What Happens Now (11 page)

“Me? I’m having the time of my life.”

“And . . . ?”

I paused, thinking of how it felt to stand with Camden in that open window. Like he was telling me he understood about the Possible, although we had never discussed it.

“And it’s scaring the crap out of me. You know, Camden asked me to stay over.”

“What?”

“I mean, along with a whole bunch of other people. I guess it’s something they do. For safety? So people don’t drive home drunk?”

“Oh. Well. Still. That’s a little much.” She looked at me more thoroughly. “Are you feeling weird that he asked?”

“I’m feeling weird about everything,” I said. “A good weird. A great weird. But . . .”

“A scary weird. I get it.” Kendall paused, glancing out to the patio. “Do you want to leave?”

“No,” I answered quickly. “Actually, yes. Well . . . no . . .”

Kendall gave me a look. “If you’re going to make me leave this party, you’d better be sure.”

“Okay. I want to leave.”

She nodded grimly. “Then let’s go.”

“What about James?”

Kendall smiled at the sound of his name. “We already exchanged email addresses.”

“Kendall!”

“He’s into photography and he’s traveled all over England and Ireland.” She turned to stare wistfully outside again.

“You met a guy and now I’m ruining—”

“I came for you, Ari,” interrupted Kendall. “I’ll leave for you, too.”

I hugged her. My friend. My best friend. Maybe not forever, but here and now.

After a moment, she pulled away and said, “I’ll wait in the car. Why don’t you go say good-bye to your boy, and for God’s sake, give him your number.”

Back on the patio, the band was still loud and people were still moving frenetically, but I didn’t see Camden. I climbed
onto a wooden chair so I could get a better look at the crowd, but that head, that hair, was nowhere. I circled the outside of the barn once, scanning the darkness for shapes and voices, and found nothing.

I looped back inside. Maeve Armstrong was sitting on some older guy’s lap in the living room, deep in conversation, and didn’t notice me. I went halfway up the spiral stairs but the landing was empty.

When I came down, I spotted a notepad and pen stuck to the fridge. It was not how I wanted the night to end, but it was better than nothing.

Camden,

Wanted to stay, but something came up. I wouldn’t mind more travels with Atticus Marr. Call when you can.

Ari
        

I left the note on the pad, my number scrawled at the bottom. Every step I took toward the door, part of me wanted to turn back. What good is
no regrets
when there’s an equal chance of regretting it either way?

“Am I an idiot for leaving?” I asked as I slid into the passenger seat of Kendall’s car.

“I guess you’ll find out,” said Kendall with a shrug. She paused, examining my face. “This was about that night at Lukas’s, wasn’t it?”

Couldn’t speak. Could only nod.

“I knew it,” said Kendall. “I remember how that threw you.”

Threw you
was a new and interesting way to describe how much I hated myself for letting things go so far, and for realizing I didn’t love Lukas. Kendall didn’t know about the other parts because I didn’t tell her. The pristine white skin of my right arm, daring me to let out some of this fresh pain. The shoe box with the razors and the cotton balls, hidden at the back of my closet. The urge to see it. Open it. The strength it took to resist.

Instead, I’d told my therapist about these feelings (but not about the box, because that was one secret I needed to hold on to). My therapist told my doctor, and my doctor tinkered with my dosage.

“Yes,” I finally said. “It threw me good.”

We drove home with all four windows down, the breeze deep in my lungs.

I looked at my hand and wondered where the creases on Camden’s palm had lined up with the ones on mine.

I’d left my number. It would have felt worse if I hadn’t, but I was sort of at his mercy now.

Wait, who was I kidding? I’d been at his mercy all along.

8

I opened my
eyes in the half-light of Kendall’s bedroom, not sure what time it was or whether I had actually slept at all.

This room was so familiar from our years of sleepovers. The blue shag area rug on the floor next to me, the pile of dirty clothing that was always different but also, somehow, the same. Kendall’s ceiling with the hot-air balloon mobile hanging in the corner, the window with the cracked pane, that poster of the kittens eating cake. Even the air mattress under my sleeping bag was a type of home.

In this moment, it was easy to feel like the night before had never happened, that none of its strange magic or glorious
surprises had, in fact, been real. Maybe we were still twelve, fourteen, sixteen, and we’d made it all up in a story we’d told each other in the dark.

“Will you help me write an email to James?” said Kendall’s voice suddenly from the bed.

“You’re awake?”

“Duh.”

I laughed with relief.

“Did you sleep at all?” I asked.

“I’m not sure.”

I laughed again, then got up, retrieved Kendall’s laptop from her desk, and fell onto the foot of her bed.

“Move over,” I said.

She scooched close to her pillows and hugged her knees close.

“Do you think he liked me?” she asked.

“Uh, yeah.”

“Because they always seem like they like me, at first. But then something changes. I can’t figure out what.”

“It’s not you,” I said, not sure if that were completely true. Kendall usually clammed up and got so shy, so nervous. The more she liked someone and the closer they got to something sparking, the weirder she started acting. I could easily see how a guy could misinterpret that as her pushing him away. But I’d never been able to tell her this. Especially after Lady Bic Night, and after Lukas. Our lives had diverged too much in this department.

But right now, we were at the same point, hovering on the edge of something with someone. This changed everything.

“I guess we’ll see,” said Kendall.

“You’ve been lying here, writing a rough draft in your head, yes?”

“Oh, yes.”

I passed her the laptop. “Okay, show me.”

Kendall pulled up to the curb in front of Millie’s. We’d pressed Send on her email to James and jumped on the air mattress for a few minutes. I was convinced that light rays of nervous energy were about to shoot out of our fingers.

“You’ll keep me posted?” I asked.

“You’ll turn on your goddamn phone at some point?” she shot back, pointing with her chin at my bag. I hadn’t yet dared switch it on. If it wasn’t on, I couldn’t
not
get a call.

“Yes, yes.”

“Do it now. I want to watch you do it.”

I gave her a dirty look. “Fine. But there won’t be anything. It’s too early.”

I fished out my phone, held down the Power button, and the screen lit up. We waited for a few seconds for it to tell me I had a voice mail.

It didn’t tell me I had a voice mail.

“Too early, like you said,” said Kendall.

We both stared at the phone as if it might offer a more expert opinion.
According to my data, the average turnaround time for a “call me” request to a potential love interest is 18.5 hours. If at all.

After Kendall drove away, I turned to see Richard standing in the window of the store, holding up two coffees.

“Fun night?” he asked as I came inside and took one of the coffees from him.

“Amazing,” I said, realizing it was true regardless of what happened next.

What happened next was that I made myself busy for an hour. Max’s yarn had come in the previous afternoon, and I packed it up in a crisp brown paper bag with handles.

Two people came into the store during that time, and neither of them bought anything. I watched Richard watch the
FIND VERA!
flyer as the door closed behind each one, until it stopped fluttering and finally became still.

“Aren’t Sunday mornings always slow?” I asked, waving my hand in front of his face.

“Yes, yes,” he said, snapping out of it.

“It’ll be okay,” I offered, even though I wasn’t sure what
it
was. Maybe that didn’t matter. It was a fill-in-the-blanks thing to say.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. My breath caught. My adrenaline surged.

It was not a number I recognized.

“Hello?” I said, my voice shaking.

“Ari?” asked Camden. He sounded far away. Fainter, and quieter. Tired, or nervous.

I swallowed hard, to make sure my throat was even working.

“You found my note.” I’d discussed this with Kendall, and we’d decided this was the best opening line. It came out okay. Almost regular.

“Eliza found it and stuffed it in my pants while I was sleeping.”

“Oh. That’s . . . sweet?”

“The Eliza version, yes.”

We both laughed, then fell quiet. I felt like we’d traveled successfully up the ramp to this conversation and were now cleared for takeoff. Richard looked up at me from where he sat at the counter.

“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.