Thirty-Four

thirty-four

My parents end up going to bed early enough that it’s still light out. I hook my phone up to the charger and use it to call Leo, unsurprised when it goes straight to voicemail. I try the camp’s front office phone next. My name must come up on caller ID, because Mickey picks up and says, “Oh, good. Can I put you on speakerphone before half the camp riots? Phoenix Cabin is freaking out that you’re gone. This whole night has been s’mores with a side of anarchy.”

I laugh into my sleeve so I don’t wake my parents. “Actually … is Leo there? I really need to talk to him.”

“Hold up.”

I hear the tap of her putting the phone down on the front desk, my heart fluttering in this way that feels more in my throat than in my chest. I don’t know exactly what I plan on saying, but for once, I’m not worried about it. The kinds of things I want to say right now can’t be planned.

“Hey, Abby. Leo’s busy.”

It’s a hard stop, with no quip to soften it. Not a Try calling back later, or even a Sorry.

“Is he?”

Mickey blows out a breath. “Do I even want to know?”

I rest my head in my hands, smushing the phone farther into my cheek. “My life is basically a CW drama right now, is all.”

“You’re telling me.” She drums her fingers on the desk, the faint noise echoing on the other side of the line. “Don’t worry. I’ll knock some sense into him. I know it’s none of my business, but I’m emotionally invested in the two of you getting your heads out of your asses and confessing your love for each other already.”

I don’t bother muffling this laugh because it sounds too much like I’m being strangled.

“Sorry,” says Mickey, not sounding it one bit.

“Don’t be.” I hesitate, but not nearly as long as I should. “Also—while we’re, uh, inserting ourselves into each other’s business—Savvy and Jo are extremely done.”

There’s a pause. “Huh.”

“Do with that information … what you will.”

I can almost feel the heat of Mickey’s cheeks burning through the phone. “It’s tough out here for a Ravenclaw.”

“Didn’t you say you were a—”

“Humans are in constant evolution, Abby. Ever-changing, constant growth, et cetera,” says Mickey, a smile in her voice.

“Let’s hope.”

After we hang up I sit there against the wall of the hotel room, my phone still juicing up. I’m connected to legitimate Wi-Fi for the first time in weeks, so I find myself poking through it—looking at Connie’s Facebook pictures of gelato and pizza and what appears to be her very smug-looking cousin drenched and posing by an Italian fountain. Scrolling through all the photography Tumblr accounts I follow. Doing anything I can to distract myself from the fact that the one person I need to talk to most is the one I have no way to reach.

My finger hovers over the Instagram app. I don’t even know if I’m logged in. I press it anyway, waiting for it to load, and—

Oh.

Oh my god.

At first I think I’m logged into someone else’s account by mistake, because there are so many notifications that the app looks like it’s going to crash trying to account for them all. That, and the follower count—it’s over twenty-six thousand. Pushing twenty-seven.

I scroll down. My jaw about unhinges from my face.

It’s my account, all right. @savingtheabbyday, just how Leo set it up. But it’s not only pictures from the time Leo and I met up before camp. It’s pictures from the last few weeks—specifically, the ones I dumped from my memory card into the Dropbox we were all sharing to work on our Anthro projects.

I tap the most recent one, posted two days ago. No caption, but underneath a bunch of periods are at least a dozen photography hashtags, none that I’ve ever heard of. It’s an image of the fog rolling in on the Sound, a photo I took one sleepy morning so early that even Savvy wasn’t around yet. One sleepy morning when I was, unsurprisingly, thinking of Leo.

It has thousands of likes. Dozens of comments. I sit up straighter, accidentally squeaking my shoes against the hotel’s linoleum floor, sure I’m hallucinating this whole thing.

I pan out to the grid and see dozens of them—a photo from on top of the Wishing Tree. Another of the sunset gleaming through the crack in a rickety old bench nobody uses anymore. Another I took when Mickey, Leo, Finn, and I were wandering around after dinner, of the embers of one of the campfires blowing in the wind.

There are none of the goofier, spontaneous ones I took of Rufus, or the other girls in my cabin, or the staged ones we took for their Instagrams. Leo went through with a careful eye, picking the exact ones I would have chosen myself—maybe even chose better than I would have. A photo of the mismatched kayaks all lined up at the shore in their yellows, blues, and reds that I dismissed as soon as I took it has more likes than anything in the last three weeks.

If that’s staggering, the amount of DMs flagged in my inbox is enough to knock me off my feet. I tap on them, hit by a wall of everything from why no people in your feed, girly? bet ur a stunner to omg!! how can i BE you to one that I click on too fast to process, so fast that I have to read it three times before I can even begin to let it sink in.

Hello Abby,

I hope this DM finds you well—we couldn’t find an email for you. We work with a scholarship program through Adventure Lens, and we’re sponsoring teen travel photographers to go on short trips and take photos as wildlife ambassadors. It’s for graduating seniors. I wasn’t sure if you qualified this summer or the upcoming summer, but either way we’d love for you to consider the opportunity. The travel dates are flexible, and all expenses are paid, with the expectation that your photos are used as a part of our campaigns that subsequent year and featured on your personal Instagram. Please let me know if you’d like to hear more details!

I click out of it, breathing hard, pressing the phone between my hand and the floor as if something is going to leap out of it. I had no idea. I had no idea. All this time Leo hasn’t been keeping my photos safe—he’s been building them a home.

My eyes squeeze shut, but it’s like the grid of photos is tattooed to the inside of my eyelids. Every single one of them carefully plucked, posted, and hashtagged. A little ritual Leo must have committed himself to, one he kept up even when we weren’t keeping up with ourselves. Like these posts aren’t just posts, but messages that mean something—I’m sorry, or I’m still here, or maybe even the hope for something more that swallows all of them, even now.

I can’t reach him tonight. He won’t pick up the phone, and it’s too dark to sneak back to camp. Tomorrow I may get a chance before I leave, but if I don’t—he has to know the truth. And I know exactly how I can make him.

My dad’s computer is still out on the table. I upload the memory card on Poppy’s camera, pulling up all the photos. It only takes a moment to find the one I need. It’s the first time I’ve seen it at full resolution, the first time I’ve really been able to look at it, but even in that split second I know it’s more precious to me than any photo that’s come before.

I hit “Share” and close it before I can see reactions come in. I fall asleep with the phone in my good hand, willing him to see it and hoping he sees the same things I do when he does.