The rest of the table chimes in. “Fuck ’em!”
I know this should make me feel comforted, like I belong. But I can feel the Roxwood boys staring, judging, furious that I’m out here at a bar, enjoying myself. I hunch over the table and try to disappear.
The conversation changes and I check the clock to see how much longer we have to stay here. But then Heller, Cal, and the others start pushing their barstools back against the sticky wooden floor. They pile their pool cues on the table.
“Let’s get out of here,” Cal says loudly. “Smells like the shit on the bottom of Alpine Lake anyway.”
They laugh and I force myself to keep my eyes trained down, to focus on the conversation going on at my table, to not catch Heller’s eye as he walks out the door.
Ava huddles close to me and I know it’s for protection. She leans down, resting her elbows on the table. “What was that about?” she asks, her tone quiet and understanding.
It’s a different Ava, tender and caring. The version of Ava I met when we were eight, before her parents divorced and before she grew nearly a foot. She would spend hours brushing my hair and twisting it into various updos, held in place with rhinestone barrettes, to make me feel pretty—or play the card game Bullshit, spitting out the word in a British accent because she knew it made me laugh.
She was loyal and sensitive, even after the divorce, when we both had grown breasts and leg hair and had body odor. That’s when she would go through her yearbook, metallic and hardcover, and draw devil horns on the people who called her dad acheater, who snapped her bra straps during field hockey practice.Dead to me, she wrote next to Gina Flute, who told the whole class Mark Cantor skipped town with a mistress because Ava wasn’t smart enough.
That was when my life was still fascinating to her, so different than hers in New York. She wanted to do the same with my yearbooks, for me to show her who I was friends with, who I hated, who I wanted to kiss. But I always made up excuses. The Roxwood yearbooks were more like pamphlets, designed with Microsoft Word clip art, copied at the printer’s in town. The kids looked undercooked compared to Ava’s friends. We didn’t wear designeroutfits on picture day. We didn’t get blowouts or professional faces of makeup.
Plus, I didn’t want to admit to her that I had no one to circle, no one to call out. After Cal, there were no best friends, no enemies, no crushes. Not until senior year, not until Heller. For most of my life, I was a shadow in Roxwood. Someone who was there, but barely, counting down the days until I could visit Ava and Imogen, or head back to Alpine Lake.
At camp I could be free. I could be special. Talented. Alive. I was desired and loved and welcomed. Why would I want Ava and Imogen to know that in my real life—in the world outside the Alpine Lake bubble—I was not?
Ava asks again, her eyes concerned. “What happened, Goldie?”
I shake my head. “Nothing.”
CHAPTER 6
Then
I didn’t mean to keep Heller a secret from Ava and Imogen. That wasn’t my intention, not really. The day after we kissed, I planned to tell them during our weekly video chat. But before our scheduled call, Ava’s name flashed across my screen.
“You’re early,” I said, propping the phone up against my laptop so I could paint my toes sky blue while we spoke.
But when her face came into focus, my stomach dropped. Her usually perfect skin was splotchy and her hair was frizzy in the front, matted on the sides. “Ava...” I started.
That’s when she lost it, her sobs loud and heaving as her shoulders shook.
“Whatever it is, it’s going to be okay,” I said, quiet. I wanted to reach through the screen and rub her back like I had so many times before.
Ava held her face in her hands and after a few seconds, her breathing steadied and she finally started to speak.
“He’s sending them to Alpine Lake,” she said. “My dad.”
“The twins?”
Ava nodded. “Camp ismineand he’s sending them there.”
Part of me wanted to roll my eyes and tell herwho the fuck cares?But Ava had barely met the girls. To her, they were symbols of herdad’s infidelity—of all the ways people who are supposed to love you can betray you. His decision to send them to Alpine Lake may as well have been a knife through her heart.
“It’s going to be okay. There’s no way Mellie and Stu would make you their counselor.”
Ava hiccupped as she tried to catch her breath. “But knowing they’re there loving the things that I love... it’s too much. It’s going to ruin the summer.”
“No way. Right after graduation? Not a care in the world?” I scoffed. “Come on, how can itnotbe incredible?”
Ava groaned. “How can you know that?”
I shrugged. “Roxwood Spidey senses.”
