In an Instant(9)

Oz, sedated with a healthy dose of Benadryl my dad spiked his juice with moments earlier, snores heavily against the window, Bingo curled at his feet. In the back, on the Bentley bench, my mom works, her laptop on her thighs. She has a big trial in a few weeks she’s stressed about. Aunt Karen reads a magazine.

We are on our way.





4

The clouds close ranks as we begin our climb up the mountain, the color and light draining until the world is reduced to matte gray with no sense of time or depth. It’s only late afternoon yet dark enough to be dusk. Our game ended because Natalie was caught cheating and Chloe wouldn’t back down when the rest of us said it didn’t matter. All bets are off, and it will be a free-for-all for claiming beds when we get to the cabin.

Oz still snores, my mom still works, and Aunt Karen paints Natalie’s toenails as her daughter pouts because none of us are being nice to her.

Mo and I are still at the table, our heads huddled close over my phone.

“I can’t,” I say, my cheeks flooded with warmth as I stare at the letters Mo typed for me on my phone. Hi Charlie Plans for formal? If not I was thinking we could go together??? Finn

The message took over twenty minutes to compose—simple and to the point. My finger hovers over the send button, until Mo, tired of waiting, swoops in and presses it for me, causing my heart to jump.

“Done,” she says, a satisfied grin on her face.

My stomach lurches around nervously as I stare expectantly at the screen for an instant reply, praying for and dreading his answer in equal measure; and time suddenly slows, each second taking at least twice as long as it did before the message was sent.

“What’s done?” Chloe asks, untangling herself from Vance and pulling her right earbud from her ear. Noxious music squawks from the tiny speaker, the kind of booming thrum and cacophonous screech that makes you think of tortured cats, industrial vents, and garbage cans.

“Nothing,” I say, amazed how Chloe always does that: ignores you when there’s something you want her to hear and listens when you don’t want her to.

She snatches my phone off the table before I can react. “Who’s Charlie?”

“No one.”

Mo smirks.

“Not that soccer guy with the big belt buckles and boots?”

“He’s from Texas,” I defend.

“I think it’s cute,” Mo says.

Chloe rolls her eyes as she tosses my phone to the table. “Hard to believe we’re sisters.”

I can’t argue—the room we’ve shared my entire life, our love of stupendous words like stupendous, our copper hair, and our green eyes about the only things Chloe and I have in common. She plugs the bud back in her ear, a smile on her face, and I know she’s happy for me. She’s been rooting for me in the romance department for some time, always telling me I’m pretty even though I pretend not to care. She’s the only one who says it, but she says it often enough and with such sincerity that sometimes I actually believe her.



By the time we reach the cabin, I’ve bitten off all my nails and checked my phone at least two hundred times. The Miller Mobile rolls to a stop, and all of us stretch and stand. Snow has started to fall, and though it isn’t even five o’clock, the world is dark.

I squint at the “cabin” through the gauzy veil, and my heart fills. Some of my best childhood memories were made here. The cabin, which is more like a small mountain chalet, was built by my mother’s father when he retired, his dream to live among the pines lasting two short years before he died. But his vision still stands, a regal log-and-glass A-frame accessed by a private fire road, making it the only house for miles.

I step from the camper and momentarily forget about Charlie and my phone, the cold smacking me as the winter wonderland steals my breath. Most of the time, with my long limbs and bright hair, I feel tall and conspicuous, but here, surrounded by such rugged vastness, suddenly I am small and astoundingly aware of my own insignificance.

Mo twirls around me, caught up in the moment as well, her tongue out to catch the sprinkling of snow.

“You know the snow is dirty,” Natalie says.

Mo leaves her tongue extended as she turns to face Natalie, who then huffs away. Mo and I giggle.

My dad wrestles a soda-laden cooler down the steps of the camper and asks Oz to do the same with the second cooler, which Oz does, effortlessly carrying the chest behind my dad, Bingo on his heels.

“Thanks, buddy,” my dad says over his shoulder, causing Oz to grin.

I carry my duffel and two bags of groceries and follow Vance, who carries nothing but his own bag. He shuffles forward, shoulders slumped as he walks in the slow, irritating way he has that manages to be both lazy and arrogant at the same time.

My phone buzzes in my jacket pocket, and I jump like I’ve been poked with a cattle prod.

Chloe, who is behind me, swings the bag of groceries she’s carrying into my butt. “Is that your boyfriend?”

I glance over my shoulder to sneer but then see her excited face and blush instead.

I desperately want to look at my phone and reveal my prize, but Charlie will have to wait, because we have now crossed the threshold to the cabin, and it’s a mad dash to claim your bed. I drop the groceries on the counter and leap past Vance, who obviously has no idea how important this is. Oz is already on the stairs that lead to the loft, lumbering up the steps. When he wants something, he can be fiercely determined, and I know he wants the top bunk.