Total pages in book: 22
Estimated words: 20192 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 101(@200wpm)___ 81(@250wpm)___ 67(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 20192 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 101(@200wpm)___ 81(@250wpm)___ 67(@300wpm)
“Hold on. I feel dizzy.” Out of pure necessity, I fold forward and brace my hands on my knees, a horrible wave of nausea rising and invading my throat. “I don’t think I can hear anymore.”
“The GPS coordinates she gave you led to that big grove of laurel trees. You’d just been talking about how you love the smell of them—” Isabel breaks off, probably because I’ve left mid-sentence, my head pounding. Feet heading toward the trail that Margot took minutes earlier. “Hey, where are you going?”
“I’m an idiot,” I rasp, the woods a blur in front of me. “All that time, all the pranks were . . .”
“She was trying to tell you she liked you.”
Oh my God. “Since . . .”
“Since we were thirteen.”
“Why couldn’t she just tell me with words?”
“Ah come on, you know she likes to be dramatic. At least she finally got the courage to tell you this morning, right?”
Yeah. She had. And I called her a liar.
More than once.
How far are you going to let me take this before you admit you’re full of shit?
I wince as the memory comes back to haunt me. That was her first nonacting kiss, and I finished it off by telling her she’s full of shit? I should get prison time.
You’ve never shown any interest in me before.
Yes, I did. You just weren’t paying attention.
“I’m in idiot,” I repeat, torn between this hopeful lift in my middle because, holy shit, she really likes me, while also being swamped by a growing sense of panic. What if Margot liking me doesn’t matter now? What if she stopped? What if I screwed this up too hard to fix things between us?
At the end of the trail, the cabin comes into view and I pick up the pace, but Isabel does, too, jogging backward in front of me with her hands out, staving me off. “Uh-uh. No boys allowed in Unicorn Cabin.”
“This is an exception.”
“There are no exceptions. Those are your own words, Counselor Dean.” She blocks the door, but I can see there’s a light on in the cabin, and all I can think about is getting to Margot and apologizing. “Margot!”
“Let me go in and see if she’s receiving visitors.”
“Isabel, I swear to God.”
“Please hold.”
I grind my molars up at the moon while Isabel vanishes to the other side of the door. Murmurs ensue. A single sniffle from within nearly breaks me.
Isabel emerges once more, closing the door at her back, but not before I see Margot wrapped in a blanket from head to toe in the farthest bunk bed from the entrance. “I’m sorry, but Margot is currently in the serenity bunk.”
I hold on to my patience, but it’s thinning. Rapidly. “What is the serenity bunk?”
“It’s where a unicorn goes to be alone. Or not be disturbed. Kind of a neutral zone.” She pauses. “The Mighty Meerkats don’t have anything like that?”
“It’s called the toilet.”
“Wow.”
“Margot,” I shout over her head.
“Listen.” Isabel squeezes my right shoulder. “You’re not going to make anything better tonight. She wants to be alone. Try again tomorrow.”
“I’m not waiting until—” A ding interrupts me. It’s coming from inside my pocket. With a gritted curse, I jerk my phone from my pocket and look at the screen. There’s a single message from Aiken.
It reads: Accidental stabbing with one of the marshmallow skewers. Bring a towel.
A second message arrives. Scratch that. Bring three.
Fuck my life.
Casting one last regretful glance at the door to Unicorn Cabin, I turn around and head back to the campfire. Tomorrow is another day.
And I had better make it count.
Chapter Five
Margot
It’s hard to be down when I’m surrounded by giggling.
I know from experience that a camp counselor’s mood can infect an entire cabin. My failed love affair with Dean is not the first romance to go south at Camp Firefly, after all, and it won’t be the last. My third year at camp, the Unicorn Cabin counselor—Remy D’Angelo—was so depressed over her ex-boyfriend that she read passages from The Bell Jar out loud to the campers every night. That was the summer we all became poets. We wrote sad poetry about everything from half-empty ketchup bottles to dead leaves. Stole Remy’s mentholated cigarettes and smoked them in the woods while talking about the apartment we’d all share in New York one day.
Trust me, I ate that drama up.
But I’m not about to let my sadness trickle down to the girls.
Not when they only have three weeks to make memories.
So I lace up my boots and dab a little concealer under my eyes to hide the fact that I cried buckets last night, and we sing a repeat-after-me song on the way to breakfast. It’s a beautiful summer day at Camp Firefly. The air smells like bug spray and sunscreen; the sun breaks through the gently swaying branches of the trees overhead. Birds call to one another across the campground. We’re scheduled to go canoeing this morning, followed by Pop Paint, an arts-and-crafts activity I made up two seasons ago that involves listening to pop music and applying body paint. It’s going to be messy.