“Card?”
“I wasn’t down there looking for a fight,” I said.
There was a flicker of recognition that I’d been listening to her and Greer talking that night in the museum, but she let it pass. “So why were you?”
The bruises along my ribs ached as I took a deep breath.
“My mom was infected on the sixteenth. She lives in town, and I thought she might have been . . . I thought somebody like Tommasulo might have gotten to her.”
“Did they?”
I shook my head.
“Is she all right?”
A pressure was building behind my eyes. I closed them to block it off and found myself standing in the dark outside that window, looking up at Mom as she embraced Mr. Addad.
“She’s living with someone now, and she seems . . . I don’t know. She seems happy.”
Neither of us said anything for some time after that. I felt hollowed out, as if I’d just run a dozen miles.
“Anyway. I just wanted you to know that. And to tell you that all those things I said to you the morning I left—about things being your fault—I was just . . . I didn’t mean it.”
“For all we know, you were right.”
“No,” I said. “I wasn’t.”
Snow Cone stirred at a flurry of voices outside and ran or the door. Greer appeared at the top of the trail with Cash and Shan and Isaac dancing around him, vying for his attention.
“Guys, I don’t care how many times you ask me, I’m not going to let you bring a goat up here.”
“But Gre-er!”
“No goats!”
There was a peel of laughter and then a shriek as DeShaun chased Cash and Shan—Ricky and Margo now—toward the dining hall in the main lodge. I got up from the bunk and headed for the door.
“Card, wait.”
Hannah was standing by her cot with Hershey Bar at her side.
“I was thinking maybe you could come down and eat with us tomorrow. It’s hot dog night. For some reason the kids have decided that’s something they’re really, really excited about. We end up playing games and stuff after. I’m sure we can find a way to make it safe for you.”
I thought back to the music and the swirl of bodies the night of the dance and how strongly I felt pulled toward it. I shook my head.
“Then maybe the three of us can go look at fireflies again sometime.”
The way Hannah was smiling made her whole face brighten. The whole room. All the knots inside me loosened and fell away.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’d like that.”
I hung out at the edge of the camp and waited until Greer got the kids corralled into the dining hall for lunch.
“Hey, save your old buddy Greer a little something, okay, guys? A morsel. A crumb. I beg you.”
He came to the doorway, wiping his hands with a dishtowel. When he saw me, he stopped cold.
“So,” he said. “How’d the mission go?”
“Mission?”
He stepped out of the doorway and onto the grass. “Yeah, you were gone so long, I figured it must have been because you were a secret agent who’d been activated to deal with issues of national security. Either that, or you were just a titanic jackass.”
He balled up the towel he was carrying and lobbed it at my chest. I caught it and kicked at the patch of ground in front of me.
“Titanic jackass,” I said. “Definitely.”
Greer laughed. “Damn. I was really hoping for the secret agent thing.”
Benny came to the doorway and yanked at Greer’s sleeve. “We got any more lemonade?”
“Yeah, in the kitchen. I’ll grab some in a second.”
“Hey, Ben.”
Benny didn’t even look at me. He turned around and went inside without a word. My stomach sank as I remembered what Hannah had said about all the excuses she and Greer had made for me. I’m sure they’d done their best, but Benny was smart. He had to have known what they were doing.
Back in the dining hall, there was a crash of glass breaking and then Astrid called out for Greer. He rolled his eyes wearily.
“Duty calls.” He started into the hall, then turned back. “Hey! You still working on that garden?”
“I don’t know. I guess so. Why?”
He smiled that big, goofy smile of his. “Feeling the urge to return to my roots as a subsistence farmer. Let me get these demons squared away, and I’ll meet you there.”
He put up his hands, and I tossed the towel back to him.
“All right, monsters!” he bellowed as he went inside. “What’s going on in here? Who’s up for more lemonade?”
The kids responded with a shouted chorus. All except Benny. He dropped his fork, then left the table and stomped out the back door. I started to follow him, but thought better of it. Greer and Hannah had given him excuses. Did I have anything better?
I stopped at the supply shed on the way out of camp and grabbed the packets of seeds, a rake, and a shovel. Hershey Bar came out of Hannah’s cabin and trotted along beside me as I set out for the garden, hoping there were enough summer days left for anything I planted to grow.
20
“YOU KNOW what our problem is, man?”