“Not the kitchen one!” I defend myself. “Just the front desk and stuff.”
“Sure, sure,” Imogen says, smirking. She leans forward a bit, nods at the bag of Red Vines I’ve got in the console. “Pass those back, would you?”
“Mm-hmm. How’s that going, anyway?” I ask, once she’s pulled a handful of licorice from the package, snapping the end off one of the strips with her molars. “You and Handsome Jay.”
“It’s going goooooood,” Imogen says, laughing a little. “He took me to Sage the other night, actually.”
“Fancy!” I crow. Sage is the only white-tablecloth place in Star Lake other than the dining room of the Lodge. My mom used to take me on my birthday, just the two of us, but going with a guy is an entirely different thing.
“Right?” Imogen says. “I know it’s totally just a fling, we’re both out of here at the end of the summer, but, like—I like him.” She glances at Gabe, wrinkles her nose a little. “Sorry,” she says, “is this enormously boring to you?”
“No, no.” Gabe shakes his head, sincere. “Floor’s all yours.”
Imogen grins. “Well, in that case,” she says, and dives in. I reach over and squeeze Gabe’s knee, dumbly proud of how easy things seem between them.
It’s almost . . . normal.
Imogen’s chatting happily about Jay’s family, his dad who likes to paint. Suddenly, I remember running into her before homeroom the morning after I slept with Gabe—how I hadn’t talked to Patrick or my mom or anyone else yet, how I’d been walking around in a soup-thick fog all morning and the sight of her smiling at me across the hallway, her flowered dress and her cork-heeled shoes, was enough to have me swallowing back tears. “Morning, sunshine,” Imogen said brightly. She never carried a backpack. She didn’t think it was ladylike. “What’s up?”
Don’t be nice to me, I wanted to tell her. Don’t be nice to me, I’m awful, I don’t deserve it, I did the worst thing I could possibly do. For one moment I wanted to tell Imogen everything, to pour it all out regardless of the mess it would make, to stand back and stare at the horribleness of it like the world’s ugliest piece of art.
Then I realized I never wanted to tell anyone ever.
“Nothing,” I called back, shaking my head resolutely. “Morning.”
Now we stop for gas at a grimy station off the side of the highway, cars rushing by packed with suitcases and camping gear. It’s high summer, vacation time. It’s hot. “Can I tell you something?” Imogen asks me, both of us waiting in line for the questionable bathroom. “You seem, like, really happy.”
“I do?” I blink at that, surprised—it’s the first time anyone’s described me that way since I got back here. It’s the first time anyone’s described me that way in more than a year. Hearing it feels oddly incorrect, like someone pronouncing your name wrong.
Imogen laughs. “Yeah,” she says. “You do. That so hard to believe?”
“I—no, actually. I guess not.” I glance at Gabe, who’s pumping gas across the blacktop. He catches me looking and grins. I think of his goofy stories, the interested way he chats with every last person in town; I think of how he knows my ugly parts and likes me anyway, how he’s not perpetually disappointed by the person I turned out to be. I’m still nervous about this weekend—ugh, actually just thinking about meeting up with Patrick and Tess makes my stomach flip unpleasantly—but out here in the middle of nowhere with Gabe and Imogen, I’m really glad I said I’d come.
The gas pump shuts off with a noisy thunk. “I am happy,” I tell Imogen, tipping my face up toward the sunshine.
Day 34
Falling Star’s in full swing by the following afternoon, the whole campsite crowded with people. The air is thick with the smell of weed and sunscreen and grill smoke, girls in bikinis lounging on the rocks and the constant clang of a dreadlocked white boy strumming away on a guitar. Imogen and I made totally undrinkable coffee over the campfire this morning, then gave up, got in Gabe’s station wagon, and drove twenty minutes to the nearest town. I brought a cup back for him, waving it under his nose where he was still sleeping inside the tent we’re sharing. “You’re my fucking hero,” he told me, and I laughed.
Now we’re clustered around a couple of the picnic tables eating chips and playing poker with handfuls of crumpled one-dollar bills—me and Gabe and Imogen, Kelsey and Steve, who wandered over from their campsite down the way, and Handsome Jay, who drove up after his breakfast shift at the Lodge this morning. Even Patrick and Tess are playing, Tess’s red hair braided into a heavy-looking skein hanging over one shoulder. She looks like something out of an Anthropologie catalog, rustic and effortless. I pick at my cuticles and sip at my water bottle, trying not to notice Patrick’s hand on her knee. They showed up last night, the two of them ambling over to the campfire. Tess hugged me hello while Patrick hung back in the shadows: “Hey,” I said to him, making a point of it. After all, we said we’d try and be friends, didn’t we?
Patrick just looked at me, even. “Hey, yourself,” he said, so quietly no one but me could hear.
Now Gabe lays down three tens, which is a winner, all of us grumbling good-naturedly as we toss our cards onto the rough wooden table. “Thank you, thank you,” he says grandly, reaching for the pot with silly, exaggerated movements.
“Oh, no, wait, hold up, though,” Imogen says, pointing, just before Jay reaches out to clear the deck. “Patrick’s got a full house, right?”
Patrick looks up at that, then down at the table, surprised—he’s been playing with half a mind, no question, lost in Patrickland while the rest of us hang out here on Earth. Then he smiles. “Oh, hey, no shit, yeah I do.” He reaches for the cash, but his brother stops him.