What Happens Now(30)

She looked up at me, her eyes wide and serious. “You’re good. You’re good at this.”

“I’m good at Silver Arrow.”

Max turned to Camden and said, “She’s going to guess it right away.”

“Shhh,” snapped Camden. “I want it to be a surprise.”

“You want what to be a surprise?” I asked.

“The surprise,” he said, smiling with delicious mischief. I could taste it even from where I stood.

He gestured for us to walk toward the Crapper, where he paid for my admission. Julian was there again, and it was fun to watch the slow dawning of his expression as he realized I was with Those Dashwood Kids. I followed them toward the beach, but before they got to the spot where the trees stopped and the sand started, they suddenly veered to the left, toward the entrance to that trail I knew led into the woods.

“We’re not going to the lake,” I said stupidly.

“No,” said Camden, hanging back so Eliza and Max could walk in front of us. “We’re going to the surprise.”

Camden let me go first as I stepped onto the trail, almost a tunnel with its canopy of branches arced above our heads. We walked for a minute in silence, and I thought of all the times I’d watched him and Eliza and Max disappear into these woods. How I’d wondered what they did there, and how the wondering itself burned up inside me. Was this going to be about drinking or smoking something? Whatever they offered me, I wouldn’t take it. Was there a way to explain why, without ruining everything?

Ahead of us, Max slid his hand into Eliza’s.

“There’s dog hair on your sleeve,” he said to her.

She reached down and pulled something off herself, flicked it away. “Sorry. I thought I’d thoroughly de-furred.” Then she glanced over her shoulder at me and said, “My pet-sitting business and Max’s allergies make us a little like Romeo and Juliet, don’t you think? But I can’t give it up. Cosplay is not a cheap hobby, and you can only get so much raw material from dumpsters.”

“You’re star-crossed,” I said.

She smiled a smile that showed her teeth before turning back around. Did that mean she liked me? Did that mean it mattered?

“What about you, Max?” I asked, suddenly wanting more of all of them and not just Camden. “Are you working this summer?”

“I’m helping my dad at his computer programming firm. I’d explain exactly what I do there, but it’s so boring, you might nod off and fall and injure yourself.”

“Thanks for the safety considerations,” I said with a laugh.

“You wouldn’t know it to look at him,” said Camden, “but Max is a coding genius.”

Eliza glanced back proudly at Camden. “And Camden’s volunteering with the youth hotline at Family Services. He wants to save the world.”

“I don’t need to save the world . . . ,” said Camden softly, shyly. “But maybe one or two people would be cool.”

I’d never experienced this before, friends talking as if they were a collective.

“What do kids call the hotline about?” I asked, trying to hide how Camden’s job impressed me. Was it wrong that this made him extra attractive?

“All the fun stuff,” said Camden sarcastically. “They’re being abused, or they want to run away. They realize they’re addicted to drugs or alcohol and they don’t know how to get help. They’re depressed or even suicidal, and they want to hurt themselves but also they don’t.”

I paused for a second, missing a half step, before continuing. Back when I couldn’t stop thinking about opening up my skin, it had never occurred to me to call a youth hotline. What if it had? What if I’d called and talked to someone like Camden? I felt oddly happy for the kids who did.

Eliza and Max suddenly stopped walking. The trail had opened up, running parallel to a rocky creek about thirty feet wide.

“Wait. Where are we?” I asked.

“I think it has a name,” said Max. “Something Falls. But we call it . . .”

“Hush!” said Camden with a meaningful look at Max.

“I’ve been coming to the lake my whole life,” I said, watching the water travel busily downhill, oblivious to us. “I had no idea this was here.”

“We only found it by happy accident,” said Max. He stepped into the water and held out a hand for Eliza. Together they made their way through the ankle-deep creek and across some smaller rocks to a large one, flat and wide, lit by the sun. There, they crumpled together and started to kiss. Not kiss, really. More like, try to crawl inside each other’s faces.

“Come this way,” said Camden, touching my elbow as he stepped past me on the trail. “We have to go a little farther down.”

After we fell into step together, curiosity overpowered me and I asked, “Does it bother you? That Eliza and Max are so . . . PDA-oriented?”

Camden frowned. “Why would it bother me?”

“Because you and Eliza used to go out, right?”

He paused for a second, then started walking again. “How did you know that?”

“I saw you together last summer. At the lake.” I said it as casually as I could, as if I were just remembering it now.

“We only went out for a few weeks, and I was the one who broke up with her. I actually encouraged things to happen with Max. I’m happy they’re happy. I’m happy we found a way to still all be together, because I would have hated to lose that.” He suddenly sped ahead. “We’re almost there,” he called over his shoulder.