“I am,” Stevie said. “It took longer to get back from town . . .”
“I’m just saying,” Nicole said, then said no more and got up and walked away.
“She likes you,” Nate said.
“Don’t worry about it,” Janelle added. “I have it all covered.”
She produced a binder, inside of which were a series of color-coded spreadsheets, each tagged with sticky notes.
“I’ve got all the crafts set up by age,” she said. “Now, let’s see . . .”
And that morning and afternoon, Stevie did see. They made samples of everything on Janelle’s chart while attending multiple assemblies, where names were learned and rules were read and everyone was welcomed. The kids were, Stevie had to admit, fairly cute. At least, most of them were. The oldest ones were eleven, and they clearly viewed the counselors not quite as equals, but certainly as peers of a sort. Stevie kept glancing at her phone, checking for updates, and the one she was waiting for finally came around four.
I’m here, David wrote.
“See you later,” Janelle said, smiling.
Even though Stevie had just been told not to leave, nothing was going to keep her away. She slipped away from one of the sessions, ducking between the cabins and hurrying across the fields, right on to the camp entrance, running over the road that split the camp from the park. She hustled down the paths until she reached the place where she could see the parking lot. There, standing by an old gray Nissan, was David.
David and Stevie had last been together at school every day in December. Fate (and a bunch of murders, and a senator) had separated them. There had been lots of video and endless pics, so they were constantly in each other’s lives. But she had not seen him in the flesh since that cold, snowy morning up on the mountain in Vermont when they had come to take him away. She knew every element of his face from every angle a camera screen and her memory had captured, but seeing him here, fully assembled, scrambled her brain for a second. Had he always been that tall, that wiry, with tight coils of muscle? Was the shirt big, or was he thinner? Had those always been his legs? And his hair—dark, loose curls that had grown ragged and free at Ellingham were clipped a bit shorter now. She had known that, had seen the images, but now nothing quite fit.
But her body knew what to do. She ran up to him, jumping, and he caught her clumsily. They fell back against the car door, and she kissed him through his smile.
Yes. It all made sense again. The picture reassembled itself. The feel of her face in the hollow of his neck. The way his arms wrapped around her back and they curved into one another. His breath. His heartbeat. David.
Also, she was on her toes and they were both sliding sideways down the side of the car, and they stumbled apart, laughing.
“Have we met?” he said.
She squeezed him around the middle.
“Want to help me set up?” he said. “It would be good to have a place to sleep before the sun goes down.”
Stevie and David removed a bunch of equipment from the back of the car—a tent, a cooler, a camp stove, two folding chairs, and a small folding table. They walked this to an empty area close to the lake edge.
“The sleeping bag is mine,” he said. “I use that in some of the shadier places we stay in on the road. The rest of the stuff I rented from a place in town. I even rented a kayak from their boathouse. Now, how does one tent . . .”
The tent proved to be more challenging than it first appeared. There was a lot of staking things into the ground, and rolling in the right way, and inserting tubes in pockets and attaching. But somewhere around the two-hour mark, Stevie and David entered the tent, found it to be stable, and immediately tried out the floor.
This was so private. It was unlike anything Stevie had ever experienced, even in their rooms at Ellingham. This was wild, and separate. And they had come together here for a reason. David had come a long way to be with her. Her. That was the only reason he was here.
“I need to go soon,” she said.
“Do you have to go back?”
She considered for a long minute. The temptation to stay exactly where she was, on this sleeping bag in this tent, was tremendous. On the other hand, Nicole had been unambiguous when it came to things like skipping out for the night.
“I have to go,” she said.
“I’ll walk you over,” he said. “These are murder woods, right?”
“But then you’ll be walking back alone. These are murder woods.”
“Good point. Stay.”
“Stop,” she said, pushing him and not wanting him to stop at all. There immediately followed a round of making out, which ended only when Janelle called Stevie and told her that Nicole had been around, and curfew was falling fast.
“Really have to go,” Stevie said. “Quick, quick go.”
“Then I’ll drive you,” he said.
It was convenient to have a car here now. Stevie scrambled to make herself presentable again, still pulling on her socks and shoes as they left the tent. David drove her out of the park’s parking lot and down the short stretch of road to the opening of the camp. He drove her almost the full way down the driveway, stopping before the entrance sign and the lights. Stevie hopped out into the warm night, waving and watching all the way, and ran to the cabin. When Nicole checked again, Stevie was on her bed, looking at her tablet like she had never been gone.
18
“GOOD MORNING, SUNNY PINES!”
Stevie blinked into her pillow and turned her head to look at Janelle. Janelle was not there. When Stevie gathered up her things and stepped outside to take her shower, she found a long line of children waiting to get into the bathroom. Janelle stood somewhere in the middle.
“This is bad,” she said out loud.
The line was so long that Stevie ended up skipping the shower entirely and heading to breakfast with Janelle. Nate was already there, waiting for them. He picked up a tray and stepped into line between them, then followed them to a table.
“How was the first night?” Janelle asked.
“Do you see the kid with the red hair?” he replied. “Blue shirt? His name is Lucas. He is my nemesis.”
“You can’t have an eight-year-old nemesis,” Janelle said, picking the grapes out of her fruit cup.
“Don’t tell me how to live my life. He’s . . . oh god. He’s coming over here.”
Lucas, the nemesis, had noticed Nate and was indeed walking toward them, eating a sausage link with his fingers as he did so. He sat down at the table with them without asking permission and looked at Janelle and Stevie.
“Are you his friends?” he asked.
Lucas was direct.
“Yes,” Janelle said sweetly. “We go to school together.”
“I’ve read his book seven times,” he said.
“Wow,” Janelle replied. “That’s a lot!”
Because it was a lot, and this kid was eight years old.
“Yeah,” Lucas replied. “I’m still waiting for the next one. He says he’s not done.”
Nate’s head shrank a bit into his shoulders, like a slowly descending elevator.
“Can you get him to finish it?” Lucas asked.
“I don’t think so,” Janelle replied. “But he will.”