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“She’s great,” Cal says.
“She’s a lot.”
“She’s great,” he says again, with more conviction.
I look at him. He means it. He has, over the course of one semester and several significant incidents, become fond of Sydney in the way that people do when they first find her overwhelming and then can’t imagine a room without her.
“Don’t tell her that,” I say. “She’ll be far too smug.”
He concedes this with a tilt of his head.
I look back out of the window. Somewhere ahead of us is a house on the edge of Joshua Tree National Park where three musicians are currently either writing, or arguing about writing, or both, and I am in a truck with a boy I didn’t plan for, driving toward a week I didn’t plan for, at the start of a summer that looks nothing like the one I drew on a piece of paper when I was twelve.
It’s better than what I planned.
It’s so much better.
* * *
LAX arrivals, I have decided, is pretty awesome. I’ve been standing here for twenty-five minutes watching the doors and eating an airport pretzel that Cal insisted on buying me even though I insisted I wasn’t hungry. I was. I was on the dangerous edge of hangry, to be honest, and this delicious cinnamon pretzel is saving me from myself.
“There,” Cal says.
I look.
Sydney comes through the doors first, obviously. She’s in a bright orange linen set and enormous sunglasses, hot pink nails wrapped around a suitcase that is significantly larger than a week’s worth of clothing requires, and behind her Gianna is in jeans and a white shirt looking like a person who packed sensibly and is mildly overwhelmed by the airport.
Sydney sees us and grins huge and she makes a sound that turns several heads in the arrivals hall and covers the distance between us at a pace that doesn’t quite match the dignity of her outfit.
“You’re here,” she says, grabbing me. “You’re actually here. I’ve missed you! Tell me everything. You look incredible—the road clearly suits you, and oh my god, you smell like sunscreen—” She pulls back and looks at Cal “Hi, you’re also here. Good, this is good. Very happy for both of you. I have so many questions, but they can wait. How far is the house?”
“About three hours,” Cal says.
Sydney’s face falls fractionally. “Three hours.”
“It’s Joshua Tree, not Malibu.”
“Right. Right. Okay. I can do three hours.” She looks at me. “I need snacks for the car.”
“There’s a shop—”
“I’ll be quick.”
She disappears back into the terminal.
Gianna reaches us, unhurried. She hugs me, both arms, and then looks at Cal and nods. “Good drive?” she asks.
“Good drive,” Cal says. “How was the flight?”
“Fine.” She glances at the terminal where Sydney has disappeared. “She talked for most of it.”
“To you or generally?”
“Both. The man in 14C knows things about her skincare routine that I don’t think he wanted to know.” She grins at me.
Sydney reappears with a bag of snacks and starts passing them around the second we climb into the truck.
She and Gianna take the back. I slide into the passenger seat beside Cal.
