by Emma Lord
“Crap.”
I take off, but before I find Savvy I nearly run headfirst into Mickey, who’s coming back from a run with Rufus. She pulls her headphones out of her ears, squinting at the hobble I’ve adopted in an attempt not to mess up my wrist.
“Have you seen Savvy?”
She glances at my arm, drops her mouth in horror, and looks back at my face. “Uh—”
“Seriously, my parents are here, I’ve gotta find her.”
The horror slides off Mickey’s face into a deeper, disquieting kind of fear. “She’s not with you?”
“No. Why?”
“Because she didn’t come back to the cabin after she talked to Jo last night,” says Mickey, the words coming out too fast. She was breathing hard before, but now she’s on the verge of hyperventilating. “I just figured with everything going on that she was with you. She’s not with you anymore?”
The chill that goes through me is more immediate than the one from Polar Bear Swim, more ancient than anything I can shake off. “She hasn’t been with me at all.”
There’s a beat, and then Mickey starts whisper-screaming, “Shit. Shit. Shit, shit, shit—”
“When did you last see her?”
“She was outside the cabin, taking the call, and I was—I didn’t want to hear it, I…” Her face has gone ashen. “She was trying to get better service and walked out toward the main office, and that’s it. That’s the last time I saw her.”
Only then do I remember the flash of her phone number lighting up my screen, right before I fell from the tree. I pull out my phone and call her back, Mickey’s eyes glued to me for the few long seconds it takes.
“Voicemail,” I mutter.
Mickey looks like she’s about to bawl. “Rufus wanted to go with her, but I was feeling sorry for myself, and I made him stay and cuddle with me. Oh my god. Oh my god—”
“It’s okay,” I hear myself saying. The girl with angry parents in the car, and a wrist ballooning more by the second, and a brain that’s basically in free fall, is telling someone it’ll be okay. “We’ll find her. Is there some kind of camp protocol? Anyone we’re supposed to call?”
Mickey sucks in a breath, drawing herself up and blinking until her eyes are clear. “Yeah. I’ll go tell Victoria.”
“I’ll…”
Mickey is full-on sprinting away already, leaving me in the dust. I stand there, glancing back to see if my mom has followed me. But it’s only Rufus, staring at me fully alert, sans slobber or stolen camp paraphernalia in his mouth, like he’s waiting for a command.
My parents are gonna kill me.
“Let’s go.”
thirty
I’m not a runner, but today I sure as hell am. Rufus starts sprinting ahead of me, recognizing the trail I’m headed for before I reach it, and my adrenaline somewhat cancels out the pain of my wrist. Whether it’s going to cancel out the pain of being grounded for the rest of my life is another matter entirely.
What’s strange is that I’m not panicking. Maybe it’s naive, but I know that Savvy is okay. First of all, if she were really in danger, she would have called an authority figure long before she called me last night. And second of all, I doubt there’s much this island could throw at Savvy that she doesn’t have some solution for hidden in one of her leggings’ pockets.
Rufus and I make slow but steady progress, kicking up mud from last night’s rain. The trail is way more slippery than I remember. I nearly topple over twice and actually do a third time, just barely catching myself with my unmangled hand.
Still, even with the mud working against us, we make it up to the abandoned archery spot Savvy showed me within minutes. We pass the tree where Savvy’s and Mickey’s names are carved into the trunk and skid to a stop—at least, Rufus does. My feet stop, but my body doesn’t, the mud creating some kind of nature-made Slip ’n Slide. And before I know it, I’m slip ‘n’ sliding right to the edge of the spectacular view of camp, and kissing it goodbye as I swoop down, down, down on my butt, finally coming to a stop with a muddy thunk at the bottom of the minicliff.
Once I’m pretty sure I have stopped sliding into an abyss of mud, I open my eyes to see one mucked-up, frizzy-haired, wild-eyed Savannah Tully, who is—praise be to Gaby the camp ghost—very much intact.
“First off, are you okay?” she asks.
I am too embarrassed to answer, knocking my head back into the mud and feeling it congeal in my hair. She correctly interprets this as a yes.
“Second off, please for the love of all that is holy tell me you brought help.”
Rufus lets out a woof, before promptly disappearing from our sight.
“Other than Rufus, whose last two brain cells are committed to eating strangers’ iPhones.”
I close my eyes. “No.”
There’s a silence, and then: “I am so fucking hungry. Abby. I’m at the level of hungry where I might actually eat you.”
“I’m not Instagrammable enough to eat,” I mumble, still too humiliated to move. “There’s some gum in my pocket?”
“You’re dead to me. Hand it over.”
I pull myself up with my good arm and reach into my front pocket, pulling out my lanyard and some admittedly warm cinnamon gum that’s been chilling there for I’m not sure how long. Savvy rips open two pieces and crams them in her mouth, half crying, “God, I wish this were food.”
“Well, people definitely know you’re missing now, so I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before—”
“People only just started looking? Are you kidding me? I’ve been stuck down here for—what the fuck time is it, anyway? My phone’s dead.”
I reach for my phone, but it’s not in my back pocket. Savvy’s eyes go so wide and murderous on mine that I almost want to strangle myself so she doesn’t have to put in the effort.
“It must have slipped out of my pocket when I fell.”
“Dead. To. Me.”
“Fair enough,” I say, trying to scoop as much mud off my legs as I can manage. “But for what it’s worth, I’m really glad you’re okay.”
The words puncture past her frustration, then past something deeper than that. She sighs, then settles down next to me, leaning in and resting her head on my shoulder. I rest mine on top of hers, and the two of us take a long breath and make some quiet forgiveness.
“I guess if I’m gonna be stuck down here, it’s nice to have company.”
For a few moments there is this weird, completely inappropriate relief, considering how screwed we are. Our well-being may be in semidanger, but this, at least, isn’t. Whatever this is, it’s solid now. Not enough to have a name, maybe, but enough to withstand a storm.
We both stare up at the little ledge that brought us down.
“You’re sure there’s no way out of here?”
“Trust me, I’ve tried. I also just considered standing on your shoulders and abandoning you long enough to cram some food in my face and get help, but that’s a no-go, too.”
“I’m touched.”
Savvy’s eyes close. “I would commit a felony for an egg sandwich right now.”
“You know, you are not the first person whose rescue mission I have phenomenally messed up in the last twelve hours.”
“Oh yeah?” Savvy asks, raising her eyebrows. “What did I miss?”
I hold up my wrist. Savvy hisses.
“Not to story top or anything,” I say, resting it back down at my side.
“Uh, yeah, come talk to me when you’ve spent the whole night in a ditch and nobody notices you’re gone.”
I knock my shoulder with hers. “To be fair … a lot of drama has gone down since then. This place is basically the set of a reality show.”
Savvy snorts. It’s the most graceless sound I’ve ever heard her make. I love everything about it. “You’re telling me.”
“Mickey said that Jo called.”
Savvy turns to me abruptly. This close I can see there isn’t only crusted mud in her hair, but actual
leaves and twigs. She looks like that time our school put on a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the theater kids got a little too method about their costumes.
“Mickey heard that?”
“Heard what?”
“Me breaking up with Jo.”
My eyebrows lift. “You broke up with Jo?”
“How much did Mickey hear?” Savvy demands, way more paranoid than someone whose problems include being trapped in a muddy ditch without a way to contact the outside world should be.
I shrug. “I mean, I’m guessing not much. She said you took the call and she was in some kind of mood and made Rufus cuddle with her or something, so…”
“Jesus.” Savvy hikes her knees up and rests her forehead on them, streaking herself with mud. It’s unfortunate that I’ve never noticed our resemblance more than in this instant. “I’m making a mess out of everything.”
“Okay, this time I definitely get to story top you, considering I told my own parents to fuck off.” I kick at the mud with the heels of my shoes, making little mud piles in front of me. “So … what happened with Jo?”
Savvy groans. “I broke up with her and the universe immediately punished me by plummeting me into a muddy ditch and giving me a sister who doesn’t answer the one call I’m able to make before my phone turns into a glorified brick.”
My ears don’t perk at the word sister the way they normally would. For the first time, it doesn’t feel weird. Maybe it’s hearing it like this, mid-rant with a tinge of annoyance, that finally makes it fit—she throws out the word sister the way I throw out the word brother, with the carelessness of someone who’s allowed to be careless because they know that sister or brother isn’t going anywhere.
“Why would the universe be punishing you? I mean … I don’t know Jo or anything. But it kinda seemed like it wasn’t a match made in teenage heaven.”
“I mean, yeah,” she admits. “It wasn’t working.”
I approach the topic with caution. “Too busy to keep up with each other?”
“No—well, yeah.” The defensiveness leaks out of her, and she adds, “But if I’m being honest … that’s probably why we lasted so long in the first place.”
“Ah, yes. It was … what was that incredibly romantic word you used? Convenient.”
“Also, she was … she didn’t want me hanging out with Mickey so much.” Savvy’s expression is wry. “She was sure Mickey had an agenda, which is dumb, obviously. Mickey was dating that girl for years. If she’d had an agenda, I’d have known by now.”
If Savvy’s bad attempt at hedging around it hadn’t already confirmed that she is still harboring at least some feelings for Mickey, referring to her ex of several years as “that girl” sure does.
“Anyway, that was always going to be nonnegotiable. Mickey’s my best friend.”
I think of the way Mickey went redder than a fire hydrant the day we first met and I mistook her for Jo, how she always seems to have her eyes peeled for Savvy and anticipates whatever gloriously Type A thing Savvy is going to say before the thought has taken root in her brain.
I think of Mickey handing me Savvy’s shoes after Jo showed up, looking every bit as defeated in that moment as I felt over Leo.
“I dunno,” I say. “Watching the two of you, sometimes I get the sense that—”
“Oh my god, you sound just like Jo.”
I try another tactic. “Okay, fine, then here’s a thing Jo definitely didn’t say—you might be mad at yourself, if you didn’t at least ask her about it.”
Savvy’s lips quirk upward. “Gee,” she deadpans. “What great advice.”
I nudge my muddy sneaker into hers. “Yeah, the girl who gave it to me isn’t half bad.”
Savvy nudges my foot back, and leans farther into the muddy hillside, staring outward and mulling something over.
“How about we make a deal,” she says. I brace myself, thinking it will have something to do with Leo, and I won’t know what to say. “I’ll feel things out with Mickey, if you agree to have a serious conversation with your parents about your photography.”
Just like that the sting is back, a fresh reminder of the untouched Dropbox.
“Well, joke’s on you. I already tried.”
“Try harder.”
I shrug. Even if I wanted to, now doesn’t feel like the right time. There’s too much going on to pull this out of the periphery and into a spotlight taken up by the rest of the chaos I’ve brought on.
“If it helps, my parents are judgy as hell, and they love your work.”
“Really?” I ask, not entirely convinced they weren’t trying to play nice with their kid’s biological sister.
Savvy rolls her eyes. “Of course they do.”
“Uh—ouch?”
“No, sorry, I—I didn’t mean it like that,” Savvy adds quickly. “I just mean they’ve always kind of like—I don’t know. Seemed kind of baffled by my whole Instagram thing.”
“I guess if I grew up without Instagram, I’d be baffled, too,” I say, trying to be diplomatic.
“Yeah, well, they grew up without ordering the Amazon Alexa around, and they seem to be adjusting to that just fine,” Savvy says flatly. “You’d think they’d be more supportive, since they basically groomed me for it. What else was I going to do after a lifetime of being raised by the biggest hypochondriacs in the greater Seattle area?”
“If only we could all so easily monetize our parents’ paranoia.”
Savvy loosens a bit, letting out a laugh. “Anyway, it makes sense they’d jump all over your photos. That’s exactly the kind of thing they’re into. Everything about you—the whole creative, seizing-the-day thing.”
I sidestep the “Day” pun for my own sanity, and add, “Or as my parents would call it, that whole reckless, bad-prioritizing thing.”
“Your parents seem so chill. I mean, I couldn’t get a single nugget of information out of them, so that was a bust. But other than that they seem chill.”
“Of course they’re chill to you. You’re the dream kid.” I caught myself before I said their dream kid, but I might as well have. It’s heavy in the humid air, taking up space even though it didn’t take up sound.
But Savvy doesn’t seem to notice, turning more fully to look me in the face.
“Abby, you’ve got to stop thinking you’re like, a ‘bad kid’ or something. So your grades aren’t the best. So what? Grades stop counting pretty much the minute you get your diploma. Especially when your talents are outside of school.” It’s the last thing I’m expecting to hear from the most aggressive rule-following Capricorn to ever walk the earth, but less surprising than what she says next, which is, “Truth is, I’d kill to be more like you.”
“Excuse me?”
She leans back. “You know what’s dumb? I’m trapped in the middle of the woods, and yeah, I’ve thought about food and water and getting eaten by a wild bobcat—but mostly I’ve obsessed about how nobody’s updating the Instagram. No scheduled posts, no stories, no DMing with followers. I’ve basically gone dark for the first time in two years.”
There’s reservation in her face after she finishes, like she’s expecting me to make fun of her.
“How’s it feel?” I ask instead.
“Super shitty.” Savvy swipes sweat off her brow, accidentally streaking more mud on her forehead. “It’s wild to think I used to do this for fun.”
I peer at her cautiously. “Was it ever really fun, though?”
“It was,” she insists. “Actually, it was kind of a relief. I just wanted … control, I guess. Over the stuff my parents wanted me to do, all the rules they had. You saw what happened when I got a days’ worth of sniffles,” she says, gesturing widely the way someone would at a catastrophic mess. “It’s always been like that, and nothing I said ever really stopped them. There was always this big scary unknown that I could never talk them down from, because they never told me much about my bios. I didn’t know enough to understand where the fear came
from in the first place.” She tilts her head, considering. “But running the Instagram—showing them I was taking their advice seriously—for a while it worked.”
It hits a little too close to home, hearing her say that. Savvy, for all her bravado, is as guilty of taking the easy way out as I am.
“And even when it stopped working, it was fun, when it was just me and Mickey. But now it sort of feels like—this whole other beast. I started it to feel like I had control, but it controls me.”
I nudge her with the shoulder of my good arm, and she sighs.
“Sometimes I think about all the stuff I missed out on, because I was distracted, or because I didn’t want to break some rule I made for myself, and … I think—I know I’m missing out on stuff. And that makes me anxious. But not sticking to my plans makes me feel worse.”
She looks over at me the way little kids do, when they’re looking to someone else to confirm something is or isn’t true. But we both know she’s right. I think of my nights hanging out in the kitchen without her, the calls she took while we were pointing at constellations, the sunrises she spent scowling into the screen on her camera.
“And you … you’re just yourself. You’re brave. You do what you want. No apologies.”
Brave. It’s a word I’m still getting used to, after a lifetime of ducking from my problems. But maybe I’m growing into it, in my own way. A little less running and a little more talking. A little less wandering and a little more found.
“Plenty of apologies. I drive my parents nuts.”
“Listen, I got jack shit out of them, but I do know they’re proud of you. Before I found them they were mooning over your photos of the camp.”
I haven’t been able to access the Dropbox link for more than a day. “You’re sure they were my photos?”
“Sure I’m sure. I think if you talk to them, you can find some common ground.” She lowers her voice. “You love this, Abby. There’s no point in making yourself miserable about it, and as long as you’re hiding, you always will.”
The lump in my throat aches all the way down into my chest. I don’t know if it’s been hiding so much as protecting. This one thing that was mine and Poppy’s has turned into something that’s only mine. But that’s something I don’t want to fully reckon with right now in the mud, so I just nod.