99 Days(19)

Day 18


The Lodge opens in a few days, and Penn’s dialed up to eleven: This morning she had me and Desi dusting the details of the crown molding with Q-tips, then interrupted us halfway through that to taste-test three different ketchup options in the kitchen. I’m exhausted, a wrung-out kind of limpness in my arms and my shoulders—so tired, in fact, that when Mean Michaela waves to me in the hallway on my way to the time clock, I’m stupid enough to wave back in the moment before she turns her hand and flips me off instead. “Night, bitch,” she singsongs cheerfully, the door slamming behind her as she goes.

“Nice,” I mutter, rolling my eyes even as I feel the familiar heat of shame flooding my face. All I want to do is go home and crash without speaking to another human person, but when I grab my bag out of my locker and head for the exit, I find Tess already there punching her card.

“Long day?” she asks, looking pretty wiped herself—I can only imagine what pool duties were today, if she had to scrub tile grout with a toothbrush or something. Tess is wearing shorts and a Star Lake Lodge T-shirt with the old logo on it, one she must have found floating around the hotel somewhere. Her hair’s in a messy knot on top of her head. She doesn’t look like a supermodel or anything, isn’t tall or extraordinarily pretty. It makes her a lot harder to hate.

“Long day,” I echo, punching my card and slipping it into the appropriate slot. The time clock dates way back to the sixties. I start to wave good-bye, feeling awkward just being around her, but Tess holds up a hand so I’ll stay.

“Look, Molly,” she says, shrugging her broad athlete’s shoulders. She’s holding a half-eaten peach in one hand. “I guess I just wanted to say—” She breaks off. “God, this is awkward. This is really awkward, right?”

That makes me smile. “A little,” I admit.

“Okay,” Tess says. “Well, we’re in it now, so I’m gonna push through. I guess I just wanted to say that I know it’s weird between us, but, like—we work together, we’re gonna see each other a lot now that we’re opening, and I just—whatever happened before I moved here, you definitely never did anything to me, you know? And even though—” She stops again, wrinkling her nose up. “I hope you feel the same way about me.”

Right away I feel enormously grateful, and also two inches tall. “I thought you hated me,” I blurt, blinking at her in the bright lights of the staff hallway. “I mean, ’cause of—”

“I read the book,” Tess confesses. “And I mean, Patrick told me—”

I cut her off with a nod. “Yeah—”

“But I definitely don’t hate you. I was kind of scared of you, to be honest.”

“Seriously?” I gape. “Why? I have no friends! Have you noticed I have no friends?”

“You have Gabe,” Tess points out. Then, like she realizes that’s possibly not the best example to be using: “And you’re Penn’s favorite, clearly. I just, I don’t know, you’ve known those guys forever, you’ve known Imogen forever—”

“It’s not like that.” I shake my head. “Whatever it used to be—it’s definitely not like that anymore.”

“Well, whatever.” Tess smiles, then takes the last bite of her peach and tosses the pit into a nearby trash can. “So we’re okay? I just didn’t want to spend the whole freaking summer doing that Mean Girls stuff, that’s not really how I roll. We’re okay?”

“We’re fine,” I tell her, and my smile then is genuine. Even if Patrick’s going to hate me forever, it occurs to me to be glad he’s got someone like Tess. “Yeah, we’re good.”





Day 19


They’re doing a Summer of Spielberg thing at the hundred-year-old theater over in Silverton, and Gabe’s grin is bright and crooked in the light from the vintage marquee. “Oh, hey, I brought you something,” he says as we’re crossing the parking lot, digging into the cargo pocket of his shorts and coming up with one of those plastic glasses sets with the nose attached, complete with a fuzzy synthetic mustache. “To avoid detection.”

I laugh out loud as we head into the lobby, grabbing them out of his hands. The very tips of his fingers brush mine. “Oh, you’re funny,” I tell him. “Nobody will notice me now.”

“Nope.” Gabe smirks, reaching for his wallet as we step up to the ticket counter. “I got it,” he says easily, waving me off when I try to pay.

“You sure?” I ask, tucking my disguise into the collar of my shirt. Until now we’ve always split dead even when we did anything together, lunch at Bunchie’s or the first night we went to Frank’s for hot dogs. I’m not totally sure what it means that he’s changing the rules. It’s not a date, I told myself as I got ready tonight, even as I wiped vanilla behind my ears and flicked on mascara.

In any case, Gabe lets me pay for the popcorn, and we settle into the tattered red seats, bits of crimson thread dangling from the edges. The chilly air is heavy with the smell of old butter and salt. The theater’s old, and the rows are crammed close together: Gabe’s knees bump the back of the seat in front of him hard enough that the girl sitting there whips around and shoots him a dirty look in the half second before she realizes how cute he is, and smiles instead.