You Have a Match(76)

I nudge her with the shoulder of my good arm, and she sighs.

“Sometimes I think about all the stuff I missed out on, because I was distracted, or because I didn’t want to break some rule I made for myself, and … I think—I know I’m missing out on stuff. And that makes me anxious. But not sticking to my plans makes me feel worse.”

She looks over at me the way little kids do, when they’re looking to someone else to confirm something is or isn’t true. But we both know she’s right. I think of my nights hanging out in the kitchen without her, the calls she took while we were pointing at constellations, the sunrises she spent scowling into the screen on her camera.

“And you … you’re just yourself. You’re brave. You do what you want. No apologies.”

Brave. It’s a word I’m still getting used to, after a lifetime of ducking from my problems. But maybe I’m growing into it, in my own way. A little less running and a little more talking. A little less wandering and a little more found.

“Plenty of apologies. I drive my parents nuts.”

“Listen, I got jack shit out of them, but I do know they’re proud of you. Before I found them they were mooning over your photos of the camp.”

I haven’t been able to access the Dropbox link for more than a day. “You’re sure they were my photos?”

“Sure I’m sure. I think if you talk to them, you can find some common ground.” She lowers her voice. “You love this, Abby. There’s no point in making yourself miserable about it, and as long as you’re hiding, you always will.”

The lump in my throat aches all the way down into my chest. I don’t know if it’s been hiding so much as protecting. This one thing that was mine and Poppy’s has turned into something that’s only mine. But that’s something I don’t want to fully reckon with right now in the mud, so I just nod.

“Well—same goes for you,” I say. “With the rules thing, I mean.”

Savvy slouches, her legs sinking into the mud even more. “That’s the problem. I don’t know if I can give them up.”

I’m at a loss for what to say, but remember what Leo said to me last night, about setting your own pace. “I don’t think it happens overnight,” I tell her. “But you can start. And maybe I can help.”

I pause, wondering if she’s going to laugh at me.

“We can start with this,” I say, tracing two lines into the mud. “It’s called a pros and Connies list.”

Savvy’s eyebrow lifts.

“The next time you want to do something—instead of thinking about what would happen if you did it, think about what would happen if you didn’t do it. The stuff you’d miss out on. The people who’d miss you, too. Those are the Connies.”

It is at that precise and inconvenient moment, sitting in the mud a whole island away from our usual stomping grounds, that I miss Connie with a near impossible force. There’s so much I want to tell her. So much I want to understand. I feel like I am straddling some line between who I was when I left and who I’ve become, and Connie is somewhere in the middle, just out of reach.

“How about this,” says Savvy. “No matter what happens when they finally drag us out of here—even if we have to wait for you to turn eighteen so we can see each other—we find some way to be in touch. To hold each other accountable.”

“Savvy’s Savvies meets Abby’s Days?”

Savvy groans. “Leo’s puns are rubbing off on you.”

The truth is there are very few parts of me that Leo hasn’t had a part in. If I am the way I am—the way Savvy thinks of me, at least—then Leo is the one to blame. If I’m brave, it’s partially because I always knew Leo was looking out for me. If I do what I want, it’s partially because of Leo supporting me. We’ve been catching each other’s slipups and rooting for each other’s dreams before they counted for anything. Long before now, when a lifetime of them are so tangled in each other that I have no idea what shape they’d take without him.

I clear my throat, pushing it to the back of my mind. There’s nothing I can do now—not about what Connie said, or the months Leo and I wasted tiptoeing around each other, or even the fact that, somewhere within a mile radius of where we are currently trapped in a ditch, our parents are probably losing their collective shit.

I lean farther into Savvy, who is, surprisingly, much calmer than I am. It’s as if she’s been waiting to get this off her chest for a while, and is slumped in relief, muddy and banged up and brand-new.

“Well,” I say lightly, “when you’ve got names like ours, it’s kind of hard not to resist the lure of a pun.”

Savvy blinks, the blue in her eyes sharpening.

“Your mom’s name. It’s Maggie, right?”

“Yeah. Why?”

Savvy yanks my lanyard from where it’s hanging out of my front pocket and hands it to me. “Magpie,” she says softly.

I stare at it resting in my palm, its gleam sharp against my skin. This thing that knows the history of me, maybe better than I know it myself. This gift that held my biggest secret in it, and just gave us a key.

“Maggie and Pietra.”





thirty-one