The Edge of Always(50)

I shrug, because I can’t really think of a good line.

“Come on, you can tell me,” he says. “It’s not like he and I talk.”

“Sorry,” I say, glancing over, “but I don’t talk about him behind his back.”

“Fair enough,” he says with a smile. “You know what?”

“What?”

Andrew grins mischievously, and I don’t like it one bit.

“I remember a couple of things on our first road trip that you never got around to doing.”

Uh-oh…

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I lie.

He drops his right hand from the steering wheel and rests it on his leg. That daring look in his eyes is gaining momentum, and I try not to make my growing nervousness so obvious.

“Yeah, I think you owe me a bare ass in the window, and I still need to bear witness to your bug meal. What will it be? Grasshopper? Cricket? Earthworm? Or, maybe a granddaddy long leg. I wonder if they have granddaddy long legs in Florida…”

My skin is crawling. “Give it up, Andrew,” I say, shaking my head. I prop my foot on the door and twirl my braid between my fingers, trying to mask my worry. “I’m not doing it. And besides, that was the first road trip and you can’t just carry stuff over like that. Should’ve made me do it when you had the chance.”

He’s still grinning like the devious shithead he is.

“No,” I say again, flatly.

I glance over. “No!” I say one last time, and it leaves him laughing.

“All right,” he says, putting his right hand back on the steering wheel. “It was worth a try, though. Can’t blame me for tryin’.”

“I guess not.”





Andrew


We spend the entire day swimming and laying out on the beach. We watch the sun set over the horizon and eventually the stars, as they come alive in the darkness. Just an hour after nightfall we’re met by a group of people our age. They’ve been on the beach not far from us for a while, hanging out.

“From around here?” the tall guy with a full-sleeved tattoo down his right arm asks.

One of the couples sits down in the sand near us. Camryn, sitting between my legs, leans away from my chest attentively.

“No, we’re from Galveston,” I answer.

“And Raleigh,” Camryn adds.

“We’re in from Indiana,” the black-haired girl sitting down says. She points at the others she came with who are still standing. “They live here, though.”

One of the other guys wraps his girlfriend up in his arms. “I’m Tate, this is Jen,” he indicates his girlfriend, then points to the others standing nearby. “Johanna. Grace. And that’s my brother, Caleb.”

The three of them nod and smile down at us.

“I’m Bray,” the black-haired girl sitting by Camryn says. “And this is my fiancé, Elias.”

Camryn sits up fully and dusts the sand away from her hands by brushing them together. “Cool to meet you,” she says. “I’m Camryn and this is my fiancé, Andrew.”

Elias reaches out to shake my hand.

Tate, the guy with the tattoo says, “We’re heading to a private spot on a beach about thirty minutes from here. It’s a great party spot. Pretty secluded. You’re both welcome to join us.”

Camryn twists her body a little at the waist to see me behind her. We talk to each other with our eyes for a moment. At first, I wasn’t really up to it, but she seems to want to go. I stand up, helping her up with me.

I turn to Tate. “Sure. We can follow you out.”

“Kick ass,” Tate says.

Camryn and I grab our beach towels and the bag we brought packed with beef jerky, bottled water, and sunscreen, and we follow Tate and his friends off the beach and to the parking lot.

And now we’re back in the car being spontaneous again. I’m not so sure about this shit, maybe because it’s been so long since I’ve partied with anyone other than Camryn, but they seem harmless enough.

The so-called thirty-minute drive ends up being more like forty-five.

“I have no idea where the hell we are anymore.”

We’ve been on a dark highway and off the main freeway for the past twenty minutes at least, their Jeep Sahara coasting over the road in front of us at seventy-five miles an hour. I’ve got no problem keeping up, but I don’t usually speed like this in unfamiliar territory at night where I can’t spot the cops hiding on the side of road out ahead. If I get a ticket it’ll be my own damn fault, but I might still bust that Tate guy’s head for it just on principle.

“At least we have a full tank of gas,” she says. Then she laughs and hangs her foot out the window and says, “Maybe they’re leading us to a creepy cabin in the woods somewhere and plan to kill us.”

“Hey, that thought did cross my mind,” I laugh back at her.

“Well, I trust you to keep me safe,” she jokes. “Don’t let any of them cut me up into little pieces or force me to watch Honey Boo Boo.”

“You got it,” I say. “Which brings to mind number four on our list of promises: if I’m ever lost or missing, promise you’ll never stop looking for me until it’s been exactly three hundred sixty-five days. On day three sixty-six, accept that if I was alive I would’ve already found my way back to you, and that I’m long dead. I want you to go on with your life.”