Chapter Four Dean #2
“Well. Maybe not the furthest thing.” She laughs, but her voice is getting thicker. Oh Jesus, I know that burr in her throat. She’s getting ready to cry. I made this beautiful girl cry. What the hell is wrong with me? “I need my bag.”
“Let me walk with you.”
“No, thank you.” She makes a grab for the drawstring bag, and this time, I have no choice but to let her take it.
A few minutes ago, she was lively and mischievous.
Now, she leaves the glow of the campfire circle with her head down.
It would take very little encouragement to throw myself into the flames about now.
I’d probably suffer less than I am right now, knowing she believes I called her a catastrophe.
“Where did Margs go?” asks Isabel, who saunters up beside me, hands on hips. “There’s about to be a lot of sticky fingers up in here, and she’s got the Wet Naps.”
“I think she’s upset. With me.” My voice sounds like a hard block of cheese being grated. “No, I know she is. I called her a catastrophe.”
“What? Why?”
“I don’t know. Because she usually . . . prides herself on being one. She has been driving me nuts since we were thirteen. On purpose. Now she suddenly wants to kiss me in the—”
Isabel gasps, her eyes lighting up. “She kissed you? She actually did it?”
It’s all I can think about. How she seemed to be . . . learning with me. “The point I’m trying to make is, anyone would be confused over the sudden change in her behavior. One day, she’s leaving a toad in my bed—”
“Not just any toad. The Great Basin spadefoot. Your favorite.” Something about Isabel’s relieved tone of voice, as if she’s getting a secret off her chest, stirs up a hornet’s nest in my ears.
The Great Basin spadefoot is my favorite toad.
I’d only seen one in my life, up until pulling back my covers and finding a second one nestled against my pillow.
“She searched for that toad for a week.”
A claw hammer buries in my sternum, yanking downward. “What?”
“And the time she faked a snakebite? That might have been a bit rash, but it was your mom’s birthday, and she knew it was the only way to get you out of the cabin.
Out around your friends.” She pokes me in the shoulder.
“If you recall, we all ended up in the lake for a night swim, and you felt a lot better. Her plan was weird, sure, but it worked. Kind of like the time she gave you wrong directions during that scavenger hunt and—”
“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.