99 Days(35)

“No, not at all,” I assure her, though I can’t actually imagine how it could possibly be anything but that. I wonder if Patrick told her about us on the lawn the other night. I wonder if it’s weird that I didn’t tell Gabe. “Of course not.”

“Okay, good.” Tess nods. “I’m sorry we didn’t get to hang out more at the party,” she says then. “I know Julia hasn’t exactly rolled out the welcome wagon.” She looks hesitant, like she’s not sure if she’s crossing a line here, but before I can say anything she presses on. “Anyway, I’m glad you’re going.”

I look at Tess’s freckly face, open and expectant; it’s impossible to hate this girl, truly. God help me, I want to be her friend. “I’m glad you’re going, too.”





Day 33


Handsome Jay isn’t coming up to Falling Star until tomorrow, so Gabe and Imogen and I all carpool into the mountains, a winding drive that takes just over an hour and a half. I’m worried the trip is going to be hugely awkward—I’m worried this whole weekend is going to be hugely awkward, truthfully, that the whole thing is going to feel like some extended blast-from-the-past double-date nightmare with everyone I know there to witness the carnage—but Gabe and Imogen are both talkers, and she’s hardly even settled herself into the backseat of the station wagon before they’re engaged in a cheerful debate about the new Kanye West album. After that they move on to the lech-y driver’s ed teacher at the high school and a gross new sandwich place near French Roast that Gabe keeps calling “Baloney Heaven”; I let out a breath and lean my head back against the seat, happy to listen to them talk.

“So, Handsome Jay is working today?” I ask Imogen, turning around to glance at her in the backseat. She’s wearing a vintage-looking scarf as if she’s Elizabeth Taylor in some old movie, dark sunglasses obscuring half her face. She’s too glam for camping, but she’s always loved doing it, ever since we were little kids tucked into a fort on her living room rug. She was the one who got us started coming to Falling Star to begin with.

“Uh-huh,” she says now, sighing dramatically, then, peering at me over the tops of her lenses: “Don’t you make the schedule at that place, P.S.?”

“Not the kitchen one!” I defend myself. “Just the front desk and stuff.”


“Sure, sure,” Imogen says, smirking. She leans forward a bit, nods at the bag of Red Vines I’ve got in the console. “Pass those back, would you?”

“Mm-hmm. How’s that going, anyway?” I ask, once she’s pulled a handful of licorice from the package, snapping the end off one of the strips with her molars. “You and Handsome Jay.”

“It’s going goooooood,” Imogen says, laughing a little. “He took me to Sage the other night, actually.”

“Fancy!” I crow. Sage is the only white-tablecloth place in Star Lake other than the dining room of the Lodge. My mom used to take me on my birthday, just the two of us, but going with a guy is an entirely different thing.

“Right?” Imogen says. “I know it’s totally just a fling, we’re both out of here at the end of the summer, but, like—I like him.” She glances at Gabe, wrinkles her nose a little. “Sorry,” she says, “is this enormously boring to you?”

“No, no.” Gabe shakes his head, sincere. “Floor’s all yours.”

Imogen grins. “Well, in that case,” she says, and dives in. I reach over and squeeze Gabe’s knee, dumbly proud of how easy things seem between them.

It’s almost . . . normal.

Imogen’s chatting happily about Jay’s family, his dad who likes to paint. Suddenly, I remember running into her before homeroom the morning after I slept with Gabe—how I hadn’t talked to Patrick or my mom or anyone else yet, how I’d been walking around in a soup-thick fog all morning and the sight of her smiling at me across the hallway, her flowered dress and her cork-heeled shoes, was enough to have me swallowing back tears. “Morning, sunshine,” Imogen said brightly. She never carried a backpack. She didn’t think it was ladylike. “What’s up?”

Don’t be nice to me, I wanted to tell her. Don’t be nice to me, I’m awful, I don’t deserve it, I did the worst thing I could possibly do. For one moment I wanted to tell Imogen everything, to pour it all out regardless of the mess it would make, to stand back and stare at the horribleness of it like the world’s ugliest piece of art.

Then I realized I never wanted to tell anyone ever.

“Nothing,” I called back, shaking my head resolutely. “Morning.”

Now we stop for gas at a grimy station off the side of the highway, cars rushing by packed with suitcases and camping gear. It’s high summer, vacation time. It’s hot. “Can I tell you something?” Imogen asks me, both of us waiting in line for the questionable bathroom. “You seem, like, really happy.”

“I do?” I blink at that, surprised—it’s the first time anyone’s described me that way since I got back here. It’s the first time anyone’s described me that way in more than a year. Hearing it feels oddly incorrect, like someone pronouncing your name wrong.

Imogen laughs. “Yeah,” she says. “You do. That so hard to believe?”