“Wherewe’reheaded next,” she emphasizes. “I’m not giving up on convincing you to come with me.” Then she spins to face Reed. “Pleasetell me you’re the one planning what we’re doing next and that it’s video-worthy.”
A campout. That’s what Reed planned. My parents agreed, so long as we sleep in separate tents. It was Cozy’s bright idea to challenge the guys to a tent set-up race—winner gets the insulated sleeping bags. She’s propped her phone in the nearest tree branch to record the whole thing. Considering I’m an infant when it comes to the cold, I scream at Cozy to hurry up as she struggles to wedge a broken pole through the tent tabs.
“Just hold the broken part flat. Stop bending it,” I instruct warily.
“I’m trying! This isn’t a fair race when we’ve been given shotty parts,” she complains.
I steal a glance at the guys. Seventy-five percent of their tent stands to our one. Cozy should have never made this bet with a bunch of Boy Scouts.
“There!” she shouts.
The pole is far enough through the loop that it pokes out the other side, and I’m able to pull it through the rest of the way. I thread it through two more loops on my side before staking it in the ground.
“Done!” Reed yells, high-fiving Miles, and Cozy collapses to the ground on her back in defeat. I wipe the perspiration thataccumulated on my forehead from all the straining and stress. Shielding the sun from her eyes, we all gather over Cozy’s body.
“Reed, I’ll pay you five bucks to use the sleeping bags,” she gasps.
An hour later, we say good night to the guys and crawl in our tent. Minutes after her video uploads, Cozy is snoring in the downy comfort of her mummy bag.
Not me. There’s a circle of uncovered netting at the top of our tent just large enough to see a smattering of stars. They flicker and twinkle in time with the crackle of the dwindling campfire outside. I don’t know how long I lie there before I give up on sleep altogether. I wrap the striped blanket I stole off the end of my bed around my shoulders for warmth and unzip the tent. The fire is nothing more than ashes now, but the moon is bright enough to light a path toward the end of the dock where I go to sit.
“Can’t sleep?” a voice asks from behind me.
I look up to see Miles in a pair of gym shorts and a T-shirt looming over me.
I shake my head.
“Me neither,” he says, sitting down beside me.
A water skipper skims the surface in front of us, performing an ice-skating dance that would be comical if it were any other creature.
“So, Cozy’s pretty entertaining,” Miles says.
“Yeah, she is.” I laugh just thinking about her dramatic sigh as she slipped into her paid-for sleeping bag. “But she’s a great friend.”
“I can tell.”
I should tell him about Reed, but this is the first moment we’ve had alone since the end of last summer. What I want to talk about instead has nothing to do with Reed and me.
“I know we texted each other a few times but I never did ask you… how was your senior year?”
“Oh, it… wasn’t my favorite,” he admits. “But the ending was good.”
“When you threw your cap in the air?”
He looks at me. “How did you know?”
“Because you’re my best friend. And we’re similar in a lot of ways. Also, because it was my favorite part too.”
The corners of Miles’s mouth lift. Then he grips the edge of the dock with his palms and looks out over the water.
“She married Duncan.”
“Duncan?” I gasp. “As in, cowboy karaoke announcer Duncan?”
“That’s the one. They eloped at the town courthouse the day after graduation.”
“Well, that was… fast.”
