We were quiet, listening to each other breathe.
Finally I said, “Okay.”
I hung up and left my room, and everything looked different. The hallway a slightly deeper color beige, the light fixture refracting tiny diamond shapes I’d never noticed on the ceiling. It was as if every conversation with Camden was taking me another few inches farther from the person I’d been.
I was in the water with Dani when Camden appeared on the beach. The faraway Camden from last summer: the hair and the shoulders, the heartbreaking tilt of his head.
Then he came closer and became the new Camden. My Camden. The one whose stories I’d been learning, who I’d kissed twice so painfully briefly, I almost wished I hadn’t at all. Because it was torture, the more more more and the when when when and also the if if if.
This Camden walked onto the dock and smiled at me. I smiled back, unafraid to offer up how happy I was to see him, that phone conversation still echoing between us. Then he suddenly dove into the lake, coming up a foot from Danielle.
“Squash!” he yelled as he broke through the surface.
Danielle laughed hysterically. “Why did you say that?”
“I don’t know, I felt like I should shout something when I came up. That’s the first thing that popped into my head.”
“You’re weird,” said Danielle.
“I try,” said Camden, and they beamed at each other. He’d already won her over. She’d been almost as easy as I was.
We swam together for a while, and I was glad to have Danielle there between us. Without Dani to distract me, I would have drowned in the more when if. Instead, my sister and I showed him the Garbage game and he threw her, higher and farther than I ever could. When we finally stumbled out of the water and I wrapped Danielle up like a burrito, Camden watched us, then asked, “Who does you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Who wraps you up like a burrito?”
I shrugged. “Nobody. I don’t really need to be a burrito.”
Camden flashed a devilish smile. “Don’t be silly. Of course you do.” He turned to Dani. “Am I right?”
Dani nodded energetically, eyes wide, eager to please him.
He picked up my towel and shook out the sand, then stretched it wide and flat across his long, beautiful arms. We locked eyes. I stepped into it and he wrapped me tight, one side of the towel and then the other. I felt his chest against mine, the quickest sensation of a heartbeat thudding, a precious squeeze as he tucked one corner of the towel at the back of my neck. Then he stepped away.
“What do you think, Ari?” said Dani. “Isn’t it the best?”
“Yes,” I agreed, feeling my own pulse speed up as my eyes and Camden’s found each other again. “There is nothing better.”
“Does your mom know?” asked Kendall from behind her window at Scoop-N-Putt. It framed her perfectly, like she was a talking portrait.
I’d brought Dani straight here from the lake. I told Kendall about the swimming but not about the burritos.
“No,” I said, turning to check on Dani, who was talking to the rabbit on Hole 3, a cherry-dip cone already melting down the back of her hand.
It was 98 degrees and too hot even for ice cream, so we were the only customers. Kendall’s boss was taking a nap in his air-conditioned office upstairs.
Kendall took two sugar cones from the sugar cone tower. She took a bite out of one, handed the other to me. “Why not? She would be jazzed that you’re hanging out with other Arrowheads.”
“Do you think so?” I asked, and bit into my cone.
“Don’t you?”
“Haven’t decided,” I said, chewing. Which was the truth.
Part of me thought, yes, jazzed is the right word. Maybe she’d embrace it as something that proved yes, we were connected in ways that can never be broken. Especially now, when her presence in our house was about to become even more shadow-like.
Another part of me thought: mine. All of this—Camden, Eliza, Max, Silver Arrow, and Satina Galt—belonged to me.
I couldn’t think of anything else that did.
“This is nervous eating,” said Kendall, crunching another bite. “I’m seeing James—Jamie—tonight.”
“What? You wait until now to tell me this? Where are you guys going?”
“Movies. Maybe the diner after.”
“That sounds like a date. Kendall, your first date!”
She shrugged, but I could tell she was trying to contain her excitement. “It sounds like a date. Looks like a date, smells like a date. But it might not, in fact, be a date.”
“But you like him.”
Kendall bit her lip and nodded. “A lot.”
“Then you’ll have fun, whatever it is.”
Kendall nodded again, as if I’d given her instructions. Maybe she’d needed them.
“Are you coming with us to the fair?” I asked.
“You’re definitely doing that?”
I gave her a look.