“?‘Free tonight?’ That’s a thing?”
Sebastian nodded. Lincoln looked slightly horrified, before saying, “I guess it’s better than ‘booty call.’ Or ‘DTF.’ Or ‘U up?’?” He shook his head, then looked down as his phone chimed.
“What?” Sebastian demanded as Lincoln started laughing.
“Okay. I’m sorry. It’s—well. This one girl compared your bedroom to a clown car.”
Sebastian growled.
“It was funny!” Lincoln said.
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Sebastian said again.
“Yes. I agree. I agree completely. I’m on your side. Come on.” Lincoln pulled up the blankets and smoothed the pillowcases until his bed looked just as pristine as it had when they’d walked into the room.
“You know there are people who do that,” Sebastian said.
Lincoln just grabbed his bike from where it was leaning against the wall. “This will blow over.” He paused as Sebastian wheeled his own bike toward the door. “Except, here’s an idea.”
“What’s that?”
“Abby,” said Lincoln.
Sebastian tensed. Did Lincoln know he’d slept with Abby, too? And did Abby know about the video?
This was bad. Very bad. “What about Abby?”
“How about, just as a thought exercise, instead of trying to hook up with her, you try to be her friend?”
Sebastian stared at Lincoln. Lincoln met Sebastian’s gaze with his eyes wide open.
“I wasn’t trying to hook up with her,” Sebastian finally said, praying that Lincoln didn’t know he already had.
“I’m just saying, you have an M.O.,” said Lincoln. “And not a lot of female friends.”
“Lana is my friend,” Sebastian protested.
“Lana is my wife,” Lincoln said. “And, thus, the only woman who’s completely and indubitably off-limits to you.” He looked sternly at Sebastian. “It’s just an idea. But maybe, just this once, you try to do things differently.”
Sebastian nodded. He wasn’t holding crossed fingers behind his back, but he also wasn’t verbally agreeing to anything… which, he thought, would give him plausible deniability in case anything did end up happening with Abby. Although that wasn’t looking likely, he thought, glumly wheeling his bike out into the parking lot, preparing to start the day’s ride.
Abby
Lizzie had done a seven-day trip from Buffalo to Albany, along the length of the Erie Canal, and had warned Abby about the scenery—or, more accurately, the lack of scenery—that upstate New York would feature. “It’s pretty, but it’s not superinteresting,” Lizzie had said. Most days, they’d be covering similar terrain—a relatively flat path, sometimes paved, sometimes lined with dirt and crushed cinders, with a body of water—the Hudson River or the Erie Canal—off to one side, winding through forests, meadows, historic sites, and the scrubby backyards of small towns. Sometimes, they’d see the remnants of the railroad lines that had run before the trails had been converted—rusting trestles and decaying wooden ties. They’d ride through cemeteries, and pass monuments, old battlegrounds, reservoirs, and public parks. Pretty, Abby thought, as she led the group back onto the trail, but not very exciting.
They stopped for breakfast at a diner in Yorktown Heights and had lunch at a park in Brewster. Abby saw ducks and geese shepherding their goslings across the path, sometimes hissing at cyclists as they went by. There was also the occasional turtle sunning itself on a rock. Once, Abby saw a deer, standing in the forest maybe ten yards from the trail. It stared, wide-eyed, watching as Abby rode closer, before turning and bounding away.
It was another hot day, eighty-three degrees by noon, and humid. But fall was on the way, even if it still felt like summer. The leaves were beginning to change; the days were getting incrementally shorter, and the drugstore in Yorktown Heights, where they’d stopped to buy Lily some Bengay, had back-to-school supplies and Halloween candy on display.
Abby was riding sweep again. All the riders were up ahead, Sebastian and Lincoln in the lead, the teenagers behind them, the adults and senior citizens spread out in their wake, and Abby bringing up the rear, lost in thought.
Andy and Morgan, she saw, were riding side by side. Abby smiled to herself, remembering what it was like to be sixteen. She would pull out her phone after every class to see if Mark had emailed her on her AOL account, and she’d check the mailboxes at her parents’ houses every day after school, because he’d send her little gifts—a bag of Fritos once; a small box of Godiva chocolates for Valentine’s Day. He had wooed her at summer camp, and he’d never stopped, still never quite believing that she wanted him, always trying to win her heart.
* * *
Abby hadn’t been excited about the prospect of Camp Golden Hills’ boys. Back then, her heart belonged to Josh Hartnett and Adam Sandler. But Marissa had insisted that fat boys were better than no boys at all. “And you never know,” she’d said. “Maybe some of them will be hot by the end of the summer. Come on!” she’d said, leading Abby and Leah down the path. “They’re probably almost all here, and you’ve got to have someone picked out by Friday night.”
Marissa and Leah had explained to the other camp newbies the importance of staking a claim on a boy to go out with (what “going out with” as tweens at a summer camp meant, Abby would eventually learn, was treading water together during afternoon Free Swim and, eventually, attending the end-of-camp dance as a couple).
“What’s Friday night?” asked Abby as Marissa towed her up a hill that overlooked the track and the athletic fields.
“Movie night,” said Leah, with a doleful sigh. “They give us popcorn. Unsalted popcorn,” she added.
Marissa tossed her hair and turned to Abby. “You just go to the nurse on Thursday and tell her you’ve got a sore throat. They’ll give you salt for salt water to gargle with, and you save the salt for the popcorn.” She rolled her eyes at her bunkmate. “Have I taught you nothing?” Turning back to Abby, she said, “I know all the tricks. Movie night is makeout night. They hand out blankets to sit on…” Another eyeroll, this one for the counselors’ stupidity. “But kids just get under the blankets. And the counselors are supposed to, like, patrol, and break things up.” She lowered her voice. “Only they’re usually too busy sucking face with each other.”
Leah said something in reply, but Abby didn’t hear. She’d stopped listening, because that was the moment she saw Mark Medoff.
On an eighty-five-degree day, where the air was thick and hazy with humidity, Mark was wearing a Yankees sweatshirt, made of heavyweight cotton (to disguise his man-boobs, he’d later confess). His Air Jordans came up high on his shins, his board shorts hung almost to his knees, and his baseball cap was creased to keep as much of his face as possible in its shade. But he had the sweetest smile as he looked at her from beneath the brim of his cap. The sweetest smile and the kindest eyes.
“Ugh. No,” Marissa hissed, when she saw where Abby’s gaze had gone. It was cruel, and ironic, but at Camp Golden Hills, as in the outside world, the heavier you were, the less status you had… and Mark was one of the heaviest boys at camp.
But by then Abby had seen Mark’s smile. She’d also noted the goofy, slightly dumbstruck look on his face, a look suggesting that he’d seen her and had fallen instantly in love, just the way Eileen’s Harlequins and the spicier novels her mother kept in a drawer in her bedside table had taught Abby that, someday, a man would.
She had also realized that, beside him, or in his arms, she would feel as dainty as Princess Buttercup when André the Giant carried her. Abby couldn’t remember ever feeling dainty in her life. This boy could be her chance.