“Yeah,” I said, feeling even more sick. “He told me.”
Mika scowled. She twisted the cap of her bottle off and then on again. “Well, I’m glad he talks to someone about it. He doesn’t to me, but I know things have been screwed up all year. I overheard his parents fighting in the lobby the other day, about keeping his birth mom away from him.”
“What?” I asked. Why hadn’t he mentioned that?
Mika scratched her ear. “He was miserable every time we Skyped. The only thing that cheered him the fuck up was moving here. And don’t kill me for saying it, but he seemed seriously relieved when he found out he was coming back before you left.”
Thinking about that made everything hurt even worse. Jamie had cared about me. He’d kept caring about me—until I’d shoved him aside as violently as I possibly could. “God,” I said. “I am actually a horrible person.”
“You are not.” She pointed at me with her plastic bottle. “But you should see him. Today.”
My head was swimming with too much information. I sat down, my back pressed against the tree trunk. She slid down next to me so we were shoulder to shoulder.
“Why do you want me to see him?” I asked, closing my eyes. “I was so pissed at you for lying about David. You’re allowed to be pissed about this.”
“Dude, I’m not. I totally knew the you-and-Jamie thing would happen. You realize I’ve had three years to get used to your long-distance mooning, right?”
“But you’re mad at me about something,” I said. “Aren’t you?”
There was a silence. A tentative one. I opened my eyes, and Mika was staring at her shoes, blushing.
“The thing is,” she said, “it really sucks that you’re moving, okay? But you know what else sucks? Staying. Like, I’ve been meeting new people and saying good-bye to them since freaking kindergarten. They always go somewhere new and get new lives and forget about me, and it’s the goddamned worst.”
Mika sounded vulnerable. The opposite of how she’d been all week, surly and defensive toward me. I’d assumed that had been about Jamie and David. But maybe it wasn’t. Maybe she was trying to protect herself from losing something as well.
“And you know what else?” she said, sitting up taller. “I don’t even know if I’d be friends with dweeby Jamie if we hadn’t lived in the same place for so long. But you’re—you’re really important. So I don’t care about you and Jamie. I don’t care if you get married and have weird curly-haired babies and live in a castle in France or whatever. Just—don’t forget about me, okay?”
“Of course not,” I said and grabbed her wrist. Because maybe our friendship wasn’t perfect, and maybe we were both a little damaged for it, but she’d always been there for me. And I wasn’t about to let that go. “I’m really going to miss you.”
She was attempting to be nonchalant, but her eyes wavered. Mika didn’t have the same emotional face as Jamie, but I could read it now. “Whatever. But forget about me, bitch, and I will haunt your dreams.”
I pushed her shoulder teasingly. She fell over, sat up, and pushed mine back.
“Hey,” I said. “If I ever live in a castle in France, you can totally have your own tower or something.”
She paused, and then smiled. The most beautiful, genuine Mika smile I’d ever seen. “Deal,” she said, sticking her hand out to shake mine. “But only if it has a fucking moat.”
We walked back to the hotel and stood in the lobby, swaying in the air-conditioning. Mika had to go home. She was meeting some cross-country kids for a pre-season run, and then she was busy all afternoon. “My parents are making me write sample college essays,” she said. “Because this is adulthood, apparently.”
As soon as she was through the sliding glass door of the hotel, she turned around, came back, and hugged me. She buried her head in my neck, and I felt her take a long, unsteady breath. When she pulled away, there were tears in her eyes. And I was crying, too.
“Okay, okay.” She lifted the collar of her shirt to wipe her face. “People can see this. We’re in broad daylight.”
I took the elevator up to my room, threw open the curtains, and collapsed onto the unmade bed.
CHAPTER 31
SATURDAY
ALISON WAS SITTING ON THE OTHER BED. She had her legs crossed and was bouncing them up and down. There was a pair of sunglasses tangled in her hair, and she was wearing my favorite pair of her shoes—red lace-ups with crosshatch stitching on both sides.
How long had she been there? Had I been asleep?
“I hope you’ve been drinking water,” she said. “And I hope you haven’t been sleeping this whole time.”
I pulled the sheet around my shoulders like a cape. Dorothea Brooke was on the floor, drinking from her travel bowl. I reached over to scratch her back. “I’m not sleeping,” I said. “I’m hungover.”
“This is unhealthy,” she said. “You need sunlight, and you need open spaces.”
“I’m not a plant.”
“Get up,” she said, still bouncing her leg. “This is important.”
“Why?” I asked. “Why are you doing this all of a sudden? Why are you trying to expose me to life? Expose yourself to life, you big hypocrite.”
“I found somewhere you need to go.” She was standing now and pacing the aisle between our beds. Something was wrong. There was sweat around her hairline and on her shirt.
I hoisted myself onto my elbows. “Have you been exercising?”
She dumped my flip-flops in front of me. “Sophia.”
I sighed. “Come on. I’m exhausted and sad. Can’t you just let me feel sorry for myself?”
Alison kicked the bed frame lightly. “This is important.”
“Sleeping during the day is bad for you,” Alison said as the glass door of the hotel swept open. She put on her trusty pair of sunglasses.
“Ha!” I said. “You’re such a—”
In the almost blinding sunlight outside the hotel, I saw a boy. A boy wearing a slouchy knitted cap, bending over to get something from a backpack.