What Happens Now (3 page)

That was it. (Pathetic. G-rated. Like I said.) But it felt so intense, I awoke wanting him even more. Like he’d come, then left. Like I’d snatched him away from my own self.

Kendall had been right. There were no answers to be found in the Camden Dreams. I needed reality, and hope, and forward motion. I needed what was actually possible. I was so serious about this, I made it a proper noun. The Possible.
That
was something I could commit to.

Then there was the boy, the real boy. It had been a whole year since that bad, bad night and Lukas was somehow still waiting for me.

So I turned to him.

THE SECOND SUMMER

(OR, EVERYTHING ELSE)

2

This is what
bugs me about calendars: all those perfect, emotionless squares. Those squares keep coming, every morning after every night, whether you want them to or not.

When the square of the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend arrived—the end of my junior year—I stayed in bed overthinking exactly all of this.

“The lake! The lake!” yelled Danielle, running into my room and bouncing on the mattress.

“Yes, the lake,” I mumbled into the pillow. “But for the love of God, no bouncing.”

Mom came in and sat on the bed’s opposite edge. Her wet hair hung in tired clumps, fresh from the shower she always
took the minute she came home from the hospital night shift. Her eyes hung, too. I was sure they’d somehow moved farther down her face in the last year.

Danielle kept bouncing. Mom did nothing about it, even though when I was her age, I wasn’t allowed to bounce. Because of, you know, the inevitable skull-breaking and waist-down paralysis that would result. Maybe bouncing had gotten magically safer in the last few years and I missed the memo.

“That’s right,” said Mom. “The lake opens today. I’m sorry I can’t go with you.”

Danielle stopped bouncing and crawled into my mom’s lap; my mom wrapped her arms around Danielle and leaned into her. At first glance they didn’t appear to be mother and daughter. My mother was a deep brunette, her features severe as if they were drawn with extra-thick Sharpie. Danielle, in her nearly white curls and pale pixie skin, resembled her dad, my stepfather, Richard. I didn’t match either of them, with my straight not-brown-not-blond hair you might recognize if you saw the photos I have of my father, who left when I was two. I’d recently cut that hair blissfully short, just below my chin, while Mom’s and Danielle’s hair was long.

It bothered me that the three of us females in the house didn’t look like a family. Maybe if we looked like one, it would be easier to feel like one.

“Let’s wait until your next day off,” I said to Mom. “Besides, the water will be freezing. I’ll do some crafts with Dani downstairs and we’ll be quiet while you sleep. And later if you give
me a list, I’ll take her to the grocery store.”

My mother got a faraway look. I knew this was a tempting offer: one less thing to do today. An hour she could have all to herself, sleeping or watching
Millionaire Matchmaker
, which for her was basically like going to the spa.

“Arianna, no,” she finally said. “It’s going to be a beautiful day. I can’t let you hang around the house. You both need to be out, being active. I’ll pack up some snacks.”

She left the room. Danielle watched her go, then turned to me and bugged out her eyes.

“Maybe your guy will show up!”

“Shhh!” I lowered my voice, hoping Mom hadn’t heard her. “What do you mean, my guy?”

“You know. Your summer crush.” Now she smiled that evil genius kid smile.

“How do you know about things like ‘summer crushes’?”

“Because I
live
. In the
world.
Also I eavesdropped on you and Kendall talking about it once.”

“Well, that’s over, and you’re not allowed to talk about it. Actually, don’t even think about it. Don’t think about thinking about it.”

(That went for me, too.)

“You’re no fun,” said Danielle. Her expression turned sad and she added, “I wrote a letter to Jasmine about the lake because I wanted to know if any of her friends live there. But she didn’t come last night.”

Oof.
I usually knew when there was a fresh note for
Jasmine, Dani’s fairy pen pal. I’d slip into Dani’s room once she was asleep and grab it off the windowsill, then write back on special green vellum paper I kept hidden inside an old math textbook.

“You know what happens sometimes,” I told her. “Jasmine gets busy working at the fairy vet hospital and can’t write back for a while.”

Danielle nodded, apparently satisfied with this. I loved that I could make things better for her so easily.

My mother came back in, holding out some cash like it was the most brilliant idea she’d ever had, and said, “Here’s something for ice cream. A special treat to celebrate summer.” Her face got suddenly serious again. “Promise me you won’t get the kind with artificial colors.”

Dani rolled her eyes. I sat up, swung my feet to the floor, and took the money from my mother.

The Possible
, I chanted to myself.

Everything is Possible.

Maybe I would continue to believe it. Maybe it would even be true.

Every summer, Danielle created a rock collection that she arranged in meticulous groups along the edges of our front porch. To most people, they looked random and unremarkable, easy to dismiss as a little kid’s Accumulation of Crap. But I’d learned to see what was special about each one.

As soon as Danielle and I stepped from the car across the
lake’s parking lot, she bent to pick up the first member of the new crop.

“Look,” she said. “It’s a perfect oval. And so smooth.” She held the rock and stroked it with one finger as if it were alive.

“Mmmm,” I said in not-faked admiration. “Good for drawing a face on.”

Dani nodded, then clutched it to her chest as we walked over to the admission kiosk. The kiosk was actually a tall, narrow wooden house, and years ago Kendall and I decided it looked like a latrine so we called it the Crapper. A kid from school named Julian was working the Crapper today, perched on the metal folding chair, reading a book.

Kendall. God, I wished she were here and not camping with her older brothers, that she’d chosen me over them this weekend.

“Hi, Julian,” I said as we stepped up to the Crapper window. “One adult, one kid, please.”

“Hey, Ari,” said Julian, taking my money. He swished his eyes toward my arms. It had been over a year, but the buzz about my scars was still humming, because people could see them now. I’d stopped covering them up. I wasn’t trying to show them off or anything. At some point, they’d become a part of me. I woke up one day okay with them, the same way you’re okay with a birthmark or a white spot on your skin from a long-ago mosquito bite you never stopped picking at.

It was like a physical reminder of my depression, a way for me to accept that even though I had fought and won, it would
always be there with me. And also that I had power to fight again.

“Ready for the season?” I asked Julian, who was still fixated on my arms.
What do you think? Were they what you imagined?

Julian glanced back up. “There’s carpeting on the dock this year. Splinter-proof.”

“Fancy.” I smiled.
No worries, you’re not the first person I’ve caught looking.
The lookers used to bother me until my therapist, Cynthia, suggested that maybe people saw a little of themselves in those lines on my skin.

I’d recently asked Cynthia if I could take a break from our sessions for the summer. I was tired of talking about feeling okay and thinking about feeling okay. I wanted a chance to just, you know,
feel okay
. She’d said yes, but she’d also made me set an appointment for the first week in September to make clear this was a trial run. It felt like a challenge, and one I wanted to win.

It was early, the opening day crowd beginning to trickle in. I led Danielle to a nice spot under a tree far from last year’s. As far as I could possibly get from last year’s. Then I did a quick casing of the joint to confirm that nobody I knew was here yet, and that nobody else of particular interest—oh, for instance, nobody I’d had boring-devastating dreams about—had shown up either.

I prayed for him to come. I prayed for him not to come.

Danielle was ankle-deep in the water before I could even get the blanket spread out. “It’s so freezing ice-cold I’m gonna
die!” she yelled. “Come in with me!”

“Wow, you really know how to sell it.”

“We’ll play whatever you want. Mermaids, dolphins. Sea monkeys!”

“Tempting. But I didn’t wear my suit today.”

Dani scanned my regulation tank top and black jersey skirt with distaste. Maybe that’s really when you become one of the grown-ups. You come to the lake and don’t even bring a damn suit.

“You’re not leaving
those
on, are you?” Danielle asked, pointing at my feet.

Oh. I’d forgotten about my boots. I’d worn them every day of the two months since I’d bought them and they didn’t even feel like footwear anymore. They were just soft purple leather perfectly molded around all the stuff at the bottom of my legs. Like I was a doll and someone had painted them on. Actually, that doll existed. I had two versions of it at home, one of them mint in box.

“They’re my Satina Galt boots,” I said. “You know I wear them everywhere.”

Danielle made a face. Which was really rich, coming from a child who often wore the same outfit three days straight, only taking it off for a mandatory change of underpants.

Satina Galt was the character who made
Silver Arrow
what it was, to me. The boots made me feel strong. They made me feel like something Possible. Maybe if I wore them long enough, I would actually be that something. My mother understood the
boots. She never let on, but I could tell by the way she looked at them sometimes, like they were a memory of a memory. Occasionally, she looked at me that way, too.

Something over my shoulder caught Danielle’s eye and her face lit up. “Oh! Madison’s here!”

I turned to see a girl I recognized from Dani’s class, and the kids ran to each other, hugging and squealing like they hadn’t spent seven hours at school together the day before.

When does that stop?
I thought. When you’re not afraid to claim your friends, to clasp them to your chest and shout to the world,
Mine!
When you know for sure, pinkie promise, that the way it is now is the way it will always be.

Kendall and I hadn’t hung out in weeks. We’d both been so busy, of course. She had the special year-end edition of the school newspaper and already started work at Scoop-N-Putt. I had Dani and a job at Richard’s art supply store and a really packed schedule of hanging out alone in my room, lurking on
Silver Arrow
fansites.

It stung, to watch the little girls now.

I located and approached Madison’s mother: huge sunglasses, stylish beach hat, paperback in hand.

“Hi,” she said, grinning. “How are you?”

“Good. How are you?”

“I’m fine, thanks. I actually meant, how
are
you? You look like you’re doing really well.”

I smiled and said, “Thank you.”

I said it because I lived in a small town, and people don’t want good stories to end, and everyone thinks they know a little bit about depression, and because these were just a few of the terms I unknowingly agreed to that night over a year earlier.

“I have to go to the restroom. Do you mind keeping an eye on Dani for a few minutes?”

“Of course not, sweetie. She’s lucky to have you.”

Yes, she is
, I thought as I walked toward the restroom building, my head swimming.
I miss Kendall. There was still gossip about me.

Inside, the cool and the dark and the silence and the quick bliss of being unseen.

I went into an empty stall and jiggled the lock shut.
You look like you’re doing really well.
What exactly does that look like? What would not-doing-well look like? Because I had once been not-doing-well for a long time and nobody noticed at all.

Turns out, I wasn’t completely alone in the bathroom. I could hear someone in the next stall going, too. It was one of those awkward situations where you find yourself in sync with a stranger.

After I was finished (
first!)
, I stepped out of the stall to wash my hands. I heard the other stall door open and glanced up into the mirror.

“Am I in the wrong bathroom?” asked Camden Armstrong. Like it was simply an intellectual question.

This is where I wondered if I was having a hallucination.

Then in the mirror, I could see a urinal on the wall behind me.

And this is where I panicked.

“Um, no,” I managed to say. “Apparently,
I
am. Sorry!”

I ducked my head and walked quickly past him out the door. I’m not sure what ducking my head was going to accomplish, but as I mentioned: the panic.

No. No, no.
Pleasetellmethatdidnotjusthappen.
I stumbled across the beach, my feet not going where I wanted them to go, trying and failing to get away from my own mortifying self.

Once I got back to my blanket, I waved at Madison’s mom and she waved back. The two girls were swimming nearby. I grabbed my phone and texted Kendall with quivering thumbs.

Just saw Camden Armstrong at the lake. Went into the men’s restroom by accident. Call me.

Those days, I was always looking for things to connect over with Kendall. Our friendship was like the drawstring in a pair of sweatpants, always slipping out of sight and out of reach. We always knew it was there. One of us merely had to retrieve it with that safety-pin trick until next time.

I waited for a reply, looking out at the lake so I wouldn’t have to watch Camden come out of the restroom, so maybe he wouldn’t see me back. He was here. I had spoken to him. I wasn’t sure what I felt other than an overwhelming urge to dive into the lake, swim past the far boundary rope, then keep going and never come back.