Bookishly Ever After (Ever After #1)(78)

“Come out here for a few. I need your help.”

I caught his eyes as best I could in this lighting and, after a second’s stare-down, sighed. “Give me a minute.” I threw a hoodie over my flannel pajamas and slipped my feet into a pair of sneakers. Checking one last time that the girls were all still asleep, I stepped outside.

“Over here.” Dev waved from the walking path and I carefully made my way over. Grogginess plus clumsiness plus random pieces of wood and rocks were definitely a bad combination. As I got closer, I could make out his shorts and sweatshirt combo. Even in the middle of the night he looked gorgeous, especially with the shadow of stubble across his chin and tousled hair. Me, on the other hand…

“Nice pajamas.”

“Uhm. Yeah. Thanks.” I tugged at my Hello Kitty pajama pants with one hand while trying to tame my Bride of Frankenstein hair with the other. All of that, plus my glasses, definitely made me not gorgeous. “Why are we out here in the middle of the night?” Where I didn’t want to be. He supposedly didn’t have a girlfriend, which meant I was pretty much a flat-out reject. Now, I was a Hello Kitty pants-wearing reject.

A wide grin spread across his face.

“We’re playing Jersey Devil.”

I knew I had just woken up and was still a bit groggy, but that made absolutely no sense. I stared at him with a frown until he continued. “You know, tradition. The counselors always go around the cabins leaving footprints after the bonfire.” He held up a stick with a shape at the end that looked like a three-clawed foot. “Mrs. Forrester asked me to do it and I thought you might want in on this.”

Right. The stories at the bonfire. So that was where the footprints had come from when I was a camper. I opened my mouth to say no—my warm sleeping bag and a chance to not expose him any further to my freakish middle of the night look were definitely tempting, but then he caught my eyes. The smile he gave me made it impossible not to agree. I covered my sigh with a yawn.

“What do you need me to do?” Another yawn, then I pulled myself together. If Maeve could battle a Gancanagh in her underwear, I could make a few footprints in my pajamas.

“Awesome. I knew I could count on you.” He reached behind a tree and handed me a broom. “Your job is to get rid of our footprints.”

“Got it.” I took the broom from him with one hand while zipping my hoodie up the rest of the way with the other. “I don’t want to ruin our chance to terrify a group of eleven year olds.”

“Tradition, Feebs. You can’t be a piney kid without having at least one run-in with the Jersey Devil.” He yawned, not bothering to cover his mouth. “If we hurry, we can still get an hour or two of sleep before reveille.”

“Joy. Let’s get this over with.” I followed him down the path, my eyes glued to the ground and, occasionally to the back of his bare legs. “Aren’t you cold?” I asked. I had slipped my own hands into my sleeves. A cool wind was whipping between the cabins.

He shrugged, “Nah, I’m hot tonight.”

My eyes wandered upwards for a second and I suppressed the urge to say, Yes, you are. I blinked a few times and forced my eyes back on to the path.

“So, why’d you pick me to help out? Adam or Cassie would love this. They’d probably even figure out ways to put footprints on the cabin roofs or something.”

He looked back at me over his shoulder and his teeth shone in the moonlight. “You’re my counseling partner. It’s my job to bring more excitement into your life.”

My heart nearly skipped a beat and I stumbled. Straightening up again, I ducked my head so he couldn’t see my red cheeks. “Um, I think we need to work on your reading comprehension skills. I don’t think you read the job description right.”

“It’s an added perk of the job. Counsel some kids, make you take your nose out of those books of yours…”

“I take my nose out of books!” It was hard to sound indignant when speaking in a whisper.

“‘Reading comprehension?’ Who says stuff like that?”

I stuck my nose up in the air to give myself a snobbish appearance. “People who want A’s in English.”

He poked me with the foot-stick. “Just sweep, book nerd.”

We worked in silence for the next few minutes, Dev laying down trails of “footprints” around the cabins, me sweeping away any trace of our non-devil existence. After we finished with the girls’ cabins, we started the trek around the lake to the boys’ cabins. When we were far enough from any cabin, I tilted my head to stare at the perfectly clear sky above us.

“I love how the stars and the moon are so much brighter out here. It’s like you can practically reach out and touch them,” I said, when the tension of the silence between us got to be too much. “I never can tell if the moon’s waxing or waning.”

“The moon is a liar,” he said under his breath. Dev had stopped walking and was also staring at the perfect crescent in the sky.

“Excuse me?” I turned my focus from the sky to his shadowed profile.

“The moon’s a liar,” he repeated, this time in his regular voice. “You know crescendo and decrescendo, right? Like, the way they work in music?”

I tilted my head and snorted inelegantly, cringing at my faux pas. “No. I’ve only played flute for seven years.”