“Are you sure?” Kendall asked when I told her.
“He shouldn’t be alone.”
“So what does that mean, you’re going to stay over?”
“I have no idea. But if Mom or Richard call your house, can you cover for me?”
A pause. “Okay.” Her voice sounded flat and tight.
“I’ll check in with you later.”
I hung up and scooped the penguin from the ground.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said, and took Camden’s hand with my free one. He looked at me and the pain on his face, it was so Azor. The memory of our kiss at the Ferris wheel flushed through me. All my unleashed, bold Satina-ness. “The ending sucked,” I added, “but until then I had the best night of my life.”
Camden smiled a little. “You have no idea.” He slipped his hand into mine to give it a squeeze before drawing it away.
I knew the quickest way out of the fair, and this time he was the one following me.
13
We didn’t speak as Camden drove Max’s car out of the fairgrounds parking lot.
In the strange and also strangely intimate minutes that followed, I stared out the window and thought about how getting to know someone is all about learning and unlearning at the same time. For every piece of new information you gain about that person, you might have to let go of something you thought was true.
Finally he asked, “So, that guy from your school we ran into. He was someone, right?”
“Ex-boyfriend,” I said.
Camden nodded. “You don’t have to tell me the story. Unless it’ll make me feel better.”
“I was the one who ended it.”
A pause. “That makes me feel better.”
We were silent the rest of the drive. Camden seemed lost inside himself, sloshing around in places I had no access to.
When we got to the Barn, I followed Camden to the porch, where he stooped to fish a house key out from under the cushion of the wicker sofa. His Azor uniform was long gone. Now he wore only his white T-shirt and black pants and boots, and I couldn’t help thinking that half of him had been stripped away.
The house was eerily quiet without the voices and the music, the whirr of Eliza’s sewing machine. Once inside, I closed the door behind us. The sound of it seemed to startle him. I thought maybe he’d forgotten I was there, too. But he turned and looked at me, then held out both hands.
I took them.
“You’ve never seen my room,” he said, his voice rough like he was struggling to retrieve it.
My stomach lurched. “No.”
He tugged me toward the staircase, walking backward.
“Is it okay if I show you my room?” he asked.
“Yes,” I squeaked.
I’d been in this situation before. Knowing you’re there for the wrong reason. So aware that the way you want something is completely screwed up, but not caring. Sometimes wanting is a buy now, pay later deal.
I knew I should tell him to stop, that we needed to talk about the whats and the whys.
I could not.
When we got to the stairs, he let go of one hand to walk forward, but kept the other. We walked like that to the top, past the big picture window, across the landing. Through the door Camden opened for me.
He stood aside so I could look around. The room was small, with a slanted ceiling and a skylight. Each wall was painted a different color: forest green, teal blue, burgundy, and white. The combination felt random, yet harmonious. In one corner was his bed, which I only glanced at quickly before feeling my skin flush. It was just a tiny twin, but it may as well have been a king-size water bed with velvet pillows and fur throws, under a banner that said SEX! in fifty-point font.
An overpacked bookcase filled the opposite wall. A beanbag chair sat in the corner, his laptop sunk into it. He had no posters or pictures up. Only a huge map of the world, dotted with plastic thumbtacks. Next to each thumbtack was a tiny slip of paper with writing that I couldn’t read from a distance.
“Nice skylight,” I finally said, leaning against the doorframe. I hadn’t come all the way inside the room. I wasn’t committing to anything. Right?
“Thanks,” he said, staring up at the skylight. “My mom put it in for me when she bought the house.” He paused, maybe snagged by a memory. “We’d been moving around so much, and now we were going to stay still. She wanted me to have a spot to watch the stars change position and remind us that at least the planet was still moving.”
“How old were you? When you finally stopped moving around?” I asked, glad to be talking and sharing again, hungry for more pieces of him.
“Thirteen,” said Camden. “And tired. Happy to be on solid ground.”
I looked at Camden’s face, which was still raised upward.
“Leave all the time-and-space traveling to the Arrow One,” I said.