Mine.He repeats as if I need a reminder.
I don’t. I can’t go another day without thinking about her, much less another hour, another minute.
I’m sick, and Lila Hart is the only cure.
CHAPTER FIVE
Lila
“Two inches to the left.”
I cling to the top of a ladder with one hand and clutch a twelve-foot stretch of coral bunting with the other.
“Your left or mine?” I call down.
From the center of the Frosting Queen stage, Candi stands facing me, which means her left is my right, and I refuse to guess when I’m dangling off the top step of a ladder with an armload of bunting. She’s dressed for festival setup in a pristine white romper and pale pink sandals that have remained untouched by the sand, paint, and dust covering the rest of our scrappy band of volunteers.
With a sigh, she tilts her head and plants one hand on her hip as though I’ve asked her to explain physics to a sea sponge. “The correct left.”
“Excellent clarification,” I grumble and move the decoration a bit to my left—a direction I choose entirely out of spite.
The Crescent Cove Summer Festival doesn’t officially open until tomorrow, but the beachfront park is already humming with activity. White tents rise in rows along the boardwalk. Mayor Wren and his husband wrestle folding tables across the grass while Neve strings lights between weathered woodenpoles. Mrs. Abernathy and Mrs. Delaney test the sound system on the main stage, sending a high-pitched screech across the festival grounds before they cut it off. The air smells like salt and sugar and fryer oil from the food vendors testing their equipment. Farther out, waves crash against the shore near the volleyball sand courts.
It should be impossible to be completely and totally annoyed in such a beautiful setting. To my mounting displeasure, Candi is determined to prove otherwise.
“It’s drooping!” she hisses. “The banner. Not your face. Although…”
“Wow, thank you,” I chime, giving her my besteat shitgrin.
Being an only child to parents who were also only children, I’ve often wondered if this is how siblings or cousins behave—sniping at each other for no reason other than the fact that you just really dislike everything about the person but can’t seem to get away from them completely. If so, I’d like to file a complaint with the universe. I don’t want a sibling or a cousin. It can take Candi Honeycut and drop her back into whichever caldron of acid from whence she came.
“Drooping, Lila. Do you know what that means?”
I grit my teeth and reach higher.
The Frosting Queen stage occupies a prime patch of grass overlooking the beach and is decked out in a winner’s platform, microphone, and the throne Mrs. Abernathy insists we use every year and Candi insists on decorating.
This year, she outfitted it in ballet slipper pink silk roses and arranged her previous Frosting Queen sashes across the back. All of them have her name embroidered along the bottom in curling gold thread.
I tie the end of the bunting around a nail and take a few steps down the ladder to inspect my work. Coral, turquoise, and sunshine-yellow flags swoop across the front of the stage,matching the oversized paper flowers I spent the last five nights making.
I press my palms to my cheeks as I dismount and back away from the ladder. “It’s bright and summery and cheerful,” I beam. “It’s perfect!”
Pink light shimmers around my handmade decorations. The coral flags fade to whisper pink. The turquoise dissolves into rose gold. My pop of sunshine-yellow melts into a shade of champagne so pale it may as well be white.
“Oh, come on.” I glare at her. “We agreed on cheery summer sunrise colors.”
“They are cheery summer sunrise colors.”
“Maybe on planet Boring,” I mumble.
“The Frosting Queen competition is the centerpiece of the festival. It should look elegant. It’s not my fault your taste isn’t more refined.” Her gaze drifts over my dusty denim shorts and the bright yellow tank top I bought because the color makes me happy. “I have tried my best to help you. I practically spentallof senior year trying to improve your style, but it’s clear you just aren’t a learner, Lila.”
“You spent all of senior year hosting a lunchtime workshop called If Lila Can Look Good, So Can You.”
“Right.” Candi flashes a pageant perfect smile. “That’s literally what I just said.”
My eye twitches. It hasn’t fully recovered from the frosting slip and slide she caused at Max’s. Neither has the rest of me.
