by Abby Cooper
I smiled.
“Me too,” I said.
26
A Big Splash
“Welcome to Arizona, folks! We’re now descending and should be on the ground in the next five to ten minutes. Weather’s seventy-nine degrees and sunny, with five-miles-per-hour winds from the north. The current time is 10:09 A.M. Mountain Standard Time. Thanks for flying with us today, and we hope you enjoy your stay.”
The warm air washed over me the second we got off the plane. It was nice but weird too. We were really here. This was really happening. And while I was excited to spend more time with Bo, I couldn’t help wondering what Zoe was up to at home.
My heart beat faster with every step we took toward baggage claim. Anything could’ve happened these past couple hours. By now, Zoe could be best friends with Afiya. They could’ve already spent the whole morning together, shopping, eating, and doing all kinds of fun things. Right this minute, Zoe could be asking herself, So who’s Jade, again? Or worse, not asking that at all, because she was having too much fun for my name to even cross her mind.
I picked up my pace and tried to get my family to walk faster too. We really needed to hurry up and get our bags. Then we could get in the car or on the bus or whatever thing with wheels was going to take us to the hotel faster, and I could write the whole way there.
When we found the right carousel, I raced to the front.
“Oops, sorry!” I said to someone I’d bumped into.
“It’s okay,” he said. He turned to face me, and I froze. My eyes must’ve grown a zillion times their normal size.
“Clue?”
“Jade?”
“What are you doing here?” we asked at the same time.
He swayed back and forth on his sneakers.
“I’m…I’m on a trip,” he said.
“Me too.”
“Nice.”
We stayed quiet after that, but my mind sure didn’t. Of all the people in the world, Clue and his family were taking a trip to the same place my family was, at the same time, and they’d been on the same flight? It was too weird. Maybe he was on an expedition to find more magical bodies of water or something. But still—weird.
At least, if Clue was here, that meant he wasn’t in Tiveda. And if he wasn’t in Tiveda, he couldn’t go ahead and swap Zoe out for his person while I was gone.
Maybe she was doing things I wasn’t so sure about, but at least she was safe.
I spotted our bags and called for Mom to come help. Once we’d gathered them, I turned back to Clue.
“Well, have a good trip,” I told him.
He smiled. “You too.”
And now that Zoe was safe—and that I’d finally have some time to write—I knew that I would.
* * *
Zoe and Jade were apart, and Zoe was not happy.
She paced back and forth across her house (that had all the furniture she needed to be comfortable and happy). “I wonder what Jade is doing right now,” she wondered out loud. Sadly no one answered.
Zoe knew she needed to think of something to do while Jade was gone. Otherwise she’d be really, really bored.
“Maybe I could make a list of ideas,” Zoe thought. So she grabbed some paper she found in her house and got to work.
Play games.
Watch movies.
Read.
Repeat.
Zoe smiled to herself. There! It wasn’t a long list of activities, but it was enough to make it until Monday night. Games like Solitaire could be played over and over again. Movies were long, and there were millions of them to choose from. Same with books. Mrs. Yang always said you could never read enough books. You could even read the same books over and over again, because maybe you’d discover something you hadn’t noticed your first time through. Even though Mrs. Yang’s advice had been wrong lately, that idea was right.
Mom interrupted my writing. “Jade, look!” she said. “Mountains! Aren’t they beautiful?”
“Yay,” I said, but I didn’t look up. I couldn’t waste time. (And we had mountains in Colorado, anyway.)
Zoe was excited. It’d be a good weekend. And when Jade got back on Monday night, they’d tell each other everything they did, and they’d jump right back into their friendship like no time had passed at all.
“Look,” Mom called again. Bo and Dad ooh-ed and ahh-ed, but I ignored them and looked over what I’d written. It wasn’t my best work, but it would have to do for now. Maybe once we got to the hotel, I’d give Zoe a call and make sure she had ideas. Anyway, I was trying to trust her at least a little. I hadn’t told her what to read or watch. There were plenty of blanks she could fill in on her own.
I sat back and squeezed Bo’s hand. Now that I was sure everything would be fine, I could finally relax and enjoy the trip. I got ready to ooh and ahh at the next mountain, but I guess I was too late, because nobody made any more happy noises the whole rest of the drive. But whatever. Once I talked to Zoe and made sure everything was good, I could make some happy noises of my own.
* * *
We didn’t have any official trip activities until lunchtime, so I asked Mom if I could borrow her phone and go to the hotel pool. When I got there, I dipped my toes in the water, took a deep breath, and gave my best friend a call on her home phone.
She answered right away. “That was fast!” she said.
“Huh?”
“Who is this?”
“Jade?”
“Oh,” Zoe giggled. “Sorry. I thought it was Afiya. We were just talking and she said she’d call me right back. But that was literally a second ago. She wouldn’t have called back that fast. Funny, right?”
“Yeah,” I agreed.
I cleared my throat. “I wanted to make sure you weren’t too bored without me.”
“Aw, that’s so nice! Don’t worry about me. I’m totally fine. Afiya and I were actually just making plans. We’re going to have a sleepover tonight at her house with Camilla and Maggie. Afiya says we can play games, watch movies, and take some magazine quizzes.” Zoe took her first breath in what felt like a very long time. “We’ll miss you, of course,” she added, “but it’s going to be so fun!”
I pushed my feet into the water and kicked them up and down, up and down, up and down. Water splashed into the air with each satisfying smack.
“Jade? Are you there?”
“I…”
“Oh, you know what? That’s actually Afiya calling me back. I have to go, okay? Have an awesome time on your trip. Can’t wait to see you when you get back!”
“Yeah, I…”
I didn’t have time to finish my sentence. Zoe had already hung up.
I kicked my legs harder and harder. Most of my body wasn’t even in the pool, but it felt like I’d done the biggest belly flop of all time. That was not how the call was supposed to go. Not. At. All.
I’d given her such good activities! But she’d decided on her own that if she couldn’t do them with me, she’d go do them with somebody else. At a sleepover. A sleepover!
The belly-flop feeling got worse—right as a whole ton of water splashed onto my face.
“Hey!” I called out, wiping off my glasses.
A face emerged from the water.
No. No way. It couldn’t be. And yet it totally was.
“Sorry,” said Clue. “My cannonballs go wide sometimes.”
“Hey, Greshie! Cannonball!” a little girl jumped off the edge, and two men on lounge chairs on the other side of the pool clapped and cheered.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
Clue pushed some wet hair out of his face.
“I’m just…here,” he said after a minute. Even with all the different feelings floating around inside of me like loose pool toys, I couldn’t help but laugh.
“That was a terrible answer
,” I said. I kicked my legs some more. “Are you…are you on the trip through the cancer center?”
Clue let out a long breath. “Yeah. I am. I thought you might be on this trip, too, when I saw you at the airport,” he added, “but I didn’t know for sure. I guess I could have said something.”
We didn’t say anything for a bit. Clearly neither of us really wanted to talk about why we were on a trip like this one, or ask the other too much about it.
“You splashed me, you know,” I finally told him.
“Sorry about that.”
“It’s okay.”
“Do you want to splash me back?” he asked.
Our eyes locked. There was a funny look on his face, like he was giving me a dare but didn’t think I’d really do it. I usually wasn’t a very splashy person. But after my phone chat with Zoe, smacking the water didn’t sound so bad. I tossed Mom’s cell onto a lounge chair nearby.
Then, before Clue even realized what was happening, I leaned over, slipped my hands into the pool, and pushed as much water up and out as I possibly could.
He coughed a couple times, but the coughs quickly turned to laughs.
“Jade Levy!” he said.
“Clue Gorham,” I replied.
He gave me a funny look, and I put my hands back into the water and braced myself for what I knew was coming next.
“Splash fight,” he yelled.
“Unfair advantage,” I called as I tried to defend myself. “You’re actually in the pool!”
“Too bad, so sad,” he answered.
I squealed as more water hit me and shrieked as I sent some flying back toward him.
Before I knew it, I was completely soaked from head to toe. Which normally wouldn’t be that big of a deal, but there was the tiny fact that I was still in my shorts and T-shirt.
“Here, let me help you with that,” Clue said. He got out of the pool and tossed a big handful of towels at my head.
“Oh, you’re so kind,” I said as I tossed towels back on him. “Let me help you too. It’s only fair.”
Clue grinned. “Towel fight?”
I was laughing so hard I could barely answer.
When Mom came down to tell me it was time to go to lunch, she was a little bit confused. We had moved on to seeing how many towels we could stack on each other’s heads before they fell over. So far I had six, and Clue trailed behind with four.
Mom took her phone back and snapped a picture.
“I have no idea what’s happening here, but I absolutely support it,” she said. We laughed at that, which made us wobble, which—
“Ahhh!”
“Take cover!”
—made all the towels fall down.
“How was your chat with Zoe?” Mom asked as we picked them up and got in the elevator to go up to our room.
I shrugged. “Okay.”
For a second I’d totally forgotten how stressed I was after that call.
And even though it was on my mind now, as I changed into dry clothes, I couldn’t stop smiling.
27
Getting a Clue
After I changed we met everyone in our cancer-center group in the hotel lobby.
There was Clue, his dads, and the little girl from the pool, who must be his little sister. There were two other families, also—one with a mom and two little boys, and another one with a mom, a dad, and four little kids who looked even younger than Bo. I beamed at my brother, remembering the flight here.
Clue and I waved at each other as the leader of the trip, a cute old guy named Ray, made sure we were all accounted for.
“Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen,” he finished, and marked something on his clipboard. “All right, folks. Let’s get this started. Hop on the bus for a tour and picnic lunch extravaganza!”
My thoughts turned to Zoe as we went outside and boarded the giant bus. Our call was so weird. Why was it that the more I tried to make things perfect between us, the more complicated they got? My stomach flip-flopped just thinking about it.
Bo wanted to sit with Clue’s sister, so I took a window seat in the row across from him and flipped my notebook open as everyone else got on.
Zoe was making more and more of her own choices, and Jade couldn’t help it—she was freaking out. Zoe was doing the activities Jade wrote about, but instead of doing them on her own, she’d decided to go do them at a sleepover with practically every girl in their entire school. Which was fine. Right? It was fine. Jade was trying to trust Zoe. And even though it would’ve made Jade feel better if Zoe decided to be alone, she had to believe that Zoe could have fun with other people while still remembering that her best friend was Jade.
She had to believe it. Had to.
But what if she couldn’t?
“Working on a new Zoe story?” Clue interrupted.
“How long have you been sitting there?”
Clue shrugged. “Long enough to figure out what you’re up to.”
I jerked my head toward the green notebook in his lap. “What are you up to? Remembering the time you lost a splash fight against somebody who wasn’t even in the pool?”
“Yeah, pretty sure lose doesn’t mean what you think it means. I was undeniably the winner.”
“Sure,” I said. “Go ahead and think that. Whatever makes you feel better.”
Clue laughed.
“For real, though,” he said. “What are you writing?”
“Just…trying to figure out some Zoe stuff,” I said. “You?” I squirmed in my seat.
He eyed his notebook. “Working on a story.” “About what?”
“My sister.”
“Oh,” I said. “Harper or Fallan?”
Fallan, who was probably four, had become fast friends with Bo. They had some super-detailed princess-and-Giraffe-rescue-the-Legos-game going on in the row across from us.
Harper was the one he’d mentioned before, the one who had all the theories about things. The one who believed the pond was magical.
But Harper wasn’t here.
Suddenly I was piecing it all together. It all made sense. Why Clue was at the cancer center that day. Why he was on this trip now. Clue didn’t say anything else. He didn’t have to. Deep down, somehow, I just knew.
“So Harper…” I started.
“Had cancer,” Clue finished. “Yeah. When she was in sixth grade and I was in fourth. She had a tumor in her brain. And then she died.”
I sank into my seat as a guilty feeling spread through me. I was always kind of bummed about Dad, but maybe I should spend more time appreciating that he was doing okay.
“My sister loved to travel,” Clue said, and I sat up to hear him. “This trip seemed like a good way to honor her.”
I bit my lip. “So a couple years ago, when I saw you at the cancer center, you were there for her?”
“That was after she passed away,” he said. “We liked to go back and visit her doctors and nurses. Still do. I was visiting her old room that day.”
I leaned my head against the window and took a few breaths. I had assumed the worst about Clue that day. And about my own problems and Dad’s.
I glanced at his notebook again. “Do you write about her a lot?”
He sighed. “All the time. She…she was my best friend. I mean, I love my little sister too, but my dads adopted Harper and me together. Before they came along, it was just the two of us.” He cleared his throat. “So I guess you know what I’m really trying to do, huh?”
I bit my lip and looked away. Who was I to want to keep my imaginary best friend when he wanted to see his big sister?
I looked back. “Just wondering…why did you bring Zoe here if you really wanted to bring your sister?”
Now it was Clue’s turn to squirm in his seat. “I just wanted to see if everything worked okay. See what it’d b
e like if someone actually did come to life. Ever since you told me about your Zoe notebook at the cancer center, I’ve been curious about it. I’ve been observing you at school. Not in a creepy way.”
We both laughed quietly.
“Sure,” I said. “Just in a want-to-see-if-your-character-would-make-a-good-real-person way.”
“Yeah,” Clue agreed.
He seemed like he wanted to say more, but he looked at his notebook instead. A weird taste flooded my mouth even though I hadn’t eaten anything since the plane. I definitely felt bad for Clue, but at the same time, it was weird that he’d used Zoe and me to test out his plan. It was like my whole friendship with her was practice for something that didn’t actually involve us at all.
“These are our real lives, though,” I told him. “Zoe’s and mine. We’re not experiments. We’re people.”
Clue frowned. “I know,” he said, “but I need Harper. If Zoe goes, you can write about her again, like before. She’s real but she’s not, not really.”
I frowned too. “She’s real to me, though. She’s my best friend.”
Clue didn’t say anything, but the look on his face showed that he didn’t understand, didn’t think Zoe was nearly as important as his sister. And she wasn’t, I guess. Nothing could be worse than losing someone you loved. Still, Zoe was important to me. And Clue was acting like that didn’t matter.
I turned away. I crossed my legs, then uncrossed them, then crossed them again. I didn’t want to say anything mean and make things worse. But I couldn’t think of anything nice to say, either.
So I didn’t say anything at all.
28
The Plan
I didn’t know when we were getting to the lunch portion of this bus ride, but it was starting to seem like never.
Or maybe it just seemed like never because Clue and I hadn’t said a word to each other in what felt like hours, but we were still stuck being seatmates.
“Bringing Zoe here wasn’t only because I wanted to test out the magic, you know,” he finally said.