“Can I have a few minutes?” I whispered to Richard, dropping the phone to my side. Richard smiled and nodded. “Hang on,” I then told Camden.
I went through the storeroom and then out the back door, where I sat down on one of the three wooden steps that led into the alley. It was the most privacy I was going to get anytime soon.
“Where did you take me?” asked Camden.
“To the alley behind Millie’s Art Supply.”
“What are you looking at?”
His voice now. Throaty and curious. The soft curve of interest in it, painfully lovely.
I paused. “Two dumpsters. A blue Ford pickup truck that’s been parked here since last winter. A pair of sneakers hanging from the telephone lines.”
“What color are the dumpsters?” he asked.
“Black,” I said.
“Ah, okay. Got it. I can see you.”
Can you, Camden? And what do you see in me that I can’t see in myself?
“What about you?” I asked.
“I’m in my room,” he said. “I’m looking up at my skylight. It’s a perfect rectangle of blue. Kind of looks like someone painted the color right onto my ceiling.”
We were silent again. Awkward. But also, not. I wondered where he was in his room. I wondered if he were lying on his bed, but didn’t want to ask him any questions that had the word bed in them. I wondered if he was in pajamas or had slept in his clothes, the Atticus Marr costume’s T-shirt and pants. I pictured the combat boots sitting on the floor, the flight jacket hanging over the back of a chair.
“I’m sorry I had to leave last night,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t ask for more explanation.
“I am, too.”
Silence again. I heard him take a deep breath, and it sent a flush of heat down the side of my neck, how loud and close it was in my ear. How person-like it made him. “I can’t talk long,” he said after a few moments. “I’m leaving in a bit for Vermont.”
I felt something inside me lurch to a stop.
“Oh,” I said. “How long are you staying?”
“I’m not,” he said, and the lurching sensation dissolved into relief. “I’m just driving my mom up there and dropping her off. She’s spending the summer at an artists’ colony outside Burlington.”
“The word colony always makes me think of the Revolutionary War,” I said, “but I’m guessing it has nothing to do with that.”
Camden snorted. “Think more leper colony. They give her a studio and she makes her art, and then hangs out with other artists. I’m not sure how that’s different from what she does here, but whatever.” He paused. “No, I know what the difference is. The difference is that I’m not there. You know, to distract her. Or judge her.”
“Is someone staying at the Barn with you while she’s gone?”
“Just Max and Eliza, when they can. Some other friends will probably drop in and out. But if you mean a legal adult there every night, then no.”
“Wow.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time.”
I thought for a second about what that might be like, to be left to live alone for an entire summer. A slice of heaven, is what it might be like.
But I didn’t tell him I was thinking that. Instead I asked, “How do you manage to NOT turn that situation into a bad eighties movie?”
Camden laughed. Hard. It made every hair on my arm stand on end to hear it.
“Well, we did have the wild party before my mom even left,” he said.
“That’s true. You know how to buck the clichés.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. A car raced down the alley, too fast, the roar of it filling the pause and making it feel like something planned. I tried to picture Camden again, tried to imagine what he was looking at on his end. How tightly he was holding his phone, what he was doing with his other hand. Whether he was still trying to picture me.
“So do you,” said Camden.
“So do I what?”
“Know how to buck the clichés.”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” I said, keeping my voice light and teasing. Giving him no inkling that inside I was pleading Tell me! Tell me more about what I know!
“I guess you seem . . . not like the other Fitzpatrick kids I’ve seen around. Maybe more serious. More mature. Like you’ve been through something and changed.” He paused. “I’m sorry, I don’t want to be making assumptions about you. It’s those damn Satina Galt boots.”
I had no response, stunned that he’d glimpsed me so clearly in such a short time. Camden must have taken my silence for being insulted.
“Anyway,” he said quickly, nervously. “Speaking of Satina Galt. Can you meet me at the lake tomorrow? I want to show you something.”
I thought about my calendar. My mom was working, which meant I’d have Danielle with me. But Tuesday . . . Tuesday I’d have to myself.
“I can meet you the day after,” I said. “I work at the store until two o’clock, but then I’m free.” The thought of having to wait two whole days to see him . . . well, that sucked.