“What’s up?” I asked, gesturing for her to pass me the bag of chips we were sharing.
“I was just wondering if Wyatt said anything about me.” Toby handed me the bag and looked back out to the water, where Wyatt was standing on his board, balancing on one foot for a moment before wobbling and falling off. It looked like he was doing paddleboard yoga, which seemed like a terrible idea all around. “Like, when you guys were . . . having guy talk?”
“Sorry,” Clark said. It hadn’t taken him long to pick up on her massive crush and Wyatt’s complete lack of interest.
“I think you need to move on,” Palmer said gently, and Tom, sitting behind her, nodded. “Because you’re awesome, and if Wyatt can’t see that, it’s his loss.”
“Maybe he just can’t see it yet,” Toby said, sitting up a little straighter. “It’s like this in all the movies. You can’t see what’s been right in front of you the whole time until it’s the right moment.”
I exchanged a look with Bri, who just shook her head quickly—telling me to let this go. “Maybe,” I said, but even I could hear it hadn’t been all that convincing.
“Wasn’t there a guy at the museum who liked you?” Tom asked. “Maybe he already can see what’s been in front of him. Like, maybe he’s already at the end of the movie.”
“But I don’t like him,” Toby pointed out, her voice slow and clear, like all of us just weren’t understanding this. She shook her head. “I swear to god, I’m—”
“You’re not cursed,” Bri said without even looking up.
“Who’s cursed?” I looked up and saw Wyatt, standing by Bri’s towel, holding his paddleboard and dripping wet.
“Nobody,” Toby said, giving me a look that I knew meant I shouldn’t say anything to contradict her. “Clark was just talking about his, um . . . dragon book.”
“Right,” Clark said quickly, with a nod. “That’s me. Dragons and curses. That’s what my books are all about.”
Wyatt nodded and then shook the water off his hands so that so that they dripped on Bri’s bare back. “Hey,” Bri said, looking around and then pushing herself up. “What’s going—” She scrambled to her feet. “Wyatt!”
“What?” he said, shaking more droplets on her. “Sure you don’t need to cool off?”
“I’m fine,” Bri said, laughing as she pushed him away.
I leaned over Clark and turned his wrist so that I could see his watch—it was black and chunky, you could apparently scuba dive with it, and it had taken me a little over a week to be able to tell time on it. “And I should get going,” I said with a sigh.
“Already?” Clark asked, and I nodded.
“Duty calls,” I said, then arched an eyebrow at him. “What do you say? Want to walk some dogs with me?”
“Seriously?” Bri asked, looking around at all of us. “I’m really the only one who thinks that sounds dirty?”
“I heard it this time,” Palmer said, nodding. She frowned at me. “Keep it clean, you guys. There are children here.”
“We’ll try,” Clark said, getting to his feet and—unfortunately—pulling on his T-shirt.
“Did you see my moves?” Wyatt asked Bri as he flopped down in the sand next to her, despite the fact that Toby had moved so far over on her towel to make space for him, she’d forced Tom onto the sand.
“By ‘moves,’ do you mean falls?” Bri asked. “Because those really were impressive.”
Wyatt laughed and made an obscene gesture at her, which Bri returned. “It’s because the water was too deep,” he said, pushing his wet hair back. “If we were in a pool, it would be different.” He looked around at us. “Any of you acquire a pool since last year?”
Tom shook his head, and Wyatt shrugged, like he was letting it go, when Clark said, sounding just a little bit nervous, “I’ve got a pool.”
Everyone looked over at him, eyes lighting up, and I felt my stomach sink. I tried silently to tell him to walk this idea back, pretend he thought they meant billiards, that it was under construction, anything. Because I knew my friends—they were pool-hungry maniacs with no sense of politeness at all when it came to using one.
“Really?” Toby asked, smiling at Clark, then glaring at me. “And why is this the first time we’re hearing about it?”
“It’s just . . .” Clark hesitated. “I mean, it’s not my house. It’s my responsibility for the summer, so I didn’t want anything to happen to it. . . .”
“Wait,” Wyatt said, raising an eyebrow. “You live there alone?”
“Yeah,” Clark said, and I fought the urge to bury my face in my hands.
“This,” Palmer said, grinning, “is awesome.”