hadn’t lived in this world for so long that it was weird to see that people we
re still drinking green juice and taking out their phones whenever they had to stand in line.
“This is so nice,” I said, and then I sipped the cider and made a face. “Ow. Hot.”
“Still?”
“Why don’t you try it and find out?”
“I’m not falling for that one,” Lane said, laughing.
Nearby, little kids ran through the pumpkin patch, hyper from sugar and covered in face paint. I leaned my head against Lane’s shoulder, thinking about my sister, who was twelve. Too old to be enthusiastic about this stuff, but still young enough to dress up and get free candy.
“What was your worst Halloween costume?” Lane asked me.
“I was Hermione Granger, like, five years in a row,” I said. “By the time that was over, I’d gone through my embarrassing years.”
“I was a gorilla once,” he told me.
“You were not!” I laughed.
“I was,” he insisted. “I think I was five. I saw the costume in one of those Halloween Castles, you know, those stores that pop up for a few months and then disappear?”
I nodded.
“Anyway. That was it. Gorilla. So my mom took me trick-or-treating, and she made me go really early, just to the houses on our block. And that year it was, like, eighty degrees out.” He glanced over at me with this lopsided grin. “Which means it was at least a hundred degrees in that thick, hairy gorilla suit. The mask was off by the third house, and then the feet, and then the gloves. And after ten minutes I was standing there covered in sweat and crying in this hairy black jumpsuit, wanting to go home.”
We both laughed. I tried to picture five-year-old Lane in a hairy gorilla suit, and it was surprisingly easy. I’d known him when we were thirteen, after all.
“I want to see a picture,” I insisted.
“Fine, then I want to see you in that Hogwarts uniform.” He raised his eyebrows.
“Oh my God, I was ten!”
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