“No,” I said. “We used the forest. Which is part of the college campus, not the festival.”
“You put your advertising inside of the official programs of the Summerlost Festival,” Gary said.
He had me there.
“You can’t work at the Summerlost Festival anymore,” Gary said.
Lindy opened her mouth as if she were about to say something, but then she closed it instead. Cory grinned and I wanted to punch him. Maddy and the other girls had wide eyes and one of them frowned at me, but it was a sympathetic frown. I could tell they felt bad for us, but I knew they probably also liked the drama.
“I understand that you have to fire me,” I said to Gary, “but you shouldn’t fire Leo. He’s your best employee. He’s the only one with a proper accent.”
“It’s not a real accent,” Cory said.
“Of course it’s not a real accent,” I snapped at Cory. “Leo’s not actually from England.”
“He’s never even been to England,” Cory said. He sounded gloaty and glad. “He wants to go there but he’s never been. His brother told my brother at football practice.”
I turned to look at Leo. He didn’t deny it. His face looked fallen. Tired.
“Whoa,” said Cory. “I can’t believe that you didn’t even know that.”
“I’m sorry,” Leo said to me.
“You lied about that too?” Gary sounded surprised. And sad. I had never heard Gary sound sad before. “You two can go home. Send your costumes back tomorrow after you’ve washed them.”
As if he didn’t want us there for even one more minute.
“Fine,” I said to Gary. It was weird, my doing all the talking instead of Leo. And I said it mean.
Gary looked stunned. I felt bad, because Gary was strict but he wasn’t a bad person. But I pushed the feeling away and marched out. I heard Leo behind me.
“I have to walk home,” I said to Leo when we were out in the courtyard. The heat crackled the leaves under the sycamore tree, trickled sweat down my back. “My mom dropped me off. She won’t be back for a while.”
“I rode my bike,” Leo said. “But I’ll walk with you. If that’s okay.”
“Yeah,” I said.
I walked with him to the bike rack. The cool blue water of the fountain looked perfect to me. I wanted to climb right in and let the water go over me smooth as the velvet of Lisette’s Miranda costume jacket. I’d seen it today when Meg took it out of the box to steam and repair it for the Costume Hall.
“I’m sorry I lied,” Leo said after we’d walked for a while. “I told Gary I’d been to England before you even moved here so he’d let me use the accent, and then the lie kind of kept going.”
“It’s okay,” I said.
“And I’m sorry I got us fired.”
“You didn’t get us fired,” I said. “We got us fired. Both of us. I was there too.”
“It was actually my mom’s idea,” Leo said. He looked sad. I didn’t understand what he meant—it was his mom’s idea for us to get fired? To do the tour? That didn’t make any sense—but then he kept going, pushing his bike along with his head down and his eyes on the ground. “For my dad to go to England with me. I heard them talking. She thought it would be good for the two of us to do something like this. He came up with the idea to make me earn the money for the plane ticket. Probably because he thought that I wouldn’t be able to do it.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I bet he was sure you could do it. Because he knows you.”
We walked a few more steps. The frat houses, mostly empty for the summer, had dying grass in their front yards and I could see a couple of beer cans under a bush. Everything felt white-blue in the heat, and dusty.
“Now we don’t even have the concessions job,” Leo said, “so it’s going to be impossible for me to earn the money in time. I’ve been saving all year. I can’t believe it came down to this. But the worst part about getting fired is now you and I can’t hang out at all.”
“I know,” I said. “But I’ll be back next summer.”
It sounded so far away.
Until I met Leo I hadn’t known you could understand someone so different from you so well. And we did have lots of things in common—the things we both thought were funny, especially. He made me think. He made me laugh. He loved being alive and he had big ideas and I liked being around him because of those things. And because he was a guy. The fact that he was a guy made everything sharper. A little more crackly.
“Don’t worry,” Leo said. “I’ll make sure you still find out about Harley. I’ll keep watching and take notes. I could leave them someplace for you.”
“Like on my windowsill,” I said, feeling bold. Why not let him know that I knew? It could be a while before we saw each other again.
Leo smiled. “I think under the doormat or mailing them might be easier,” he said.