I sit up in bed and watch her path. It’s a familiar one, down to the entrance to the lake, where we used to hide out when we were campers. It’s a secret spot. One designed for smoking weed and making out in the dark.
I want to call out to her, but I can’t. I don’t.
Instead, I keep my face pressed against the screen window, waiting for her to return. And when sleep comes, I wonder for a split second if she was ever really there at all.
---
I don’t hear the hinges of the door open in the main cabin, and I don’t hear Ava push aside the hanging sheet that separates the counselor room from the main one. But even in my sleep, I feel her weight, her warmth, as she cocoons herself around me.
“Ava?” I whisper. But I don’t have to turn around to know it’s her. She smells like she always does, of expensive blueberry shampoo. Her long fine hair fans around my shoulders, against my bare skin. She wraps her arm around my waist and we lie like that for seconds, maybe minutes, before she whimpers into my T-shirt, stifling her own sobs.
“You okay?” I ask.
She nods silently, her head bobbing up and down behind me. I flip over and face her. There are tears streaming down her face and she’s wearing all black.
“Ava,” I say again, but she shakes her head.
“I love you, Goldie,” she says. “I love you, okay?”
I nod, confused and drowsy. “I love you, too.”
Ava turns around, facing outward and scoots herself toward me so we’re packed tightly on my twin bed. I rub her back like I used to do when we were little, and soon her breathing grows slow and heavy, my hand stops moving in circular motions, and we both drift off into the night.
CHAPTER 16
Then
The crash was immediate and sharp, as Heller tried to slam on the brakes. I heard a thud and the screeching sounds of metal as the truck came to a halt. The smell of burnt rubber cut through the window. I gasped for air, tasted iron on my tongue, and my first thought was if Heller was okay.
I turned to him and saw he was gripping the steering wheel, his face frozen with shock. He read my mind and nodded. “I’m okay.”
I surveyed my body, realizing I was fine, that everything worked, and I unbuckled my seat belt. I pushed the car door open, apprehension building in my stomach, willing what I saw to have been all in my head.
“Must have been a deer,” Heller said from the front seat.
But his voice faded into the darkness when I realized I had been right.
There, in the middle of the road, was Dylan Adler, lying facedown on the pavement, his legs contorted at an awful angle. A paper bag with the McDonald’s logo lay next to him, and French fries were scattered around, wilting with the falling snow.
Heller must have gotten out of the car, but I couldn’t hear him. I could only see Dylan’s back moving up and down, slowly, a sign he was still alive. I could only hear my screams, pulsing in my ears.Heller wrapped his arms around me and pulled me back to the driver’s side of the car.
“Call 9-1-1,” I yelled. “Now!”
Heller looked at me with a terrified face. “We will,” he said. “But, Goldie...” He paused, breathing out a puff of air. “Can we say it was you?”
“What?”
“I’m drunk,” he said. “Dartmouth...” Heller shook his head, his hands gripping my shoulders. “Can we say it was you?”
I should have said no. I should have pushed him off me and screamed at him for even suggesting that my future was worth less than his. That’s what Ava would have done. Imogen, too. But I’m not them.
Instead, I cupped his chin with my freezing fingers and said quietly into the darkness, “Yes.”
CHAPTER 17
Now
When I wake, Ava is gone and my mouth is dry and scratchy. Meg grumbles below me, and for a second, I think reveille will start. But there are no horns to wake us, no Stu on the loudspeaker wishing us an amazing Alpine Lake day, no announcement about all the work that’s got to get done before the kids arrive tomorrow.
