It takes me another two seconds to register everything Oliver has just signed to me. As I’m staring at him, he says, “Go get your stuff!”
“Your mom is okay with this?” I ask.
Oliver goes still, hands hanging in midair. Then he says, “She doesn’t care.”
She doesn’t know, I think suddenly, although I’m not sure how Oliver managed to sneak out of his house with his backpack and his sleeping bag.
“Please, please, please!” Oliver sighs.
I bite my bottom lip. I know the responsible adult thing to do would be to march Oliver back over to his house and tell his parents about this impromptu camping trip. But I think about the few interactions I’ve had with them. The distant shoutingI heard the other day, after I brought Oliver home from the peninsula. How dejected he seemed.
He’s not dejected now. Now, he’s bouncing up and down on his heels, beaming at me with excitement. He’s also still signing the wordplease.
“Stop,” I say. “You’re going to wear your fingers out.”
Oliver rolls his eyes and keeps signing.
I sigh. “When did Theo ask you about this?”
“This afternoon,” Oliver says. “Please, Chloe? Theoreallywants you to come, too! He said I could only spend the night if you were there!”
It’s a trap, says a voice in my head that sounds suspiciously like Penelope. But I don’t actually believe it. I?—
Want to see Theo again.
I can feel my will wearing down, if for no other reason than Oliver’s big, earnest eyes would break my heart if I told him no.
“Fine. I’ll go.”
I tell myself that I’m only agreeing to this because of Oliver. I don’t think that’s the whole reason, even though I’m trying to deny my foolish excitement at seeing a man who isn’t even human.
Oliver jumps up in the air. “Hurry!” he signs. “Get everything you need. Do you have marshmallows?”
I smile at him. I actually do, an impulse buy from the day I moved in. I haven’t even cracked the bag open yet. “Why don’t you check the cupboard while I pack my things?”
Oliver scurries off into the kitchen, and I take a deep breath. My body brims with electricity. Is this a bad idea? Absolutely.
Am I going to do it anyway? Also, absolutely.
I switch off the TV and head into my room to pack, the sound of Oliver ransacking my kitchen following behind me. I throw a few things in my own backpack: fresh clothes, a hairbrush, a change of clothes.
When I slide my phone into the bag, I think about Penelope telling me to get a gun. A knife will have to do.
When I come back into the living room, Oliver has gathered a pile of snacks in addition to the marshmallows, seemingly at random—a handful of granola bars, a bag of oranges, and three cans of Coke. “Your snacks are as lame as what we have at home,” he tells me.
“Hey, you don’t have Cokes or marshmallows.” I slip into the kitchen with my backpack, drag open my cutlery drawer, and extract my big butcher’s knife. Oliver’s still in the living room, not paying any attention to me. It doesn’t take long for me to wrap it in a towel and add it to my things. Just to be on the safe side.
“Are you ready?” I rejoin him in the living room, shouldering my backpack. Oliver found a grocery bag from the stash I keep beneath the sink and managed to pack up all my lame snacks that way.
“Yes!” he signs. “I’m so excited. Theo was worried you would say no, but I told him I’d make sure you didn’t.”
My heart clenches at that. “He wanted me to say yes?” I ask as we file out of the living room and onto my back porch. I glance over at the Jenkins house. It’s shut up for the night, the living room window dark. Seems early for that, so I crane my neck, looking for his parents’ Range Rover.
Gone.
Something like sadness washes over me. Maybe Oliver didn’t have to sneak out at all. Maybe they just left him alone.
I don’t ask. Oliver’s already halfway down the pier anyway, and in the falling light, I can make out his boat bobbing in the water.
