“And yet you were ready to go drinking on a Friday night,” Brandon shot back. “Yeah, you must be swamped with work.”
I wet my lips to ease the jolt of shock that raced up my back. “Flunked out?”
“He was expelled,” Crumbs said over her shoulder.
Mortification drained the color out of Brandon’s skin. “I wasn’t invited back. They gave my spot on the roster to another applicant.”
“Because he flunked out,” Crumbs sang out, the lights of passing headlights bouncing off her teeth in the rearview.
He swallowed hard and turned away from me, pressing his forehead against the window. “This is a new low.”
I reached over and set my hand on his knee. “Hey. I’ve been meaning to ask you something.” I waited for him to look at me before I asked, “How familiar with The Importance of Being Earnest are you?”
“Moderate to very.” He frowned. “Why?”
“Ask me when we get back to campus.”
Maybe by then I’d have the courage to say it out loud.
29
We waited for ten minutes after Crumbs dropped us off before sneaking back through the trees to the front of the school, where we were less likely to encounter any wandering counselors. Brandon was really patient as I explained my Oscar Wilde–inspired decision to leave home, take the train over state lines, and spend three weeks living under a false identity. He even waited until I stopped talking before he totally freaked the hell out.
“Shit. Shit. Shit,” he chanted, slamming the back of his head against the Rayevich sign. “Ever, this is really serious. Are you even eligible for the scholarship if you’re here under a pseudonym?”
“It’s not technically a pseudonym,” I said, drawing my knees up to my chest. Sitting on pine needles wasn’t super comfortable. “It’s a nickname and one of my last names. I used my real social security number.”
His hands started to flap and fist at intervals. I wished I had a pencil for him to twirl. “But what if someone finds out? What if you get sent home? Or what if your brother gets sent home and then they find out about you?”
“Oh.” I bit my bottom lip, tasting the honey-scented beeswax of my new lip balm. “Isaiah isn’t really my brother. He’s my cousin. And he’s fifteen. No. Wait. Yesterday was his birthday. He’s sixteen. He’s also a giant sack of crap who will drag me down with him if he gets caught up here. He told Cornell that we’re twins so that they’d let him compete under age.” That felt like a lot of bad news to drop in one go, so I added, “I do have a real little brother. Ethan. He’s nine. I miss him a lot more than I thought I would.”
He rubbed his eyes and stared at me blearily. “I don’t know how to process all of this. Why are you telling me this now?”
“Because when I freaked out about you faking a Rubik’s Cube and then vomited basically all of my hopes and fears on you, you didn’t even tell me that you’ve been lying about the school you go to.”
“I didn’t lie,” he said. “I haven’t gone to any other school yet.”
I snorted. “Oh my God. That is such a weak technicality. You flunked out of the Messina, Brandon.” He flinched. “It’s okay, but I don’t understand why you wouldn’t just tell me. I feel like an idiot for grilling you for details about it. Wouldn’t it have been easier to tell me the truth?”
“Is this really the best time for you to define the morality of lying?” he asked flatly.
It stung, but I pushed ahead. “If you breathed a word of what I told you tonight to any of your friends or any of the other campers, I would be on the next flight home. If my parents didn’t decide to show up and drag me back by the ear. It’s not the same thing as you letting me believe that you go to a school you don’t.”
His head dropped into his hands. “It’s not something I’m proud of. It’s embarrassing. Almost as embarrassing as having my sister ruin our date.” He half-smiled, but it evaporated when he saw my face. “I did fine for the first two years. I stayed pretty high in the class ranking. That’s the big selling point of the Mess: the monthly class rankings go public so that you and your parents can keep track of your progress.”
I shuddered. I had no idea where I would have fallen in my class and I didn’t need to know. “No offense, but that sounds like a nightmare hellscape.”
“It is. I thought I’d get numb to it. Everyone else seemed to. Sure, sometimes there was crying or fights or people getting pulled into the school psychologist’s office, but mostly people dealt with it. I dealt with it until last year. And then I just … I don’t know. Started suffocating. There was no way to give one hundred percent in all of my classes at the same time. I really tried. I even liked what I was studying. But all of a sudden I was getting Cs in everything. And then less. And then I was getting hauled into a meeting with my parents and the principal and the school psychologist about how I would do better in a less vigorous environment. I didn’t even understand that they were throwing me out until my mom started crying.” He swept away a piece of pine tree shrapnel from the canvas of his shoe and watched as it joined the brush and dirt on the ground. “I didn’t realize how much of my family’s vision of me was as this consummate prodigy, the alpha and the omega of all things academic.”
“Is it your family’s vision of you or your vision of you?”
“Both?” His fingers twined around one of his shoelaces. “When people always tell you that you’re smart, you get used to it. It becomes the thing you are, you know?”
“I don’t, really,” I said. He looked up at me with annoyed disbelief and I shrugged. “Isaiah is the family prodigy. His family moved off base so he could go through a gifted program. He skipped the eighth grade. It was a big deal.”
“Why?” he asked. “No one learns anything in the eighth grade.”
I smiled at him. “I know that and you know that, but the Lawrences were blown away. Anyway, Isaiah’s real sister—Sidney—is the air force poster child, so she’s always been the real favorite in the family. Top of her BMT class. Lieutenant by twenty-four. I’m … I don’t know. The one being raised uppity. I think my aunts and uncles see me as bougie. My dad is kind of a shithead about money. He’s not shy about letting people know that he has it, which on my mom’s side is really verboten. And my stepmom is about ten years younger than him, and white, so there’s plenty for people to talk about.”
“But that doesn’t have anything to do with who you are.”
“Yeah, well. What does you being good in school have to do with who you are?” I scooted over to rest my leg against his. “It doesn’t cover the fact that you’re funny and sort of a grump and use your hair like an invisibility cloak. Or that your voice gets really soft when you speak French.”
“It’s a quiet language,” he muttered. “Elliot Lawrence Gabaroche.”
He gave my last name a throaty flourish that made all of my tendons go limp. I put my hand on his jaw, drawing his face closer to mine.
“Should I even call you Ever?” he asked, his nose inching toward mine. “I can call you Elliot. Or Ellie?”
“Ellie is what my family calls me, so no. But you can call me Elliot or Ever. You’re one of the only people who calls me Ever. I made it up for the Onward application.”
“It suits you,” he breathed.
I curled a piece of his hair around my index finger. “I really enjoyed our date.”
He wrinkled his nose at me. “We didn’t even get to go to the movies.”
“We can stream it. We can sneak out again and use the Wi-Fi in the pumpkin. If you don’t mind hanging out with an impostor.”
“I don’t care what name you’re using.”
“And I don’t care what school you’re enrolled in.”
The fauna underneath us crunched as our lips came together. His kiss was inquisitive, as hesitant as it had been the first time in the sci-fi section. I pushed back against him with certainty. My feelings hadn’t changed. I was as sure as ever that I wanted to be here, to be with him,
even if he wasn’t going to graduate from some fancy prep school.
He curved his body toward me, his hands gripping the sides of my sweatshirt. I strained to be closer to him, my legs lifted off the ground like one of Leigh’s complex yoga positions. My heel caught a pinecone and I slipped. I threw out an elbow to keep from bashing my head into the signpost. My funny bone clipped Brandon’s jaw. We both made unnatural, pained sounds as I landed hard back on my side of the dirt.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, scrambling to my knees to check his face for signs of injury. His skin was blistering hot, but seemingly unscathed. “Nature sabotaged me. What a mood killer.”
“It’s okay. I’m a seventeen-year-old guy,” he said, peering up at me as my fingers touched his face. “There isn’t much that kills my mood.”
“You’re kind of a pervy nerd, you know that?” I said. His face fell into panicked lines before I laughed. “Chill. I’m into it. Be less scared of me, please.”
“Be less amazing, then. I don’t deserve to be anywhere near you.”
“We need to work on your self-esteem.” I planted a swift kiss on his lips and hopped to my feet. “We weren’t planning on being back until midnight. Let’s go somewhere else. Somewhere with no pinecones or stabby needles. Also maybe not directly next to the front entrance?”
“Earlier, you said something about a tree house?”
*
We stayed as far away from the main path into the arboretum as possible. We stole kisses between buildings and across the unlit stretches of grass. The sky sparkled with stars like spilled glitter. The air was cool and clover scented.
With every step, I felt buoyant. I hadn’t understood how burdened I’d been with my secrets. Saying them out loud made me feel like a new person. Or like myself, outside of the cage of living up to being either Ever or Elliot. Even if it was just for tonight.
“It was so nice of the counselors to track down a tree house for us,” I said, pulling Brandon by the arm as we approached the fork in the road in the middle of the tree canopy in the arboretum. “I still haven’t seen another one on campus.”
He wrapped his arms around my waist, walking backwards in a clumsy hug. “We could go looking, if you want.”
“There are a lot of trees to examine.”
“I’m up for it if you are.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, rubbing my nose against the curve of his cheekbone. “I didn’t quite catch that. Once again in French, please?”
“Je serais…” He stopped abruptly at a rustle around the corner. Voices and footsteps coming toward us. He gestured to the dark cluster of trees behind me. “Hide!”
I crossed my arms. “I so don’t need your altruism.”
“This isn’t some misguided sense of chivalry,” he hissed. “I don’t want you to get sent home. If I get kicked out, I can take Crumbs’ car back here to see you! You can’t drive back from Sacramento.”
“Oh,” I said. “That is sweet.”
“Elliot!” he stressed.
It was halfway between the trunks of two knobby trees when the clatter of sneakers on pavement got louder. Hunter and Jams rounded the corner, both wild-eyed and whispering to each other in apparent distress. They both halted when they saw Brandon.
“Oh, thank shit,” Hunter said, clutching his heart.
“Ever?” Jams said. “Why aren’t you guys seeing that naff movie?”
I had no idea what naff meant, but it didn’t sound complimentary. I climbed back onto the sidewalk as casually as I could, even though Hunter and Jams could tell that I had been attempting to hide.
“We got, um, sidetracked,” I said. “Decided not to go.”
“My sister caught us,” Brandon elaborated. “And dragged us back here under threat of tattling.”
“Oof,” Hunter said with an exaggerated wince. “Tough luck.”
“What are you guys doing?” I asked.
“We were taking advantage of the Team One date night,” Jams said, folding his fingers into Hunter’s. “But now we’re going to look for a counselor.”
“Why?” Brandon asked.
“We found something,” Hunter said.
“The binders?” I guessed, unable to hold back a spark of hope.
“One binder,” Jams said, uncomfortably. “But also like a metric fuck ton of stolen stuff.”
“Metric,” Hunter chuckled.
“What kind of stolen stuff?” I asked.
“Food, mostly,” Hunter said. “A computer or two. A bunch of liquor. I think someone’s been living in the tree house.”
Jams nodded. “On a positive note, I think I found your socks, Brandon. Yay?”
30
Brandon and I ran toward Fort Farm while Hunter and Jams waited for us at the tree house. It was nice to run, but even more so to have Brandon keep stride with me.
The tree canopy disappeared behind us, revealing the twinkly night sky again. And, in the distance, the single fort draped in rippling blue sheets surrounded by bare wooden structures.
Brandon led the way through the clover and wildflower field, his shoulders rigid as we approached the occupied fort. There was clearly something rustling behind the sheet. A soft laugh made Brandon’s shoulders go rigid before he reached out and knocked on the fort’s frame.
I stood to the side as the sheet whipped open. The Perfect Nerd Girl’s head popped out like the gatekeeper in The Wizard of Oz. I nearly expected her to ask, Who rang that bell? Instead, her eyes narrowed.
“B?”
“Hey, Trix,” Brandon said, raising his hand in an awkward wave. He raised his voice slightly. “Hey, Ben.”
“Hey, Bran,” said Lumberjack Beard from inside the fort.
Trixie’s head stretched forward. She looked from Brandon to me and back again. “What are you guys doing out?”
“Come on, Trix,” said Lumberjack Beard, still out of sight. “We’re really not in a place to lecture.”
She glared over her shoulder. “I am.”
Brandon cleared his throat. “Can you guys, um, put some pants on so we can talk?”
The sheet closed with a fwump of air. I tucked my hands into my back pockets and gazed out at the field, ignoring the thumps and curses coming from behind the wall of cotton.
“It was an art installation,” Brandon blurted.
I glanced at him over my shoulder. “Excuse me?”
“Fort Farm.” He coughed. “It was originally an art installation representing deforestation. Or suburban anonymity? Something like that. But the students like having an outdoor space to study, so they petitioned to keep them.”
“And apparently they’re big enough to have sex in.” I snorted. “Who wouldn’t want to keep them around?”
“Yeah, we can hear you,” Lumberjack Beard said.
“I was in no way trying to lower my voice,” I said back.
Brandon wheezed a laugh into his elbow.
“I told you that you could find me here in the event of an emergency, Brandon,” Lumberjack Beard said. “So, where’s the fire? We dismantled the alarm again—”
“Hunter and Jams found a bunch of stuff hidden in the tree house,” Brandon interrupted. “Including a binder.”
The sheet flew open again and Lumberjack Beard unfurled himself from the depths of the fort like an expandable water toy. He looked down at us. “Who?”
Trixie scrambled out behind him, tugging the hem of her shirt around a pair of fleece pajama pants that seemed too baggy to be hers. “Team One’s Hulkling and Wiccan,” she said.
“God, I loved Young Avengers,” Lumberjack Beard said, stretching his arms over his head. “Why hasn’t that come back?”
Trixie whacked him in the side. “Ben, focus.”
He grunted. “Oh. Right. Nice kids.”
“Let’s go see this contraband,” Trixie said, crunching through the field. “And also maybe talk about why Meg’s team is wandering around after lights-out.”
“Again,” Ben said, skipping to keep
up with her, “I’m not sure we have the moral high ground here.”
“You really don’t,” Brandon said.
“Also, I’m pretty sure that Harper bet the two of you that you couldn’t last three weeks living in the dorms,” I said to the back of Trixie’s orange hair as we all stepped onto the sidewalk. “And living in a field doesn’t count…”
Ben threw his head back and laughed. “Cold-blooded but so accurate.”
Trixie shot me a look, her steely irises particularly spectral in the starlight. “I’m not going to ask how and why you know about that stupid bet.”
“I’d guess Harper has succeeded in developing her telepathic gift,” Ben said. “Or she made Brandon spy on us again.”
“Surprisingly, no,” Brandon said.
“Again?” I echoed.
“Don’t worry about it,” Ben and Trixie said in unison.
Brandon rolled his eyes and took my hand. “It’s not as bad as it sounds. I’m only moderately traumatized.”
“Did we or did we not get jobs here just to keep you company for the summer?” Trixie asked him with a sniff.
“Did you or did you not send the brochure to my parents?” he snapped.
“We didn’t,” Ben said, scuffing his heel on the pavement. “Meg did.”
“Hey, my one true love?” Trixie said, glaring up at her boyfriend. “Shut up.”
“I knew it was Meg,” Brandon grumbled. “It’s always Meg.”
Trixie threw her hands up. “You were really scared about not having the grades to get into a good school—”
Brandon cut her off with a shake of his head. “It doesn’t matter. Let’s deal with this fresh pile of crap.”
“It’s been years since we went crime solving,” Ben said, a jaunty spring in his step. He wrapped his arm around Trixie’s shoulders and kissed the top of her head. “I feel like we should be wearing uniforms.”
“I feel like we could be wearing nothing,” she said, severely underestimating how carrying her whisper was.
“Are they always like this?” I asked Brandon. “I only ever see them separately.”
Not Now, Not Ever Page 20
