“Well, we were kind of keeping things quiet, you know, not wanting to say anything until we knew it was going somewhere.” Pinky looked over her shoulder at the woods as she spoke, hoping Dolly wouldn’t notice her inability to make eye contact. Hmm. Maybe Dolly wasn’t the only bad liar in the family. “Um, anyway, his internship in DC fell through and he didn’t want to go home yet, so I invited him here. His name’s Samir Jha.”
“Wait, wait, is this the same Samir you told me about in the spring? The one whose mom is a little overprotective?”
“A lot overprotective, yeah,” Pinky said.
“Oh,” Dolly said thoughtfully. “I got the impression you found him kind of irritating.”
Pinky felt herself begin to sweat even more, as if that were possible. “Oh yeah, no, I did. But, um, things kind of changed. We’ve only been dating, like, a month, so.”
Dolly frowned a little. Pinky’s heart thumped. If Dolly, the most trusting and innocent person in the world, wouldn’t buy this, she had no hope of making her mom buy it. But then Dolly’s face broke into a smile. “I’m happy for you,” she said, and Pinky could tell she meant it. “I can’t wait to meet your boyfriend.”
Yeah, me too, Pinky thought. She stood up, dusted off her shorts, and held out a hand to her cousin. “Let’s go home. I sweated out all the salt in my body and now I’m dangerously close to death.”
Laughing, Dolly took her hand and let herself be pulled up.
They walked back toward the house, their clothes damp and sticking to them. “Wonder what the parental units are going to be like when we get back,” Pinky said. “You think they’re going to be walking on eggshells around their strange teenage daughters?”
Dolly sighed. “Either that or my parents are going to want to find me a therapist, stat.”
Pinky snorted. “Yeah, that sounds about ri—”
Dolly let out a high-pitched shriek that rang in Pinky’s ears.
“What?” she said, half-concerned, half-annoyed.
“I almost stepped on that rat!” Dolly said, pointing to a spot just off the path. “Is it—is it dead?”
Pinky looked and saw that it wasn’t a rat at all. It was a small, furry gray opossum, probably still a baby. It lay on its side, very still, its mouth and eyes open. Everything about it was extremely limp. A greenish substance was leaking out of its mouth.
“Oh God,” Dolly said, clapping a hand over her mouth. “Do you think it got poisoned or something?”
“No obvious injuries,” Pinky said, looking it over quickly. “So maybe.”
“Where’s its mom?” Dolly looked around jumpily, like the opossum’s mom might be hiding behind a bush, waiting to charge them.
Pinky knelt next to the little thing, frowning. “It’s probably weaned. Look how big it is. Remember when I helped establish that raccoon hospital back in Cali? Raccoons only nurse for about three months, and I remember reading possums were the same. This one doesn’t look older than six months or so. Oh, and look—its little paw is injured.” Something struck her as she studied its face. “Wait. What if…? What if it’s not dead?”
“Um…” There was a pause and then Dolly knelt beside her and rubbed her shoulder. “I know it’s hard to accept, but it’s dead. I mean, just look at it.” She paused. “You always did have such a soft spot for animals.” Dolly smiled one of her gentle, Mother Teresa smiles.
Pinky rolled her eyes. “I mean it might not be actually dead because opossums play dead. Sometimes for hours. It might have gotten stressed out and then decided to faint or whatever.”
“Are you sure?” Dolly asked. “I mean… look at that stuff coming out of its mouth.” She shuddered audibly. “Maybe we should just leave it. Or we can come back with a shovel and bury it.”
“We can’t leave it here for predators to find! Or to die from the heat!” Pinky said. Then, making an executive decision: “I’m taking it home.” She reached out to pick it up.
Dolly shrieked. “It could have fleas!” she said, aghast, like fleas might be the gateway insect to the Black Plague or something. Oh, right. They actually were. “Or rabies!”
Annoyed because Dolly might actually have a point, Pinky pulled out her phone. Ten seconds later, she said, “Nope, possums don’t get rabies.” With that, she picked up the possum and cradled it in her hands as she began walking toward the lake house. When she realized she didn’t hear any footsteps, she turned to find Dolly rooted to the spot. “Come on,” she called. “What’re you waiting for?”
That prodded Dolly to action. “Are your parents going to be okay with that?” her cousin asked, eyeing the limp possum as if it might suddenly make like a rattlesnake and strike.
“Who says I’m going to tell them?” Pinky asked. There was a snorting kind of noise from Dolly’s general direction. “You can pretend you didn’t see this if you want,” Pinky added. “That way if I get caught, you can just tell them you had no idea.”
“No way!” Dolly said, studying the possum a little dubiously. “We’re in this together.”
Pinky smiled, and Dolly smiled back. Maybe this was her way of making up for the whole barn fiasco. “Okay. Then we’re going to need to make a nest.”
Dolly’s smile slipped off her face. “Right. A nest. Of course.”
CHAPTER 5 Samir
The taxi pulled up to a ginormous Cape Cod–style, beachy-looking house with slate-blue siding, big windows, and two decks. It was immaculately kept, overlooked the water to its right—Ellingsworth Lake, according to Google—and was sheltered by huge horse chestnut trees. Honeysuckle vines tumbled over the backyard fence, and bees darted lazily in and out of the flowers, drunk on the heat and pollen.
“This it?” the taxi driver said, peering out through his windshield. “Fancy.”
“I think so…,” Samir said, looking for cars parked in the driveway, but there were none. Maybe they parked in the garage. It was weird, but when he’d imagined Pinky’s house, he didn’t see this tasteful, well-designed structure. He’d kind of been expecting a yurt, to be honest. Or an environmentally friendly geodesic dome with a wildlife refuge out back or something. “Well, I guess I’ll find out.” He paid and got out, his hand slightly sweaty around the handle of his suitcase.
He heard the taxi’s tires crunching over the gravel as the driver turned around and sped away, and stood still for a minute, listening to the birds calling in the trees. Across the water, someone started up a Jet Ski. Samir walked around the corner of the house, pausing by a Japanese maple. In the far distance, he could see a red-and-white striped lighthouse towering over the island. As if he couldn’t tell he was near the beach from the way his hair was puffing up in the humid air. There was no denying it: He was really here.
Well, if this was indeed Pinky’s summer house, he was really here.
Suddenly, Samir was sure this was a giant mistake. Maybe he should just go home and stay with his mom. What did he know, exactly, about fake dating anyone? He’d never lied about anything major his entire life. Well, except that one time when he told his mom a bird had flown in the window and eaten the entire cake she’d baked and was letting cool on the counter. But that didn’t count; he was, like, seven or eight. What made him think he could handle lying to a couple of lawyers? Especially when one of them was the Shark?