You Have a Match(68)

“I can’t find him anywhere. I tried to cover for him, but Victoria’s gonna notice soon, and—”

Leo clears his throat, wiping his palms on his shorts. “Have you checked in with Savvy?”

Mickey shakes her head. “I can’t find her either, but I know Jo called, so…”

Leo finally steps away from me. I can sense him searching my face, but when I look over, I don’t know what to make of it. It’s almost like he seems disappointed, but I can’t tell if it’s in himself, or in me.

“Abby has to go pack, but I’ll help you look,” he says to Mickey. “I’ve got a few ideas.”

They talk it over and are off in separate directions within the minute, leaving me out on the beach with my camera still dangling around my neck. I look out over the water, unsurprised to find the orcas are gone.





twenty-seven




Considering I am far less familiar with stories about Gaby the camp ghost than the dozens of Camp Reynolds returners, I should probably be the last person to follow her straight to Finn. But there I am, a mere five minutes later, standing at the base of an allegedly haunted tree with the shadow of a Finn-shaped human making long shapes on the ground.

I crunch down on a spare branch when I come to a stop, and Finn’s face pops down between the branches. He takes one look at me, closes his eyes, and says, “Shit.”

“Good to see you, too.”

He turns his head away, toward the skyline, which is getting darker by the second. “I’m not stuck.”

“That sounds like something a stuck person would say.”

“Is Savvy with you?”

I don’t even have the wherewithal to be offended. Even if I did, we’ve got much bigger problems judging from the sound of his voice, which is very much that of someone trying not to panic and doing a very bad job of it.

“Just me.”

Before he can bleat out some other excuse or Finn-ism, I tug the strap of my bag so Poppy’s camera is on my back, flex my wrists, and start climbing the tree. It isn’t exactly an easy feat without much light, but that’s the problem. There’s no time to turn around and get Savvy, or turn around and get anyone, really. I’ve got about five minutes to coach him down before the sun ghosts us and the whole camp goes dark.

“You don’t have to…”

I’m fast, faster than Finn’s expecting. His eyes go wide at me closing in on him, big and red-rimmed and giving him away before he can turn his head.

“What are you doing up here?”

He’s clinging to the tree and another branch for dear life, but at least he seems to relax once I’m up there. There’s nothing between us but bark and the faded MAKE A WISH sign. Whatever plans he had of not looking at me are immediately foiled when a twig of a branch cracks under my hand and he full-body flinches.

“Don’t you have your own problems to deal with?” he asks, voice strained.

I’m high enough now that I’m eye level with him. “Nice deflecting.”

He’s looking at me without looking at me, half peering and half laser-focused on the arms he has wrapped around the tree.

“Finn.”

He rests his head on the tree trunk. “I … was climbing. And I guess I don’t usually climb it by myself. And I’m … a little bit…”

“Stuck,” I provide.

He blows out an embarrassed breath.

“Well, I’m here now. I’ll help you down.”

It feels like someone else is saying it. I’m not used to feeling like someone with authority, someone with a plan. That was always Connie in our group, or my parents at home, or the army of teachers and tutors at school. I kind of assumed I’d be bad at it.

And maybe I still am, but there’s no time to overthink that now.

“Yeah,” says Finn, except it sounds less like a yeah and more like he choked on his own spit.

I try another tactic. “Why’d you come up here in the first place?”

“For wishing,” he says, a flash of his usual self. “Duh.”

I try to think back to the wishes we made, but it feels like it’s been years since he first brought me here. Leo told me once that all your skin cells replace themselves every two or three weeks, but this time it’s like I felt it, every single one of them dying and being reborn, making some new version of me with edges and pieces I don’t fully know how to use yet.

My wishes were so specific then. I may not have been able to fix my problems, but at least I could give them names. Now I wouldn’t even know where to begin.

Which is how I remember exactly what Finn said, because it’s exactly what I feel all these weeks later.

“For things to be less fucked up?”

He lets out a wheeze that might have started out a laugh, tilting his head away from me. Problem is his limbs are too occupied glomming onto the tree to swipe at his eyes or stop the quick tear that slides down his cheek.

“You know I wasn’t even supposed to go to camp this summer? We were going to go on a big trip across the U.S. together, me and my mom and dad. We’d been planning it for years.”

My chest is tight, wondering what’s on the other end of this, knowing from the look on his face that it’s about to go from bad to worse.