“Want me to go first?” Olivia asked.
The child nodded.
Olivia turned to Perry. “Okay, will you stand with her?”
“Of course.” He glanced down the boat. Amelia and Phoebe were lounging on the seats, chatting away with Rob and his parents. No one had any idea what they were missing.
Olivia stood at the edge of the boat and waved down to Jake. “Here I come!” she called. Then, to Luci, “I’ll wait for you. You go next.”
With that, she thrust herself off the edge of the boat and tucked. Perry watched her slip gracefully into the water with barely a ripple.
“Wow,” he said.
Luci stood beside him, very close, watching her mother surface.
“Your turn,ma chérie!”
Perry looked at the little girl. Her braids were soaked from splashing like two little rat tails. Her thick eyebrows were knit in concern. She was such an odd little creature.
“You can do it,” he said.
Suddenly, Luci slipped her small hand into his. She squeezed it. The force was no more than a mosquito bite, but Perry felt it gostraight to his chest. He squeezed back. And then she let go and disappeared off the side of the boat. There was a splash. A whoop. Olivia held her arms out and Luci was in them.
Perry found himself gripping the railing of the boat like a drunk.
Below came the joyous burst of laughter and splashing. The sun prickled in the late-day sky. Perry turned away, just in time.
Emma
Alicia was mad at her. Again. “What do you mean youwent outwith them?”
“Hang on, and I’ll tell you.” Emma was at the crafts table helping one of her campers assemble a dream catcher. The little boy was having trouble with the yarn.
“I can’t cut it,” he complained.
“It’s okay,” Emma said, taking the length of yarn from him. “I’ll help you.”
Alicia stared impatiently across the table. “Like, you went out out? At night?”
Emma nodded. “Here, I’ll hold the yarn tight, and you cut it. That’s right. In the middle.” She held the yarn between her two hands and smiled at the boy, trying to ignore Alicia’s outraged expression.
“But I thought you hated them.”
This got the little boy’s attention. “Hated who?” he asked.
“Keep going,” Emma said, redirecting him. She helped him write his name in marker on a piece of masking tape and affix it to the dream catcher. The end result was loosely tied and slightly crooked, but as far as she was concerned that’s what made it camp-perfect. “Your mom will love this,” she told him, and he beamed.
Alicia waited until the first grader galloped off after his friends before resuming her interrogation. “So what happened? Tell me everything.”
That was the thing. Emma didn’t really feel like telling Alicia much. It was the double-edged sword of being best friends for so many years. Like a favorite pair of jeans you’d had forever: they were comfortable. Every rip and fray told a story. And on a bad day when nothing else looked right on you, you knew you could tug them on and feel pretty damn good about yourself. But the fact was, they could also be outgrown.
Emma didn’t like to think of herself as outgrowing Alicia. They’d been best friends for as long as she could remember, and for good reason. But since high school had started, Emma felt restless. She liked her friend, but sometimes she longed for new ones. Alicia liked to make fun of the more popular kids, dissecting the gossip they heard after a weekend party or mocking the way those kids strutted down the hall.
“Did you hear how much Courtney Jacobsen drank at the keg party? I heard she was literally licking the walls.” She and Alicia would criticize their clothes, their predictable inner circle squabbles, their smug expressions. “They’re such jerks,” Alicia would say, and Emma would laugh or nod in agreement. Emma used to find it funny, but lately it only highlighted for her how much on the outskirts they were socially. Emma watched the popular group sitting together in the cafeteria and wondered what it would feel like to casually set her lunch tray down, laying claim to her seat at that table. Deep down, Alicia probably wondered the same. And now Emma had had a taste of what it was like to sit at that table. If only for a little bit.
“It wasn’t a big deal,” Emma said now, as she scooped up remnants of yarn and collected glue bottles. “They wanted their Wild Turkey back. When I gave it to them, they sort of invited me out.”
Alicia stared at her wide-eyed. “Which one invited you?”
