Twenty

twenty

What we eventually realize, after wringing Mickey’s brain out like a sponge, is this: neither of our parents were coming to confront us about Operation Stealth Sister. Savvy’s parents were there because Mickey mentioned Savvy’s cold to her mom, who then mentioned it to Savvy’s mom.

“And that merited both your parents dropping their lives and crossing a large body of water in less than twenty-four hours because…?” I ask.

Savvy scowls, charging ahead and leading us deeper into the woods. “Why were your parents here?”

Ah. That. I wince, opening the protein bar Savvy handed to me before yanking me onto a hiking path and telling me to follow her.

“There’s a medium-to-large-ish chance I failed a class and I’m supposed to be in summer school right now.”

“Summer school?”

And there it is again. The raised eyebrows, the disbelieving tone. Even with literal twigs in her hair and her nose redder than Rudolph’s she manages to ooze the kind of authority that would make my school principal hand Savvy the keys to her office without thinking twice.

“Yeah, yeah, we can’t all be Betty Coopers,” I say.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound … judgy. I was surprised, is all.”

Well, that’s a notch up from her being unsurprised, so I’ll take it. I’m about to circle back to Savvy’s parents crossing the Puget Sound over her sniffles, but Savvy finally comes to a stop.

“Whoa.”

The path has given way to a clearing with a wide view and a sharp, unexpected drop—not quite as high as some of the perches I’ve seen since we got here, but breathtaking. We’re far enough away that we can see the camp below, the cabins and the cafeteria and the tennis courts stretched out beyond us, campers starting to mill about lazily for the less-structured Sunday agenda. I don’t realize how quiet it is up here until Savvy lets out a sneeze and I flinch.

Savvy touches my shoulder. “It gets really muddy,” she warns.

I glance down at the drop from the edge below. It isn’t perilous, but it’s steep, and it doesn’t really look like there’s much of a way to get back up if you tumble down.

I take a step back, resenting that I heard all those thoughts in Leo’s voice.

“What is this place?”

“Well, it was where we did archery, that one summer after the first Hunger Games movie came out and a bunch of kids were into it. But then nobody wanted to hike all the way up here, and the path got overgrown, and … most people forgot about it.”

Her eyes linger on the base of a tree but wrench away so quickly that I know better than to look at whatever it was.

“But not you.”

Savvy shrugs and sits down on a tree stump. I plop down on the stump next to her, still wondering if I really saw my parents’ car or if I’m going to wake up in the cabin to find out this was all some bonkers bug spray–induced fever dream.

“So our parents hate each other.”

“We don’t know that,” says Savvy.

“The last time I saw a Prius going that fast, the REI flagship downtown was having a garage sale.” I sink my teeth into the protein bar. “Besides, all of our collective parents were here, which means mine probably saddled three boys under the age of ten with my unsuspecting uncle and took the six A.M. ferry. And then just … left?”

The hurt doesn’t really know where to settle in me, or if it even should. They have no way of knowing that I know they’re here. And it’s not like they left because they were mad at me. Hell, they’re here because they’re mad at me. But the whole thing has me uneasy. The decision to come all the way here must have been a big one. That can only mean the force that drove them out is bigger—bigger, even, than getting to see me.

“Ugh,” says Savvy, burying her head in her knees. “I wish our parents would just … chill.”

“I mean, I blatantly lied to mine and hacked into their emails to avoid my legal obligation to attend summer school, so they’re probably at the right amount of un-chill,” I admit. “Yours, on the other hand … what’s got them so worked up about the sniffles? Are you sure they’re not here because of Jo?”

“No,” Savvy says miserably, her face muffled by her leggings. “Jo’s long gone.”

“Oh.”

I’m not sure if I’m supposed to ask. Being with Savvy is like—there’s this closeness, an understanding somewhere in the core of us, in our matching eyes and rhythms and magpie charms. And there’s this friendship that we’ve started to build between us. But it’s missing the in-between. The part in the middle of being a friend and being related, where you know things about each other’s lives and know where you fit and what kind of person you are when you’re with them.

“My parents—they’ve been like this ever since I can remember. When I was a kid I’d sneeze and end up in the pediatrician’s waiting room. One time they kept me home from school because my tongue was green, and it took the whole damn day for us to remember I’d had a Jolly Rancher the night before.”

“Were you like, super sick as a kid or something?”

“Not even. But they always seemed to think—”

She stops herself, staring at the half-eaten protein bar in her hands, and licks her upper lip.

“Seemed to think what?”

She stares for a few more moments without answering. I’ve had to get used to this. Savvy’s pauses, the way she is always trying to word things so carefully. It’s better not to try to prompt her. She’ll usually say whatever it is eventually, but sometimes I can’t help myself.

“They seemed to think—well—they’ve always been paranoid about me having some kind of undiagnosed heart condition. Which, as far as I know, I don’t,” she adds quickly. “Just one weird blip on a monitor as a baby that even the doctor said not to worry about, but my mom was convinced it was something else, and that if I ever got too sick it would make it pop up and become a real problem.”

“That’s … an oddly specific fear.”

Savvy nods, watching me, and only then do I realize her hesitation. Maybe it isn’t odd. Maybe it’s just specific.

“Nobody in my family had any weird heart things that I know about. Do your parents think we do?”

“I kind of assumed? I was mostly busy being annoyed.” Savvy blows out a breath. “But it all kind of rubbed off in the end, I guess.”

“Uh, you’re like, the opposite of a hypochondriac. I’m pretty sure even if you were at death’s door you would challenge the grim reaper to a green juice shot contest and be on your merry way. You’re like, the healthiest person I know.”

“Yeah, because I had to be. As long as I was doing a whole song and dance about taking care of myself, my parents would get off my case.” She lets out a laugh, extending out her knees and stretching her back, like the words loosened something in her joints and she doesn’t know how to hold them. “I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone that.”

I nudge her knee with mine, and it settles her a bit. “I think that’s the kind of thing your friends probably already know.”

Savvy’s smile gets smaller, less intentional. Like she’s revisiting something. “Yeah.” She adds, “To be clear, I like what I do. The Instagram, I mean. Or…”

“You like spending time with Mickey.”

Savvy straightens up so quickly that I know I’m right, but almost wish I hadn’t been. Or at least figured out that I should have kept my mouth shut.

“Are you going to leave?” Savvy asks, her voice quieter than it’s been all morning.

I pick at a weed in the ground, stabbing its stem with my fingernails, watching the juices dye my skin green. There’s no scenario where my parents don’t yank me out of here. But the disappointment isn’t as much of a blow as I thought it would be. The time I’ve had here—the mornings watching the sun rise with Savvy and Rufus, the afternoons on the water with the girls and sneaking around to get good views with Finn, the nights eating food with my fingers with Leo and Mickey—it was always too good to last. Like when you’re in a good dream, but you know you’re dreaming. I was here on borrowed time.

“I don’t want to.”

Some of Savvy relaxes, like she can only let herself go a few degrees at a time. “Well, you’ve already missed summer school, right? The damage is done.”

“There’s a second session,” I say miserably. “And it doesn’t start until after camp ends in two weeks, but I’m sure they’ll pull me out anyway. I’m kind of surprised it didn’t happen sooner.”

“Are your parents big into you getting into a good college or something?”

I shrug. We actually haven’t talked about it all that much. I always kind of assumed I’d go to the community college nearby until I figured out what I wanted to do, and nobody seemed to have a problem with that.

“Then why are they so fixated on your grades and signing you up for all this stuff?”

“I’m not, like, dumb.”

“I know,” says Savvy. Not too fast, or too placatingly. “Victoria mentioned your first practice scores were probably too high to justify SAT prep.”

Even elbows deep in trying to dissect our parents’ drama, I’m oddly tickled to hear this.

“I … I don’t know. My grades were always fine. But this year … not as much, I guess.”

What I don’t say is that they dipped after Poppy died. That it happened right before the start of junior year. That the grades themselves weren’t so bad, maybe, but how I didn’t seem to care scared the pants off my parents.

And it’s not that I didn’t care, exactly. It’s just that by the time the school year started, I was exhausted. Everything was changing—not only the big, scary changes, but the little, more practical ones. The shakeups in our routines, the things my parents had to account for without Poppy around to help. I didn’t realize how much of the care and keeping of Abby Day had been relegated to him. Didn’t realize until my parents shifted to make up for it, and suddenly way too much of their focus was aimed at me.

“They just started putting me in tutoring for everything, even the stuff where I was doing okay.”

“But you hate it.”

“With a burning, fiery passion.”

“And you haven’t told them.”

It’s not a question. My reputation for letting problems fester has apparently preceded me.

“It wasn’t so bad, at first,” I explain. The protein bar starts to taste mealy, like it’s too thick to chew. I wrap up the remains and set it on my knee, staring as it stays perfectly balanced, waiting for it to fall. “Poppy—my grandpa—he always used to knock them out of the whole helicopter parenting thing, if they were going off the rails. Sometimes he’d even fake kidnap me, and we’d go up to the trail or to Green Lake with our cameras.”

“That sounds fun.”

My eyes are still perfectly trained on the bar, and I’m almost glad when it falls, so my eyes have something to focus on instead of tearing up the way they want to.

“Yeah.” My voice wavers. “Anyway, joke’s on them. The more tutoring they put me through, the worse my grades get.”

“Are you doing it on purpose?”

Am I? Sometimes I feel like the last year slipped out from under me, and I can’t even measure it in time so much as things that happened in it. Losing Poppy. The BEI. Finding out about Savvy. The rest is this murky haze, like I’ve been underwater, trying to go with the current, and only just broken the surface and realized how far downstream I am.

“I don’t think so. But … once I started falling behind…”

“It’s hard to catch up.”

“Maybe if they let me. If I just had some time to…” I let out a sigh. “I mean, this whole Reynolds-method SAT prep thing? I don’t hate it. I’m getting okay at it, even. Because we have time to do our own shit afterward. My brain can like, hit flush. Reset. Whatever.”

Savvy nods appreciatively.

“And I will talk to them. Maybe later. When the timing’s not so…”

“Yeah,” Savvy agrees. “And it’s hard, I guess. To get mad about stuff they do because they love us.”

It suctions something in my chest that, in all the chaos, I’ve been able to ignore: I miss them. I almost want things to go back to normal, just so I can hug them, and talk to them about the boring parts of my day that nobody else cares about, and feel that warm feeling of being theirs, without everything else getting in the way.

But the key is the almost. Because I’m understanding now that it’s not just that I can’t undo this—I don’t want to. I don’t want to go back to a world where I don’t know Savvy. Not because she’s my sister, but because, against all odds, I think she might be my friend.

“Yeah.” I crush the protein bar wrapper in my hand, steeling myself. “They love us. So they’ve gotta tell us the truth.”

Savvy nods, and we both get up. I start to head back down the path first, but Savvy’s voice stops me.

“I hope you get to stay.”

I’m not a hugger, really, so I’m not even sure why I’m leaning in until I’m doing it—hugging this girl who is me and not-me, this girl I don’t relate to at all but somehow understand. She stiffens, but then hugs me back and squeezes, and it feels solid, then. The understanding between us. No matter what happens, this isn’t the end of us. There is going to be a whole lot more bickering and sunrise photo sessions and trying to make sense of ourselves to come.

We turn to leave, and I duck down to tie my shoe. Only then do I see the little carving in the old tree, whittled with a pocketknife, faded with time: Mick + Sav, written in a big, carved star.