Chapter Three
“Clarity, just talk to me,” Hannah pleaded, whispering outside my cabin window. I’d popped the screen back in place; I had vowed not to sneak out anymore.
“Hannah, we can’t do this—”
“Do what, Clarity?” The challenge in her tone made my stomach pinch.
I grudgingly popped the screen back out—so much for self-preservation. Hannah held out her hand to steady me, but I ignored her and the biting pain in my ankles when I landed off-balance outside my cabin window.
“What?” I hissed, instantly regretting it when surprise passed over her face. This hostile, standoffish gremlin wasn’t me, at least not with her.
“What do you mean, ‘what’? Are you okay—are we okay?”
“I don’t know. My friends won’t look at me.
No one will look at me, Hannah. It’s like I’m being shunned,” I admitted, hating that my cold resolve easily melted into embarrassment.
The same embarrassment I felt earlier when Yasmin iced me out of our lunch table… and Jameson didn’t do or say anything.
Go sit with your girlfriend, she’d spat at me. Hannah and I weren’t in a relationship—she wasn’t my girlfriend. But we’d talked about it, and for the first time, the word sounded nasty.
“They hate me, Hannah—”
“They don’t hate you.”
I toed some of the loose dirt between us, not convinced. “Why are you here?”
“Maybe I just wanted to see you.” She brushed her hand down my arm, usually a gesture that I’d lean into. When I didn’t move or say anything, she added, “We go home in a few days, and this’ll all be over. I’m excited for us to finally be together, like, together.”
“You can’t be serious,” I said, the words coming out sharper than I intended. I met her gaze for the first time since coming outside. Her eyes were as hard as boulders.
“So that’s it, then?”
If it weren’t for the utter sarcasm in her tone, I would’ve just said yes and been done with it. If only ending things and moving on were that easy.
“So, a couple of immature kids who can’t think for themselves beyond a book full of fantasy stories—”
“Hannah—”
“Snitch on you for kissing someone you care about, and our plans just vanish into thin air? Our relationship gets tossed?”
“It’s more than that, and you know it—”
“I know that you and I have something special. Have not had. It’s not over.
This feeling hasn’t gone away. I know that I matter to you as much, if not more than, you matter to me, and denying it makes you a liar.
We knew it wouldn’t be easy. That’s why we agreed to be together in secret.
So, all of this”—she gestured wildly, hands flailing in the directions of the lake and the cabins and the camp—“maybe it validates your fears, but it doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t have to change anything.”
I leaned back against the wall of the cabin, the wood weathered and smooth against my bare shoulders. Hannah took a step closer to me, ignoring the distance I’d tried to put between us, and waited.
Even before the Incident, I wasn’t ready for everyone to know about us, about me.
At first, I told myself it was because everything was so new and I just wanted to experience it for myself without it being a “thing.” But I also knew I was afraid.
I didn’t know how liking Hannah would change things, if it would change things.
What would Kristen think? What would my parents think?
We go to the same school, so there’d be plenty of opportunities for us to “run into” each other, to just see each other throughout the day. To try a secret exclusive relationship.
“You know I’m right.” Hannah interrupted my thoughts, tipping her forehead against mine.
Her hair fell like a curtain, blocking the world out so that only our faces existed.
She always wore her hair down at night, which made it easier for her mango shampoo to waft in my direction, no matter where we were or what we were doing.
I smelled the sweet scent on my next inhale, and when my lips parted, it took too much effort to not close the space between us.
I shifted away, remembering that someone could see us.
I’m pretty sure Hannah knew that’s what I was thinking because she sighed and took a step back. I tried to ignore my own inclination to shift closer to her, that magnetic, automatic pull between us. But I couldn’t. Despite all my rational thinking, I wanted to be close to her.
I still hadn’t said anything when she told me to think about it.
Days went by and I stayed quiet.
She didn’t come back to my window, and when I woke up on the morning we were due to go home, she’d already left Camp Refuge.