“Yeah,” I replied. “I guess it is.”
We rode the rest of the way in an oddly comfortable silence, both of us breathing in the purple darkness. I’d never changed the country station, and neither did Gabe. When we pulled up to school, I was almost sorry to be getting out of the car.
“I can give you a ride home, too, if you need one,” Gabe said before we split up at the gate to the baseball field, as if he’d read my thoughts somehow. Already his friends had spotted him and were hooting his name. “Just come find me later on.”
“I can probably go with Imogen,” I told him. “Thanks, though.”
“Yeah,” he said. “No problem.” He waved, and we headed off in opposite directions, but not five seconds later: “Hey, listen, Molly—”
“Hm?” I turned back around, surprised and curious. “What’s up?”
Gabe shook his head. “Never mind. Just, congrats on getting recruited, is all I was going to say.”
That made me smile—nobody had congratulated me yet, I realized. Patrick certainly hadn’t. “Thanks,” I said, smiling one more time before I went to go find Imogen in the stands.
*
It’s hotter than I realize, and when I wake up on Imogen’s flowered sheet sometime later the first thing I register is the red roasting sensation all up and down the skin of my arms and legs, on the tops of my feet and the bridge of my nose around my sunglasses.
The second thing I register is Patrick.
“Mols,” he says, looming above me, so his face is all in shadow, nudging my hip with his ankle until I startle. I sit up fast and disoriented. Everything stings.
“Did you just wake me up?” I ask stupidly. I’ve been avoiding him on purpose since we got here, trying to give him and Tess their space. Not that they need my help, really—after they got here they spent most of last night sitting on a huge rock near the water, heads tipped close together, telling secrets I couldn’t even begin to guess. I’d taken the beers Gabe offered and sat with everyone else around the fire. Tried not to feel jealous about that. “Where is everybody?”
“You’re frying,” Patrick tells me now, not particularly friendly. “Come on, you gotta put sunblock on, get in the shade or something.”
“Oh,” I say, disoriented, that underwater nap feeling where you’re groggier after than you ever were before. I’m eye level with his knees, ripped denim he’s had for as long as I can remember and a swatch of tan skin showing through. It occurs to me to wonder how long he’s been standing there, and what went through his mind while he did. I’m sorry about earlier, I want to tell him. Gabe was being a jerk, and I’m sorry. “Okay.”
“Here,” Patrick says, thrusting a bottle of Coppertone in my general direction, the callused pads of his fingers brushing mine. By the time I get it together enough to look up and say thanks, he’s already gone.
*
There’s a concert that night, the clang of drums and guitars echoing through the mountains like a call-and-response from some other lifetime; Gabe pulls me away from the crowd to make out for a while in the darkness, his palms scraping pleasantly across my stinging, sunburned face. “You’re fun,” he mutters, biting my bottom lip a little.
“You’re funner,” I tell him, and grin.
I’m coming back from the bathroom when I run into Tess standing by herself near where our tents are, arms around herself and looking confused. “Where’d everybody go?” she asks when she sees me. She smells like booze and bug spray. “I lost everybody.”
“They’re still back over by the field,” I tell her. Then, looking a little more closely: “You okay?”
Tess shakes her head. “I’m fucked up,” she says bluntly. “Ohh, Molly, I am fucked up.”
“You are, huh?” I’m a little buzzed myself, to be honest, the few beers I had singing through my blood and brain and bones. “Hit it hard?”
“Yeah,” Tess says vaguely. “Too hard. I don’t really feel so good.”
“Okay,” I tell her, frowning a bit, taking her arm and leading her over to a picnic table. “You’re okay. Just sit for a second, I’ll grab you some water.”
“No, don’t leave,” Tess says immediately. “I just—please don’t.”
I blink, surprised and a little alarmed. “Okay. It’s okay.” New plan, then. “I’m not going anywhere.” I’m squinting through the darkness to see if I spy anybody from our group when all of a sudden Tess is up off the bench.
“Nope,” she says. “Nope, nope, I’m gonna—”
From the green, panicky look on her face it’s pretty clear what she’s going to do, even when she doesn’t finish the statement—I don’t see a garbage can anywhere nearby, so I take her by the shoulders and steer her toward a clearing that’s not too close to anybody’s tent. “Right there,” I instruct, basically forcing her to bend down, arranging her limbs like she’s a doll. “You’re okay.”
I keep saying it over and over while she’s sick—you’re okay—rubbing her back a little and making sure the thick rope of her ginger braid doesn’t swing into any oncoming grossness. It feels like it goes on a long time. I actually really hate the sound of throw-up—like, it pretty reliably makes me gag—but it’s not like I’m going to wander away and leave her, so I look around at the trees and try not to listen too closely.
“Oh my God,” Tess says when she’s finished, standing upright and wiping the back of her hand across her mouth, eyes red-rimmed and face puffy. She looks about ten years old. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Don’t tell Patrick, okay? Please don’t tell Patrick.”