You Have a Match(75)

“Oh my god, you sound just like Jo.”

I try another tactic. “Okay, fine, then here’s a thing Jo definitely didn’t say—you might be mad at yourself, if you didn’t at least ask her about it.”

Savvy’s lips quirk upward. “Gee,” she deadpans. “What great advice.”

I nudge my muddy sneaker into hers. “Yeah, the girl who gave it to me isn’t half bad.”

Savvy nudges my foot back, and leans farther into the muddy hillside, staring outward and mulling something over.

“How about we make a deal,” she says. I brace myself, thinking it will have something to do with Leo, and I won’t know what to say. “I’ll feel things out with Mickey, if you agree to have a serious conversation with your parents about your photography.”

Just like that the sting is back, a fresh reminder of the untouched Dropbox.

“Well, joke’s on you. I already tried.”

“Try harder.”

I shrug. Even if I wanted to, now doesn’t feel like the right time. There’s too much going on to pull this out of the periphery and into a spotlight taken up by the rest of the chaos I’ve brought on.

“If it helps, my parents are judgy as hell, and they love your work.”

“Really?” I ask, not entirely convinced they weren’t trying to play nice with their kid’s biological sister.

Savvy rolls her eyes. “Of course they do.”

“Uh—ouch?”

“No, sorry, I—I didn’t mean it like that,” Savvy adds quickly. “I just mean they’ve always kind of like—I don’t know. Seemed kind of baffled by my whole Instagram thing.”

“I guess if I grew up without Instagram, I’d be baffled, too,” I say, trying to be diplomatic.

“Yeah, well, they grew up without ordering the Amazon Alexa around, and they seem to be adjusting to that just fine,” Savvy says flatly. “You’d think they’d be more supportive, since they basically groomed me for it. What else was I going to do after a lifetime of being raised by the biggest hypochondriacs in the greater Seattle area?”

“If only we could all so easily monetize our parents’ paranoia.”

Savvy loosens a bit, letting out a laugh. “Anyway, it makes sense they’d jump all over your photos. That’s exactly the kind of thing they’re into. Everything about you—the whole creative, seizing-the-day thing.”

I sidestep the “Day” pun for my own sanity, and add, “Or as my parents would call it, that whole reckless, bad-prioritizing thing.”

“Your parents seem so chill. I mean, I couldn’t get a single nugget of information out of them, so that was a bust. But other than that they seem chill.”

“Of course they’re chill to you. You’re the dream kid.” I caught myself before I said their dream kid, but I might as well have. It’s heavy in the humid air, taking up space even though it didn’t take up sound.

But Savvy doesn’t seem to notice, turning more fully to look me in the face.

“Abby, you’ve got to stop thinking you’re like, a ‘bad kid’ or something. So your grades aren’t the best. So what? Grades stop counting pretty much the minute you get your diploma. Especially when your talents are outside of school.” It’s the last thing I’m expecting to hear from the most aggressive rule-following Capricorn to ever walk the earth, but less surprising than what she says next, which is, “Truth is, I’d kill to be more like you.”

“Excuse me?”

She leans back. “You know what’s dumb? I’m trapped in the middle of the woods, and yeah, I’ve thought about food and water and getting eaten by a wild bobcat—but mostly I’ve obsessed about how nobody’s updating the Instagram. No scheduled posts, no stories, no DMing with followers. I’ve basically gone dark for the first time in two years.”

There’s reservation in her face after she finishes, like she’s expecting me to make fun of her.

“How’s it feel?” I ask instead.

“Super shitty.” Savvy swipes sweat off her brow, accidentally streaking more mud on her forehead. “It’s wild to think I used to do this for fun.”

I peer at her cautiously. “Was it ever really fun, though?”

“It was,” she insists. “Actually, it was kind of a relief. I just wanted … control, I guess. Over the stuff my parents wanted me to do, all the rules they had. You saw what happened when I got a days’ worth of sniffles,” she says, gesturing widely the way someone would at a catastrophic mess. “It’s always been like that, and nothing I said ever really stopped them. There was always this big scary unknown that I could never talk them down from, because they never told me much about my bios. I didn’t know enough to understand where the fear came from in the first place.” She tilts her head, considering. “But running the Instagram—showing them I was taking their advice seriously—for a while it worked.”

It hits a little too close to home, hearing her say that. Savvy, for all her bravado, is as guilty of taking the easy way out as I am.

“And even when it stopped working, it was fun, when it was just me and Mickey. But now it sort of feels like—this whole other beast. I started it to feel like I had control, but it controls me.”