You Have a Match(42)
I bite down the hurt, tossing the contents of my tray into the trash, and ask, “What’s your problem with Finn, anyway? Isn’t he your friend?”
“Of course he is.” Leo takes my tray for me, his voice considerably lower. “But Finn … he’s had a rough year. And there’s a bit of an edge to him now. A reckless one. And you’re already pretty reckless on your own.”
He leans in closer, his eyes trained on mine, and I hate myself for feeling it—that electricity from last night, the thick gravity of the storm between us. I’m almost mad at him for bringing the current back. But he has no way of knowing that current means something entirely different to me than it does to him.
“And for what it’s worth, I’m always on your side,” he says. “But part of being on your side is telling you the truth. Which is that you should put a stop to this thing with Savvy before it goes full Lord of the Flies.”
I try and fail to hold in my monumental sigh. He’s right. And as mad as I am at Savvy, I am also stuck on the mystery of the magpies, on the brief connection we had this morning. Something fragile enough that if we bend it any more than we have to, it might break.
“We’ll … do some kind of dumb prank, then,” I relent. “Cut off the Wi-Fi in the counselor lounge so she can’t update her Instagram or something.”
Leo loosens up considerably. “That’s not a bad idea. It might actually get her to hang out with us.”
I wrinkle my nose.
“Just avoid messing with her job here,” says Leo. “It’s important to her.”
I chew the inside of my cheek, biting down the urge to say that being able to take photos in my free time here was important to me, and that sure didn’t stop her from coming for it. “’Course not,” I mumble.
Leo’s face settles back into a smile, albeit an uneasy one. I hesitate, and then so does he, and finally he says, “Be careful tonight.”
I can’t tell if he means to be careful climbing the rock or careful of Finn, but maybe that’s for the best. “I won’t do anything you wouldn’t do,” I say, trying to ease the tension.
Instead Leo’s mouth forms a tight line, his eyes on the other side of the mess hall like he is considering something. I can see the exact moment he decides on it, his jaw clicking before he turns back to me.
“I was being unfair before. Finn’s a good guy.”
“So … you are into the idea of me and Finn?”
It’s supposed to come out cheeky, but it’s choppy and too loud in my ears.
Leo shakes his head and tilts it like he always does at me, except this time there’s something weary in it. Something that catches in my chest, the push and pull, the knowing and not knowing where we stand.
“I want you to be happy,” he says.
Of all the things he’s ever said to me, this might be the worst. Because I know what would make me happy, and it’s not something he can give. Instead of answering him I step in closer and reach up, rubbing his hair with my closed fist until it goes all floppy, expecting him to laugh the way he did when we were kids. But his eyes just stay heavy on mine, weighted in a way I can still feel after we’ve both turned and gone our separate ways.
I file out of the mess hall with the rest of the breakfast stragglers, trying to shake off my unease, and immediately stumble into all three girls from Phoenix Cabin waiting for me outside. I stop in my tracks.
“Finn told us what happened. That Savvy busted us all, and now we have to spend the whole summer locked up in class,” says Jemmy, her nostrils flared.
“Yeah,” I say miserably.
I’m about to apologize, but Izzy cuts in and says, “He said you’re coming up with a plan to get back at her.”
I brace myself. This is it, then. Savvy stole my summer and took all my new friends with her. If there really are sides to this battle, there’s no doubt whose they’d be on.
But Cam’s mouth puckers into a determined line, and the others fall in behind her. She takes a step forward, looking like the leader of some very angry Powerpuff Girls, and says, “We want in.”
fifteen
Make Out Rock, as it turns out, may officially be the least sexy place in the entire Pacific Northwest—unless the five of us all competing over who can make the most believable bear noises while chugging an entire liter of smuggled Sprite qualifies as “sexy.”
“Finn, you’re banned unless you stop the uncontrollable burping,” says Izzy, a phrase that may be the cherry on our unsexy sundae. “Also, last check on the final draft of this before we go over Operation Wack.”
We shuffle around in the darkness, our faces lit by the glow of Izzy’s phone. On the screen is a dummy Instagram account we built that looks almost identical to Savvy’s, with all her recent uploaded photos and the bio exactly the same. Except where it should say “How To Stay Savvy” it reads “How To Stay Wacky,” and we also uploaded some old adorkable pictures of her at camp so it would look like her account was hacked by a nostalgic ghost.
The idea was mine, but the execution was all Finn. While we were stuck in SAT prep, he snuck onto the Wi-Fi to upload his old camp pictures—Savvy and Mickey hamming it up in matching braces and handmade One Direction T-shirts, Savvy sleeping on top of Leo and Finn with drool dribbling out of her mouth, and all of them with two Pringles shoved into their mouths, flinging out their elbows like ducks down by the shore.