Bookishly Ever After (32 page)

I smiled at her drama. This was my kind of camper. “The hair was in her face. He probably talks like that to every girl on the island.”

“So, you really think she’s right about wanting go to New York?” She paused and tilted her head. “I mean, we both know she’s not going for the music program, because it’s pretty obvious that working at the ceilidh and practicing with Evan is making her a better violinist, even if she doesn’t know it.” Her tongue tripped over ceilidh, pronouncing it “see-le-deh.”

“It’s kay-lee, like her name,” I pointed out. “I think she has no idea how she feels and doesn’t want to get played by anyone. Even someone who probably doesn’t realize he’s playing her,” I said softly, willing myself not to look at Dev.

“No way. Evan’s too nice to play anyone.”

“I think she should stay wherever she is and give this
guy a chance,” Dev said, dropping a handful of confiscated pickle slices onto his place as he sat down again.

I looked up sharply, wondered how much he heard, and hoped he didn’t think I was projecting or anything. “You have no idea what we’re talking about, do you?”

“Potato farmer book?”

“Ugh.” He really had a memory like an elephant. “You should be on my side, then. You were the one who said Bollywood backup dancer beat potato farmer.” I made little air-quotes as I spoke.

Dev’s eyes met mine. “What’s this girl afraid of, anyway?”

I didn’t break his gaze. “Letting herself fall for him completely and then getting her heart and ego crushed.” That came out softer than I had planned.

He let out a frustrated sound. “So, you’d rather have her throw away any chance with this guy because of the tiniest chance she could be reading him wrong?”

“No, she—” Bethany Two tried to break in, but failed.

“If the guy was more transparent and didn’t keep leaving her wondering how he felt, she wouldn’t be in this situation at all,” I said.

Bethany Two tugged at my sleeve, but I brushed her hand away.

His mouth set in a straight line at the challenge. “Maybe she’s just too dense to see the signs he keeps throwing at her.”

“Maybe putting herself out there is too much to ask for just a few signs,” I shot back.

“I bet potato farmer guy has put himself out there a few
times and this girl just blew him off like this hot-and-cold bookworm ice princess.”

“She’s a violinist,
not
a bookworm, and—”

“Guys? Guys!” Bethany Two’s raised voice made us both turn our heads to face her, and that’s when I realized that Dev and I were standing and practically nose-to-nose over the table. “It’s just a book, you know.”

Holy heavens above, half of the mess hall was watching us. Waves of embarrassment washed over me. “It’s never just a book,” I said under my breath as I sat down again.

“And, anyway, you’re both getting the plot wrong. Evan and Kaylie aren’t like that.”

I surreptitiously looked up at Dev, who was busy twisting and untwisting his napkin. His lips relaxed from that straight line as he checked his watch. “Okay, guys, five minutes ‘til the end of lunch. Anyone in the mood to rile up the other teams?”

Our entire table let off a chorus of “yeah”s and yeses except for Bethany Two and some of the other girls from my cabin, who were all watching me with matching smirks. The team cheer was some silly thing Dev had created that the kids loved to yell randomly throughout the day. Other teams tried to match it, resulting in a lot of off-key chanting through all of the activities. Usually, he used it to break up any arguments that might happen between the campers, but this time, he seemed to want to break the intense tension between us that hung in the air like the energy of a pending thunderstorm.

“Awesome. Let’s make this loud and proud. Ready?”

Cups and trays rattled as the campers started stomping their feet under the table. “Team eight, team eight, team eight is really great. We’re great in the morning, we’re great at night, we’re better than dynamite!” Thank God most of them were still too innocent to get any possible innuendo from that.

I cringed as the chant set off similar ones throughout the mess hall until I could barely think through all the noise. One-and-a-half more days. And then I could hide from him again.

“Sometimes, fear like this can be a gift. It means you’re growing beyond any artificial boundaries you thought you had.”
Daymeon,
Starbound

I pressed the pulp into the screen, looking up to check that all of the other campers at my table were doing the same. Most of them watched my movements and tried to imitate the way I dipped my screen and wiggled it in the water to catch the pulp. It wasn’t like I knew anything more about papermaking than they did, but I picked it up like it was second nature. My pulp sheets were thin, rectangular, and sort of uniform as I flipped them out onto the felt to dry, unlike the campers’ and Dev’s clumpy blobs. After the mud thing, a little part of me thrilled at being better than him at something other than archery.

Working the afternoon shift at the rope bridge had been the most uncomfortable five hours of my life. Dev and I didn’t talk to each other the whole time beyond what was absolutely necessary, but he was still his awesome, joking self to the kids. Dinner was impossible—we sat on opposite ends of the table. The dark cloud from our sort of-fight still hung heavy in the air, and even the kids seemed to sense it.
Even now, the tension between us was like a too-taut rope. Pairing us up had been the worst idea Em ever had.

I looked up to find Dev studying me from across the room like he was trying to figure something out. For a second, our eyes met and I froze. It was only a heartbeat before he dropped his gaze back to the mound of paper clumping on his screen. Confusion tangled with an intense need to just throw myself at him and I fumbled, dropping my screen into the pan of pulpy water.

I steadied my fingers and dug the screen out of the pan. Forcing myself to sound light, I demonstrated—again — how to dip and float just enough pulp on the surface of the screen to make a perfect sheet.

“And then you just wiggle it really carefully to distribute the pulp, just like the teacher showed us. See?” I set my screen down to drain and stood back to watch everyone else try.

Dev’s eyes met mine again and this time I was the one who turned away, acting like I had been focusing on the boy next to him.

“Make sure you hold that screen parallel, Lee.” But I felt my ears getting warm.

I gently rolled the surface of my paper, flipped it out, and mechanically went back into the pulp. The watery sludge swirled around my fingers and I pretended to be deep in my work. At the rate I was going, I’d have enough pages for a high fantasy novel.

Why was he always staring at me in that weird, but toecurling way? Something rose to the surface of my thoughts,
like the lighter pieces of pulp, and I didn’t push it away.

Maybe those looks of his were like when Aedan was always watching Maeve, while he was trying to figure out if they could actually be together. Maybe he really was about to kiss me at the bridge, and I’d never know. Maybe I really was pushing him away without knowing it, like Maeve pushed away Aedan or Kaylie avoided Evan.

“I’m not an ice princess,” I said to myself, earning a weird look from the boy at my elbow.

What if Dev’s comments at lunch were him projecting, too?

I had a crazy, scary, maybe-awesome-maybe-awful idea. Was I really strong enough, like Maeve, to put everything on the line?

The friction between us was still thick through orienteering the next morning. Dev didn’t joke around like he usually did and we seemed to move in concentric circles around each other—passing but insanely careful not to touch. Afterwards, as I was packing up all of the compasses and maps, I took a deep breath and tried to sound light as I kept my back to him and said,

“I just need to weed through all of the bows and arrows for this afternoon, replace a few strings, put aside anything that’s too beaten up to use. You can handle lunch, right?”

“You’re not going to eat?” he asked as he reached around me for the small rake he used to cover up all of the fire pits.

“Not hungry. I had a big breakfast.” I turned to face
him, but his back was to me. “So, can you? The equipment is really in too bad a shape to get through one more lesson and I don’t want anyone getting hurt.” I crossed my fingers and hoped he wouldn’t argue.

“I’ll bring you back a burger,” he said, tossing the rake onto the table and grabbing his clipboard. He started walking and added over his shoulder, “No extra pickles, since you don’t need the ammunition.”

I cracked a smile. “You’re the best.” As soon as he left, I jumped into action, grabbing my bag of supplies and hightailing it to the archery field.

I hadn’t lied about the condition of the bows and arrows. About a third of the arrows had chipped or damaged shafts, or destroyed fletching and some of the bows desperately needed new strings. I tore through the equipment and repairs faster than I’d ever done anything in my life. That didn’t mean I wasn’t nervous when I checked the time on the little clock on my clipboard. I really wanted to get this over with so I could enjoy what would potentially be my last afternoon of not feeling like an idiot.

I still had fifteen minutes before Dev was supposed to show up to help set up. Hands shaking, I spread my borrowed supplies on the ground and got to work sewing together the sheets of paper I had made the night before and writing. I was Marissa, figuring out the tussie-mussie. I was Maeve with the clover. I was Kaylie, planning out her song.

I was concentrating so deeply on my writing that I didn’t even notice Dev until he was nearly on top of me. With a
squeak, I rolled up my work and shoved it in my quiver.

“One burger, ammunition-free.” Dev slid a napkinwrapped burger across the table and, without waiting for my “thanks,” headed over to my rack of repaired bows. He twanged a string. “Looks good.”

“Yeah.” The rest of our setup went the same way, him making one or two word comments and me unable to say anything longer back. By the time the campers arrived, the atmosphere around us was back to charged and tight, like we were engulfed in a ball of coarse Suffolk yarn.

“Do something cool,” one of the boys challenged me, like every group had, and I looked over at Dev.

“We’re here to teach you basic—” he started his usual spiel about safety and how tricks could wait. But as he was speaking, I nocked an arrow and, in an attempt to repeat what I’d done that day in the school field, whipped around and took a shot. The arrow zipped through the air and hit the blue circle. Not as impressive as a bullseye, but it still elicited a few gasps and “cool”s from the kids.

Dev joined them in staring at me. I shrugged, plucking another arrow out of my quiver—careful not to jostle my papers—and preparing for a proper demonstration. “I thought it might be good to change things up a little bit.” I felt the corners of my lips turn up before I turned my attention to the campers and launched into archery 101. His eyes never left me.