The Herd(76)

She hesitated and I thought she was about to say have a crush on Cameron, which would of course require that I kill myself or her or all three of us on the spot. Cameron looked at her curiously and she continued, “You have a lot of loyalty toward Eleanor and might think it was weird I was hooking up with her ex.”

“Huh.” I leaned into the seat’s leather back. I knew this changed something, the social web I’d mentally spun around Eleanor, but I wasn’t yet sure how. Katie and Ted, Mikki and Cameron—I’d somehow become a fifth wheel. “Did Eleanor know?”

“No way. She’d be weird about it.” Mikki shrugged. “I didn’t want to make her jealous or anything. Cam and I just…hit it off, that’s all.”

Would Eleanor have been jealous? She never mentioned Cameron. “When?”

“I went down to visit Ted in October,” Cameron said, gesturing with his can. “We ran into each other.” They didn’t exchange looks, besotted or otherwise. None of this felt particularly romantic.

“And it’s been on since then?”

“No, we haven’t—”

“We’ve barely seen each other since then,” Mikki finished. “Sorry to…keep a secret, or whatever. But.”

“It’s fine.” I took a long sip of pop. The revelation was like a branding iron on my chest, and I fought not to let it show. “Hey, you know what’s weird? I just walked in on Ted and Katie hooking up.”

“Just now?” Mikki yelped, at the same time Cameron said, “Wait, Ted and who?”

“Yeah, just now. With my sister. I thought they’d barely said two words to each other.”

“Whoa.” Mikki shook her head, amazed. “Okay, now your fuckfest comment makes more sense. Were they embarrassed?”

“They hadn’t closed the stupid door properly. We were all equally mortified.” I started to giggle and it turned into a choking noise.

“Aw, Hana.” Mikki shot me a sympathetic look. “I keep doing that. Starting to feel normal and then bursting into tears, because, shit.” I nodded, pulled myself together. “So you’re done being mad at Katie?”

“Well, I’m still mad, obviously, but I wanted to talk to her because…” I strained to remember—my memories were floating around like snowflakes, Ted’s creepy stalker file, Karen robotically pouring wine. Then I remembered: “I found out the strangest thing about Eleanor. It all started ’cause I spotted her yearbooks, and it reminded me that she skipped over seventh and eighth grade….”

I recounted the story, my gaze bouncing between the hallway, the ceiling, my Sprite, before settling back on Mikki just as I finished. I leaned forward. “What, what is it?”

She opened her mouth, then stopped herself with a little snap of laughter. “I haven’t told anyone this and I can’t believe you’re the first to catch it,” she said. “None of that happened to Eleanor—it happened to me. In middle school. And I told her about it at some point, maybe like sophomore year, and then she brought it up years later when she was starting the Herd.” She swept her hair together, then tugged it over her shoulder. “She asked if she could, quote, ‘borrow’ it, because it worked so well with the brand narrative. But she also said the post and press release and everything else were already written and approved and about to go up.” She looked away. “It kinda felt like she was announcing, not asking. Letting me know as a courtesy, like, ‘Oh, by the way.’?”

The hairs along my biceps and back were standing tall, buzzing beneath my sweater. “And you didn’t…have a discussion or tell her you felt uncomfortable?”

She shook her head.

“That’s fucked up,” Cameron contributed.

Mikki was gazing out the window, her expression inscrutable, so I fumbled on: “Did she ever do anything else like that to you?”

“She was pretty bratty when she was little,” Cameron offered. “Pissed a lot of people off. Would just break your toy or smash your sand castle for no reason.”

“Jesus, maybe don’t speak ill of the dead, Cameron.” Mikki tucked her feet beneath her.

I pointed with my can. “Her parents said she was just really bored. And that it got better after she skipped grades.”

“Yeah, maybe. She fell in with the cool crowd in high school,” Cameron said.

“And stopped smashing sand castles?” Mikki finished.

“And started dating you,” I added. “The first time.” He winced a little and I noticed it, pressed at it like a crack in a pane, some small and childish part of me perhaps eager to volley back the hurt: “Why did you and Eleanor break up? The first time?”

He flicked his eyes toward Mikki, then ran his fingers over his jaw. “Oh, you know. I remembered what freshman year of college was like. I thought she should be free to explore.”

Liar. Covering his mouth, avoiding our eyes—he hadn’t magnanimously set Eleanor free, and I knew it. Of course she’d told us about her ex, how she’d waited until her last week at home to tell him it was over.

And then they’d given it another go our last year at Harvard; as Eleanor told it, it just happened while she was home for the summer. But she had seemed increasingly frustrated with Cameron that time around: rolling her eyes when they were together, complaining about him when they were apart. From what we could tell, raw animal attraction had brought them together again, but practicality—her big plans for Gleam, excitement from early investors, her shiny new life in New York City in stark contrast to Cameron’s life in Beverly—had pushed them apart for good.