Page 31 of Cabin Fever

I kiss her face and shove her down the opposite hall with Theo, telling her to get her beauty rest for the party tomorrow, and I almost forget that Theo still hasn’t told her the truth. When I turn to walk down the hall with Finn, I catch him watching me in the mirror.

“What?”

He takes a step closer and leans in. My pulse gallops, a flush rising to the surface of my skin, when he says, “Last one to the room showers second,” and bolts toward the hallway.

I shriek and run after him. “Finn! That’s not fair. My skin is sensitive!”

We tumble into 6042 laughing. I grab onto any part of Finn that I can to climb over him and get through the door first. He bars the entrance with his legs, so I parkour off the doorframe and nearly fall face-first onto the carpet.

The woman across the hall swings her door open and gives us both a dirty look. We stand there like we were caught smoking weed behind the school, then burst out laughing as soon as our door is shut.

I'm wheezing. My legs hurt. I have salt and sand in places that have never seen the sunlight, and somewhere between the door and the beds I reach up to pull the elastic out of my matted hair and can't. Because the string of my swimsuit top has welded itself into the salt-knot at the back of my head.

I pull and yelp, then turn in a circle like a dog after its own tail.

“Stop, stop!” Finn laughs. “You're making it worse.” He bats my hands away. “Hold still. Let me⁠—”

Heat from his body warms my back as his fingers go into my hair, working the knot. His knuckles brush the back of my neck, and I’m suddenly finding it hard to breathe. “I can’t believe you get robbed by a raccoon.”

“Hey, Theo got robbed, okay?”

I'm laughing again, head tipped forward, and he says, “Hold still. Jeez.”

I stand straight, trying to be obedient, but every inch of me either feels itchy or incredibly turned on. As I search for some kind of distraction, the raccoon makes me think of our conversation the other night. About the nickname he gave me based on what I assumed was another strange, small mammal.

“Why did you call me Perry?” I ask. Finn’s hands are still, and I shift on my feet. “You told me to ask.”

“I told you that you should’ve asked.” He’s working the knot again.

“Well. I’m asking now.”

He makes a sound and clears his throat. “What do you remember about Perry? The actual character.”

Dahlia and I watched almost every episode of Phineas and Ferb as kids. I still have the theme song memorized. “He's teal. He wears a hat. He makes a sound like a broken kazoo.”

“Okay, but what happens every single episode.” He tugs, and I wince. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine. Ummm, the brothers come up with some insane plan,” I start.

“Right.”

“And Candice tries to bust them.”

Finn blows out an annoyed breath. “Seriously?”

“What?”

“We’re talking about Perry, Harp. The weird pet that nobody looks at twice.”

“Thank you. We’ve established that you thought I was weird.”

He spins me around and looks me in the eye. “Who saves everybody. He stands up, puts on the hat, and runs the entire operation. He fights the guy, defuses the thing, gets home before anyone notices the couch is on fire. And nobody ever finds out it was him. That's the whole joke of the show. The most capable one in the family is the one nobody pays attention to.”

His fingers have gone still in my hair, arms still looped around my neck and resting warm against my skin.

“You were thirteen,” he says. “And everybody was always watching Dahlia. She was the show, and you were the one behind her cleaning up all her messes.”

“Finn—”