Chapter Twenty-Two

I had fucked up.

Breathing in jagged, panicked breaths, I ran through the hotel and out the front doors. Now, where to? Dusk had fallen, casting everything in blue and purple shadows.

What had I done? Why had I made such a scene? Should I go back in and apologize? No; it would be easier for Dad to smooth things over if I was gone.

Besides, I didn’t want to apologize or smooth things over. Maybe I had laid everything out wrong—I hadn’t been prepared to try to convince anyone about Andrea Darrel—but shouldn’t Mr. Gibson have been willing to hear what I’d found out? He’d been so dismissive of Andrea, and of me. I shouldn’t have been written off as emotional.

I needed to get out of here. Scanning the parking lot, I caught sight of a car with a Lyft sticker. I ran toward it, Cinderella to her pumpkin, hoping it wouldn’t melt away. “Hi!” I yelled, waving my hands. “Are you free?”

The driver rolled down her window. “You running from someone, honey?”

“Embarrassment. Humiliation. Shame.”

The driver winced. “Can’t outrun melodrama,” she said under her breath. “All right, get in. But you gotta find me on the app.”

In minutes, we were speeding away. I’d put downtown as my destination, uncertain of where I wanted to go but certain it wasn’t where anyone could find me. I watched the trees dash past, tall pines heavy with summer moss. Where should I go? Not Golden Doors. The Atheneum? But it would probably be closed now.

Abby or one of her friends?

Not Abby’s. She was dating Noah Barbanel, and I didn’t want the Barbanels to be able to find me until I was ready. Stella, then. I texted her. Any chance I could crash with you for the night? I’m having a bad day

Sure, she texted back immediately, followed by the address. I’ve got lots of ice cream.

Stella did have lots of ice cream.

I’d never been to her place before. It was a tiny room in a building with a bunch of other tiny rooms for rent, filled with summer employees. Like my dad’s room, it was located in a forested mid-island neighborhood; I redirected my driver there, and she dropped me off at Stella’s doorstep.

We collapsed on her rug and devoured a pint of Ben and Jerry’s. “What’s going on?” she asked. “Did you and Ethan have a fight?”

“No.” I belatedly realized this meant she thought Ethan and I were together. So much for our theoretical secrecy. “I made a total idiot of myself, though.”

As I told her about the accidental confrontation with Mr. Gibson, Stella looked infuriated on my behalf. “What a jerk.”

“Yeah. But I should have kept it together.” I was too mortified to look at my phone, though it kept buzzing in my pocket. I put it facedown on Stella’s bed, hoping to ignore it.

“Now what are you going to do?”

Now? “I don’t know. I was sort of hoping to avoid thinking about that for a while.”

Stella’s phone buzzed. She glanced at it and grimaced. “Ethan wants to know if I’ve seen you. What do you want me to say?”

I fell over backward on the floor and flung my arm over my forehead. “I don’t know. I feel…humiliated. I embarrassed my dad, and maybe risked his chance at an important grant. I was a disaster in front of my boss. And Ethan already thinks I’m jumpy and wary about dating him and probably a weirdo and he told me—and I agreed—to not make a big deal out of this until later and then I went off the rails—”

“I’m just not going to say anything.”

I nodded.

“Did you know that cheetahs are very anxious and zoos give them their own emotional support dogs to help them feel comfy and model social behavior?”

I blinked. “No. I did not.”

She turned her phone toward me. A golden retriever puppy and a fluffy little cheetah were flopped on top of each other. “Wanna watch TikToks of baby cheetahs cuddling with their emotional support puppies?”

Yes. I did.

We were deep down the rabbit hole of baby animal friendships when a knock sounded at the door. “Stella! Stella, are you there?”

Stella and I stared at each other. “I swear I didn’t text him anything.”

But maybe not texting had given us away; maybe everyone else had responded in the negative. My chest felt both heavy and hollow, and my ears buzzed in a way that seemed to slow the world down. “I’ll talk to him.”

“Are you sure?”

“It’s fine,” I said faintly. “I don’t even know why I ran away. I have to face him—everyone—at some point.”

As though in a fog, I crossed to the door and swung it open. “Hi.”

Ethan stood there, arm raised and poised to knock again. He breathed heavily, as though he’d been running (though from where? His car to the door?), and his eyes widened, like he hadn’t expected to find me. “You’re here.”

“I am,” I agreed. In case, I don’t know, he needed verbal proof.

We stared at each other.

Creeping shame burrowed its fingers through me. I couldn’t believe I’d run. Like a child. I should have stayed, I should have borne the brunt of whatever conversation occurred, I should never have gone off like that in the first place—but I had, and now Ethan thought I was an idiot and a fool and the kind of mean, stupid child who was willing to throw her father’s career away.

I didn’t want to threaten Dad’s chance of getting a grant. I just wanted to stand up for Andrea Darrel.

“We should talk,” I said abruptly. I leaned back into the room. “Thanks, Stella. We’re gonna go for a walk.”

“Okay.” She popped her head out. “Let me know if you need me. Hey, Ethan.”

He nodded at her, and then we headed down the hall and out of the building. I led him across the street from Stella’s, where a grassy trail led into deep woods. Around us the trees shot up tall and lush, dark green moss dampening their bark.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have run. I was overwhelmed.”

“He should be sorry,” Ethan said immediately. “Gibson. He was a jerk.”

My gaze shot toward him. “What?”

“He shouldn’t have been so patronizing.”

“You thought he was patronizing?” I thought he’d been patronizing, which should have been enough, but I felt weirdly validated Ethan agreed.

“Yeah, of course. He called you sweetie and said you were emotional.”

I ducked my head. “Yeah.”

We were silent a moment. “You should let your dad know you’re okay,” Ethan said. “He’s really worried about you.”

And after I had spent all summer trying to make him notworry, trying to prove myself adult and capable and not messy. So much for that. “He’s probably really disappointed, huh.”

Ethan looked at me curiously. “Disappointed about what?”

I gave a little shrug, as though that lessened the impact. “In me. At my behavior.”

Ethan frowned. “I don’t think he was disappointed. I think he was worried. And confused.”

But he had to have been a little disappointed, didn’t he? He didn’t come after me, after all. I stared up at the moon, half obscured by clouds.

“What?” Ethan asked.

I shrugged again. “I guess I wanted him to follow me.”

“But he did,” Ethan said. “I mean, he stayed long enough to tell off Gibson and then he went after you. We all did, me and Cora too. But by the time we made it outside you were being whisked away in a car, and we’ve spent the rest of the night searching for you.”

“He told Gibson off?” I don’t know why I was so surprised—or why I wanted to cry. Except I wasn’t sure I deserved my dad standing up for me.

But I was really glad he had.

“Yeah. Well, in your dad’s very polite way of telling someone off. He said Mr. Gibson couldn’t speak to you like that, and he was being rude and inappropriate, and his reaction shouldn’t have been to be challenged but to find out what your whole case was.”

Oh. “But why didn’t he say that when we were fighting?” I asked in a small voice. “Why didn’t he back me up?”

It was Ethan’s turn to shrug. “I don’t know, I think he was listening. Processing. Your dad doesn’t always jump into the middle of conversations.”

This was true. It probably did not mean he thought I was the worst, but rather too rapid-fire. Maybe. “Oh.”

“You should let him know you’re okay,” Ethan said again.

A terrible and painful idea. I winced, then pulled my phone out. Ignoring the cacophony of alerts, I called Dad. He answered right away.

“Hi, Dad,” I said in a small voice.

“Jordan?” Dad sounded panicked. “Are you okay? Where are you?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry for bolting. And—exploding.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m at my friend Stella’s.”

“I’ll come pick you up.”

Of course he would. Which I hadn’t quite been ready for. “Okay,” I agreed, and gave him the address.

Hanging up, I turned back to Ethan. “He’ll be here in fifteen minutes.”

“Cool.” Ethan opened his mouth, hesitated, closed it, then tried again. “Are we okay?”

I looked down at the moss and the forest floor and the ferns, then up at the sun casting its last rays of light through the forest canopy. “What do you mean?”

“I didn’t speak up, either.” He paused. “And you left me behind.”

Struck, I stared at him. I hadn’t realized Ethan might be afraid I might leave. That he might have a hard time trusting me. “Ethan. I’m so sorry.” I stepped forward, cupping his cheek with my hand. “I’m sorry I freaked out. And I don’t want to break your heart either. I think you’re amazing.”

He smiled at me, a soft smile that made his entire face glow with a golden light. “I think you are, too, Jordan. I’m wild about you.”

Something hard and tight broke apart in my chest, leaving breath coursing freely through me, my heart pumping hard enough I could hear it, feel it. I rose on my toes and kissed him.

He smiled down at me. “What next?”

I leaned my head back, gazing through the tree branches above us. In the dusk, only the brightest stars could be spotted. I sought Polaris, steady and bright. What could anyone ever do but follow their own north star? “I’m not ready to give up. I want to figure out what really happened. Maybe later on, I’ll be too tired to try to right wrongs. Maybe at some point I’ll be exhausted and burned out, but right now—I have the energy. If we want to make the world better, we have to try.”

“All right. Then that’s what we’ll do.”

“That’s what we’ll do,” I agreed. “We’ll show the world what Andrea Darrel of Nantucket discovered.”