You Have a Match(16)
I don’t say anything, and he starts going into some variation of the “we’ll always be right here to come get you if you need it” spiel, which I tune out when I see a new text on my phone from a 425 number. I am right on the verge of rolling my eyes, certain it’s a pushy reminder to get my parents on board. Instead, it’s a link to Savvy’s latest Instagram post, along with the caption: “do what u love, especially if what u love is posing with a water bottle in a bunch of spandex.”
I snort.
“What’s shaking?” my dad asks.
“Nothing,” I say, exiting out of my texts just as another notification comes in, and the smirk wilts right off my face. It’s an email from the school, with a subject line so aggressive it feels like our principal is shouting it right into my eardrums: MANDATORY SUMMER SCHOOL—SIGN-UP INSTRUCTIONS WITHIN.
Shit.
five
There are several things my parents are unaware of when they drop me off at the ferry dock, where I am, at the mercy of the entire universe, somehow escaping to Camp Reynolds for the summer.
The first of those things is, obviously, Savvy.
The second is that I deleted the email about me failing English and having to go to summer school. And then I used our Netflix password to hack into both of my parents’ emails and delete it from theirs, listing all emails from the school district as spam while I was at it. And after, I sprinted home between school and tutoring sessions to check our home voicemail and intercept every message left by the power-hungry twentysomething who runs the attendance office and feasts on the misery of all the students whose parents he calls in the middle of the day.
The third is that when my mom asked if I’d made my bed and cleaned my room I said yes, even though the floor is more clothes than carpet and it’d be a miracle if someone found the bed right now, let alone made it.
To be fair, I haven’t exactly been rolling in spare time. Last week was finals, plus Connie was packing for her big Europe trip with her cousins, and Leo was prepping for a summer job in the kitchen at Camp Evergreen (or, as I dubbed it when we were kids, “Camp Whatevergreen”), and I was more than a little preoccupied leading my new super hip double life as Abby Who Doesn’t Lie To Her Parents and Abby The Lying Liar. We were planning to meet up to see a movie or something before we all took off, but I guess it slipped through the cracks.
The last of the cars start filing onto the ferry, so walk-on passengers have to get on or get left. My dad hugs me first.
“Take care of yourself,” he says. “If a bear tries to eat you, punch it in the nose.”
My mom swats at him. “There are no bears on that island.” At my look, she sighs and admits, “I checked.”
My dad and I both laugh at her, and she swoops in and hugs me tight. I squeeze back, hard, like I can squeeze out the competing waves of guilt and anger that just crushed me, followed by a trickle of something else. Something uneasy and unfamiliar. I’ve been so distracted by “Operation Stealth Sister,” as Connie has started calling it, that it didn’t occur to me until now that I’m leaving for a full month. I’ve never been away from my parents for more than a few days in my whole life.
Before I can do something dumb like blubber all over them in front of several dozen ferry commuters, all three of my brothers pipe up at once, and I’m smushed with two hugs that are arguably more violent than not and one lick to my face, courtesy of Asher.
I wipe my face with my sleeve and give them all noogies, and the three of them spin out back toward the car, growling and hissing and taking on their “monster” personas for whenever I mess up their hair. My dad follows them before they end up monstering themselves off a ledge into the Puget Sound, and my mom hugs me one last time.
“We’re leaving to see your uncle in Portland in a few days, but we’re only there for a week,” she reminds me. “But if you need anything, let us know.”
I hug her back, feeling like a bigger monster than all three of my brothers combined.
The ferry ride is a short one, a jaunt across the water to where Camp Reynolds sits on the edge of one of the islands that surround the Seattle area and beyond. I’m about to fully let myself lean into my impending panic spiral, but I look out the window and see the day is so stark clear that for once you can actually see Mount Rainier in its full glory, peeking out over the suburbs in the distance. With all the fog in this city, that damn mountain is basically my white whale. I pull Kitty out, glad she has the long-range lens on her already, and am about to head out to the front of the boat when—
“Abby?”
I know who it is before I turn around, before my brain even consciously thinks his name. I know from the two swoops, the one that plummets in my stomach and the one that goes up my spine, the full second of my body fighting itself that I’ve gotten used to feeling any time he takes me by surprise.
But this isn’t surprise. This has skipped right past surprise and straight to what in the legitimate fuck.
“Leo?”
I haven’t seen him in a few days, which has inconveniently only heightened the things about him I’ve been trying diligently not to notice. Read: the way he’s grown out his hair a bit, too short to tuck behind his ear but long enough that my fingers are twitching to try. Read also: the way the sun is streaming in from the ferry window, lighting up the amber of his eyes on his aforementioned face. Still reading: the way he is smiling, a full-body smile, the kind that might have started in his lips but clearly goes all the way down to his toes.