You Have a Match(46)

After I hang up, I stand there, listening to the dial tone, trying to wrap my head around what just happened. We’ve had plenty of disagreements in our years of friendship, but nothing like this. There’s never been anything I wasn’t quick to forgive and forget. I wasn’t built any other way, and I really do love Connie like the sister I never had.

I set the phone back in its cradle, standing perfectly still, trying to ground myself—trying to make it seem less like we started that phone call far away from each other and ended it further than we’ve ever been.





seventeen




I’m not crying when I show up for toilet-scrubbing duty with Savvy in the bona fide sewer that is the boys’ bathroom, but I’m not not crying either. Savvy is elbows deep in one of the stalls when I get there, and for once I’m grateful she’s not talking to me. It gives me a chance to hide my sorry face in a stall of my own. And my pee-soaked pity parade is going just fine, at least until Savvy gets up and knocks over the mop water in her stall, spilling it out onto my shoes.

“Shit,” she says, so surprised at herself that she forgets we aren’t speaking. “Shit, I’m sorry—”

And that’s when I realize I am crying, because Savvy stops dead with the mop in her hands and the alarm on her face softens into a look a little too close to concern.

“It’s fine,” I say, reaching up to wipe my eyes. Savvy swiftly grabs my wrist, reminding me that my hands are covered in the primordial ooze of pubescent boys, and I think better of it. Before I know it she’s helping me to my feet and out of the mop puddle, and we’re face-to-face in the cramped stall.

Savvy blows out a breath, like she’s trying to decide if she’s going to do something about me or not. By then I have minor control over my face. It’s not too late for her to pretend she didn’t notice anything, and for us to get back to the Camp Reynolds version of the Cold War.

“Did … something happen?”

I shake my head.

“Because if it’s camp stuff, I’m kind of obligated to know.”

It stings, even though it shouldn’t. For a second I thought she cared about me as a person, and not what me being a person meant for her job.

“It’s just weird drama. From back home.”

“Oh.” Savvy mulls this over, and her eyebrows lift. “Did your parents find out we—”

“No,” I say, suppressing a laugh. To be honest, I’ve mostly forgotten there’s anything for our parents to find out. “What, did yours?”

Savvy shakes her head. Then she lingers, like maybe she’s going to say something else, and I’m so eager for the opening that I end up blurting the words so fast they end up stumbling on one another like mismatched dominoes.

“I’m—I’m really sorry about the whole pranking thing. I didn’t think…”

The way she’s been shutting me out, the last thing I’m expecting is what she says next.

“It was dumb,” she says, the tension leaking out of her shoulders. “But what I did was dumber. I don’t know what came over me.”

Except we both do, even if neither of us wants to say it. Maybe this Instagram thing started out fun for Savvy, but whatever it is now is so hardwired into her psyche that it made her drive a stick-shift eight-seater van up a hill before the sun was even out, and made her forget that there are at least ten camp rules and some actual laws against it.

“But you should know, I wasn’t trying to like, punish you, with the SAT thing,” says Savvy, her voice low. “I thought it would be better if Victoria knew sooner than later. If she found out in a few more days she would have had to call all your parents, and—”

“They might have made me leave.”

She lowers her gaze. “You did say they were pretty serious about all this tutoring stuff.”

I shrug, and my weight shifts between my sneakers, making a squelch noise that echoes through the empty bathroom. We look down at my feet. They’re soaked with mop water. We move out of the stall, over to the sinks. When I look in the mirror, my cheeks are an embarrassing shade of red and my eyes are puffy enough that they’re practically screaming for Visine.

“Is that what it was about?” Savvy asks. “The drama back home?”

“Oh … uh, no, actually. Just…”

I’m not planning on telling her, but she’s maybe the only person I can tell. She doesn’t know Connie. The things I say here will never get back to her.

And maybe I’m imagining it, but it seems like she actually cares.

“It’s my friend Connie.”

“What, you made her a fake Twitter?”

I laugh, surprising myself and Savvy, who seems pleased that she’s capable of making a joke. It loosens me up a bit, and everything spills out.

“No. Learned my lesson with that.” I take a breath. “But, uh—so—it’s dumb. There was this thing with Leo, a few months ago…”

“So he did tell you he liked you.”

My head snaps up fast enough to make Savvy flinch. “No. The thing was that Connie told me Leo didn’t like me.”

“Oh, he likes you,” says Savvy frankly. “He talked about a girl named Abby all last summer. He might not have come right out and said it, but he clearly had some kind of crush. I just didn’t make the connection until you were here.”