“Hey, look!” Raj calls. “They have a park!” He rushes ahead of us toward the little wooden play area, and Celine slips from my grasp—supposedly to follow Raj, but I feel a bit deflated. Sometimes I think she wants what I want, feels what I feel. Other times, it’s like watching her close her eyes and turn away.
Patience, I remind myself. Patience. It’s just that waiting is starting to feel a bit like lying. And I don’t lie to Celine.
“Guys,” Sophie is saying, “we’re supposed to be responsible and super-mature explorers here.”
“Who wants to play on the swings?” Raj asks.
Aurora squeals and runs to join him.
“Oh, for God’s sake.” Sophie gives me a look. “Do something.”
Celine seems to find this hilarious.
I sigh and look around until my eyes land on the park’s little green-and-gold sign. “It’s only for children up to twelve years,” I call.
“I could pass for twelve!”
“Raj. You have a mustache.”
“Says you”—Celine grins over her shoulder—“Mr. Five O’clock Shadow.”
“Get him, Celine!” Raj is gleeful.
I arch an unimpressed eyebrow at her. “Are you undermining my authority?”
“And what authority is that?” she asks with syrupy sweetness.
Sophie groans. “Jesus H. Christ. It’s like drowning in a bath of hormones.” Then she stomps into the park, picks Aurora up, and bodily carries her away from the swings.
Celine bites her lip and follows.
And I make a decision. Since I’m not going to sleep in my grotesque condensation-dripping tent tonight, maybe there’s something else I can do with that time instead.
CELINE
Aurora, Sophie, and I are packed like sausages in our tent, huddling for warmth and discussing campsite snoring etiquette.
“It’s not his fault,” Aurora says mournfully. “He could have some kind of condition.” It’s pitch dark, countryside dark, but I can imagine her expression of wide-eyed sympathy. Then our mystery neighbor’s earthquake-level snore reverberates through the campsite, loud enough you’d think the perpetrator was in here with us, and I imagine a little smile sneaking onto her face.
“Fair enough,” Sophie allows, “but I didn’t notice anyone on this campsite sleeping alone. So whoever’s next to him better roll him onto his side sharpish.”
“They must be used to it,” I muse. “Maybe they’re asleep right now.”
“With that racket?!”
“Maybe they find it soothing after decades of living and sleeping side by side in loving harmony. Maybe it’s like a lullaby and they can’t drop off without it.” I don’t realize that was a weird thing to say until both girls pause.
Sophie’s the one who finally responds. “Celine. What are you on?”
“The sweet drug of true love,” Aurora says.
“What?” I squawk. “What are you talking—” But before I can get to the bottom of that disturbing comment, a noise comes from outside. And it’s not a snore. It’s my name, whispered in a voice I know too well.
My heart perks up like a well-trained dog.
“That better not be Brad,” Sophie mutters.
Aurora dissolves into hysterics.
I tut at them and grab my phone, flipping on the torch and unzipping the tent with inhuman speed. “Are you okay?” I ask, just as the flap peels open to reveal a shadowy shape I recognize. The moon is full, and the clouds covering it shift away just as he smiles at me. Bradley Graeme by moonlight is a mind-wiping, pulse-pounding sight most people would pay to see for aesthetic reasons alone. But when I look at him—when I compare the light in his eyes to the scattered stars in the sky and find his brighter, when I wish I could touch every inch of him the way this silver glow does—it’s not just aesthetic. At all.
Lately, when I’m falling asleep, I have this weird half-awake fantasy of Brad giving me a tiny piece of himself and letting me put it in my pocket and keep it. I should really Google dream symbolism and figure out what that means—I could make a TikTok about it—except I’m afraid of the answer.
I don’t know how long I can keep doing this.
“Hey.” Brad pokes the tip of my nose with unnerving accuracy. “Pay attention. Want to go to the park?”
I flush hot and look down at myself. “Er, I’m wearing my pajamas.”
“Want to change?”
“We have a curfew.”
“Want to break it?”
I remember I am still going, inch by torturous inch, through the arduous trial of acknowledging and expressing my true feelings. “Yes.”
He beams. “Good. I’ll wait here. Wear your gloves.”
I roll my eyes, zip up the tent, and ignore Aurora and Sophie’s sniggering while I hurriedly throw on a tracksuit. And a coat. And a scarf. And gloves, because wearing all that without them would be weird, not because he told me to. When I crawl out of the tent and zip it up behind me, the campsite is still and quiet, except for the haunting hoot of a nearby owl, the ominous howl of wind blowing through the forest to the north, and the resonant snore of That One Guy.
Brad is waiting with his hands in his pockets, but as soon as I stand up, he hooks our arms together like he’s escorting me around a ballroom and we head slowly, cautiously, toward the park. “How is it this dark?” he asks.
“Well, at night, the sun goes away—”
He elbows my ribs. “The sun does not go away.”
“You’re such a pedant.”
“We would fly out into space and die.”
I tut. “You don’t know that.”
“Celine,” he says seriously, “if you tell me you’ve been swayed by a conspiracy theory against the existence of gravity, I will be forced to reconsider our—”
I think he’s going to say relationship—which would be a problem, obviously, because we’re not in a relationship. And that’s a good thing, a safe and sensible thing, so I’m relieved when he says, “reconsider our friendship.” I am. I am.
If I fall quiet, it’s because I have to concentrate. The park is on the other side of the campsite and when clouds blow in front of the moon, which they do every few seconds, we might as well be stumbling around with clay pasted over our eyes.
“What’s wrong?” Brad asks.
“I’m trying not to smack into the side of someone’s caravan.”
“I mean lately. With you. You seemed off today.”
There he goes again, noticing things. “It’s nothing.”
The moon reappears, and we’re here at the park, which is a convenient distraction. Brad slooowwwly eases the gate open but it still squeaks. We both freeze.
Neither Holly, Rebecca, nor Zion pop out of their tents and start waving red flags of Disqualification and Doom in our direction, so we slip into the park. I thought we’d head for the swings, but instead, Brad tugs me toward a little castle on wooden stilts.
“Why are we even doing this?” I grumble. “Breaking curfew. I must’ve lost my mind.”
“We did it before, remember?”
“Yes, and almost got caught, and clearly failed to learn our lesson.”
“I guess you can’t resist me.” He winks, and, God, the truth rips right through my heart. We clamber into this tiny starlit fairy-tale castle, and I ache. The wood floor is hard and freezing cold under my bum, but Brad pulls me backward until I’m leaning against his chest and this is more than worth it. His thighs bracket mine. He breathes in deep and I feel his lungs expand, feel the heat of his breath rush past my neck as he wraps his arms around me and laces his fingers together over my stomach.
“Well, this is cozy,” I say dryly, because it’s either that or I faint with happiness.
“Shut up,” he replies, and noses my hair out of the way to kiss a spot just beneath my left ear.
Okay, my options have been exhausted: fainting is all I have now.
“Tell me what’s wrong,” he murmurs.
I love you. “Nothing.”
“You seem distracted.”
“I’m always distracted. It’s an unfortunate side effect of being intelligent. You wouldn’t know.”
He laughs and I feel warm and fuzzy inside. I even let myself enjoy it. Then he softly quiets down, and there’s a long pause before he murmurs, sounding only a little sad: “I wish you’d trust me, Celine. I really, really do.”
The thing is, I trust Brad an impossible amount. Like, if the world was ending—if the aliens came or an asteroid hit or a hungry god burst out of the earth and demanded retribution—and I couldn’t save the day because I happened to be in a coma or, like, waiting for my pedicure to dry, I think Brad could save the world instead. I would trust him to do it without a second thought.
So tell him.
But I can’t. Because what I really want is to spill all my feelings, to say I trust you, yeah, but also I love you and I think I always will, even if one day you leave me behind. And when it comes down to it, I’m still not brave enough for that. I’m still not brave enough to risk being left.
But maybe one day I could be? If I tried really hard? That’s not impossible, right?
For now, I tell him a truth, if not the truth. “We finish the expedition in two more days. Then we have a day or so to rest, and then…”
He follows my drift, because when doesn’t he? “Then it’s time for the Explorers’ Ball.”
My heart is heavy like a stone at the thought. “I bet he’ll be there.”