You Have a Match(44)
“So I guess that means no progress on figuring out what the hell happened with your parents?”
I hold the phone away from my mouth so she won’t get the full volume of my sigh. “Nada.” I sense another pep talk brewing, so I’m quick to add, “But you were right, you know. About staying. The rest of it … it’s actually been kind of fun.”
Sure, getting stuck in an academic cage all morning is rough, but the other girls have made it oddly bearable. Once they let us out in the afternoon, demerit duty aside, we’re relatively free. We go kayaking. We play dumb camp games and set marshmallows on fire. We swap bug spray and ghost stories and T-shirts. We take enough goofy pictures of ourselves that Kitty is sometimes less of a camera and more of a mirror.
Come to think of it, I’ve taken so many pictures that Kitty’s memory card is probably wheezing with effort to save them—sweeping views of the Puget Sound, of thick, infinite clouds, of unusual birds, of bunnies and butterflies and deer. Pictures that make me proud to go through my camera roll, that finally ease this ache I’ve had as long as I can remember to get out and see the world beyond Shoreline, beyond the three-mile radius of my house. It feels like something’s opened up to me—not only landscapes and sweeping views, but the future. It’s not clear, but it’s wider than I ever remember it feeling, full of possibility, of places I can go someday.
“Are you guys just gonna do a big old photo dump on your Instas at the end of the summer?” I asked the rest of the Phoenix Cabin girls before dinner one night, when we were swapping a chip bag Leo smuggled for us back and forth. I’d been AirDropping them photos—the ones we took of ourselves, not anything I’ve been taking on my own—but I hadn’t seen any of them volleying for the shared computer in the rec room or wandering around to get bars on their phones.
“Oh, no, this is for our finstas,” Jemmy explained, holding out her phone. “I’m nowhere near the level to be launching a brand yet.”
I looked at the screen and saw that like the “How to Stay Wacky” account we made, there were only a handful of followers, and it was locked. Connie had a finsta too, but I was never on Instagram to see it. Jemmy’s was in the same vein. Kind of like a scrapbook, without any real theme.
“Oh. I guess mine’s a finsta too then, since the posts are only for fun.”
“Kind of,” said Cam. “Mostly it’s good to have your own space, I guess? Get to know your vibe? So when we launch our legit accounts we know what our vision is.”
“What are your visions?” I asked.
Cam beamed, adjusting the blond hair she’d pulled into a much lower, non-Savvy ponytail in recent days. “There’s a whole body-positive running community on Instagram. I’m gonna start with that, and have my thing be highlighting running brands with inclusive sizing that are actually cute, and match them up with weekly curated playlists.” She cast one leg out like a ballerina, showing off the purple leggings with cloud prints she was wearing. “This one’s full Ariana, obviously.”
Izzy plucked some of the spandex on her calf and snapped it back, making her yelp out a laugh. “Well, I’m gonna be a doctor, so I’m gonna use mine to chronicle everything like a photo diary—premed, med school, residency,” she told me. “Like Grey’s Anatomy, but make it Gen Z. And with like, way less murder.”
Before I could react, Jemmy grinned widely, making a bow-and-arrow movement. “Our Dungeons & Dragons group makes all our own cosplay, so I’m gonna chronicle the campaign we’re kicking off in the fall. We’ve all decided it doesn’t end until every last one of us is dead.”
I stared at each of them in turn, impressed. “Wow, I love all of these,” I said. I was so into their ideas that for the first time I wanted to be on Instagram as an actual recreational hobby, and not just something I glanced at once a year to make sure Leo hadn’t posted pictures of the clown from It on my account on April Fools’ Day.
But there was one part that didn’t make sense. “If you all have your own Instagram ideas … why are you so into Savvy?”
“Well, first off, cuz she’s a badass,” said Jemmy. “But also because of the workshop she’s leading next week.”
“Workshop?” I asked. I knew there were specialty classes that rotated every week, but I’d been too busy harassing Mickey and Leo in the kitchens and running around the campground with Kitty and Finn to pay much attention.
“Social Media and the Personal Brand,” said Izzy. “Savvy built her Instagram up from basically nothing in two years. If anyone knows how to do it, it’s her.”
“Don’t worry,” said Jemmy, “we signed you up, but we can pull your name off it if you’d rather not.”
There was this warmth, then—one I’d been too nervous to acknowledge, in case it went away. Like I really did belong here. Like I was capable of finding my place outside the bubble I’d been living in, with the same best friends and the same town and the same endless to-do list on Abby’s Agenda.
“See?” says Connie, tugging me out of my thoughts. “You just have to bust out of your shell a bit. Maybe do something totally radical, even, like show your photos to people who aren’t me and Leo.”
“Let’s not get too carried away.”