Everyone in the camp center was talking at once. Alyssa was with her dad, Lance, who, for someone who controlled so much, was smaller than Carolina had expected. Lance was barely taller than Alyssa, with thinning brown hair and thick glasses. Alyssa was carrying on about how worried she’d been while George loudly complained that kids today had no discipline. Gavin rested a hand on Jenn’s shoulder while Lydia boiled water for tea and scolded herself about giving the kids so much free time. In the corner, Mami and Tía Cuca looked small, clutching their purses and sitting at the far table. For once, they were silent.
The kettle whistled, and Lydia poured mug after mug of tea. She carried them over to the table, then she pulled out some chairs. “Sit,” she told everyone.
Carolina sat down across from Mami, avoiding her eyes. Lydia settled at the head of the table.
“So,” Lydia said. “Do you want to explain yourselves?”
Caro racked her brain for an explanation. “We got lost,” she said finally.
“Carolina, maybe you got lost, but these two”—Lydia pointed at Gabriela and Jennifer—“know better than to leave the trail. After what happened to Paul! We were out of our minds with worry!”
Alyssa clasped her hand to her heart. “I was worried sick about you, Gabs.”
“You were?”
“Jenn, we’ve told you to stay on the trail a million times,” Gavin said. “I don’t understand why you would go off like that.”
Jennifer stared at her hands.
“If none of you will give me a reason…,” Lydia warned.
“It was my fault,” Gabriela said. “Jenn and Caro were following me. It wasn’t their idea.”
“Then do you want to tell us why you led two younger girls so far off the trail?” Lydia asked.
“And your father and I will have something to say to you when we get home, young lady,” Tía Cuca added.
Gabriela hung her head. There was an awkward pause, then Lydia sighed.
“Given what you did, Gabriela—”
“Wait.” Jennifer got to her feet. “It wasn’t Gabriela’s idea.” Her cheeks were bright red. “She’s just sticking up for us.”
“See, Daddy?” Alyssa whispered. “I told you it wasn’t Gabriela.”
Lydia turned to Jennifer. She was very quiet. “I must say I’m surprised. I thought you out of everybody would understand why we have these rules. Do you want to give me an explanation, Jenn?”
Caro’s heart was breaking for Jennifer, who was sitting there just like Gabriela: head down, hot cheeks, looking ashamed. Caro took a deep breath.
“Jenn and I like to go to the woods during free time,” Caro said. She searched for a plausible reason for getting lost, something that wouldn’t make Gabriela look bad. All eyes were on her. George, Alyssa, Lance—they wanted an explanation. She thought of the search party in the woods, combing the land, looking for them. Sooner or later, they would discover the cottage.
It might as well be from her.
“It was because—”
She stopped. Jennifer and Gabriela both looked up, and they subtly shook their heads. Carolina wished she could think of some other reason to give, but her mind was drawing a blank. She opened her mouth again, but before she could go on, George dropped a blue folder on the table.
“Ma, enough. We don’t have to listen to this. By next week, all these problems will be long behind us—and good riddance, I say.”
Lance Rogan chimed in, “I think your son is right, Lydia. Our offer couldn’t have come at a better time.”
Gabriela looked between Lance and George. She wrinkled her forehead. Then she jumped to her feet. “You’re selling the farm!”
“Gabriela!” Tía Cuca said, shocked.
“You are!” Gabriela stomped over to Lydia. “How could you? You can’t sell Silver Meadows! I’ve been coming here every summer since I was six! My cousin Caro just got here!”
“And you’re my neighbor!” Jennifer piped in. “I don’t want to live next to more—” She looked daggers at Alyssa’s dad, then crossed her arms and settled back into her seat.
“Girls, calm down,” Lydia said.
But as she spoke, Carolina felt her pulse quickening. She longed for her sketchbook, still lying in her backpack on the floor of the cottage, longed for the peace of the woods and not the chill of this too-full room, where everyone was angry, and where Mami just stared at her without uttering a word.
“George and I decided to sell the farm several weeks ago,” Lydia explained. “Lance has made us a very generous offer, and you know I can’t keep up the farm forever. That’s why he was here today after camp, before your absence at dismissal interrupted us.”
“I’m sorry,” Mami said, finally talking. “Caro’s usually such a good girl. She’s usually so helpful.”
Carolina bit her lip, wondering what had happened to her, how she had gone astray. Mami was right. When else had she lied to a grown-up, wandered off the path, snuck tooth money past her own parents, and stolen bedsheets from her aunt?
Lydia patted Mami’s hand warmly. “I’m not mad, Ana. Kids wander off sometimes. I’m just sorry this decision took everyone by surprise.”
Mami squeezed Lydia’s arm. “I understand your difficulties. Sometimes it’s right to let go. I felt that way when we came here.”
But what about the cottage? Carolina thought. She couldn’t stand imagining it empty or, worse, torn down like their house in Puerto Rico. She wondered what Alyssa’s dad would do with Silver Meadows, whether it, too, would become straight streets and new houses.
Lydia put down her tea and came around the table. She put an arm around Carolina. “Honey, don’t cry. It was time for me, and for Silver Meadows. Things aren’t like they used to be. Without my husband, I’m alone.”
“You have neighbors,” Gavin said.
Lydia smiled. “Wonderful neighbors, but it’s not the same. Farms take a lot of work. I can either keep Silver Meadows as a shell of what it once was, or I can let it go. Those are the choices. Two roads have diverged in my little wood. Do you all know that poem?”
Softly, Lydia recited:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.
“That’s Robert Frost again,” she finished. “His farm wasn’t so far from here, you know.”
Politely, Carolina nodded, but inside her mind she responded, simply, Caminante, no hay camino. She didn’t want to look at Lydia, because she knew she wouldn’t be able to stop the tears then. So she just blinked, and wiped her eyes, and nodded again.
Lydia rose, patted her on the back, and settled into her seat. “Okay, girls, new rules for the last week of camp. One: You stay within sight of the camp center at all times.”
“What?” Jenn complained.
“Two: If you want to go past the playground, you bring a counselor. I don’t want you to think I don’t want you to explore the farm; that’s the whole reason I have this camp. But from now on everyone would be more comfortable if you stuck with a counselor.”
“Don’t worry, Lydia, I’ll keep an eye on them,” Alyssa said.
Mami interrupted them. “No, that won’t work.”
“Tía Ana,” Gabriela said.
“No,” Mami said again. “Lydia, you’ve been very sweet, but I don’t want Caro going off anywhere, with or without a counselor. It’s not like her to get in trouble, and if this is what happens when she gets a little bit of freedom, from now on I’d prefer if Caro stayed at the playground or the camp center. That is my wish.”
“Mami—”
“Caro, you want independence, you have to earn it.”
Carolina thought again of her sketchbook. The secret of the cottage was safe a little while longer. But if she could never return there with Jennifer, never draw or dream there again, she might as well have told the truth.
Tía Cuca and Mami had a lot to say in the car as they rolled onto the main road, right past the turns that led to dirt roads and farms and woodlands, until they reached Tía Cuca’s house.
“Gabs, you really embarrassed me this time.” Tía Cuca turned off the engine and unbuckled her seat belt. “If it wasn’t bad enough that you made us worry so much, to talk to Lance Rogan like that!” She held open the door to the back seat.
“I know how to open a car door, Mom.”
Tía Cuca jerked her head toward the house. “Inside. We are not done discussing this.”
Gabriela didn’t move. “What is there to discuss? You heard Lydia—we’re not allowed out of her sight for the next week. There’s nothing else to talk about.”
“I’ll see you inside, Gabriela.”
Gabriela jumped out of the car and followed Tía Cuca halfway across the lawn. “I can’t believe you’re doing this to me!” she shouted. “Alyssa’s just starting to be friends again and now I’m going to be on a leash—like some kind of criminal!”
Tía Cuca stopped just before the entrance to the house, her face white. “I seem to recall Alyssa saying she’d help keep you in bounds, Gabriela. And given how you’ve been acting, I’d say that’s a good thing.”
Their voices faded away as they neared the front door and then entered the house. Carolina and Mami were still in the car, and just as Carolina was unbuckling her seat belt, Mami told her to close the car door.
Carolina leaned over and pulled it shut. Gabriela had left it hanging open, so most of the cold air had escaped, and with the sun beating down on the roof, the temperature inside climbed quickly. A single mosquito had gotten in, and it buzzed close to Carolina’s ear.
“You see what you did?” Mami’s voice was very quiet, and her face was set straight ahead. From the back seat, Carolina could see the little hairs that grew at the back of Mami’s neck, and how her neck arched to her ears, which were different from Carolina’s: they were flush with her head, dainty and small. Carolina had Papi’s ears, the kind that stuck straight out, as if God had almost forgotten about them and then hastily smacked them on.
“Tía Cuca was humiliated in front of her husband’s boss, Caro. And your cousin, who’s done nothing but try and help you fit in, is in trouble now.”
“Gabriela was out of bounds, too, Mami!”
“So now you’re saying it’s her fault?”
Carolina shut her mouth tightly. Better to say nothing and not anger Mami more. She wanted to say that they wouldn’t have gotten into this mess if Gabriela hadn’t goaded Jennifer—but everything Carolina could say would only set Mami off further, only convince her more that Carolina had done this all on purpose.
Mami took her purse, which had been balanced neatly on her knees, and put it on the dashboard. Deliberately, she turned to face the back. “If this is your behavior when you’re with Jennifer, then I don’t think she’s a suitable friend for you, Carolina. I can’t have you going to play with someone who might lead you into the woods—or worse. Cuca told me what happened to Lydia’s husband. Did you know he went off the trail and—”
“I know!” Carolina blinked back tears for the second time that day. “I know that. But Jenn is nice, Mami. The first week of camp she was the only person who really talked to me. And, Mami, she’s an artist—like me.”
“Ay, Caro. Por favor. Being an artist doesn’t matter now.”
“How could you say that? You used to take me to Señora Rivón’s—you liked that I was an artist.”
“Of course I like it, it’s that—” Mami shook her head. “What I meant is that it doesn’t matter—nothing matters—if you’re not safe. You should have good friends. People who don’t get you into trouble.”
“I got myself into trouble,” Caro said softly. She watched the mosquito, buzzing around the headrest, until her eyes crossed. Mami still spoke, but in Carolina’s mind the only sound was this mosquito and her own voice: I’m an artist, I’m an artist. It always matters, being an artist.
Mami was leaning farther into the back seat, until Carolina’s eyes refocused and settled on Mami.
“Caro, we’re just starting to make things work here. Papi has a second-round interview next week. Do you understand what that means?”
Carolina nodded.
“I’m not letting you ruin everything with one bad friendship. This is a small town. Everybody talks.”
Except it didn’t seem small to Carolina; it seemed vast and open, the rolling hills were like the ocean. She’d never known there was so much space anywhere but the sky.
She nodded again, then slowly stepped out of the car. Jennifer, her first real friend, the artist, the daughter of a real painter—it had all come together so quickly, and now it was so quickly over. She couldn’t believe it. Mami had turned up her nose plenty of times, asked questions and dropped comments, but she’d never actually forbidden anything before. Then again, Carolina couldn’t think of another time when she’d done anything but try to be perfect and keep every rule that Mami made.
She pulled open the front door of the house. This was one of the things she liked about upstate New York, the way no one locked their doors. Of course, the door kept the house practically hermetically sealed, but at least if you pulled hard enough, it opened. At home, the house had breathed, let in air and sound. But it could also feel like a series of cages: the locked front door behind the locked gate, the high iron rails all around the house, and the gate that led out to the main street. Each one required its separate key. Carolina had been like that before, studious and rule abiding, letting in Mami, Papi, Daniel, door by door. That house had allowed in so many sounds and smells but no one like Jennifer, no best friends, no artists to share the bench beneath the flamboyán.
Daniel was watching TV in the living room, something Mami normally didn’t let him do on weeknights, even in the summer.
“Caro! I was worried about you!” He ran up to her and wrapped her in a hug. Carolina held him tightly.
“Did you really get lost in a forest? Were there bears? Tell me everything!”
Daniel had already had his bath; his hair was slicked to one side, and Carolina drank in the clean, violetas smell of his head. “No bears,” she said. “There was nothing to worry about. Just an accident.”
“Oh no! What kind of accident?”
“Everyone’s fine now,” Caro said, hugging him.
She wandered upstairs after that, and knocked on the door to Gabriela’s room. She could hardly remember whether she was mad at Gabriela, whether they were on separate teams these days, or the same.
“Come in.”
Gabriela was at her usual station, cross-legged on the floor with her laptop balanced on her knees. But the room was different now: the magazines had been cleared away and the path across the floor was empty.
“Hey!” Gabriela was surprisingly chipper.
“Thanks for sticking up for us,” Carolina said. “You didn’t have to take the blame like that.”
Gabriela shrugged. “Sorry I got you lost in the first place. I shouldn’t have—I just missed Alyssa so much.”
Carolina sat down on the floor across from Gabriela. “Did you get in big trouble?”
“Not that bad. My mom just had to get it out of her system. Besides, Alyssa’s mom called practically as soon as we got inside and they invited me to go to the lake with them next weekend, so my mom knows her dad’s not mad.” Gabriela rummaged through the tote bag on the floor next to her and pulled out a lollipop. “Candy?” she asked cheerfully.
Carolina took the lollipop and set it on her knee. “What’s going to happen to Silver Meadows?”
Gabriela hesitated. “Lydia has to sell the farm sometime, doesn’t she? And people like the neighborhoods Alyssa’s dad builds,” she went on. “They need places to live.”
But there wouldn’t be forests, Carolina knew, or cottages hidden by trees, or the sounds of wind chimes and cowbells guiding them through the trails and paths of the farm.
She sighed. “So you and Alyssa are friends again now?”
“She was worried about me. Isn’t that sweet?”
Carolina didn’t understand it, but then she didn’t understand Alyssa—didn’t understand her interest in Chiquifancy concerts or her dislike of spiders or her artificially high-pitched tone. Still, Carolina didn’t know what it was to have a friend since forever, someone whose friendship stretched over years—she thought that, when Gabriela looked back, she wouldn’t see a wake on the sea or a path in the woods but something sharp and sturdy: a paved road, and Alyssa laying the cement.
“But what about those things her parents said?” Carolina asked.
“Well,” Gabriela said thoughtfully, “she can’t help what her parents say. But she doesn’t have to think the same things. She made me that necklace, and she told me she’s going to tell her dad that he was wrong about Chiqui—and me.”
“That’s brave of her,” Carolina replied, and she meant it. She didn’t know what it was to tell your dad he was wrong, to stick up for her friend.
If she were Alyssa, she would probably wear barrettes forever.
“What Alyssa’s parents think of me is their business,” Gabriela said wisely, then immediately spoiled the effect by sucking loudly on her lollipop. “They don’t have to like the same music as me for Alyssa and me to be friends.”
Carolina looked down at her own lollipop, at how hard and dry it looked compared to Gabriela’s slick one. “I’m not allowed to see Jennifer anymore. My mom just said so.”
Gabriela swallowed hard and pulled the lollipop out of her mouth. She placed it on the floor, without even setting it back in its wrapper. Carolina cringed at the mess, but with a confident toss of her hair, Gabriela said, “Caro, I think Jennifer is the weirdest kid I’ve ever met. But if you want to be friends with her, then be her friend. You can’t always do whatever Tía Ana wants you to. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to stick up for yourself.”