Someone was trying to call me.
We’d said good-bye to Bahar at the clearing in the woods where all the piled-up debris formed a little Texas Eiffel Tower above Sam’s Well, and were heading back to my house when my phone started buzzing in my pocket.
It was James Jenkins.
And for more than just a moment, I felt conflicted about what to do. I really wanted to talk to James about so many things, but I really did not want to talk to James while Karim was listening to all those things I needed to ask him about.
I watched the screen on my phone, frozen for an instant on the tightrope stretched between wanting to answer it and wanting to hang up.
“Well? Aren’t you going to answer it?” Karim said.
“Um.”
I was stuck. I touched the connect button, but I kept walking through the woods toward my house, hoping that Karim might be distracted by the sounds of insects and my footsteps, which I tried to make as loud as possible.
“Hi, James,” I said.
“What took you so long? Are you working at Lily Putt’s?”
“No. I’m walking to my house, with Karim.”
I said “Karim” especially loud, in a code-between-friends kind of way, hoping that James would know this wasn’t the best time to talk about certain things like crushes and flirting, or being attracted to someone. And then I said, “What’s up?”
James sounded so happy and relieved. “Well, I didn’t think I’d make it to the end, but camp is finally finished. Everyone’s leaving tomorrow, and I’ll be back in Blue Creek at your house on Saturday afternoon sometime. It’s still okay for me to stay over for a few days, right? My mom wanted me to make sure before she drives all the way out there. You know, it’s kind of awkward for her because of my dad and football and all.”
My room was sure going to be crowded for the next few days.
“Yeah. It’s totally okay.”
I missed James, and just the thought that we’d get to spend the last few days of summer together lifted my spirits, despite the fact that my dad was a criminal and some kind of ringleader—and one who had a girlfriend named Linda Swineshead when he was only thirteen, and I still had to come to terms with it all.
“Well, I just wanted to tell you thanks for talking me out of quitting the dance program when I wanted to. Sam, it really was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, and I hated it most of the time because of all the work and the pain and stuff, and not having any friends here, not having any freedom, and never getting a chance to relax and just do nothing,” James said.
“Oh. Well, I knew deep down you didn’t really want to quit, James. You’re not like that.”
“And something cool happened. A group of agents came to the school and watched our final today. One of them is going to call my mom and ask her if he can send me on auditions in New York and Los Angeles. Looks like maybe we’re both saying bye-bye to Blue Creek and going far away from Texas, huh?”
Cue the spiders.
“That’s great news, James. I bet you’re excited about that,” I said.
“Well, to be honest, all I want to do for the next week is sit around doing nothing but play video games and watch movies and eat all the food that dancers aren’t supposed to eat.”
“I think I could help with most of that,” I said, and James laughed.
“Dude. You can if you’re not too busy hanging out with your crush,” James said, and I could hear the tease in his voice.
I nearly choked, and Karim was practically close enough to hear what James was saying. Or maybe everything just seemed so incredibly loud at that exact moment. I decided my only chance to get out of the situation would be to intensify the encryption level of friend-code-speak and try to hang up as soon as possible.
“Heh-heh,” I said. “That reminds me of that TIME we were in Miss Van Gelder’s Spanish class and those two girls who sat up front were TALKING ABOUT YOU when we came in, but they DIDN’T KNOW YOU WERE THERE LISTENING, and they were SAYING STUFF that was, like, totally EMBARRASSING.”59
“Huh? I don’t remember that. What are you talking about?”60
“I know! You should have seen HOW RED YOUR FACE WAS, because you were RIGHT THERE ALL THE TIME. Ha ha! That was SO AWKWARD. If only they KNEW THEY SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN TALKING RIGHT THEN.”
There was a little pause, and then James asked, “Sam, are you okay? Why are you screaming at me?”
It was a struggle. But I noticed that Karim was paying more attention to me than to where we were going.
“Yeah, me too, James,” I said. “We’re just about to go inside. I’ll call you back IN A LITTLE WHILE.”
I hung up, and Karim asked, “Why were you yelling at James Jenkins like that?”
And finally tapping into a skill that I thought was exclusive to Karim, I said, “He’s in Massachusetts, and they’re having a really bad nor’easter right now.”
“In summer?”
Karim, who had already impressed me once that day with his use of the word “scofflaw,” apparently also knew more about New England weather than I gave him credit for.
But I was on my A-game.
“Climate change. It’s a terrible thing.”
Karim nodded solemnly.
59. That’s friend-code-speak, if you get it. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work.
60. See? I told you.