You Have a Match(70)

“May she be as merciful as she is super dead.”

I reach out and touch his hand, a light graze so I don’t startle him. “Did you make your wish yet?”

“Nah, I was too busy trying not to become a forest pancake.”

“We’ll make one together. Then we’ll go down.”

Finn nods, shifting to tighten his grip on the tree, and closes his eyes. I shut mine too, my wish so immediate that it feels like it’s been taking shape all day. It’s short this time, but bigger than the word alone can hold. I wish for some kind of peace. For the lost years to count for something. For everyone to come out the other side of this stronger than they started.

Finn and I finish our wishes at the same moment, breathing them out into the black. His eyes gleam back at me, cutting through the darkness, so wide on mine that I see myself in them as much as I do him.

I lean forward and kiss him on the cheek, but it’s less of a kiss and more of an understanding. There isn’t a thrill, or a swoop, or some desire for it to be anything more. There is only my lips on his skin, and the quiet comfort of being seen, understood.

“Okay,” I tell him, my voice firm like Savvy’s when she’s directing campers. “Here’s what we’ll do. I’ll use the flashlight on my phone to light the way down. I’ll go first, so you can watch what I do and copy it.”

Finn swallows hard. “Yeah. Cool.”

“We’ll go slow.”

And that we do. The same tree that took me less than a minute to climb up takes an excruciating ten to get back down. I talk Finn through every step, pausing during the occasional panic. I start to understand things about Finn that everyone else here must have already known: he is not a risk-taker, not a rebel. He’s a confused kid doing his best at acting like one.

“Almost there,” I tell him.

Just then my phone buzzes to life in my hands, a picture of Savvy lighting up the screen. I flinch in surprise, and there’s a crunch—the slightest, stupidest misstep—and I take the last five feet of the tree tumbling, reaching out for a branch that isn’t there, hitting the ground with a thud.

“Shit. Abby—are you okay?”

“Fine,” I grumble. I don’t know whether it’s a lie yet. I’m still too stunned to take account of myself, but I don’t want to scare him. Poppy’s camera is miraculously unharmed, and that’s all that really matters to me anyway. “Hold on, I’ll grab the light so you can…”

I suck in a breath, because when I grapple for my phone in the dark, I feel it. The twinge in my left wrist that shoots all the way up my elbow, my shoulder, straight into the oh no part of my brain.

I ignore it, using my other hand to find the phone and shining the flashlight up toward Finn, even as the pain starts to beat in time with my heart and settle throughout my entire arm. He works his way down and scrambles over to help me up. I wave him off, using my right hand to hoist up my very bruised self.

“You’re sure you’re okay?”

I make a show of stretching myself out. Everything else, at least, seems to be in regular order.

“Trust me. My butt has endured much worse.”

I can’t see Finn in the dark, but I can feel his uneasy smile. He reaches out in the dark and grabs my good hand, squeezing it.

“Thanks,” he says.

I squeeze back, and it feels less like we made a wish, and more of a promise. Now we just have to figure out how to keep it.





twenty-eight




“Holy crap, Abby.”

Not the most pleasant way to wake up, and it doesn’t get better from there. The throb in my wrist has escalated to a five-alarm-fire kind of pain that only seems to get worse the more awake I am. I blearily open my eyes to Cam, who is staring at my arm like it’s a horror movie.

“Did you get into a fight with a bear?”

I follow her eyes to my wrist, which has swelled to approximately the size and shape of a mutilated balloon animal. I try to jerk it under the covers, but end up hissing in pain before I can move it more than an inch.

Izzy’s head pops over to my bedside. “You need to go see the nurse.”

“S’happening?” Jemmy, who is not a morning person until someone puts food in her, mumbles from the top bunk.

“My wrist looks like an angry potato,” I inform her.

“Potato,” she murmurs, fully asleep before the end of the word.

“Seriously,” says Izzy, “nurse. Now. We’ll walk you.”

I sit up, my head aching and my body stiff from a crying hangover. I need water, Advil, and maybe someone to saw off my arm.

But with the pain comes an even more brutal clarity: I need to find Savvy and apologize. I never got a chance to call her back last night, and if I’m going to get dragged out of here without any idea of when I’ll see her again, it has to happen with the air cleared.

“I’m fine,” I say. Off Izzy’s look, I add, “Okay, I’m terrible, but I’ll be fine to get myself over to the office. Go grab breakfast. Save me a seat.”

It’s the opposite of goodbye, which is what I should be saying to them. But it hasn’t sunk in yet, even though I figure I have about half an hour before my parents roll up. They called Victoria last night to let me know when to expect them. It’s not nearly enough time, but it’s the only time I’ve got.