Ava drops my face and wraps me in a hug. “First round’s on me!”
She leads us inside and I’m hit with a waft of cigarette smoke and stale beer. One of the bartenders mumbles something under his breath. No one else seems to hear, but I make out the words. “The interlopers are back.”
I press my lips together in a tight line and watch Ava make her way to the bar. Imogen and I post up with Tommy, Dale, and two new counselors who sound like they’re from Scotland, while the rest of the Alpine Lake crowd spreads out among the booths.
Suddenly, I’m desperate for a drink. For something to give me the excited feeling I had an hour ago and to make me forget where I am. I take a peek around the room and spot a few women who were seniors when I was a freshman, holding court in the back corner playing some sort of card game. Off near the bathrooms are a bunch of guys who work down on the dock. And over by the bar are a handful of teachers’ aides from the library.
“Think if I give those townies a hundred bucks, they’ll let meon the pool table?” Tommy asks, his words already slurred.
My face reddens and I can’t tell if it’s from the wordtowniesor what he’s implying—that he can buy his way around Roxwood. Which, to be fair, he probably could.
Imogen swats him on the shoulder and throws me a worried look. I shrug and watch the bar, willing Ava to come back.
“All I’m saying is those guys look like they could use a few extra,” Tommy says. He nods over to the billiards area, and I follow his gaze to Cal Drummond laughing and holding a glass beer bottle by the neck. My whole body tenses.
He doesn’t seem to notice me. Not yet.
Cal’s with the usual crew. Guys from the hockey team who barely graduated, though I can’t really talk shit about that. My heart quickens as I search the table looking for Heller, but he’s not there. Dylan Adler’s absent, too. Obviously. But his older brother, Jordan, hangs at the back of the group, rubbing chalk on a pool cue with a concentrated look on his face.
They’re all huddled close, throwing their heads back in laughter as they lean against the felt-covered table to shoot another round. Cal runs a hand through his cropped hair and crosses his arms over his chest, revealing a cheesy barbed wire tattoo snaking around his bicep.
“Three vodka gimlets,” Ava says, setting the plastic cups down on the sticky high-top. She holds hers up to cheers, and I remember where I am and who I’m with. It’s going to be okay. Nothing bad will happen tonight. Not with Ava and Imogen by my side.
I take a long sip from my drink and perch on a stool, trying to hide behind Ava’s height as Imogen starts talking about if she should live on the east or west side of Los Angeles in the fall. Avascans the room and I watch her, wondering where she’ll land. Who she’ll set her sights on this year.
Last summer it was Scott Schroeder, a first-time general counselor from New Zealand who had a cute dimple on his left cheek and a habit of leaving hickeys on Ava’s neck. The year before it was Joy Arlington, the soccer coach from Vancouver who spent the next six months begging Ava to visit her in Canada. They both fell in love with her, and were heartbroken when she dumped them, unscathed and detached.
Ever since her parents’ divorce, Ava has detested relationships, said they could only drive us apart from one another. We were her true loves. Everyone else was a distraction, a story to tell at parties, a way to pass the lazy hours of the day. I wonder which Alpine Lake employee she’ll go for this year.
But then her eyes land on Cal.
“Who’s that?” she asks, nodding her head in his direction.
“Ava,” I warn. “No.”
“Aw, come on. What if I want to mix it up with some Roxwood ass this year?”
I bite my lip and try to figure out how much to share. “That’s Cal Drummond.”
“You know him?” Ava asks.
“There are 7,569 people in Roxwood. Yeah, I know him.”
“Feisty, G,” she says, tapping me on the nose with her straw. “What’s he like?”
I sip my drink slowly. I guess I could tell her about when we were little, how he would come over and play dress-up with me, fighting fairies and killing dragons on my parents’ lawn. Or I could tell her that when his mother died, he slept in a sleeping bag on mybedroom floor for a week since his father didn’t want him to see him so distraught. Or maybe she’ll want to know that when we got to high school, he called me adumb bitchbecause I didn’t want to do whippits in the alley behind the community pool.
Of course, I could tell her how he encouraged the hockey team to torment me after the accident, that he laughed along with everyone else when his friends spat on my locker. Or that she actually met him once before, dismissed him as trash.
If I was a different version of me—if I was brave—I could tell Ava therealtruth, that he was the only person to see me get into the car with Heller McConnell that night—and that Heller was the one in the driver’s seat. I could explain how Cal never pulled me aside and asked whyItook the blame when he knew Heller was the one at the wheel.
Instead, I turn to Ava and say, “He’s nobody.”
Ava rolls her eyes. “No help.” Then her focus moves above my shoulder and I turn around to see what she’s looking at.
Fuck.
“Okay, nowthat’smore appealing. Dish.” Ava eyes track Heller as he leaves the bathroom, walking straight to Cal.
