Proof of Forever (14 page)

“In that case, there're other ways you could go about getting your hands on that puppy,” Rob says.

Luce turns to him. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, why don't we just steal the thing?”

Luce gasps, causing herself to choke on smoke.

Rob starts laughing.

Luce gives him a hard look through her coughing, which turns into laughter as well.

They both lie back against the sand, giggles rippling easily out of them like water. Before Luce knows it, she's snorting. She can't even remember the last time she laughed in such a relaxed, effortless way.

“If it weren't so absurd,” Luce says between snorts, “I would say that's actually a really good idea, Rob.”

“If it weren't so absurd, it wouldn't
be
a good idea.” Rob sits up, takes the butt of the joint and puts it out, burying it in the sand. She feels light-headed as he leans over, grabs her hands, and pulls her back to her feet.

Before Luce really knows what's happening, she's following Rob through the musky, darkened woods with their trash bags in hand, snickering. The trees and branches form an obstacle course and Luce dodges them, keeping her eyes on the white of
Rob's T-shirt, barely noticing a scratch here or a near-tumble over roots there.

“Slow down!” she whisper-shouts. “I'm supposed to be heading to the talent show! It's gotta be starting soon.”

Rob turns around. “Are we on a mission or not?”

She feels a ripple of dread now. “Wait. Crap. Are we gonna get caught? I can't get in trouble again. Forget it. This was a terrible idea, Rob. I need to go. I need to get to—”

“Shhhhh.” He puts his hand to his lips. “You're getting paranoid. It's just the pot. Come on, follow me.”

She does. Sooner than she expected, the back of the main office building emerges through the inky night, lit from within by the after-hours emergency lights.

“To the right,” she commands. “My mom keeps all the trophies and badges in the prize shed.” Saying it aloud confirms what they're really up to, but for some reason she doesn't care. The acceptance speeches are scheduled for tomorrow afternoon, and that's when the badges will actually be doled out. If Luce steals the merit badge, her mother will be forced to hand Jade a different honor, and Luce can then sneak off with her friends later that evening, get inside that photo booth, and make it back to the present. Then none of this will matter. It will all be erased.

Or none of this will work, and she'll be stuck living her life over again, stuck on what she's now realizing is a miserable repetition of expectations and assignments and tasks and awards and hard work and lots and lots of winning badges just to win badges. She tries to shut off the spiraling thoughts. Like Rob said, it's
probably the marijuana making her paranoid.

They deposit their trash bags into the big green Dumpster, and Rob accidentally lets the lid clang shut afterward. They both cringe at the sound, but no one shows up to scold them. Luce waves Rob over to the back of the main offices next, where she gestures for him to crouch down. She peers through her mother's office window.

Bernadette Cruz is fastidious in her neatness—the room is spare, with two matching leather chairs, a set of filing cabinets, a bookcase, and a series of ribbons and medals won by Luce. For a brief second, she feels a wave of not quite sadness . . . something more like
distance
. As much time as she's spent inside that very office, she has the odd feeling that she's peering in on someone else's life. The room is dimly lit, the computer's screen saver casting an eerie blue glow as pictures of Luce, her two brothers, and their little sister pop up on it like shuffled cards. There's one of the twins in braces and hockey uniforms, one of Amelia in the helmet she used to have to wear before her surgery, one of Luce and her dad hugging after Luce completed a swimming competition, coming in third place. She remembers how she had to fake a smile while swallowing her anger and frustration about failing to secure first place, even though she'd beaten her record.

Rob taps Luce on her shoulder and she squats back down. “She's gone. Come on.” They crawl across the grass to the shed and Luce points to a high window, the same one that Tali used to boost Zoe up into when they were kids stealing from Bernadette's
spare-candy stash. Luce always refused to be directly involved, though once they were safely stowed away in the Stevens she was happy to partake of an equal share of the hard-won goods.

“Boost me up,” she commands in a whisper.

Rob botches the first try. Luce falls into Rob's chest awkwardly.

He snickers. “Sorry, dude, I wasn't ready.” He holds out his hands again.

She grabs his shoulders, and puts one foot into his hands, holding on as he easily hoists her up to the window. It's smaller than she remembers. She pushes the glass pane upward and thrusts the upper half of her body through. Her bottom half proves a bit trickier, and she wavers there for a second, feeling like a total idiot with her butt hanging out in the night air, trying not to dissolve into laughter again. Then she grabs onto a sturdy metal shelf and heaves herself farther into the darkened shed, managing to get one leg through and then the other, climbing down the shelves.

She stands there waiting for the objects inside the crowded shed to take form as her eyes adjust. It smells of must and plastic and, faintly, Skittles. All sounds from outside seem muffled by the thick darkness within.

Gradually she is able to see that the metal shelves are lined with plastic Container Store bins, each labeled with an age group, a cabin, an activity, an accolade. Luce can barely make out the writing on the labels, even up close, with only the light from the moon through the window to read them by, but she
manages to locate the three bins designated for the badges, alphabetically ordered. In the bin labeled K through R, she is shocked to find not just one but several copies of each badge. There are about twenty-five kinship badges in a row at the front of the box. Her head feels thick, her eyes slow, her hands clumsy. Something about this box makes Luce's stomach drop. It's not like she ever thought winning the badge was all that special, but still . . . Seeing them all lumped together like that, unceremoniously, makes the whole thing seem like a joke. Meaningless.

She stares at the stack of badges in her hands in the darkness, not sure what to do or how to feel. Just then, the beam of a headlight flashes through the window, reflecting off the metal bars of the shelving, and she hears a car pulling onto the gravel right next to the shed.

Someone's
here. Shit.

Stuffing a badge into her pocket, she begins climbing back up the shelves to the window, heart hammering so loudly she's sure it can be heard all the way at the boys' cabins. When she peers out, she sees Rob's back, darting away into the night. She could swear he's still snickering.

Double shit.

Of course Rob would ditch her. He probably thinks this is absofrigginglutely hilarious.

From this vantage point, she can see a figure getting out of the car, which is parked only about seven or eight feet from where she's hiding. The person emerges—a woman in a black dress. Luce's mother. Weird. She must have gotten dolled up for
the talent show. Which reminds Luce that she needs to hurry and get out of here. She can't miss the talent show. She needs to be there for Joy.

But she can't tear her eyes from her mother, whose thick, wavy hair is tied in a low, elegant knot at the back of her neck. Luce is struck by how
pretty
her mom looks. She's wearing the diamond earrings Luce's dad got her on their fifteenth anniversary, and they sparkle just slightly in the moonlight. What's she doing back at the office after hours?

Then someone steps out of the passenger side. A man, wearing khaki shorts and a collared short-sleeved shirt that shows off his biceps. Mr. Wilkinson, the sailing instructor. The one who forbade Tali and Blake and his friends from swimming in the lake for the rest of the summer.

Luce lowers herself down by one shelf so that her eyes barely hover over the edge of the window. The last thing she needs is her mother noticing movement in the shed and coming over here to investigate.

Luckily, her mother seems distracted. She's in the middle of a conversation with Mr. W. Luce's mom throws her head back, laughing. Luce had no idea they were so chummy, though her mother gets along with most of the staff pretty well.

Now her mom is picking a piece of lint off Mr. W's collar, or straightening it, or . . . or grabbing it and pulling him closer to her. And kissing him.

Bernadette Cruz is kissing Thom Wilkinson.

Luce's mother, her
married
mother, infamously strict
disciplinarian and revered camp director . . . is
making out with the hot sailing teacher
.

She hardly realizes she has let go of the shelving with a loud gasp until she's landing hard on her elbows and knees on the floor of the shed.

Without thinking, filled with a sudden, powerful nausea, Luce bursts through the door, gasping like a fish on a line, running, blind. She runs, runs, runs, not caring if her mother saw her. She can't breathe, but she can't stop running, either. Past the back corner of the offices, past the dining hall, past the soft halo of the older girls' lit cabins.

She knows she's got to make it to the talent show. It's the only fact keeping her mind from unraveling. But as she runs, a chill races down the back of her neck. She can't tell if she's hot or cold, only that she feels like she's been punched in the gut. She veers back toward the woods, and as soon as she reaches the first tree, she leans into it, heaving, unsure whether she's going to throw up or faint. She hears the distant sound of applause erupting from the rec hall, where the talent show must have already started, and feels a pang of loneliness—awash in the intensity of being completely, incontrovertibly solitary in this world.
Solace, solicit, solitary
.
Comfort, ask, alone.

The world spins fast around her: trees, trees, darkness, cabins, grass, lake, more trees.

Her perfect mom. Her perfect mom. Her perfect mom.

A cheater. A liar. A fraud.

“But it's clear, oh so clear,

You'll never be here

Because every day, a little more

You disappear, you disappear, you disappear.”

Silence wraps Joy in its thick blanket, too warm, stifling. The footlights are so glaring, she can hardly differentiate the faces of her fellow campers in the audience.
During the song, she was grateful for those lights—they let her feel like it was just her and Ryder, singing alone on the boulder as the sun set, like yesterday. She completely forgot to worry about what her voice must seem like outside of her head, whether it was too whiny or too high-pitched; she was not worrying about whether she'd get the lyrics right or what the other kids were thinking.

Everything fell away, and she felt
right.

But now the song is over, and the terror comes flooding back
in:
Did they screw up? Did they sound okay? Is everyone trying not to laugh at her? Did she look like an idiot?

And then there's a loud rush of noise—applause. People are clapping. Some of them are even standing—not just the ones who squeezed in behind the back row after the chairs ran out. Suzanne Simonson, head of Bunk Chipmunk, is wiping tears from her eyes. Even Jeremy Farber puts two fingers into his mouth and whistles—and for once his whistle doesn't make Joy's skin crawl. In the crowd, she spots Tali, Zoe, and Luce—who snuck in late—clapping.

Ryder stands up and swivels his guitar strap so that the instrument is out of his way. Then he leans over and helps Joy out of her chair, and she realizes she's beaming like him. They turn toward the audience again and take a bow, then Ryder pulls her off the platform and through the door to the “green room,” which is really just the rec hall supply room, lined with makeshift vanities and mirrors propped against the wall, lit with clamp lights. She catches a brief glimpse of their reflection in one of the mirrors—he's about six inches taller than her, and she fits nicely under his shoulder.
We make a cute couple,
she thinks, and then is startled by the thought. They look
normal
. Like any other couple.

After all the pain and anger of the last couple of years, after all the loneliness, she stopped believing that she'd ever have that. Have
this
.

As soon as the door closes behind them, Ryder is enfolding her in a giant bear hug. She lets him press their bodies together, her face against his hard chest, and she breathes in his smell. He's
wearing some old band shirt and it's surprisingly soft against her cheek.

“We rocked it,” he says.

“I know,” she says, pulling back so she can look at him, feeling the giant, geeky smile stretching across her face. “We did.”

They watch the rest of the talent show from the wings, along with some of the other performers; they laugh together when Dave Krauss and Mike Lawrence perform a comedic skit imitating Okahatchee's counselors, and they clap along during an adorable tumbling routine performed by the little girls from Bunk Robin's Egg.

Joy loses herself in the night—the feeling of endlessness, like it's a single snapshot from a long photo strip of more nights just like this one—and is startled when she hears her name called during the awards announcement. Someone from Bunk Bear Cub has already won first place in the talent show for her incredible Hula-Hoop dance, and Hadley Gross won second, like always, for her French horn solo. A few runners-up were announced, but Joy lost track as Ryder wrapped his arm around her. So why is her name being called now?

Ryder drags her back onstage to another round of applause. With a rush of clarity, she understands what's happening: she's being given the Miss Okahatchee tiara. The faux-metal crown's sharp combs scratch her scalp as Suzanne Simonson places it on her head.

Quickly Joy scans the crowd again for her friends. She was so
wrapped up in the performance with Ryder she literally forgot what was at stake. She spots Zoe, who gives her a thumbs-up, while Luce and Tali clap.

“Wh-why me? Why do I get it?” Joy finds herself blurting as Suzy shakes her hand to more applause.

“Why you?” the counselor repeats. “Because, girl—your voice made all of us cry out there! You deserve it!”

The audience begins to filter out. Joy follows the crowd, for some reason unable to speak, unable to talk to Ryder, unable even to be proud. All she feels is numb confusion.

She just won Miss Okahatchee.

Just like last time.

Only not like last time at all.

Suddenly Zoe throws her arms around Joy.

“You did it!” Zoe shouts. “Holy shit, I was so nervous. But when I heard you sing I knew you had it in the bag. I'm so proud of you.”

Joy tries to smile, but it's as though her mind has left her body.

“Finally,”
Tali says in an urgent but hushed tone, shaking Joy's arm. “We're making progress!”

Joy stares at her.

“Aren't you excited? We're one step closer to going home!” Zoe tugs at her T-shirt.

Luce, unusually quiet, scrunches her forehead and puts a hand on Joy's shoulder. “Hey, are you okay?” Her own eyes look red, and normally Joy's reaction would be to ask
her
the same question.

But not now.

No.
Joy can feel the word burning inside her, but she can't say it aloud. She's not okay.

And she knows, suddenly, with total certainty: She's not going home.

She's not going back.

She's heaving by the time she reaches the boulder by the lake, past the footbridge, where she and Ryder sat practicing “Disappear” just last night. Was that really only one night ago? It seems like she's known him forever.

But what does forever mean, anyway?

Her throat feels hot and sticky. In the darkness, the boulder looms up before her quite suddenly, shapely and mysterious, like an ancient rhinoceros fast asleep. She climbs its back, then stands on the side facing the lake, only about a foot from where the lip of the rock touches the water. Tonight the moon is eclipsed by clouds, and the lake, sloshing with secrets, licks at the shore as though it's thirsty for more.

But she's not telling hers. Not yet. Maybe never.

Joy rips the tiara off her head and throws it as far as she can into the waves. It's so flimsy, it doesn't even make a splash—it's just swallowed, whole. Gone. There's a small taste of relief, some space opening up at the back of her throat at last, her mind starting to clear like a good high—another thing she never used to know about.

And then she hears footsteps behind her. “Hey.”

It's Ryder. He has followed her. She can see he's not angry, just bewildered.

“Why the hell did you do that?” he asks.

Why?
Because she can't go back. Because no matter how much you try, you cannot change the future. You cannot change. Not
really
. That's the problem with optimism, with hope. You end up disappointed.

She feels like a complete idiot for even thinking it was possible to break out, to start fresh, to undo the damage of the last two years, to think she had some power to cut her own path through this universe, that living differently, being braver, would alter her fate forever. But there's no such thing as forever; she knows that.

He takes another step toward her on the boulder, and she repositions her footing. “Hey,” he says, and then softer, “is everything cool with you? What happened? Was it the song? Was it . . . me?”

His concern is so genuine it actually makes her laugh. “Sorry, Ryder. It's not the song. The song's perfect. It's just me. I didn't deserve the crown.”

“What are you
talking
about? You were amazing!” he says, rubbing her arms. She hadn't realized she was shivering. His face is partly hidden in the misty night, his eyes two dark stars, burning almost invisibly.

She backs up, even though her whole body wants to stay. “You shouldn't get close to me.”

“Why not?” he asks, meeting her eyes. She's never met anyone who can hold her gaze with such confidence.

“I'm . . . dangerous,” she answers, for lack of a better way
to put it. Really, she's a volcano. She's Vesuvius. Three million people . . . three million idiots live around that place, just waiting for an explosion, just waiting to be painted in ash, just waiting for disaster. How did they not see it coming?

How can Doug Ryder not understand that they're doomed?

Because he doesn't know the truth. No one does.

He steps even closer to her. “I'm not afraid.”

She feels like a rubber band, stretched taut—she has no idea which direction she'll fly once released.

“Maybe
you
should be afraid of
me
,” he says, getting even closer, so their noses are almost touching—too close.

“Oh, really?” Her heart aches. Her whole body aches. His hands are skimming her shoulders, making a new kind of shiver. “Why's that?”

“Here's why,” he says softly . . . and then pushes her.

She shrieks and tumbles backward right into the lake. It's shallow here and she comes up laughing, spluttering water, then grabs his ankle and yanks him in, too.

Now she's in his arms, in the water, and she can feel his breath against her wet cheek. All it would take is to lean in, just a little. . . .

His kiss feels like it has been coming forever, and yet she's still surprised by it, his lips warm and soft and urgent against hers. She lets herself go, gives in to it, gives in to
him
, even if it is wrong, even if it is doomed.

He leans back just a fraction, his bottom lip still touching her top lip, then kisses her eyebrow, her cheek, then her mouth
again, pulling her toward him so that their bodies are completely aligned. He lifts her slightly out of the water. She wraps her arms around his shoulders and he lifts higher, so her hips are pressed against his abs. His hands grip her waist strongly, like he knows what he's doing—like he's been waiting to do this for a while.

He trails his kisses down her neck. He kisses the soft spot just between her shoulder and collarbone. “You're shaking,” he says, slowly putting her down.

“I'm fine,” she says, though it's more like a sigh.

“You're freezing,” he says.

“I'm hot,” she says, giggling, happiness rising inside of her like a bubble. “I'm boiling, see?” Spontaneously, she pulls her drenched shirt off over her head.

He draws her toward him again, touching her all over, kissing her everywhere. Her skin feels cold and hot, sticky and smooth, tingly and static, like her body carries an electric charge. She fumbles to take his shirt off, too, drawing it over his torso, laughing as the shirt gets stuck coming over his head, feeling wild and a little dizzy. Is this even real? But then it's almost like her hands have a mind of their own, tracing his chest and shoulders, as though desire itself is a directional force, a compass needle that always knows north.

Now he's tugging at her shorts, which are so sodden with lake water that they cling to her thighs, until she's in only her underwear, and then he's carrying her, carrying her, over to the mossy shore by the mini waterfall, which is really more of a five-foot-high trickle, and he's laying her down on the mossy shore
and they're kissing more and touching more and their bodies are speaking to each other in a language Joy had no idea she even knew. Her nerves feel like they're on fire, like they'll burn right through her skin, like they'll singe
his
.

“Joy,” he whispers.

Her name, like long-awaited punctuation in a run-on sentence, a sentence that wants to keep going forever. In this moment, she
does
believe in forever. The Joy who didn't believe just moments before is a stranger to her now. She's floating. She's all rhythm and touch and heat. She curls into him, feeling sweat or possibly tears on her face, or a light mist from the waterfall spraying off the rocks.

She has no real clue how they both ended up naked, how any of it happens—she doesn't know anything at all. She kisses him again. He smells like the lake. He puts his arm around her to keep her from shivering, which she didn't think was possible after being so hot.

“This sounds crazy,” he whispers. “But do you believe in love at first sight?” Then he laughs a short, sheepish laugh.

Joy smiles, burying her face into his chest. “I don't know,” she answers honestly. She suddenly feels so
young
. Usually she feels mature, old, like nothing can surprise her. But in this moment, she's realizing maybe she hasn't lived at all before now. Maybe her life is just beginning, from this point on.

Some of the clouds have parted and a few stars are faintly visible over them. The lake is quietly whispering near their feet, and
Joy knows at least one of its secrets, but that just makes her realize the infinite ones she'll never know.

Ryder rolls slightly more onto his back. “I think that's the Big Dipper,” he says, pointing. “I've never actually noticed it before. I'm terrible at that stuff.”

She laughs, looking up at the series of stars forming what looks like the bottom half of an octagon. “Yup, that's it.”

“Seems like it's gotta be, I don't know, proof of something,” he says, tracing his fingers down her arm, writing unreadable cursive on her skin.

She looks up at the sky again, at those tiny pinpricks of distant fire, burning out there in cold, black space, forming their pretty, arbitrary shapes.

“Hey, what time is it?” she asks.

He fumbles for the phone in his jeans, long discarded. “Eleven forty-five.”

She sits up, an idea occurring to her. “Then there's still time to catch Blake's party.”

Ryder laughs again. “You're a little bit insane, aren't you?”

She turns to him, then grabs his hands and pulls them both up to their feet. It feels awkward, standing like that, naked, with someone she was just . . . intimate with. She's almost dizzy with the knowledge of it. She pushes that aside. “I don't want to miss anything.”