I imagine they’re like this: loud, with multiple conversations overlapping one another, only interrupted by laughter. I don’t really get invited to those, though. You need a group of friends for that—closefriends, who you trust won’t judge your tiny apartment, or be weirded out by your unwelcoming dad, or mind sleeping on the ground because you only have a tiny twin-size mattress.
I have my teammates, of course, but they’re not all the “hanging out after practice” type. Besides the weekly coffee runs the gymnastics girls do, but Mallory said her car only fits five, unfortunately. Which I get. And the post–track meet arcade nights, but the one time I went, I got a bit too excited about beating Danny Bluth at air hockey, and I think they forgot to tell me about any team-bonding activities after that. There’s a lot of people in track, so it’s easy to lose count. I understand.
While I’ve never been to a slumber party, I’ve had plenty of sleepovers. With just one person: Amelia. Because Amelia thought our apartment was cozy, not cramped, and if Appa’s passive-aggressive comments were too much and we didn’t feel like squeezing into my tiny bed, she’d just invite me to spend the night at hers.
Even though I’m having fun now, sitting cross-legged in front of the fire, with the stars above our heads and the flickering firelight illuminating everyone’s faces, I feel a pang of nostalgia for all the slumber parties I missed out on, and grief for the sleepovers with Amelia I’ll never have again.
I’m toasting one of the mushrooms Dean and I “foraged” today over the fire, when somebody sits at my side. Vendredi.
She’s smiling, albeit hesitantly. “Hey,” she starts, her voice barely above a whisper. Beck and Adin are arguing about Bigfoot’s origins too loudly for anyone to hear us, and even if they could, Siddharth’s nervous pleas for them to stop are too distracting. But there’s a camera a few feet away trained on us that I think she’s wary of. “Um, I wanted to apologize.”
“Huh?”
“About the other day. When you wanted to sit with me and Beck, but I iced you out.”
The pang in my chest turns into a hole. I feel my heart caving into it like a plane cabin depressurizing. “Oh, that?” I say, straining my voice to sound normal to her and the clip-on mic below my chin. “Pfft. No apology necessary. I hardly remember it.”
I remember it.
Vendredi holds her knees up to her chest, tucking one braid behind her ear. “Still, it was really rude of me, and I wanted to explain.”
My mushroom’s burning in the fire. I keep rotating it over the flames so I have something to do with my hands. “Seriously. All good. You don’t need to justify not wanting me to sit with you guys, I—”
“I was trying to convince Beck to be in an alliance with me,” Vendredi says, “and I was worried you were going to swoop in and snatch her up before I could.That’swhy I brushed you off.”
I sit back. “What?”
“Beck has two parents who are former contestants,andshe’s been on reality TV before. I needed her on my team, bad.”
My stomach stops trying to eat itself. It wasn’t about me. “Oh.Oh.”
“I’m really sorry. I can get pretty competitive, but I shouldn’t have been so cold to you.”
I touch her shoulder to cut her off. She doesn’t move away. “Hey, I get it. Thanks for explaining,” I say. “For the record, I just wanted to talk to you guys about ghosts.”
Vendredi clutches my forearm and collapses against my side in dramatic fashion. “Oh myGod,that girl can go on about ghosts. I haven’t told her I don’t believe in them. I think it’d ruin our alliance.”
“What, not even a little bit? How can you be sure they’re not real?”
Vendredi’s more than happy to indulge me in a debate about the existence of the paranormal. We argue about it, and the tingle of adrenaline from going back and forth with someone who’s just as combative as I am is nearly euphoric, even if I don’treallycare about what does or doesn’t go bump in the night. She ultimately gives up when I won’t budge on orbs.
“Ugh. You’re as bad as Beck,” Vendredi teases. We’ve scooted out farther away from the circle by this point and can talk a bit more freely. She bumps my shoulder with hers. “You should join us for breakfast tomorrow. Dean, too, if he wants.”
I swallow my grin so it doesn’t scare her off. “Cool, that sounds nice.”
It’s not long before the day’s events start wearing on us all, and everybody heads back to their shelters. Soon, it’s just me, Dean, and the dwindling embers of our fire.
“Uh,” Dean says. He tugs on the collar of his sweater. “I guess teaming up means sharing a shelter, too.”
This is not how I pictured my first-ever sleepover with someone besides Amelia.
“We’ll make it work.” My voice is higher than usual. “We’ll just… yeah.”
It’s not very roomy inside the shelter, and with the stick in the center supporting it, it leaves even less room for us to arrange our bodies. We line the ground with pine needles, both to help insulate our body heat and to prolong the inevitable. But, eventually, we have to go to bed.
“There’s no way you’ll fit—”
“Get yourfootout of myface—”
