Twenty-Eight

twenty-eight

“Holy crap, Abby.”

Not the most pleasant way to wake up, and it doesn’t get better from there. The throb in my wrist has escalated to a five-alarm-fire kind of pain that only seems to get worse the more awake I am. I blearily open my eyes to Cam, who is staring at my arm like it’s a horror movie.

“Did you get into a fight with a bear?”

I follow her eyes to my wrist, which has swelled to approximately the size and shape of a mutilated balloon animal. I try to jerk it under the covers, but end up hissing in pain before I can move it more than an inch.

Izzy’s head pops over to my bedside. “You need to go see the nurse.”

“S’happening?” Jemmy, who is not a morning person until someone puts food in her, mumbles from the top bunk.

“My wrist looks like an angry potato,” I inform her.

“Potato,” she murmurs, fully asleep before the end of the word.

“Seriously,” says Izzy, “nurse. Now. We’ll walk you.”

I sit up, my head aching and my body stiff from a crying hangover. I need water, Advil, and maybe someone to saw off my arm.

But with the pain comes an even more brutal clarity: I need to find Savvy and apologize. I never got a chance to call her back last night, and if I’m going to get dragged out of here without any idea of when I’ll see her again, it has to happen with the air cleared.

“I’m fine,” I say. Off Izzy’s look, I add, “Okay, I’m terrible, but I’ll be fine to get myself over to the office. Go grab breakfast. Save me a seat.”

It’s the opposite of goodbye, which is what I should be saying to them. But it hasn’t sunk in yet, even though I figure I have about half an hour before my parents roll up. They called Victoria last night to let me know when to expect them. It’s not nearly enough time, but it’s the only time I’ve got.

I pull on a sweater to hide my gross wrist, even though it’s already hot enough that stepping out of the cabin feels like breathing in lukewarm soup. I don’t want Finn to see and feel bad, and I don’t want my parents to make a big scene about it before we go.

I’m outside the kitchens when I’m accosted by none other than Finn, who looks about as tired as I feel. He slows to a jog when he reaches me, looking pale in the light of day, but with some of that Finn spark back in his eyes.

“I wanted to make sure you’re okay,” he says, skidding to a stop. “And thank you, for last night.”

I wave my good hand at him.

His smile is smaller than usual. “I mean, I’d probably still be up there if it weren’t for you. They’d probably have had to call the fire brigade or something. And my ‘cool guy’ rep would have really gone down the drain.”

“That’s mostly why I helped. Heaven forbid a cooler guy upstage you here.”

Finn lets out an appreciative laugh, rocking back on his heels and pushing his mop of hair back with his hand. “Well—I’ll find you somewhere on the internet. See you when camp’s out?”

“Sure.”

Some of the usual mischief sneaks back into his face. “Maybe then I’ll take you on a real date. Not a terrifying one that’s forty feet above sea level.”

Before I can react, he wraps me in a hug so tight that my feet leave the ground. I give him a one-armed hug back on autopilot, aware of the sudden and searing heat of Leo’s eyes on us both. Finn pulls away and tweaks me on the cheek. “Bye for now, Bubbles.”

“Bye.”

There’s a beat when Finn is scampering off and I’m standing there watching him leave that I consider not turning around. Just walking around the other side of the building and going to breakfast, leaving Leo and his eyes there to make holes in the dirt.

“Well, I guess I know why you didn’t text after you found him,” says Leo. He’s trying for casual, but failing so spectacularly that I can hear the edge in his voice even with my back turned. “You and Finn are really a thing, then?”

I guess we’re cutting right to the chase. I turn around, braced for his irritation, but not everything else—the hurt shining in his eyes, heavy in his shoulders.

I take a breath. He isn’t allowed to feel hurt. Not after the past few months, and certainly not after the last two days.

“So what if we are?” I say. Whatever was brewing in me yesterday is right back, looking for trouble. This time, I don’t mind.

Leo blinks at me, like he had some script for how this conversation was going to go and I tossed it in the mud.

“Okay.” He says it slowly, his eyes on me but his face already tilting toward the ground. “Well. I hope you two are … happy.”

The words ring stilted and false, and he hovers there, like he can’t decide if he wants to keep pressing into this or turn and leave. I surprise both of us by making the decision for him.

“Okay, that’s it.” He snaps to attention, rising to meet my words. “So what if I’m with Finn? Why do you even care?”

“Why do I care?”

I press my heels farther into the dirt, squaring myself for this. Here it is—the moment that was going to happen on the other side of the BEI, and last night’s repeat of it. This was the inevitability. This was the bend that wouldn’t break. The truth neither of us would face.

“Well, first of all,” he says, taking my cue, “he’s a bad influence. You don’t think I heard about him dragging you up that stupid wishing tree last night? Or last week when you two tried to climb the roof of the cabin? Or the other day when you snuck off the damn property to take pictures from the neighboring camp’s docks, or—”

“He’s not putting me in danger, he’s doing those things because he’s helping me—”

“Because he’s trying to get you alone—”

“—and actually cares about my photography.”

I say the words dismissively, trying to cut past this argument to the heart of it, which is extremely not about Finn and very much about us.

“You think I don’t care about your photography?” Leo asks, with an indignant laugh. “I don’t … even know what to say to that. I mean—if you think I’m not supportive of you, there’s an entire Instagram page full of your photos that shows just how wrong you are.”

I grit my teeth. We both know what I’m talking about.

“You sure seem to like holding me back.”

“When have I ever—”

“Not with the photography,” I cut in. The chaos of my anger has tightened itself, made a shape I can hold on to, giving every word that comes out of me its own weight. “It’s the push-and-pull this whole damn summer. You don’t like me enough to want me, but you don’t want me to be happy with anybody else.”

Leo stares at me, so stunned that I might have curled the accusation into a fist and hurled it into him. But it’s like a dam has burst and everything is rushing up behind it, fighting its way to the surface.

“I mean, I get it, Leo. You don’t think of me the way I think, or thought, of you.” My resolve is already leaking out of me, so I have to bite the words out, saying them more to Leo’s chest than his face. “And who knows what would have happened if Connie hadn’t—” I shake my head. “But it’s fine. I made myself get over it, because that’s what friends do. Because you’re important to me. But you don’t even care enough about me to consider telling me you’re leaving before you up and go.”

My voice breaks on the last word. Something in his face splinters, and I know I’ve finally gotten through to him. I don’t live in the comfortable in-between now, of pretending Leo knows and doesn’t know the way I feel. It’s all laid out bare, and me right along with it.

“You think I didn’t tell you because you’re not important to me?”

I can only stare at him. I don’t know how else to answer without giving too much more of myself away.

“Don’t you get it?” Leo’s eyes well up, and I’m the one who’s stunned into silence. “I almost didn’t leave at all. Because I—of course I like you, Abby. I’ve wanted to tell you, but I—I knew I couldn’t do it if I was ever gonna leave.”

The breath I was going to let out catches in my throat, my anger dissolving so fast that my bones have almost forgotten how to hold me up without it.

“What?”

He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t have to. I see my own confusion and hurt reflected back at me. I see the gears turning in his brain the way they’re turning in mine, the enormity of what he just said, of what it means and what it doesn’t.

“Leo, I…” I want to be happy. I’ve waited for months, hoped against hope, to hear him say this to me. But I never thought he’d follow it up with something so bleak. “You think I’d stand in the way of you going? After everything we’ve been through, is that really what you think of me?”

Leo closes his eyes, breathing something out that’s heavier than air.

“No, Abby, that’s just it. I was afraid I’d stand in my own way. Because I knew if you felt the same way, I’d never be able to go.”

We’re both holding our breath, knowing the next few moments are going to define a lifetime’s worth of what we are to each other. We took reckless steps to get here, but we’ll have to take careful ones to get back.

I shake my head. “I’d have made you go. You know that, right?” I’m not even thinking when I take a step back toward him and lift my hand up. “That’s what—”

“Oh my god. Abby.”

His eyes are locked on my wrist. The pain has seared through my arm, an inconvenient and ill-timed reminder that I am broken in the figurative sense and in a very literal one. I try to shove my sleeve over it, but Leo’s too fast, his touch feather-light but firm enough that I know better than to jerk it back.

“What the hell … Finn,” he says, answering his own question. There’s less anger in it, more worry. He’s gone into full Benvolio mode, and there’s no getting him back. “This looks really bad. We’ve got to—”

Leo looks up at the sound of footsteps. I already know who it is from the look on his face, but that doesn’t make me any more prepared to hear the quake in my mom’s voice when she says, “We’re going home. Now.”