I jump off the ledge and skip over, startling her from behind. “Look who’s actually being a tourist,” I tease her.
“Not a tourist,” Kensington says, rising to her feet and dusting off her knees. “I was taking pictures of you two frolicking around. Look.” She holds out her phone, and I see a photo of Sofia leaning on the fountain, trying to pose like she’s a 1950s calendar girl, but with her phone blocking her entire face. “Come on, that’s brilliant.”
“It’s pretty good,” I say. “Should we load our favorites while we wait for her to finish modeling?”
“I suppose,” Kensington says, and we both get to work on PhotoReady. I don’t want to overdo it, so I choose one of my step pictures, and another of the Metropolitan Opera House’s arches, placing a shadowy filter over each to bring out their moody light.
“New York is awesome!” Sofia appears next to us, saying each word like it has an exclamation point after it.
“You ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” Kensington says, gesturing for us to follow her as she heads off the plaza. She leads us past a pool of shallow water with two sculptures resting in the center, and we pass a restaurant with dressed-up people sitting at tables outside.
“Do you think we could stop here for a snack?” Sofia calls after Kensington.
“You can’t possibly be hungry already,” I comment.
Sofia gives me an innocent look as Kensington whirls around. “Do you have a tapeworm?” she asks. “Come see this, and then I’ll take you for the best cookie of your life.”
“Ooh, let’s speed it up, then,” Sofia says, beginning to jog in order to keep up with Kensington’s gait. At the corner of the restaurant, Kensington turns right and starts stomping across a grassy lawn, up and up, toward another corner of the building.
Only it’s not a lawn at all—the entire roof of the restaurant has been turned into a miniature park, with groups of people sprinkled around it, sitting and talking with one another. The entire thing sits at a diagonal, so the grass slopes up in two of its corners, as if you’re climbing hills in the middle of a pasture.
“I feel like I’m in The Sound of Music,” Sofia says as she spins around, arms outstretched on either side of her. I snap a picture as she twirls, and I load it onto PhotoReady, captioning it The hills are alive and giving it the correct label. Meanwhile, Kensington strolls to the other high corner of the lawn to take pictures of the plaza from afar, Sofia and I scampering after her.
“Have I mentioned I love New York?” Sofia asks, flopping down on her back and waving her arms and legs back and forth as if she’s creating a snow angel.
“How do you know about snow angels?” I ask her. “Have you ever had one flake of snow in Arizona?” Sofia leans up on one elbow to face me.
“Sand angels,” she says seriously. “Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it!”
I sit next to her, and she holds her phone out in front of our faces. “Let’s take a picture of us in nature,” she suggests. We lean our heads together, and Sofia snaps the photo just as Kensington inserts herself in the frame, making a face behind our heads. When Sofia opens the photo so we can examine our work, the three of us—Kensington, too—collapse into a fit of giggles. The kind of giggles so uncontrollable that if we were in class right now, we would almost certainly get written up by the teacher, yet we still wouldn’t be able to stop them.
“Don’t you dare load that, Arizona,” Kensington tells her. “I can’t have those kinds of pictures of me floating around on the interwebs.”
“I agree,” I say, rising to stand. “Let’s keep that one for our own amusement.”
“Ugh, fine,” Sofia says, and I’m grateful that together, Kensington and I have some semblance of power over Sofia’s lightning-quick posting finger.
“Let’s go, tourists,” Kensington says, pretending to haul us up by our armpits. “Time to get this one a cookie before she faints from hunger.”
“Just when I thought this day couldn’t get any better!” Sofia exclaims, jumping up in the air and clicking her heels together.
“Wait, do that again,” I instruct. “And Kensington, do it with her. But face the corner, so that the buildings are behind you.”
“You’re quite the demanding photo director, Avalon Kelly,” Kensington says, but they listen to me anyway, clicking their heels together repeatedly until the right image is captured.
The image—just possibly—of a brand-new friendship.
* * *
After we leave Lincoln Center, Kensington leads us through the Upper West Side all the way to Seventy-Fourth Street. She makes a sharp turn to head down a small flight of stairs (if there’s anything I’ve learned from following her around all evening, it’s that besides walking faster than anyone on the planet, she also never indicates what direction she’s going before making the turn). A deep, luscious scent soon envelops my senses: the smell of sugar and chocolate and freshly brewed coffee.
“I am never leaving this place,” Sofia calls, barreling ahead of me down the rest of the stairs and into Levain Bakery.
“Well, they close in five minutes, so unless you want to get locked in here all night . . . ,” Kensington begins.
“There are worse things,” Sofia insists. “Oh, for the love . . . Will you look at these cookies!”
“Yes, you’re welcome,” Kensington says. “They’re about to change your life.”
The three of us each pay for one chocolate chip walnut cookie (my suggestion that we share one, since the cookies are roughly the size of my head, was quickly shot down by Sofia). Reluctantly, we leave the scent of Levain behind us as we reemerge onto the sidewalk. I take a bite out of this massive hunk of baked dough, and I realize immediately that Kensington is right—these cookies are unreal. Life-changing, even. Crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside, and they are warm enough that the chocolate melts on my face as I make my way toward the center.
“I’m never going to be able to eat another cookie again,” Sofia says. “This thing is out of this world.”
“Told you,” Kensington says with a flick of her hair. “Come on—walk and eat at the same time. I want to show you something else before it’s closed.” I take advantage of a red light to photograph the giant cookie in my palm, a taxicab rushing by at exactly the right moment to create a blur of yellow in the background. I then wrap up the rest and deposit it in my bag, since there’s no way I’d be able to finish the whole thing right now (I figure this is also a good move before Sofia the bottomless pit volunteers to polish off the rest for me).
“Here we are,” Kensington announces a few blocks later, coming to a harsh stop outside a tall, black prison-like gate.
“Septuo-gee . . . ,” Sofia tries to read the sign hanging on the outside of the fence. “Sorry, this is Supercalafragilistic territory.”
Septuagesimo Uno, I read, though I have no idea how to pronounce it either. “What is it?” I ask Kensington, looking through the grates. It’s hard to see in the dim light, but I make out a brick path and a couple of benches, with some scattered bushes and flowers in between.
“The smallest park in New York,” Kensington answers.
“Seriously?” Sofia asks as Kensington pushes through the gate and walks inside. “This is considered a park? It’s more like an alley. With trees.”
“Still a park,” Kensington says. We walk to the back of the space—which only takes a few large steps, based on the size—and I look up. Two brownstones form the sides of the park, and Sofia is right—without the trees and benches and brick pathway, it really wouldn’t be much more than an alley. But with them, the place is charming, quiet, a kind of escape from the rest of the city. And after only a few hours “living” here, I can already see how such qualities would be important.
“See, the real tourists, they go to Central Park. But you guys get the smallest park in New York City,” Kensington says, lowering herself onto a bench. “How many people in New Jersey and Arizona can say they’ve been here?”
“Oh no, no, no,” Kensington says. “Cardinal rule of PhotoReady—no flash.”
“Right,” Sofia says. “Flashes completely wash me out.”
“You’re not even in this picture,” I say. “And it’s too dark here to take anything without the flash. It doesn’t show up well.”
“Then we’ll be your lights,” Sofia volunteers. “You go high, I’ll go low.” She says this last part to Kensington. The two of them turn on their phones so that the brightness of their screens can serve as my lighting. Kensington holds hers above my head, and Sofia poses at my knees.
“You two might be geniuses, you know that?” I say, turning in a circle to try to capture the entire space at once. “Got it,” I tell them once I’m satisfied. “I’m going to caption this Good things come in small packages.”
“Perfect,” Kensington says, marching back to the gate, Sofia and I falling in line behind her.
“That’s quite the compliment coming from you,” I tell her.
“What did you expect me to say?” she asks, shutting the gate behind us. “Perfecto?”
Nina is standing next to the Septuagesimo Uno gate when we exit, waiting for us. “I wanted to give you girls a heads-up that we’re going to have to start back in the next twenty minutes or so. We have an eight thirty p.m. curfew.”
“Whoa, it’s been almost three hours already?” Sofia asks, glancing at the time on her phone screen.
“Time flies when you’re having fun,” I agree, surprised to find that I am having fun. Much more than I ever thought I would.
“One more place,” Kensington insists. “Then I promise I’ll get us back in time. Move it or lose it.” Kensington makes a left and walks full-steam ahead down the block—faster than she has walked all night, which is really saying something.
“What is it?” I call after her, trying not to sound winded as we fly across West End Avenue and make a right, and then another left on Seventy-Second Street.
“Have I led you astray yet, Avalon Kelly?” Kensington responds.
“Are you always going to call me by my full name, Kensington Barrett?” I ask her.
“It’s got a ring to it,” she says. “And don’t copycat me.” We zoom across the street again as the light turns red, and then across another.
“Who’s that a statue of?” Sofia tries to ask Kensington as we pass it, but Kensington only waves her arms dismissively.
“Eleanor Roosevelt, but no time for her right now,” she says. I try to snap a photo of the statue anyway, which puts me a few paces behind. We’re nearly jogging as we pass a dog run on the left, and then dart through a small tunnel. Kensington comes to a sudden halt—once again, I’ve come to learn this is her specialty—along a stone wall on the other side, and she places both arms out in front of her, as if balancing a tray.
“I present your home state, Avalon Kelly,” she says. I look to where she’s pointing, and there, through some tree branches and across the water, I see lights lining the other side of the Hudson River. New Jersey. Home. It’s nowhere near the level of the New York City skyline, but it’s there, shining, all the same.
And somehow the mere sight of it, even from miles and a body of water away, makes me smile. A real smile. With teeth and everything.
* * *
Lying in my bunk that night, only the glow of the twinkle lights piercing through the darkness, I try to force myself to fall asleep. I look around for a clock so I can mentally calculate how much rest I’ll get before we have to wake up for our group photo discussion, but neither Sofia nor I brought one, and Kensington, with her minimalist packing technique, certainly wouldn’t have had one in her Mary Poppins–type bag. I had plugged my phone into the outlet next to the printer so that it could get a full charge overnight, which I now realize was a mistake. Because not only do I not know what time it is, but I have nothing with which to entertain myself while I wait for some form of drowsiness to hit.
I rearrange myself in bed, trying to keep the squeaking of the coils beneath my mattress to a minimum so as to not disturb Sofia. But the room is so silent, with only the faintest hint of deep breathing, that it appears my roommates are already asleep. I look over the side of my bed and try to make Kensington’s form out of the shadows of the twinkle lights, but it’s too dark to see. I flip around again and try lying on my back, staring at the ceiling. I would give almost anything to be home in my own bed right now. Not even because I’m having a bad time—the day was about one thousand percent more enjoyable than I had anticipated—but because I know I can sleep there. And nothing makes you homesick faster than a bed that keeps you awake.
I try to lull myself to sleep, pretending the sounds of traffic outside the windows are soothing instead of distracting, but nothing seems to work. I sit up in bed, careful to do so slowly so that I don’t smack my head against the ceiling, and I look across the room toward my phone. Should I risk waking the roommates? Should I risk knocking myself unconscious by climbing down this bunk bed’s ladder with little more than twinkle lights to guide me?
Yes.
As carefully as possible, I maneuver myself to the foot of my bed, and I slide, snake-style, off the side until my foot hits a rung of the ladder. I lower myself to the floor, mentally congratulating myself for being so silent and stealth. Maybe I had more ninja qualities than I initially thought. Perhaps all those years of watching Jelly gracefully leap from one piece of furniture to the next had taught me how to—
“Ow! Oof! No! Ow!”
The form that is Kensington sits up straight in her bed, which I have apparently stubbed my toe into the side of.
“Weak bladder?” she whispers to me.
“Very funny,” I say. “I can’t sleep and I want my phone.”
“The first step of addiction is admitting you have a problem,” she says in hushed tones, but even without being able to fully see her face, I can tell that she’s smirking.
“Huh?” I manage to make it the rest of the way across the room and take my phone off its charger, using its lighted screen to help me return. With the amount of stuff Sofia and I had jammed into this space, not to mention the whole additional person, it was a minefield to make it from one side of the room to the other.
“You’re addicted to your phone,” Kensington says. “If you need it to sleep.”
“I don’t need it to sleep. I can’t sleep, so I want something to do,” I explain.
“Essentially the same thing. But now that you have me up, I might as well go to the bathroom.”
“Who has the weak bladder now?” I tease her, beginning to climb up to my bunk. On the way, I use the light of my phone to check on Sofia, but she is still fast asleep, her face mostly buried under her blanket. I reach the top of the ladder and crawl across my mattress, settling in with my phone and feeling much better than I did a few minutes ago.
Which means maybe Kensington is right. Maybe this thing is like my security object. . . .
Oh, well. There are worse things.
I open PhotoReady and find at least triple the number of notifications as usual, many of them from usernames I don’t recognize.
“Hey,” I whisper to Kensington once she returns. “Did a bunch of random people star your photos from today?”
“I don’t know because my phone isn’t attached to my body at all times,” she says. “But it’s most likely the other retreat people. Don’t get too big a head.” She smacks her inflatable airplane pillow against my face.
“If Sofia weren’t asleep right now, I’d get you for that,” I tell her.
“Sure, you’re really a fierce opponent when it takes you half the night to get up and down that ladder,” Kensington retorts.
“What is with that pillow, anyway?” I ask. “You couldn’t carry a real pillow all the way down the street?”
“I don’t like to overpack,” Kensi
ngton says. “A sentiment I see you and the other hoarder on the bottom bunk do not share.”
“Very funny,” I say. “Is the light from my phone going to bother you?”
“Not any more than these Christmas tree lights,” Kensington answers. “Good night.”
“Night.” I shimmy further under my blanket, turning back to the PhotoReady notification list. About half are from people I know, and the other half strangers.
But not a single star from Celia.
I switch over to my texts and look at our chain again. She still hasn’t responded to my last message. She can’t be mad at me, can she? I mean, she’s the one who told me to go on the retreat. She pretty much insisted. So now, why is she being weird?
You up? I type to her, and I wait for my phone to buzz back. I send the same note to Arden, but she’s quiet too. I wish for a moment that Jelly had a cell phone—or, maybe more important, an ability to use it—so I could text her, and then I smile to myself imagining how Kensington would react if I expressed this thought out loud. Just as I’m about to turn off my phone and give up, the screen lights up with a text from Celia.
Yes, is all she writes.
Thank goodness!!! I can’t sleep. Why didn’t you answer me before? I ask.
Spring Break Mistake Page 6
