Lucy changed into the T-shirt and shorts I found for her, and I made the trundle bed with the extra sheets from our linen closet. When she came back from the bathroom, I had changed for bed as well and was experiencing a very strong sense of déjà vu. I had spent years in this same spot, with Lucy in the trundle bed looking up at me, as we talked for hours, long after we were supposed to have gone to sleep. And now here she was again, exactly the same, except for the fact that everything had changed. “This is weird,” I whispered as she climbed into the trundle bed, pulling the covers up around her.
She rolled on her side to face me, hugging her pillow the same way she’d done when she was twelve. “I know,” she said.
I stared up at the ceiling, feeling strangely uncomfortable in my own room, all too aware of every movement I made.
“Thanks for tonight, Taylor,” Lucy said around a huge yawn. I peered over the edge of my bed to see that her eyes were drifting closed, her dark hair fanned out across the white pillowcase. “You saved my butt.”
“Sure,” I said. I waited a second longer, to see if she wanted to talk—about the disappointing Stephen, or the circumstances of the night. But then I heard her breathing grow slow and even, and I remembered that Lucy had usually fallen asleep before me. I’d always envied the way she could fall asleep at the drop of a hat, while it sometimes took me what felt like hours to drift off. I lay back down on my pillow and closed my eyes, even though I had a suspicion that I wouldn’t be falling asleep anytime soon.
But the next thing I knew, light was streaming in through my windows, and when I sat up, I saw that the clothes I’d lent Lucy were neatly folded on the trundle bed. On top of them was the bag of Skittles, the top rolled over. And when I opened it, I saw that it contained only the flavors that had always been mine.
chapter twenty-one
Five summers earlier
I WOKE UP WITH MY ARMS AROUND THE STUFFED PENGUIN, WHO still smelled slightly of funnel cakes and cotton candy. I smoothed his scarf down, running the soft felt across my fingers, feeling myself smile as I opened my eyes, replaying the scenes from last night in my head. It had been a perfect night, and I didn’t want to forget a single moment of it.
I’d been going to the Lake Phoenix carnival since I could remember. It lasted the entire weekend, and Henry and I had gone to the first night of it. That was the night I’d always liked best. Before the grass became muddy and trampled, before you got queasy at the sight of the Slurpee booths, before you saw how few people actually won at the carnival games. When everything was still shiny and magical, the way it had been last night.
Since our movie date, Henry and I had continued to spend our days together, but things had definitely changed from the easy, race-you-to-the-snack-bar friendship we’d had before. Things were more complicated now, but also infinitely more exciting, and I’d return home every night, barely even paying attention to my dinner, instead turning over in my mind a thousand little moments with Henry—the dimple in his cheek when he smiled, the way he’d brushed my hand when he handed me my ice-cream sandwich. He hadn’t made any move to kiss me yet, but the possibility seemed to infuse every day, and I found myself wondering when it would be—when he took my hand to pull me up to the raft, and I yanked him into the water instead, and we surfaced at the same time, so close that I could see the water droplets on his eyelashes? When he biked me home, and then paused, clearing his throat and looking at the ground, like he was trying to gather the courage? Neither of these had been the moment, but that didn’t stop them from being that much more exciting, and making me feel like after spending my whole life reading about things happening to people in Seventeen, things were finally happening to me.
The only thing that dimmed the perfection of it was Lucy, who was insistent on knowing if I’d asked Henry about her. I was vague whenever she asked me about this, and found myself trying to get off the phone with her as soon as possible, once she brought it up.
But I tried to push Lucy out of my thoughts as I sat up in bed and propped the penguin on my knees. Henry and I had spent the carnival together, just the two of us. This hadn’t been easy to arrange, especially with Gelsey trying to follow me wherever I went, but I was able to bribe Warren into looking after her for the night with five dollars of the ride money my dad had given me, as well as promising to buy him ice cream the next time we went to Jane’s.
After finishing the protracted negotiations with Warren, I’d headed across the carnival in search of Henry, feeling my heart pound hard with excitement. It was early yet—the sun hadn’t totally set, and the neon on the rides and along the sides of the booths was just starting to glow. The clank of the machinery mixed with the shrieks from the people on the rides, and the yells of the workers in the booths, calling for people to step right up, test their luck, take a chance.
The funnel cake stand was almost at the opposite end from the entrance, and as soon as you got close, you could smell the scent of fried dough and powdered sugar, a combination that always made my mouth water. The sign that advertised FUNNEL CAKES/SOFT DRINKS/LEMONADE was in spelled out in pink and yellow neon, and standing under it, the glow from the sign reflecting on his dark hair, was Henry.