The Unexpected Everything (20 page)

I realized after a moment that he was waiting to make sure I got inside okay. There was a piece of me that would have appreciated this under different circumstances. But not tonight. Tonight it was just annoying. I walked up to the side entrance and pulled open the screen door, then took out my keys and pretended to unlock it. I glanced toward the driveway, but his car was still there waiting. Rolling my eyes, I unlocked the door and stepped inside, and only then did Clark drive away.

•  •  •

I pressed on the brakes even though there were no cars behind me and none in front of me, but I had a habit of missing the turn to get into the Orchard and not realizing it until I'd gone about a mile too far down the road, driving along with the sinking feeling that I should have been there by now. And I didn't want to waste that time tonight. I wanted to vent to my friends. And then, once that was done, I wanted to move on. I'd spent the drive over working out my plan. I needed someone to replace who I had hoped Clark would be—someone to help me forget about everything that had happened in the last two weeks, someone to help me turn my summer around. And Clark clearly was not going to be that person, so I would have to find someone else.

As I was about to speed up, thinking I'd slowed too early, there was the old Orchard sign, with its two cherries, letting me know I was in the right place. I swung in, starting to relax the closer I got. At some point, the Orchard had been a functional orchard, but ever since I'd first heard about it—when Palmer's
oldest sibling, Fitz, was in high school and we were still in elementary—it had been the town party spot. Not so much in the winter, but in the summers it was filled with people from the three neighboring high schools and the occasional bored-looking Stanwich College student. And tonight it was just the place I wanted to be.

I swung my car into the open field that had been repurposed as a parking lot. I got out of the car, locked it, and walked toward the main part of the Orchard, where picnic tables ringed the open space and off to the side there was usually someone selling overpriced keg beer or cans from a cooler that never seemed to get very cold, despite the ice packed around them. I walked forward, looking around for my friends. I'd texted them when I'd stopped at the gatehouse and had heard from Tom (on Palmer's phone) that they were en route. I was pretty sure I hadn't beaten them there, but if I had, I'd just sit at one of the picnic tables and begin the process of putting this night behind me.

I felt someone nudge my shoulder and looked over to see Wyatt Miller standing next to me, a red Solo cup of beer in each hand and a half smile on his face.

“I know you,” I said, nudging him back, our version of a hug, careful not to spill the beers. “Welcome back.”

“Thanks,” he said, taking a sip from one of them and smiling a little wider at me, and I made myself look away before it affected me. I got used to Wyatt after a few days, but if it had been a while since I'd seen him, it was always a little startling—he was probably the best-looking person I'd ever seen in my life, outside of a multiplex or a cologne ad. He had light-brown hair that he wore a little long and was always pushing back with
one hand. He tended to wear threadbare old band shirts, skinny jeans, and Converse, even when it was the height of summer. He was thin, with cheekbones for days, but Toby swore up and down that it wasn't his looks that made her fall for him. She insisted that he had hidden depths, which Tom said must be
really
well hidden indeed. But I could see what she meant—he was quiet (which made it easier for Toby to project all kinds of silent, conflicted feelings onto him), usually observing more than participating. But he had a deadpan, snarky sense of humor that still caught me by surprise sometimes. He played bass in a series of bands at his boarding school (bands that always seemed to be breaking up and getting back together, which was probably inevitable when you lived with people and couldn't escape them). Without even trying hard, I could picture all the girls at Briarville swooning over him during his concerts.

“How's life? What,” he said, looking at me directly, like he was about to ask me a very serious question, “is the haps?”

I laughed at that. “You didn't bring your guitar, did you?” It had been the thing Wyatt and I had argued about the most last summer. When he'd had a beer or two, suddenly his acoustic guitar appeared, and even though he was good, in my opinion, that didn't matter. Suddenly, all conversation stopped and the night became about Wyatt strumming chords. Toby loved it, though, and spent way too much time speculating on whether he was writing her a song, despite the fact that nothing really rhymed with Toby.

“Nah,” he said, shaking his head. “Thought I'd wait and give you a private concert.”

“No.”
I groaned, then looked over and saw one of his
eyebrows was raised, which was how I knew he was kidding. Wyatt's deadpan made it hard to tell sometimes. “Oh,” I said. “Gotcha.” I looked over at him and noticed that practically every girl in the vicinity was looking in our direction. “So how've you been, Miller?”

“I should be asking you that, Walker,” he replied, as he nodded toward the tables and started to lead the way over. Wyatt always called me by my last name, and even though I rolled my eyes at it, I secretly liked it. “I hear you had a hot date tonight,” he said, taking another drink from his cup.

“Not so much,” I said, falling into step next to him and spotting where we were going—the farthest picnic table, where my friends were.

“Oh.” He shot me a sympathetic look. “Well,” he said with a shrug, “always more fish in the sea? Etcetera?”

I nodded. That was pretty much what I'd been thinking the whole drive over here. “Something like that.”

Toby saw us coming and jumped up, then started to sit back down again, then stopped in the middle, doing a kind of half-lean thing that I'm sure she thought was natural but actually looked incredibly uncomfortable. She crossed her arms, then uncrossed them, then crossed them again. “I see you found Andie, huh?” she asked, then laughed loudly. After a few moments, she stopped abruptly and took a long drink from her cup, her face flushing as red as her hair.

“I did indeed,” Wyatt said, crossing over to Bri and handing her the other cup. In my peripheral vision, I could see Palmer surreptitiously wipe the excess foam off Toby's nose.

“Don't try to change the subject,” Bri said, mouthing
her thanks to Wyatt and then pointing at Toby. “This is an intervention.”

“How is saying hello to Andie changing the subject?” Toby asked.

“An intervention for what?” I asked, looking around at my friends and starting to relax. I was already feeling better, just being around them. The date was starting to fade into the background a bit.

“Emojis,” Tom, Bri, and Palmer said at the same time.

“Andie,” Toby said, turning to me, “tell them they're being ridiculous.”

“No,” I said, laughing at Toby's outraged expression. “You're out of control with them. I heartily approve of this. How do I join this intervention?”

“I've honestly worried sometimes that you've forgotten how to form whole sentences,” Bri said, her voice overly serious. “You're my best friend, Tobyhanna. And I'm concerned for you.”

“Emojis are fun!” Toby protested, her voice rising. “It's not like I'm the only one who uses them. You all do.”

“I don't,” Wyatt said with a shrug.

“See?” Toby said, pointing at him in triumph, then frowning a second later when she must have realized this didn't help her argument.

“You need to dial it back,” Palmer said as she pulled out her phone. “Like this afternoon, you texted me ‘I'm so whale, dancing girl, dancing girl, blushing smiley, nervous-teeth smiley, star, star, pizza.' ” She looked up from her phone. “What was that
supposed to
mean
?”

Toby didn't respond, just pointedly looked down at the ground, and I wasn't sure if this was because she was being criticized in front of Wyatt, or because the message was actually about him. Judging by the way Toby had glanced in his direction while it was being read, I had a feeling it might be the latter.

“We're only encouraging you to maybe use more text-based communication,” Bri said, a little more gently. “You know, for a fun change every now and then.”

“Emojis can express everything you need them to!” Toby said.

“Oh, really?” Palmer asked, the look coming into her eyes that I knew all too well. If Toby hadn't been so riled up, she would have noticed it too. It was the look we had all come to fear. When Palmer looked like that, suddenly she was yelling, “Fire drill!” when at a red light, which meant we all had to get out of the car, run around it, and change seats before the light turned green. It was how I had ended up not being able to use the past tense for a whole month of AP History and the reason Bri still refused to eat wraps. Palmer was about to throw down a challenge. “Then I bet you can't go the rest of the summer using only emojis.”

“And if I can?” Toby asked, ignoring the fact that both Bri and I were shaking our heads at her. This was Toby's Achilles' heel, and always had been—the moment she should walk away, she dug her heels in more, even when she was given an out, and her stubbornness always came back to bite her.

“Then . . . I'll never give you any grief about your emoji usage,” Palmer said, raising an eyebrow. “You can use them to your heart's content. But if you can't, you can't use any for the rest of the year.”

“You're on,” Toby said, and Palmer held out her hand to shake.

“Witness?” Palmer asked, and Tom and Wyatt raised their hands. “Okay, Toby has agreed to text using only emojis for the rest of the summer. And if she can't, no more emojis until next year. If she can, I never make fun of her again.”

“What did you just
do
?” Bri asked, staring at Toby. “And why are the stakes so low for Palmer?”

“It's fine,” Toby said, though she was starting to look discomfited. “I can totally get what I need to say across to you guys. I mean, it might take some more work, but that's why emojis are awesome.”

“Not just us,” Palmer said, shaking her head. “Nothing but emojis in all your texts to
everyone
.”

Toby paled—it was clear she hadn't considered this. “Wait,” she said a little faintly. “You didn't say that. Did you?”

“She did just say texts,” Tom said, though I wasn't sure how much this meant, since he would have backed Palmer up in pretty much anything.

“Wyatt?” Toby asked, turning to him, looking more and more worried.

Wyatt shook his head. “Sorry,” he said. “Miss Palmer speaks the truth.”

“But . . .” Toby looked from me to Bri, like we hadn't been trying to stop her a minute before. “How am I supposed to tell my mom I'm running late for dinner? Or ask someone to cover my shift at work?”

“Be creative,” Palmer said with a grin. “I mean, emojis can express whatever you need them to. Someone told me that.”

“Fine,” Toby snapped, like she hadn't just agreed to these terms. “I can totally do this. Just watch.”

“I will,” Palmer said, “and don't think we won't be checking your phone to make sure you're not cheating.”

“Andie,” Bri said, turning to me with the air of someone who knows that a subject change would be wise, “how was your date?”

“Oh, yeah, the date,” Tom said, turning to me and smiling wide. “So?”

“Ugh,” I said, as the earlier part of my night came back to me, and my friends' expressions immediately changed from excited to sympathetic.

“Oh, no,” Palmer said, reaching out and giving my hand a squeeze. “Not Dogboy! I had high hopes for him.”

“Dogboy?” Wyatt asked.

“Yeah, well,” I said with a shrug. “One of those things.”

“Was it a bad date?” Bri asked, scooting closer to Palmer so that I could sit next to her.

“I didn't think it was
terrible
,” I said, thinking back to the actual time spent at the restaurant. It would have been fine if Clark had gone along with any of my conversation suggestions. “But then when he drove me home . . .”

“Bad kisser?” Tom asked sympathetically.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “We didn't even come close to that. He just had a really bad time.”

“I'm sure that's not true,” Palmer said immediately.

“No, he did have a bad time,” I said. “He
told
me he did. Apparently, he was mad that I didn't ask him anything about himself or tell him anything about me.” A moment after I'd
said it, it was like I actually heard what I was saying. My friends looked back at me, slightly frozen expressions on everyone's faces.

“Um . . . did you do that?” Bri asked, hesitation in her voice after a pause in which everyone had become very interested in the ground, or the contents of their cups. “Or . . . not do that?”

“I did what I always do on dates. He was just weird.”

“I think it sounds like he called you on that thing you do,” Palmer said, and Bri and Tom nodded knowingly.

“What thing?” Palmer, Tom, and Bri all took a breath at once, like they were preparing to detail just what was wrong with me, and I shook my head. I didn't think I wanted to hear it, and anyway, I needed to get to work scoping out new prospects. I shook my head. “Never mind. Let's talk about something else, okay?” I looked around the group, trying to think of anything that didn't involve emoticons or my dating life. “Wyatt,” I said, feeling like he was the most neutral person here, as well as the one currently least likely to make fun of me, “are you here for the whole summer?”

“Three whole months,” he said, nodding. “I'm going to have to look into the job thing one of these days.”