“Everything okay? Need help with the bike?”
“Oh, um, no, I’m good,” I said, standing up. Of course he was cute, and there I was probably looking like I had the map of Europe across my face in blotches. Not that I really cared; I wasn’t trolling the parking lot for a date.
“You seem upset,” he said.
Nosy much?
“No, just you know, the sunset, it’s so pretty,” I said, gesturing toward the sky but realizing he probably didn’t buy it. He laughed. The smile lit up his face. There was something about the tilt of his head, the way his hair fell, his pale-blue eyes—he looked familiar, but that was sort of impossible since I was pretty sure I’d never seen him before. And fate and love and déjà-vu chance meetings were total and utter romantic bullshit.
I hopped on my bike.
“Be careful,” he said, which sounded ominous.
Maybe I’d seen him on America’s Most Wanted.
“It gets dark pretty quick, no lights on that road.”
“Thanks for the tip,” I said, pedaling away. I pumped fast, trying to outrun the setting sun. I couldn’t shake the feeling of having seen the boy in the black car before. If he was so concerned about me and my bike, why hadn’t he gotten out to help me? Was he some whacking-off parking-lot perv who wanted to lure me closer? Was he there to watch the sunset? Why was I thinking about a boy? Nan’s words echoed in my head.
You girls need a new hobby.
For once, it was wisdom that I understood completely.
FOUR
BRYAN
I WATCHED IN MY SIDE MIRROR AS THE GIRL RODE her bike toward town, back along South Ferry Road. If she picked up her pace she’d probably make it before it got too dark. Tourists usually didn’t venture to Crescent Beach. Most locals didn’t either, unless they wanted to party, fish, or search for Crest Haven diamonds, which weren’t exactly diamonds but quartz pebbles you could polish up to shine like gemstones. She wasn’t local, that much I knew. What had she been crying about?
“Duuuuuude.”
I startled. Matt laughed, pulling open the door and sliding into the passenger seat. He put his skateboard between his knees and adjusted his seat belt.
“Christ, could you be any louder?”
“Thanks for picking me up, bro. Was going to tell you to come over and say hi but I saw you were otherwise occupied. Who was the hot girl with the bike?”
I ignored him and started the engine.
“You reek of pot, Matty. Don’t you have body spray or something?”
He sniffed his tee. “Shit, really? Maybe we could hit up CVS and I can bum an Axe tester. Grab some Combos while I’m there.”
I made a K turn out of the lot. Matt yelped to the group of kids at the end of the parking lot. There was a reciprocal yell as we pulled out. I kept my eyes on the road.
“Seriously, you should have come over. Are you too good for us now? Nick, Tom, and Jake were asking about you,” Matt said. He had his hand out the window, letting it go slack against the breeze as I drove.
“I didn’t feel like hanging out, so what’s the point?”
“The point is they’re your friends too.”
“We don’t have a whole lot in common anymore,” I said. The truth was Tom and Jake had stopped coming around after I got hurt, as if being para was contagious, but it wasn’t like I’d ever been super close with them in the first place. Nick on the other hand had been a regular at my house, along with Wade and Tori. He was closer to Matt now than me. They didn’t ignore me or anything, but once we were outside of school, we didn’t hang out much. I got that they didn’t know what to say, but there really wasn’t anything to say. “I’m kind of over hanging out in a parking lot.”
“Whatever, I still think you should trick out your chair and try the half-pipe. What about surfing? Are you gonna get back in the water? Did you see that video I sent you? I think we could do it. We could help you out.”
Yes, I’d seen the video he sent me. And the one Wade sent. And the one Tori had sent me too. Inspirational videos with paraplegics doing amazing things. Jumping out of planes, scuba diving, snowboarding. Things I could do too if only I set my mind to it. They meant well, of course. People always did, but I wasn’t about to do something I wasn’t ready for. I wanted to surf again, but I just wasn’t sure I wanted the help he was offering.
“Yeah, cool, maybe. Why couldn’t you get a ride home with Nick?” I asked, changing the subject.
“He wanted to stay. Gotta get home for the raid tonight. You in?”
Was I in? Realm Wars raids were my life at the moment.
“Yeah, I thought you forgot, you know—”
“Holy shit, there she is,” Matt said. We’d caught up to the sunset girl. She stood on her pedals and coasted for a bit before she began cycling again.
“Man, I could bury my face in that ass,” Matt said.
I backhanded him in the arm. “Matt.”
He undid his seat belt. “C’mon, Bry, slow down. I just want to talk to her.”
I felt protective of sunset girl for some reason. Whatever she’d been crying over, she didn’t need to be hassled by my horned-out stoner brother. There were no cars coming in the other direction, so I slowed a bit and moved halfway to the other lane to go around her. Matt took that as a sign to chat her up. I pulled him back by his tee.
“Dude. Don’t. Really.”
“C’mon, it’s summer girl season, Bry. I’m just having a little fun,” he said, leaning out the window again.
Sunset girl turned her head toward us, her eyes wide when she saw Matt hanging out of the car. The bike wobbled and she came to a stop, putting her feet down. Matt opened his mouth to speak but I pulled back on the gas and we sped off, peeling out. He braced himself on the window frame as we picked up speed, his hair blowing back, big stupid grin on his face. He finally pulled himself in, hooked his seat belt, and leaned back in his seat.
“I fucking love summer,” he said.
Monday morning I was even more nervous than I’d been going back to school for the first time. As much as I’d known I could handle the kids when I talked to Owen on Friday, being faced with the reality of it was a different story. I sat in the multipurpose room, waiting for Wade and checking over my roster for the bazillionth time. Which parent didn’t think I could handle this? Would I be able to tell? Of course they were right. What did I think I was doing?
Wade strolled into the multipurpose room five minutes before we were supposed to be at drop-off. He was shirtless, camp polo slung over his shoulder and still wearing sunglasses. He scarfed down a bagel as he crossed the gymnasium floor, nodding and waving to the other counselors with his free hand. By the time he reached me, he had finished his breakfast and was busy shrugging on the polo. His wet hair hung down to his shoulders; he pulled it back with one of the elastics he kept around his wrist.
“Lake, I think you can lose the clipboard.”
“I think it makes me look like I know what I’m doing.”
“You do know what you’re doing.” He finally took off the shades and slid them into the front of his polo. He grabbed the clipboard from me, eyes scanning our camp roster.
“Why are you letting ten rug rats get you so torqued up?” He handed it back to me.
“Don’t know. Maybe because that’s ten lives we’ll be responsible for the entire summer.”
He flinched in mock surprise. “Man, when you put it that way.”
It was a move that was supposed to make me lighten up, but I white-knuckled the hell out of the clipboard anyway. I hadn’t told Wade about my conversation with Owen, and didn’t plan to, but my mind kept flipping between confidence and doubt, and at the moment doubt was winning. I hadn’t been nervous when I held the same job at fifteen. At fifteen I’d been like Wade. No worries. Work was just a few hours to pass the time before hitting the surf and checking out the summer girls.
Wade ran his hand in front of my face a few times. “Geez, you really are wound up
. Bry, the first time you pop a wheelie for these kids you’ll be their superhero. C’mon.”
We made our way out to the blacktop for drop-off. Campers had already started showing up. A lady stood in our designated area holding hands with a blond boy who looked like he might cry at any moment. He had an Avengers lunch box dangling from his clenched fist.
“Hey, who’s your favorite?” I asked.
The kid looked up, eyes darting over my wheelchair, then back to the woman who I assumed was his mother. She nodded at him and smiled. “Go ahead.”
He swung the lunch box back and forth and stared at the ground again. “My favorite is Captain America. That’s who I was for Halloween.”
“I think Iron Man could take him,” Wade said, crouching down to the kid’s eye level. His mom glanced at me fast, then back at Wade.
“Name?” I asked.
“Colby Somers,” she said. I scanned the list, all the while wondering if Colby’s mom was the one who had voiced her concern. Was she giving me the side-eye?
“Yep, right place. Hi, I’m Bryan.”
“I’m Maggie Somers. He can be a little shy at first, but when he warms up he’ll probably talk your ear off. Hey, Cobes, I’m leaving now, okay?”
Still in an Avengers debate with Wade, Colby barely waved at his mom. She smiled at me before heading out. I put a check mark next to his name. One down, nine to go.
“Since my man Colby-Wan here was first today, he gets to be line leader. Sound cool, Bry?” Wade asked. In five minutes Colby had changed from constipated little dude to beaming model camper when he heard Wade’s nickname for him.
Maybe things would work out fine.
“Hey, Bryan!”
I turned toward the sound of my name.
“H-bomb! Didn’t know you were going to be here,” I lied. Hunter Emmerich was my chem teacher’s son and had been my afterschool buddy on several occasions during the year when I helped Mr. E. take stock in the lab.
He scrunched up his face. “You did too.”
I pretended to go down the list. “Hmmmm . . . no H-bomb here.”
“Really?” He looked panicked.
“Yeah, oh wait, here you are.” I high-fived him and all was right with the world. Mr. Emmerich smiled.
“He could not get here fast enough.”
“Bryan, this is my half sister!” Hunter pointed to a girl who stood behind Mr. Emmerich’s shoulder. She had her arms crossed and was looking in the opposite direction. Mr. E. tapped her on the shoulder. She turned. I nearly dropped my clipboard.
Sunset girl.
Her eyes flashed with recognition, then lowered, taking in my wheelchair. From the furrow between her brows I figured it was the last thing she expected to see. I’d never gotten out of the car that night.
“This is Bryan—he spells it with a y, isn’t that cool? This is Cassidy; she screams in her sleep. She’s working here this summer too.”
“Hunter,” she said. Her cheeks reddened.
“You’re working here?”
Cassidy nodded. “I don’t actually scream in my sleep, by the way, only when someone wakes me by getting all up in my face.” She bent over and tickled Hunter’s side. He shrank back, giggling.
I smiled. “I do spell my name with a y. Nice to meet you, again.”
“Again?” Mr. E. said.
Cassidy studied me, the corner of her mouth turned up slightly. “Yes, I sort of met Bryan the other night when I was out riding my bike. He practically ran me over with his car. Guess I’ll be seeing you around.” She crossed her arms again and walked away, leaving me with a confused Mr. Emmerich.
“I didn’t practically run her over, sir,” I said, wondering why she’d . . . of course. She had no clue that was my brother’s idea to hang out the car and drool, or that I was trying to save her from his awkward advances. I laughed. Touché, Mr. E.’s daughter.
“Later, Dad,” Hunter said, giving Mr. E.’s legs a squeeze before joining Wade and Colby. Mr. E. waved and walked toward the rec center, jogging a bit to catch up to Cassidy.
“Who was that blond chick?” Wade asked.
“Mr. E.’s daughter. Cassidy.”
“No chance of her name being on our roster, eh?”
“I’m surprised you didn’t know she was going to be here,” I said.
“Me too. I’ll have her info by the end of the day,” he said.
Of course he would.
The rest of drop-off was easy. Too much went on for me to even worry about which parents had complained. When all the kids were accounted for, we herded them back to the gym for morning sing-along. As we passed Owen’s office, he called my name.
“I’ll catch up,” I said to Wade. He saluted me, as did the rest of the line. Twenty minutes into camp and the kids were already his minions.
I wheeled into Owen’s office, and right there in my line of vision was the ass my brother had wanted to bury his face in. Total unintentional #wheelchairperk was being able to get an eyeful of a girl’s rear view without seeming like a perv. I looked away quick. I was already on uncertain ground with her and wanted to at least apologize for the other night before getting caught checking her out. She stepped aside to make room for me, still wearing the same little upturned half smile/half smirk from when she met me at drop-off.
“Bry, could you show Cassidy where Tori’s room is? I have to get to the multipurpose room before the masses revolt.”
“Um, yeah, sure,” I said.
“Great.” Owen grabbed a whistle that dangled from a hook on the wall and shuffled around his desk to our side. He motioned for us to go out ahead of him. Cass went first. I followed, purposely looking anywhere but at the fray on her cutoffs.
“So, it’s this way,” I yelled over the noise of the hallway, motioning with my chin and pushing off ahead of her. She had her camp polo slung over her arm, her eyes scanning the hallways, looking everywhere but at me. We turned the corner into a longer, less chaotic hallway. The test kitchen was at the end of it.
“Hey, about the other night,” I said. “I didn’t . . . well, I wasn’t trying to scare you or anything, you know that, right?”
She stopped. I reversed so I could look her in the eye.
“Then what were you and your cretin buddy trying to do?”
I laughed. “That cretin is my brother, and I was trying to . . . well, he thought . . . that was his way of flirting. I sped away because I was trying to stop him from embarrassing the hell out of himself. Sorry if we made you feel uncomfortable.”
“That’s his idea of flirting?”
“Yeah, I know. He’s fifteen, kind of clueless.”
“Well, okay, apology accepted, but tell him he’s a little scary.”
“I tell him that all the time.”
She smiled then, not the little side-smirk one, but full on. It was distracting. For a moment I thought she was going to say something else, but we resumed our trek toward Tori’s room. Cassidy took a breath in, and this time I didn’t imagine it. She was about to say something but pressed her lips together instead.
“What?” I asked. She stopped and looked at me.
“You used to surf, didn’t you?” she asked.
It was the last thing I anticipated her asking. My face must have shown it. Her brow furrowed again, a little line right between her eyebrows. “That was awkward . . . was that awkward? Sorry. It’s just, you looked familiar the other night and I couldn’t place you, but when I saw you this morning . . .”
“Have you seen me surf?” I asked. There’s no way I would have not remembered meeting Cassidy Emmerich.
She shook her head, ran her fingers across the polo that was slung over her arm.
“Then what?”
“I was here last summer when they had that, um, fish fry for you, to raise money. They had a big display of photos and stuff, a video too . . . of you surfing . . . that’s why you looked familiar. I wasn’t sure at first, but when I saw Mr. Beckett, I remembered meeting him there too, an
d it all kind of clicked.”
“Wow.”
“I hope it was okay that I brought it up. I mean, it was kind of driving me crazy where I’d seen you before.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
“For what?”
“That you had to sit through something as lame as a fish fry. You know, if I’d had anything to do with that, I would have made it a burrito fest or something. Fish fry just sounds so sad, so very, very sad. And I hate fish.”
Her smile rearranged the atoms in the hallway. Damn.
“Is that . . . well, is that how you got hurt? Surfing?”
“No, nothing that exciting. So you’ve been to Crest Haven before? How is it that we’ve never met? Your dad was my chem teacher.” I began pushing down the hallway again, hoping my vague answer wasn’t a turnoff. I just didn’t feel like rehashing my accident at the moment, not after I’d made her smile that way. Not after we were actually getting along.
“I guess I’ve always sort of kept to myself, done things with my dad’s family. I visit a few times a year, but I usually spend a week in June. This is the first time I’m down here for the whole summer.”
She was here for the whole summer. I could get used to seeing her every day.
“Cool. What made you want to work here?”
She shrugged. “Don’t know, change of scenery, I guess. Or maybe it’s this fashion-forward polo and goofy logo. Do you think any self-respecting manatee would ever wear a beanie copter hat?”
“No, I don’t.”
Just then, Tori opened the door to the test kitchen, her eyes darting between Cassidy and me, as if she’d caught us in the middle of something suspicious.
“Are you my help?”
“Co-counselor, yes,” Cassidy said. “You must be Tori.”
“And you’re ten minutes late.”
Cassidy bristled.
“Tori, this is Cassidy. Owen asked me to show her around; it’s my fault she’s late.”
“Whatever, look, we have, like, no time before we have to get to the sing-along, so whenever you feel like getting in here to pitch in, that would be awesome.” She spun and went back in the room.
The Season of You & Me Page 5
