Total pages in book: 12
Estimated words: 11130 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 56(@200wpm)___ 45(@250wpm)___ 37(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 11130 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 56(@200wpm)___ 45(@250wpm)___ 37(@300wpm)
His brow furrows. “Anything you want to share with the class?”
“No,” I say, my lips twitching up on the side. “But maybe with a friend. Got any more POG?”
His expression softens. “Yeah, I do. And a picnic blanket with a killer view spread out a few minutes’ walk from here.”
“Perfect.” I swing my cape onto my back and tie the stiff satin ribbon around my neck. “Then let’s go. I’m assuming you have your cape up there? Or are you going to leave me hanging as the only weirdo in superhero gear?”
He grins as we start up the hill. “Of course not. Can’t have a Wild Weirdo Gang with only one person.”
“You really can’t,” I agree, wondering if that’s part of my problem.
Sam and I haven’t been spending nearly as much time together the past few years. We still hook up once or twice a month to see a movie or rip through a roll of quarters at the arcade, but we go to different high schools and have different core friend groups. We’re both busy with clubs and after-school activities and things our families insist we do—church for me and helping raise rabbits for Sam—and there isn’t as much time for being a dynamic duo anymore.
It’s only here at camp, during these six weeks devoted to nerd stuff that our other friends would find horrifically boring, that we come back together the way we used to. We fall back into our familiar rhythms, and I start to remember how good it felt to be my wild, authentic little weirdo self.
And to be loved for exactly who I truly am.
On impulse I reach out, squeezing Sam’s elbow. “Thanks.”
His eyes widen. “For what?”
“You know,” I say, shrugging as I release his arm. “So have you been hoarding that POG the entire time we’ve been here or what?”
“I have. Some guys smuggle in beer for the last night. I smuggle exotic juice.”
I grin. “I like that about you.”
“I like everything about you,” he says, making my throat tight again.
“Same,” I whisper as I start up the last rise on the map, grateful for once that I’m so out of shape. All the huffing and puffing I’m doing right now is an excellent excuse for giving the sappy stuff a rest for a little while.
I’m not good at sappy stuff. Neither is Sam.
At least not usually. But when I glance his way, there’s something different in his expression, a slightly anxious…hopefulness that wasn’t there before.
Maybe my bestie needs to get some things off his chest, too…
CHAPTER FOUR
Sam
Did she really mean what she said?
I mean, I know she meant what she said—Jess doesn’t say things she doesn’t mean—but did she mean “I like everything about you” in a friend way or in a something more way? Was she choked up about the cape because it reminds her of when we were kids or because it made her realize we’re perfect for each other?
Or maybe the cape was the final straw, the last bit of confirmation that she’s going to have to let me down easy.
Shit…
If she lets me down easy, I might actually pull a Swiss Family Robinson and run off into the woods to live in a treehouse. I can’t imagine walking back to camp beside her knowing there will always be this intolerable distance between us, that I’ll never be able to drop my guard and show her everything that’s in my heart.
It sounds like a romantic thing, all that stuff about the heart. But the reality of a chest full of bottled-up love feels more like I’m carrying a bomb around behind my ribs. One wrong move, and it’s going to explode, sending shrapnel driving into all my vital organs.
I might not survive it.
Melodramatic, much? the inner voice snarks, but it shuts up pretty quick as Jess slips off her shoes and plops down on the picnic blanket. “Okay, spill it,” she says.
“Spill what?” I ask, but my voice shakes a little, and I can tell Jess isn’t buying my “playing it cool” act for a second.
“Spill whatever has you all twitchy and weird,” she says, plucking my slightly dirtier cape from the edge of the blanket and tossing it into my lap. “But put your cape on first. In a Wild Weirdo cape, a person can confess anything without fear of judgment or retribution. What’s said in the cape, stays with the cape.”
“For real?” A part of me is soothed by the thought even as my heart begins to race. “You mean that?”
“Of course, I do,” she says. “And even if I didn’t, those are the physics of the cape. They’re inescapable. Put it on. You’ll feel it.”
I swoop the green satin around my shoulders, laughing softly as my pulse slows a little. I nod. “Yeah. I do feel it.”
“See?” She grins and the sun setting behind the mountains is instantly fifty percent less beautiful. A sunset, no matter how glorious, has nothing on Jess’s smile. The thought of scaring her away, of never seeing that wide open grin she only shows her closest friends, is terrifying.