“Where are we?” My neck is stiff, stuck at an unnatural angle while I was sleeping.
“Some little town a bit past Cincinnati,” Cameron says.
“Cincinnati?” I blink the sleep from my eyes. “How long was I out?”
“A while.” I stare at him, and he shrugs. “A long while.”
A flickering hotel sign shines through the passenger window. ENDER HOUSE, it reads, but if I squint, I can see a B has burned out. Bender House.
“And what,” I say, “we’re staying at the Bates Motel tonight?”
“We have to stay somewhere,” he says. “I made some calls as we were driving into Cincinnati. All hotels are full due to some big festival or something. This was the first place I could find us a room. We’d keep going, but I can barely see through the rain.”
“All right,” I say, reaching into the backseat to grab my bag. “Let’s go, then.”
The motel lobby has been kept up about as well as the sign. Tiles are missing on the floor, and mismatched floral couches flank either side of a nicked wood table, a tired-looking man reclined in one of them. A middle-aged Latina woman stands behind the counter.
“Hi,” Cameron says. “I called about an hour ago about a room. Cameron Andrews?”
She types something on her computer then looks up at us. “I’ll need some ID,” she says in in heavy accent, “and a credit card.”
Cameron steps in front of me, blocking my attempt to pay, and slides his driver’s license across the counter. The woman picks it up and scrutinizes it.
“Sorry,” she says, dropping in back to the Formica, “but you have to be twenty-one to rent a room.”
“Seriously?” Cameron sounds desperate.
“Serious. So unless your girlfriend here is old enough, I’m sorry.”
Cameron turns to me, his hands behind his neck, squeezing his forearms against his temples. “I guess we can try to keep going,” he says slowly.
“I’ll vouch for them,” a gruff voice says from the couch. The man is sitting upright now, flipping his wallet open and pulling out his ID.
“I dunno…,” the woman says.
The man stands up and tosses the license onto the counter. “Come on,” he says, “I’m old enough. I’ll vouch for them.”
Reluctantly, the woman types the man’s information into the computer, and Cameron and I thank him profusely. He waves us off and drops back onto the worn couch.
“You’re in room eight,” the woman says, handing a huge key across the counter to Cameron. “Checkout by ten.”
“Thank you,” he says, and we walk outside, waving a friendly good-bye to the man.
Room 8 is at the end of the building and around the corner, one of only two doors on the side of the small motel. The door creaks when we open it, and a musty smell attacks us as soon as we step inside. I cough. When the light flickers on in protest, we examine the room.
There’s only one bed, a tiny double, and no other furniture except a small stand with a TV on it. The TV is at least twenty years old, a giant box with a rabbit ear antenna sticking out at odd angles from behind it. We make our way into the room, shutting the door behind us.
The door hits the frame and swings back into the room. Slower this time, Cameron pushes the door. Nothing. He jiggles the knob, pulls up on it, and rams the wood with his shoulder.
“What’s going on over there?” I ask.
“It won’t latch.” As if to prove his point, he lets go of the door. It drifts open.
“Are you sure?”
Cameron steps aside and lets me try, to no avail. No matter how we try to force it, the door will not latch. Finally, as I’m trying in vain one more time, Cameron shoves the TV table over to me.
“You can’t be serious,” I say.
“Look, I’m tired, and you don’t know how to drive that car nearly well enough to drive in the rain at night. Let’s just go to sleep. We’ll leave early.”
I peek out the door. If possible, the rain is coming down even harder than a few minutes earlier. I can’t see the road from where I stand. He’s right. “Fine,” I say.
Cameron goes into the bathroom, and I lower myself to the bed, digging in my bag for my phone. It takes forever to turn on, but when it does, I’m immediately flooded with notifications. Eight missed calls and nineteen text messages. I ignore them all and tap PLAY on the only voice mail.
“What the eff, Anna? I waited for-frickin’-ever for you at the pool. Finally, I go in and what do I find out? You quit yesterday? When were you planning to tell me?” She huffs a breath of frustration. “Where are you? Call me. Or don’t. Whatever.”
Sighing, I drop onto my back. I should’ve told Piper and Jovani what I was doing. And part of me wanted to. But the lists were never their thing. They belonged to Storm, and Cameron, and me. So I didn’t say anything, just left town without a word to my two best friends and tried to ignore the guilt chewing at me. Holding my phone above my face, I tap out three quick messages. The first to Aunt Morgan:
ME: Hey, sorry so late. We found a room for the night. I’ll call tomorrow. Love you!
The next to Piper:
ME: I’m sorry. It’s a long story. I’ll tell you soon, I promise.
And the last to Jovani:
ME: Are you as mad at me as Pip is?
Then I turn my phone off before any of them can answer.
We get ready for bed quickly, brushing teeth and changing into pajamas—me in shorts and a tank top, Cameron in loose sweatpants and a plain white T-shirt. I come out from the bathroom, braiding my hair over one shoulder, to find him standing awkwardly beside the bed.
“Um,” he says, fidgeting, “you go ahead and take the bed. I’ll sleep on the floor.”
One look at the dingy carpet tells me it probably hasn’t been vacuumed ever. I’m suddenly very thankful that I’m still wearing flip-flops.
“Don’t be stupid,” I say. “The carpet’s disgusting.” I pull the covers down and slide into bed, doing my best not to think about what’s happened in this bed in the past. I pat the spot next to me. “Come on.”
“You’re sure?”
I nod, and he turns the light off. The bed groans as he climbs in next to me, mumbling a soft, “Good night.”
I stare into the darkness. He rolls to one side then another. Coughs lightly. We’ve been lying here maybe five minutes when he rolls onto his back again.
“You awake?”
“Wide.”
“Can’t sleep?”
“Nope.”
“Me either,” he says. “Which is stupid, because I’m exhausted.”
A thought hits me. “We could play Truth,” I say.
His laugh echoes in the small room. “Man, I never thought I’d play that game again.”
“Same here,” I admit. Not after she left us.
“So, Anna, truth or truth?”
“I think I’ll take truth for two hundred, Alex.”
“What, exactly, is going on with you and Jovani?”
“Wow.” I laugh. “Last time we played this game you asked me things like, ‘What’s your favorite ice cream flavor?’”
“Butter pecan,” he says without hesitation.
“You know it.” We lie in silence for a moment, just the sound of our breath filling the air. Then I say, “We’re friends. Really, really close friends, but friends. That’s all.”
“Friends with benefits?”
I think back to that day in my room, Jovani’s lips on mine, my hands on his belt, and my face floods with heat. I hope the darkness of the room hides my flush. “Okay, you got your answer. My turn.”
My mind blanks. The game was so much easier when we were kids and our questions were simple and innocent. Now, lying next to Cameron, I don’t know what I want to ask.
“Any time now,” he says.
“Fine. When do you leave for school?”
“Seriously? That’s what you want to know? The big truth?”
I laugh. “No. I just
couldn’t think of anything else.”
Cameron nudges me with his elbow. “Mulligan,” he says. “You can have another one.”
My voice is soft, my throat tingly, when I ask, “Are you a virgin?”
“Whoa.” He clears his throat. “That’s, uh—”
“Sorry,” I rush to say. “You don’t have to answer that.”
“It’s okay.” He pauses for a moment. “No, I’m not. You?”
“No.”
“Jovani?”
“Yes.”
He chuckles. “So, benefits, huh?”
Smacking his arm, I say, “No. Not really. We’ve dated. In the past, I mean. But not anymore. Who was it for you?”
His voice is soft. “You remember Candace?”
Her image pops into my mind, all dark hair and skin. She was a fixture at Cameron’s house for a few months, and then we never saw her again. “She moved, right?”
“To Washington.”
“Is that why you broke up?”
“Nah. Things weren’t working out anyway.”
“Why not?”
He’s quiet for a long time, and I start to wonder if he’s going to answer me at all. Then he says quietly, “She was jealous.”
“Of?”
“Storm.” He sighs. “She didn’t get how it was between us.”
I roll onto my side and prop my head on my hand. Heat radiates from him. It’s something I’ve wanted to know for ages, and this might be my only chance to find out. “How were things between you two?”
“Come on, Anna, you know how it was.” He sounds almost defensive.
“Was it ever… I mean, did you ever?…”
He sighs. Then says, “Once, almost.”
I spring up in the bed and spin to face him in the dark, sitting cross-legged. “You did? When?” The bed groans, and the light flicks back on. Cameron’s stretched across the gap between the bed and the wall, one hand on the floor to prop him up. His other hand reaches back toward me, so I grab it and pull him back onto the bed. He leans against the wall and pulls his knees to his chest.
“I said almost,” he stresses.
“Yeah, yeah. When?”
“You sure you want to hear about this?”
I nod, pulling my bottom lip between my teeth.
Cameron pulls at the collar of his shirt. “The night before graduation. The night before”—his voice breaks off, and he coughs—“so, yeah,” he finishes lamely.
“I had no idea,” I whisper. “I didn’t even know you guys were… together.”
“We weren’t, really,” he says. “Storm just wanted to once before—it was a graduation pact.” His face is blotchy red, and his eyes fill with tears. He coughs, again.
“A pact?”
“You know, like, ‘If I’m still a virgin by graduation, we’ll sleep together.’”
“You guys seriously had a sex pact? I had no idea people actually did that.”
He laughs, but it sounds forced. “You know how she was,” he says, and I laugh with him. You know how Storm is. How many times growing up did I hear that phrase? “You know how your sister is…” was Mom and Dad’s default way of explaining her oddities. Cameron would say it with a shrug before following her on one of her crazy adventures. And we never argued with her, just followed along, because we did know. We knew how Storm was.
“Was it weird?” I ask him.
He nods. “Yeah. It was. And if I’d known…”
“You wouldn’t have done it?”
His head is shaking now, slowly. “Well, we didn’t really do it, anyway. I totally freaked out. I just wish one of my last memories of her wasn’t such an awkward moment.”
I turn and lie back down. Cameron follows suit. “Wow,” I whisper. My eyes are suddenly heavy.
“Wow what?”
“Just wow.”
Cameron turns the light off. I roll onto my side, his heat against my back, and drift to sleep, thinking that maybe Storm’s not gone after all, but right here in bed between me and Cameron.
Chapter 17
We wake before the sun is up, and I am so ready to leave this place. We dress in the same clothes we wore yesterday then scoot the TV table back into place in front of the bed. The same man from yesterday is sleeping on the couch in the lobby when we enter, and we creep to the desk.
When Cameron hands the key to the woman, she whispers, “He was here all night. Wife kicked him out. You two are very lucky he didn’t want that room.”
I look back at the man. He looks younger in his sleep, his face less haggard. A smile pulls at my lips, and I feel irrationally hopeful that he and his wife will work things out.
Cameron thanks the woman, and we leave the Bender House behind.
Our drive is uneventful. We don’t talk, except to give directions or ask if the other is hungry or needs to stop for a bathroom break. There’s no music—the stereo is one of the things in this car that never got fixed—only a soundtrack of wind and tires on the road to keep us company. In the light of day, our conversation from last night creates an uncomfortable atmosphere around us. I don’t know what to say to Cameron, and his silence tells me he doesn’t have anything more to add.
So he drives, and I watch the road, neither of us knowing where we are going other than east, to the coast. We’ve been in the car all day, stopping only for fuel, hitting up drive-thrus for food. My back aches, and I know Cameron has to be exhausted, but when I ask if he wants me to take over, he waves me off with a grunt.
I’m reclined in my seat with my feet on the dash, fighting sleep, when I see the sign. I sit up straight. “Take the next exit,” I say.
Without a word, he puts the blinker on and downshifts. A mile later, we merge onto another, larger highway.
We are forty miles from the Virginia coast, and traffic is insane. Cameron weaves us down the road, grumbling when a car cuts us off. “Where are we going?” he asks.
“There was a sign back there for Virgo Beach. I thought we could check out the boardwalk or something.”
“Whatever,” he says then he’s silent again.
I watch him from the corner of my eye. His face is hard. The muscle in his jaw pops under the skin, and I watch as he tightens his hands around the steering wheel until his knuckles whiten. He’s barely talked to me today, and I can’t quite figure out how to ask him what’s wrong.
“I just thought it’d be cool to see it for ourselves,” I say. I don’t know why I feel the need to explain myself, but a surge of anger is building in me, coming fast. “You know, since Storm thought it was so funny.” My voice is sharp and spikey.
Cameron glances at me, his face tight, and gives a tiny nod. He still doesn’t speak. I huff out an irritated breath and turn toward the window. I don’t know what his problem is, but I need to not let it ruin this for me. I was so excited to see the sign for Virgo Beach and I try to hold on to that excitement now.
A few years back, when I was in sixth grade and Storm and Cameron were in seventh, Storm was obsessed with the show Virgo Beach. It was this superdramatic teen soap opera, supposedly real life, but we were certain nobody was really like the people on the show. Still, fake as it seemed, she loved it, never missed an episode, and made sure Cameron and I were there to watch with her.
On the show, they tried to make Virgo Beach look like this amazing coastal town, like a smaller version of Virginia Beach. But around the edges of the scenes things were really run-down and it showed how Virgo Beach wasn’t a shiny vacation destination at all. That’s what Storm loved the most about the show—how nothing was what they tried to make us think it was.
We make our way into the little town, and Cameron turns us toward the boardwalk. He’s still not given any indication that he recognizes Virgo Beach. I was so certain he would be excited about it, too, that he would want to see it as badly as I did. But he just sits in the driver’s seat, rigid, like he’s annoyed at the world. Or maybe just me.
“There’s a spot,” I say, pointing
to the side of the road between two SUVs. Cameron turns in without a word and steps immediately from the car. I stare at him in disbelief for a moment before climbing out myself.
“I have to call and check in with Aunt Morgan while we walk,” I say, a hard edge still in my voice, and pull my phone out.
“No problem.” He shoves his hands deep in his shorts pockets and heads in the direction of the boardwalk, leaving me to trail behind.
Nobody answers at the house, so I call Aunt Morgan’s cell. It rings four times, and I’m preparing to leave a message when she answers, breathless. “Hey, banana! Where are you?”
“Where are you?” I can barely hear her over the music in the background.
“Downtown at Rush. It’s Cassie’s birthday, so we’re out celebrating.” I check the time on my phone. They sure started the party early. The music quiets; she must’ve stepped outside.
“Sorry I just sent a text last night. I didn’t think you would want me to call that late.”
She sighs loudly into the phone. “Anna, it’s only the first day, and you’ve already broken our one rule.”
“I know, but—”
“No buts.” She giggles, and I can tell she’s had a couple drinks. “Call me. Every night. We promised your dad. Okay?”
“I promise. And I’ll try to be earlier from now on.”
She’s talking to someone else now. I can hear the soft murmur of her voice, but can’t make out the words. “Thank you,” she says to me. “I gotta get back in there, but you be safe, all right? And have fun.”
“I will. Thanks, Aunt Morgan. I love you.”
“You too.” She hangs up.
I should call Piper, too, but if I’m being honest, I’m a bit scared. Her reply to my text last night was less than happy. Maybe I’ll give her some time to calm down before I call. Instead, I dial Jovani. He doesn’t answer, and I don’t leave a message. He didn’t respond to the text I sent last night or the three I added this morning.
Cameron is a good thirty yards ahead of me, walking fast. I jog to catch up, bump his arm with my shoulder. “Hey.”
“Hey?”
“What’s up?”
He looks down at me, a barely concealed smirk on his face. “Nothing. Boardwalk, beach, sweaty tourists, overpriced chili dogs. What’s not to love?”
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