What Happens Now(56)

“They don’t know about your mom being away this summer.”

“Oh, I’m getting a debriefing?”

“Be quiet, I only have a few seconds. They also don’t know I stayed over on fair night.”

Danielle ran out of the house just then. “Camden!” she yelled, her face lit up. Camden got out of the car and Dani threw herself into his arms for a hug. Mom stepped onto the porch in time to see this. Richard, who had stopped mowing, finally turned off the mower and walked over to the car.

“Camden, this is my mom, Kate,” I said.

They shook hands and I could see it on Mom’s face. That she thought he was attractive. She smiled.

“It’s a pleasure,” said Camden. It’s a pleasure. It was such a grown-up thing to say. I got the sense Camden had been saying It’s a pleasure to adults since he was three years old.

Mom smiled. “Same here,” she said. “So tell me, who are you?”

“Pardon?”

“In the Silver Arrow cosplay game.”

“Good God, Mom. It’s not a game.”

“It sort of is,” said Camden. “Well, I used to cosplay Atticus Marr. But now I’m Azor.”

Something softened around my mother’s eyes. “Azor,” she whispered, nodding.

“I hear you’re a fan, too,” said Camden.

My mom twitched. I may have been the only one who saw it. Or maybe I imagined it.

“Yes,” was all she said.

Camden reached into his car and pulled out a brown paper bag. “I brought some raspberries. We grow them on our property.”

Danielle grabbed the bag and opened it. “Yum!”

“Come inside,” said Mom.

She and Richard led the way, Dani following with her hand already full of berries.

I turned to Camden. “You’re good.”

He shrugged. “I’ve been around more adults than kids in my life,” he said. “I know how to work the system.” Then he leaned in close and whispered warm in my ear. “Do I get to see your room?”

I felt a chill go down my neck. Why was he able to make these innocuous questions sound so sexy?

“Sure,” I whispered back, casually, even though I’d spent the day cleaning it up.

We stepped inside the house and Camden took a deep breath. “Mmmm. Smells fantastic!” He said it loudly so my mom could hear from the kitchen.

I motioned for him to follow me down the hall. On the way, he examined the photos on the wall. Baby pictures of Dani, a wedding photo of Mom and Richard with me standing between them in a lavender dress. Camden paused and touched the me in the photo briefly with his fingertip.

When we moved into Richard’s house after their wedding, Mom had gone to work hanging photographs, like she needed these reminders that her life was full of people, that she had proof it had all happened.

“Don’t look at that,” I said as Camden examined a frame designed to showcase every one of my school pictures since kindergarten. Only the last opening was blank now.

Camden looked anyway. Hard. Grinning. “Why? Because it’s the most awesome thing ever?” He pointed to my picture from second grade. “Two front teeth missing. That’s a great look. I wish you’d kept it.”

I swatted him playfully and scanned the photos, trying to see them through his eyes. But from any angle, they were undeniably ordinary.

“We don’t have actual art on the walls like you guys do,” I said.

“Who says this isn’t art?” he replied, pointing to the particularly mortifying picture from fifth grade, in which I looked like someone just off camera was poking me with a pencil.

I tugged his hand. “Can we move on?”

We went into the kitchen where Mom was putting the raspberries in a bowl and Dani was setting the table in the way I’d taught her, making the napkins into little beds for the silverware.

“Anything I can do to help?” asked Camden.

“Thank you,” said Mom, “but we’re almost done.”

“We’ll be down here . . .” I pointed toward my room.

Dani started to follow us, but Mom grabbed her shirt. “Nuh-uh,” she said.

As I led the way, I kept trying to see my house as Camden might be seeing it. The low ceilings and the tiny windows. The beige carpeting that had so many stains, I’d come to think of them as a pattern. More pictures on the walls, including framed landscapes of places none of us had ever been: the Grand Canyon, the Pacific Ocean, the Florida Keys.

When we stepped into my room, I turned to Camden. “We have to leave the door open.”

He nodded like he already knew, and I wondered if he was thankful for it.

I sat on the floor with my back against the bed and let him take a self-guided tour. My desk, piled high with college brochures. The big chair covered with stuffed animals I couldn’t bring myself to give to Dani no matter how hard she begged or how often she kidnapped them, because each of those animals had been a big deal to me, because I didn’t have a thousand of them like she did.

“This reminds me,” he said. “I have Rasta Penguin. He’s safe and sound at the Barn.”

“You can keep custody until next time I’m there.”

Camden moved over to the Silver Arrow posters and pictures, things I’d cut out of old fan magazines or printed from online. He spent a long time at my bookcase, examining the shelf that was a rainbow of Silver Arrow novels, each one a different color.