“What the hell?” Her eyebrows draw together as she looks around. “Did you hear that?”
“Maybe it’s a bird in the rafters?” I strain to look up into the darkened ceiling.
“No. That wasn’t a bird.” She steps forward and pushes open one of the stalls and we both peek in to see if there’s anything there.
“That’s weird,” I say as the door slams shut, rattling the other stalls.
She turns to me with wide eyes. “What’s weird?”
“There wasn’t a butterfly statue in that one.”
“What. The. Fuck …”
The reverberation of the doors reaches the last stall where I was standing and we hear the sound again, this time more urgent than before, and faster than a scream can leave my mouth, that thing that was in the stall with me rises and takes flight right above our heads.
“That’s a fucking moth, Audrey!” September is screaming and it’s making the thing go crazy. It’s three feet tall, I swear, and it has no sense of personal space, because it’s flying at us intermittently as we are screaming and covering our heads.
“I thought it was art!” I’m ducking and weaving, trying to make it to the door and she’s right behind me, slipping through old water, and Mothra is getting more agitated by the second. I reach the door, throw it open, and we both run screaming out into the open air, crouched low as the beast with wings follows us out and pivots up and over the bathhouse.
Cline and Elliot are running full speed toward us, and I’ve never been so happy to see someone before in my entire life. Elliot has his arms out and I grab him hard, practically jumping into his arms and wrap myself like a sloth around his body.
September is brushing dirt from her knees, and her towel has fallen away, and I watch as Cline stoops to pick it up for her. From the corner of my eye I see them make eye contact for the first time and something inside me stirs. An unraveling of rope around my heart. A thread that was knotted begins to loosen and fray.
I press my face into Elliot’s neck and smile, squeezing him a little tighter. “That’s September. She’s our neighbor. She has a boat.”
My laptop is plugged into a charger inside the car, and I’m trying to catch up on some lost time I should have been dedicating to the game instead of this impromptu road trip. I’m easily distracted by the camp fire and Cline’s new fascination with September. My attention also drifts to Audrey’s attempt to stay out of their way while they set up stuff for dinner.
She hovers just out of their general vicinity, closer to the tent until one of them walks over to get something from the cooler, then she does a quick turn and finds something else to do. It’s an awkward dance that’s keeping me from concentrating on the task in my lap.
“Audrey,” I yell to her, and she stops cold, turning to look at me like a deer caught in headlights. “Come here.” I motion for her to sit by me in the trunk and notice when her shoulders visibly relax as she makes her way across the gravel to the back of the car. The tires bounce a bit as she climbs in and folds her legs beneath her, plastering a smile on her face to hide whatever tension she just had displayed out there.
“Are you on a deadline?” she asks, craning her neck to look at my screen.
“Kind of. They want my first pitch soon, so I need to have something for them or else I’ll blow it before I even have a chance to show them my entire idea.”
Her focus drifts across the fire toward Cline and September, so I close my laptop and angle to face her better. “I’ve never seen him like this before. I mean, I’ve watched him hit on girls and take them back to our place or whatever—like what happened at your party—but he’s actually talking to her. Listening and paying attention. I guess there’s a first time for everything.” I keep my tone light, hoping to get her to talk, because she’s being so quiet.
“It’s not the first time,” she says softly, her stare unwavering.
“No?”
“No. I never believed in love at first sight until sixth grade. We got this new student on the first day of school and Cline got this look on his face like his entire world had just suddenly changed in the blink of an eye. She was all he talked about for a week before he got the guts to ask her out at lunch. He did it with a note, because he didn’t want to be embarrassed if she said no. Which she did.”
Her eyes meet mine and there’s a sadness in the way her mouth is pulled so tight and how her eyes are narrowed. “She didn’t have to be such a total bitch about it, though. Showed everybody the note. Made him feel like an asshole for it. Like she was better than him.”
“Oh.” It’s really all I can say, because we’re twenty-one now, and that kind of stuff doesn’t matter anymore in the grand scheme of things. I doubt Cline even remembers it. But Audrey’s sitting here like she’s reliving it all over again for the first time.