“You two know each other, right?” Cam looked uneasy, but it was possible his stomach was still roiling from the teacup rides.
“Absolutely,” said Shelby. Her mouth opened and closed and she looked from Alexa to Cam and back again.
“Great to see you,” said Alexa to Shelby amicably.
Shelby did not take the opportunity to say that it was also nice to see Alexa. Shelby turned to Cam and said, “I have to get back to the kids now. But I’ll definitely call you about that thing, okay?” She touched his arm when she said that.
“What thing?” asked Alexa. Nobody answered her.
Once Shelby was gone, Alexa could feel that Cam’s attention had wandered off, perhaps following Shelby to the Jungle Bounce. She couldn’t have that.
“There’s something I want to tell you,” she said. “Nobody else knows this, but I want to tell you. Just you, Cam. Only you.” She spoke quickly, before she had time to lose her nerve. “You know Katie? Well. You won’t believe what I found out about her.”
Cam’s attention was right where she wanted it. “Something bad?”
Alexa hesitated. “I’m not sure. I mean, yes. I mean, it’s not good.”
He looked worried. “About her? That little girl? Isn’t she like ten?”
“Eleven,” said Alexa. “Same as Morgan. And it was actually about her and her mother, what I found out. About both of them together. I’m not sure, but I think it’s a pretty big deal. I just—I just feel like I have to tell someone, Cam. Like I can’t keep it a secret any longer. I’m scared.” With each word she could feel the power of Shelby McIntyre receding.
“Scared?” he said. “What are you scared of?”
“Never mind,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m sorry.” She lowered her eyes, and then she looked up at him out of the corner. She was nailing this.
Maybe Cam Hartwell was not so perfect after all. Maybe, like everyone else on the planet, he was human, and he was curious. He met her eyes. His eyebrows lifted. And then she was pointing at a bench and they were sitting down next to each other and she was telling him everything.
39.
The Squad
Sometime during July Alexa Thornhill posted on her Instagram a photo of Katie and Morgan at Canobie Lake.
(We all followed Alexa’s Instagram account. She knew a lot about fashion! And makeup! When she Rented the Runway for her prom dress she posted the three dresses she was deciding among. Most of us voted for the KaufmanFranco red high low gown, which she did, in the end, choose. Though two of us stood firm for the Giambattista Valli sweetheart dress.)
Anyway, when we saw that photo we were all like,Whaaaat?Canobie Lake is typically a group activity. Three of the moms take all of the girls. It’s always been that way, since they were too small to go on the Yankee Cannonball, since before they built Untamed. Maybe not everybody can go every year, maybe somebody is at summer camp or on a family vacation or what have you, and the moms rotate in and out, depending on who is available, but at least everybody is included! Everybody is invited! Everybody is given the chance to opt in!
This year, apparently, it was a couples’ activity, the couple being Morgan and Katie.
After that, Maya and Riley went to Canobie together. Then Callie and Izzy. Taylor and Audrey ran into Anna and Abby, andit was said that they didn’t even make eye contact in the line for the log flume.
It was almost funny, but not that funny, how Katie Griffin changed everything. Forever, the girls had all been one big happy group, and suddenly there were these... well, for lack of a better word, these factions forming. Everybody starting to break off in twos. We’d been working hard since these girls were in Pull-Ups to keep this group together, and it was not nothing to do that. The organization required. The group texts that had to be tended several times a day. The plans that had to be considered and reconsidered before being offered to the whole group. We had done all of this upfront work for a reason. We were going to go to middle school as one, a united front, a whole lunch table.
And then one new person came in, and look what happened. Things started splintering like pieces of a felled tree. Breaking off like icicles from the edge of a roof.
Maybe we are mixing our metaphors here. But surely you get the picture.
40.
Sherri
“Do you want to cover this bit of gray here?”
Sherri put an alarmed hand to her temple, where the stylist, Brittany, was pointing. Sherri had come to the salon that Rebecca had recommended, Shanti, for a simple cut, although she wished she were getting full foils, like she would have in the old days. She missed her glimmering, shimmering hair. It wasn’t in the budget, even if she could have allowed herself.
“Yes!” she said. “Absolutely.” Sherri had been blond for so long; she’d only gone back to her natural color in that tiny bathroom in the awful motel room. She hated her natural color—a beigy brown that made her think of sand after it had been doused by a wave. She hadn’t noticed the gray in her temples. How long had it been there? She supposed the blond highlights had covered the gray all that time.
“It’s just a tiny bit,” said Brittany merrily. “No worries.”
