Rowan answers me as I help her roll up the picnic blanket. “Yeah, they found places for good shots, and they got a rough idea of how many extras and lights they’ll need. I think everything is good to go.” She glances up at Danica and sighs. “Can you get her? I don’t think she heard me.”
Sure enough, Danica is walking all along the edge of the dock as she chatters on her phone, her hands animating her words and proving just how oblivious she is to everything going on around her. I reluctantly walk over and invade her blast zone.
“Hey, Dani—Danica.”
With the phone to her ear, she flashes me her irritated face, the one I’ve grown exceedingly familiar with, and goes back to ignoring me.
“We’re leaving soon. Rowan wanted—”
“What do you want?” she snaps at me. “I’m trying to talk to Katie about the video.” Her voice lowers to a whisper, and she covers the mouthpiece of the phone. “The concept you were supposed to help me sell, but never did.”
“I—”
“You better not think I still owe you a favor.”
Danica sneers at me and puts the phone back to her ear, and I stand there dazed as she backs away from me. “Are you still there?” she asks Katie. “Yeah, I just—”
Her voice fades out as I watch the disaster about to happen. The clump of wet leaves clinging to the steel dock, Danica’s useless fashion-forward boot about to back into them. I reach out to grab her at the same time her foot slips out from under her. She stops falling backward, backward, and I get pulled forward, forward.
“DANI!” I shriek as she yanks on my arm to save herself. And then I’m catapulting—
Off the dock—
Through the air—
Down into the pitch-black water.
Chapter 14
I never knew that sparks could be quiet—like a silent firework that no one even knows is exploding until they gaze up at the moon and see the whole night sky consumed by burning color. A person can just be drowning in a pond, minding their own business, when the whole world catches fire.
Forests ignite. Houses burn down. One minute, you’re breathing fresh air. And the next, you can’t breathe at all.
Sometimes, you burn alive.
I don’t know the moment I sparked, but I do know the moment I realized I couldn’t breathe. And it wasn’t when Danica yanked me into that pond. It wasn’t when my calf got ripped open on the side of the dock. It wasn’t when Mike reached down and pulled me out of the water. And it wasn’t when he insisted I let him carry me on his back all the way back to the cars so I wouldn’t make a bad injury worse.
I think it happened sometime during that long trek back through the woods, with my hands braced on his shoulders and his fingers curled tight beneath my thighs. I was wearing his mostly dry hoodie and a pair of extra leggings that Rowan had brought along, and all around me was his scent and his touch and his feel. The rough calluses on his palms. The strong muscles in his back. The lifts and dips of his stride.
I knew if I relaxed, if I lowered my chin to his shoulder and allowed my cheek to brush against his, I’d feel the scruff on his jaw. I’d feel his hair against my temple. I’d feel the soft curve of his neck.
But then he’d also be able to feel the frantic drumming of my heart. The way it pounded furiously inside my chest at the thought of that scruff, his hair, his neck, those eyes, his voice, his laugh, that smile . . .
That was the moment I stopped breathing. Something had sparked inside me, and that spark stole all of the oxygen in the world. Something about being with him today . . . about seeing his smile and hearing his laugh and feeling him carrying me through the woods . . . it did something to me. My realization happened near a tree that looked like another tree that looked like another tree—with Danica walking right beside me.
You have a crush on Miiiike, came Dee’s text, and I glanced over my shoulder to see her wink at me. The whole group was walking with us, navigating the dripping forest to get to the cars before the next storm rolled in, and I hoped the flames flickering inside me weren’t as obvious to everyone as they were to my very annoying, very nosy, very stubborn friend.
But she was right.
I had a crush on Mike.
I have a crush on Mike.
I tucked my phone into the sleeve of his hoodie and tried to remember how to breathe evenly. But all I could focus on was his hands on my legs, his hands on my legs.
Danica hadn’t objected to him carrying me, which was surprising. And she had also apologized half a dozen times for knocking me into the water, which was even more surprising. She said it was an accident, and I believed her.
Which was why I felt like the biggest bitch on the planet for crushing on her boyfriend. While my arms and legs were wrapped around him.
He was being a gentleman. Danica was being nice. And I was being the lowest kind of low. I wasn’t the kind of girl who deserved piggyback rides or apologies or favors. I was the kind of girl who developed incinerating crushes on her own cousin’s boyfriend. I was the kind of girl who couldn’t be just his friend. Who texted him at night. Who kept it a secret. Who ran with him through the woods when he should have been with his girlfriend.
His girlfriend. His girlfriend.
Danica.
My cousin.
I vowed then and there to keep my distance from Mike Madden. No more gaming. No more texting. No more late-night phone calls. No more phone calls ever.
“Come on,” Luke whines over the phone four days after the pond, and I brush my teeth in front of my bathroom sink as I listen to him.
“I can’t,” I tell him with a mouth full of toothpaste, and he whines some more.
“Come ooon.”
“I’m not playing games tonight,” I argue after spitting into the sink. I feel guilty about disappointing my little brother, but he’s obsessed with Deadzone Five, and I’m obsessed with avoiding Mike.
I can do it. I can get over him. I have to.
Even if it hurts more than I thought it would—more than it should. It hurts more than losing a friend, and that’s exactly why I need to stay away from Deadzone. At least until this aching in my chest goes away. At least until I can sleep at night.
“And you should be in bed,” I lecture my twelve-year-old brother. “It’s a school night.”
“I’m skipping,” Luke announces, and I wipe my thumb over the pasty corners of my mouth.
“Why?”
“Because I want to.”
“Why?”
“Because I hate it.”
I wash my face with a cleanser wipe with one hand while holding my phone with the other. “Is this because of that punk Grayson?”
Luke’s silence is answer enough, and I sigh as I toss the wipe in the trash.
“You need to stand up for yourself, Luke.”
“How? I’m the skinniest kid in my grade.”
“I don’t know . . . Can’t you make friends with some bigger kids?”
Luke scoffs. “He’s the king of the big kids. They all do what he says.”
“Well . . . then can’t you get Mom to talk to the principal or something?”
With a very adult sigh, my brother says, “Hailey, are you seriously that old that you don’t remember what seventh grade is like? I can’t just tell my mom.”
“You also can’t skip school.”