Day 2
Sidney
Riverton is only four hours from where I live, but it’s like another world up here.
One with grocery stores that take checks but not credit cards, and close at five o’clock sharp.
All of the houses have names, like Blue Thunder, Copper Cove, and Lake House A.
Where random businesses crop up out of the woods, and instead of parking lots, everyone just parks on the side of the road for a quarter mile in either direction.
As I pull up to River Depot in my dad’s car the next day, cars are everywhere, even on a Monday.
I see the swarm of red shirts down by the canoes as I cross the little bridge over the river.
It feels like forever before I find a break in the cars and can wedge myself between two with out-of-state plates, and set out for the big brown building.
River Depot is a small, brown log building from the street, but beyond its doors it opens into multiple rooms and levels built into the hill that slopes from the road to the river.
This is the third summer Kara has worked the desk at River Depot.
Her grandma lives three houses down from Five Pines—a little cabin passed down through Kara’s family from back before the lake became a trendy tourist spot.
We met my first summer here when I was twelve, and I accidentally stole her inner tube.
And by stole, I mean it washed up on our beach one morning after a bad storm, and with no way of knowing where it came from, Kara found me two days later, lying on the hot-pink plastic tube where I had tethered it to the end of our dock.
She dumped me off of it while I lay there with my eyes closed, and when I surged out of the water, completely bewildered, she laughed at me like a wild little water pixie.
Which turned out to be a pretty accurate description of Kara.
She’s tiny—barely four foot nine—and even though she makes me feel like a giant at five foot eight, she’s one of my favorite people in the whole world.
We were inseparable that first summer—the only summer Asher’s family wasn’t with us.
Kara brought her float to our dock, and we strapped it next to the yellow version my parents bought me at The Little Store down the road.
She crashed dinners when her grandma let her, and the two of us were wild little summer pixies together, covering our toes in glittery polish on the deck and pretending to fish out of a little rowboat, even though neither of us ever caught anything and would have been too freaked out to pull a fish off of a hook even if we did.
Some days, we’d be joined by Nadine and Charlie’s daughter, Lindsay, who was a year older than us, and would get dropped off to swim and drive around the WaveRunner docked at Five Pines.
But by the next summer, Kara had turned fourteen and was working at River Depot in the afternoons, and when Lindsay made an occasional appearance she was more interested in my new neighbor, Asher.
By the time I make it to River Depot I’m sweaty and hot.
I find it hard to believe any canoe trip can be worth this kind of dedication, but the massive lines outside the gazebo where they sign people up tells me I must be wrong.
I push past the crowds and into the gift shop, which is dead and deserted compared to outside.
“Yesssss,” Kara squeals from behind the counter as I round a rack of postcards and shot glasses, all covered in the iconic images of a Michigan summer—lighthouses and waves and towering golden sand dunes. “Now it’s summer!”
She wraps tiny arms around me from across the counter, ignoring someone approaching with a box of graham crackers and a bottle of lighter fluid. “When did you get in?” she asks.
“Saturday night.” I glance at the man next to me, but Kara isn’t fazed.
She gives me a quick up and down, like she’s checking me out. “You’re still in one piece,” she says, looking amused with herself. “A whole day in, and no serious damage yet?”
“We’re too busy unpacking,” I say, wondering what Asher has planned for me this summer.
“You stocked, or should I dig up some bottles of hot sauce and hair remover?”
I smile. Deep down, I think Kara lives vicariously through my ongoing escapades with Asher. She can barely temper her amusement with the two of us. “I’m good.”
“I work all week.” She sticks her tongue out like she’s going to gag and makes a desperate sound deep in her throat. “But there’s a party Friday. Promise me you’ll come?” Her voice is high and whiny. “Just once?” she begs, her head tipping into a pleading dip at her shoulder.
On my left, Graham Cracker Guy clears his throat.
“I’ll think about it,” I say, but we both know I’m not going.
I hate parties. The small talk with strangers, and not knowing what to wear with a bunch of people I don’t know.
And one thing I’ve learned over the years is that everything in Riverton happens just a little differently than I expect it to.
I hate being unprepared, and while one party would remedy that, I just can’t seem to rip off that bandage.
“I’ll text you the address,” she says.
“Miss?” Graham Cracker Guy has more patience than I would have expected. It must be the beginning of his vacation—I’ve seen other tourists have total meltdowns for a lot less than being ignored for three whole minutes.
Kara’s head snaps to her right as if she just noticed someone was there, and a smile lights up her face.
She’s all white teeth, blond hair, and sparkle.
I notice the tiny pink stone that glitters in her nose, new from the last time I saw her.
“Is this going to be all?” she asks the man as I walk out a side door and onto the deck that stretches out toward the river.
I stop at one of two windows cut into the wooden wall to my left, THE GRILL painted in white above them.
Arriving at the lake is the official start of summer, and nothing says summer like ice cream.
“What can I get you?” a friendly voice says, pulling my attention away from the river and to a pair of brown eyes housed in a very pretty face. An almost too pretty face. The kind with cheekbones I could trace with my finger, and a jaw as sharp as the awkwardness stabbing me in the chest right now.
“Ice cream?” I say, suddenly unsure why I even stepped up to the window. Ice cream. It was definitely ice cream I came here for.
“Any particular flavor,” he asks with a smile, “or should I surprise you?”
“I like surprises.” I hate that I said it.
That somehow my filter has been disabled by his brown eyes, and everything is just falling out of my mouth unchecked now.
I said it nervously, but it sounded flirty.
I give myself a mental pep talk. You can do this, Sidney.
Just keep it up. You’re on vacation now; the mysterious, worldly girl from somewhere else.
He doesn’t know you paint rocks for fun, or that you can’t ski for your life. You can be anyone this summer.
But who I actually am is a girl staring like a weirdo at a guy who is clearing his throat and asking—maybe not for the first time—if she wants a cup or a cone.
“Waffle cone.” I smile. “Sorry, big decision. Not college-decision big or anything, but, you know … big … ish.” Oh good, the nervous rambling has started.
He laughs. I’m not sure if he’s laughing at me or with me, but I laugh, too, just to convince myself it’s the latter. “Done,” he says, taking a step away from the counter, toward a long white freezer that runs along the opposite wall.
I give myself a mental pat on the back for being wild and letting some random hot guy pick out my ice cream. You’re a regular summer wild-child, Sidney Kristine Walters. When he comes back he has a massive cone topped with three different colors.
“Wow,” I say. “That may be more ice cream than I’ve eaten in my whole life combined.”
He points to the scoops one at a time. “Superman.” He looks from the colorful swirl of ice cream to me, and I nod my approval.
“Strawberry.” I give another approving nod.
“And brown butter bacon.” My face scrunches up without even thinking, because I’m one of the only people in the entire world who doesn’t like bacon-flavored things.
“Yeah.” He shakes his head. “Took a risk with that one.”
“It’s fine,” I say, reaching for the cone with a smile. But before I can grab it, he has a spoon in one hand and knocks the offending scoop into a container.
“I’ll give that to Ellis later; he’ll eat anything. Let me take another shot at it.” He walks back to the freezer and reaches down into it. I’m not sure if he’s flirting with me, or he just really loves his job.
“I like anything chocolate,” I offer.
He comes back to the window with a swirl of brown and white topping my colorful cone. “S’more,” he says, giving me a skeptical look. “Chocolate, marshmallow, and candied graham cracker bits.”
I smile. “Perfect.”
He smiles at me like he just aced a test.
“I’m Sidney,” I say. It bursts out of me almost beyond my control. “I have a friend who works here—” I nod back toward where I can see Kara at the desk, her eyes fixed on us. “So you’ll probably see me around. I’m on vacation. I have no life,” I offer as an excuse. Shut up, Sidney.
“I’m Caleb.” He hands me the ice-cream cone as I pass a ten-dollar bill—my mom’s grocery store change from yesterday—across the counter. “So I guess I’ll see you around, Sidney.”
I take my change with a nod and a smile, and head back toward Kara, licking at the dribble of blue ice cream that’s now escaping down my cone. Holy hell, this is going to be a giant puddle by the time I make it to my car.
“Yummy, huh?” Kara says as I approach the counter.
I have a feeling she’s referring to more than the ice cream, and I have to agree. “Very.”
“What if I told you the party was at his house?”
“Is it?”
“No.” She smiles and I smack her shoulder. “But he’ll be there.”