“Dammit,” Benny said, stepping out of the canoe and shaking off his expensive white sneakers. “Fucking leak. Sorry, Lu.”
“I’m wearing flip-flops, silly,” she said, booping him on the nose with one finger and following that up with a kiss in the same place. “It’s all good. Let’s have a beautiful day, okay?”
“Yes, let’s,” Jaz said sourly.
I squinted at her while she looked back at the happy couple with a mixture of pain and longing on her face, and like a bolt from the blue, it suddenly all made sense to me. She was jealous of Lulu.
Did Jazmine have a thing for Benny?
Wasthatwhat she and Seb were whispering about this morning?
I continued watching her, but the more I did, the more I wondered if I’d gotten it wrong. After all, she hadn’t said but a couple words about him the entire time I’d been at Harvard. Maybe she just hated Lulu, or maybe there was some beef with Benny that I didn’t know about.
Why didn’t I know what was going on with my best friend anymore?
Seb pulled me out of my thoughts when his shoulder lightly bumped mine as he passed. “Sorry,” he said with a quick glance from beneath long, pale lashes. I couldn’t say why, but I was almost positive he’d bumped into me on purpose. He and Punkin headed up a barely noticeable dirt path leading away from the sandy strip into the woods, and I followed, with Jazmine behind and Benny and Lulu eventually catching up.
Our destination was barely a two-minute walk from where we beached the canoes, up a twisting path through white pines and beech trees. When the ground started getting rocky, the cave suddenly came into view—just a round, black hole in a foothill.
“Pinemoon Cave, how I’ve missed you,” Seb said, lugging the backpack off his shoulder. Inside were two old flashlights, one LED headlamp, and one camping lantern. “Didn’t know we’d have Lulu with us, so Benny, you’ll have to share with her.”
“Cool lantern,” she said, snagging it for her and Benny. Jaz took the headlamp, and Seb and I grabbed the flashlights. One by one, we each ducked beneath dangling vines to enter the cave.
The drop in temperature was always startling. I inhaled earthy, cool air as I straightened and swung my flashlight around.
“Damn. Exactly the same as we left it,” Benny appraised.
Pinemoon Cave wasn’t big. It consisted of two areas. The main one, where we stood, was the size of a small house, and the secondary cavern was long and narrow. Here in the main section, there was a dip in the middle of the stone floor that we’d used as a firepit because a tunnel-shaped hole in the ceiling allowed rising smoke to escape. Apparently we weren’t the last to use it, either: there was old, burnt wood in the pit and a fair amount of empty beer cans and some plastic water bottles strewn around.
“Someone’s been using our cave as a party spot,” Seb said in singsong voice as his dog trotted around, exploring the cavern with her nose.
Benny snorted softly. “Why didn’t we think of that?”
“Because the only alcohol we could get our hands on back then was that dusty bottle of cooking sherry in your mom’s kitchen,” Seb pointed out.
“My parents don’t drink,” Benny argued. “How is that my fault?”
“Is that why you’re such a lightweight?” Lulu said, poking Benny in the stomach with a teasing finger.
“Guilty as charged,” he said, flashing her a goofy smile that I’d never seen on his face. “Your man cannot hold his liquor.”
“But he can sure hold me,” she answered, snuggling up to him.
I mimed gagging at Jazmine and continued past the canoodling couple.
A climbable rocky ledge sat along the back wall. At the far side of it, you could access a smaller cavern behind this one that had a small stream of water running through it.
“It’s so much smaller than I remembered,” Seb said, kicking one of the empty beer cans. “Wasn’t it bigger?”
“I think we just were smaller back then,” Jazmine said. “Hey, look over there—is that our flag?”
We crossed the front of the cavern to a small nook, wheretattered, drooping fabric hung from the wall. The summer after fifth grade, we’d painted a sheet with big block letters that readWAGS, four swords, and some shoddy Latin for our motto:Thesaurus nos coniungit. United by treasure. Once we discovered “thesaurus” meant “treasure” in Latin, we used it as a code word.
On top of our childhood artwork, someone had spray-painted a penis. Several more were painted on the wall beside it.
“Would you look at this shit... ?” Jazmine said, shaking her head.
“Guess Banksy has finally run out of ideas,” I said.
