CHAPTER 15
It’s still early when we return to the Watsonville Inn. Flynn asks if I want to study for physics with him, but I tell him I think I’ll just turn in. It’s been a long day, and tomorrow, after all, is the Magwitch.
While Daniel takes his turn getting ready for bed, I call my parents. The sound of my mom’s voice makes me inexplicably angry. It’s not anything she says, really; it’s just the calm, soothing way that she says it. She must sense the irritation in my voice, because she asks me if something’s wrong. I tell her I’m fine, just tired, and then quickly end the call.
When it’s my turn to use the bathroom, I take an unnecessarily long and hot shower. I wish I could scrub away everything—my jealousy, my anger, all of my lies. I wish I could stand under the water until my slate was washed clean.
By the time I step back out into the room wearing my shorts and jazz festival T-shirt, Daniel’s sitting on the bed, holding his acoustic guitar in his lap. He’s fingerpicking something simple and sweet. I haven’t heard it before, so I ask him what it is, and without giving any indication that he knows what this will do to me, he says, “It’s something new I’ve been working on. It’s about you.”
I stare at him.
“Want to hear it?”
All I can do is nod.
While he starts to play, I lean against the desk and fold my arms across my chest. He sings softly, so he won’t wake up Flynn and Cameron next door, but the words come through clearly.
I wish I could pretend it was a love song, but it’s not. It’s tender and sweet, but innocent, almost like a lullaby. It’s a song for a friend who’s hurting. Still, I’d like to cross the room and kiss him, since that seems to be an option, at least for tonight. But I’m not sure I could do it without losing myself completely, so instead I open my bass case and carry it over to the bed. I sit facing him and pick out the melody he’s singing. My instrument isn’t amplified, so it just sounds like a tinny whisper under his guitar and voice. When I shift to playing a harmony, though, the tone doesn’t matter as much. The intervals chime together perfectly. I start to mess around with the rhythm, filling in spaces in the melody and leaving room while he sings. By the time the song ends, my mind is pleasantly blank.
“So?” He shifts the position of his guitar. “What do you think?”
I mean it when I say, “I love it.”
He nods, pleased.
“It’s different from other things you’ve written.”
“Well, you’re different from other people I’ve met.”
Instead of responding, I invent a slow, melodic line in E minor. Daniel quickly figures it out on his guitar, then finds a complementary part to play above it. I’m not much of a singer, but I can hear a vocal part begging to be sung between the notes, so I add that in, too—just notes, not words. I hate words.
Over the next few hours, we invent dozens of riffs and progressions, and it feels almost as good as kissing him. We play covers, too. We never talk about what we’re going to play; we just play it. I realize that even if his feelings for me never change, I’m still so grateful for this, for a friend who speaks a language I understand.
We’re in the middle of an acoustic version of “Everlasting Light” by the Black Keys—I never realized how sweet those lyrics were until now—when I hear something slam shut nearby. Two seconds later, someone knocks loudly on our door.
Daniel and I look at each other. We’ve been playing so softly; I can’t imagine that someone could have heard us. As Daniel gets up to open the door, I clutch my bass defensively, but Flynn’s the one who steps into our room, and he doesn’t even seem to notice our instruments. The first thing he says is, “Is Cameron in here?”
Daniel says, “No. Isn’t he in your room?” but I’ve already got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Because I don’t know where Cameron is, but I bet I know what he’s doing.
“No,” Flynn says. He’s still wearing his clothes from today, but his hair looks messed up in front; this only happens when he’s been studying or taking a test—the result of resting his head on one of his hands as he stares at a textbook or exam. “I was looking over my history notes, and he said that he was going to get some ice or something. I can’t remember.” He strides to the far side of our room and looks out the window. “I had my headphones on, and I just assumed he’d already gotten back. Or, I don’t know. I guess I wasn’t thinking about it. But when I stopped studying, I realized that he’s still gone.” He steps away from the window and paces toward the door. “It’s been hours.”
“And you’re only noticing this now?” Daniel says.
Flynn glares at him. “Hey, I’m not his guardian. I’m not responsible for him.”
While they continue arguing, I return my bass to its case and go into the bathroom to change back into my jeans. When I come out, I say, “Could I get into your room, Flynn?”
He looks at me. “Why?”
“I just—” I don’t want to voice my suspicions unless they’re confirmed. The thing is, I’m thinking about what I smelled on Cameron’s shirt outside of the prison, and I’m not sure it was laundry detergent and coconut after all. “I just want to check something.”
His eyebrows go up, but he’s already at the door when he says, “Yeah, sure.”
Daniel follows us back into the other room. I wish I could do this part without them watching, but that’s not going to be an option, so I approach Cameron’s duffle bag, take a deep breath, and pull it open.
The evidence, unfortunately, is right on top—half a dozen miniature bottles, the kind people buy in airports, all of them empty. Flynn and Daniel step up next to me, and soon I’ve allowed myself to be pushed to the side. In two minutes, they’ve pulled out half a dozen more small, empty bottles and deposited them on the closest bed.
We stare at them for a moment before Daniel says, “He must have run out.”
Flynn doesn’t say anything at first. He doesn’t even seem to be breathing. But eventually he brings his fist down on the TV stand so hard that I think he must bruise something.
Daniel anticipates Flynn’s reaction and swings around to face him. “We need to focus on finding him now.”
“Yeah.” Flynn’s face is red. All his worry seems to have been replaced by rage. “Yeah, and then I’m going to kill him. We came all this way, and the night before the only gig that actually matters—”
I wince.
“We can talk about that another time, but not tonight. Besides, look at this.” Daniel gestures at the bottles. “He’s clearly got a problem.”
“I’ll tell you what his problem is.” Flynn picks up one of the bottles and then throws it back down on the bed. It bounces off the duvet and lands on the floor by my feet. “He’s so busy trying to punish his parents for being rich that he doesn’t even notice that he’s ruining his life.”
Daniel’s own anger seems to be rising as he says, “You know that’s not the issue.”
This is the same argument they had on the night of Cameron’s surprise party—same arguments, same sides, new venue. That night, Flynn said that if Cameron pulled another stunt like that, then he’d quit Blue Miles. I don’t think any of us thought he meant it, but Cameron seemed to chill out for a while after. As I look at the bottles on the bed, though, I wonder if he really did chill out, or if he just hid it better.
“Then what’s the issue?” Flynn says. “They didn’t buy him a birthday present? They didn’t see him in the school play? Nora’s parents dropped her off with some nuns when she was a year and a half, and she’s doing okay.”
Okay is, of course, a relative term. But it occurs to me that if I am doing okay, then maybe that’s because I was adopted by people who make it clear that I matter, who show me in hundreds of small, easily overlooked ways that their lives wouldn’t be complete without me. But it would be too weird to say this out loud, especially considering the fact that I’ve spent this whole week searching for the people who left me with the nuns.
“If Cameron’s ruining his life, then it’s our job to help him get it straightened out,” Daniel says.
“Like hell it’s our job.”
I don’t like how close Daniel and Flynn are standing to each other. If I didn’t know them better, I’d think one of them was about to throw a punch, and the only thing I can think to say that might defuse the tension is, “He didn’t tell his parents he was leaving this week.”
They both look at me.
“What?” Flynn asks. The edge in his voice is so sharp it could wound.
“He never asked his parents for permission for any of this.” Neither of them speaks, so I go on. “He thought they’d get mad at him for disappearing, but they didn’t even notice. He told me on Wednesday.”
The sadness of this fact settles some of the energy that’s been boiling around us, but Flynn still says, “And what’s this”—he gestures to the empty bottles—“going to do to help anything?”
“Numb the pain?” I suggest.
But Daniel leans toward Flynn and says, “It’s a cry for help, and if you can’t see that, then I don’t know what kind of friend you are.”
I shift my attention to the window, mostly to avoid hearing them rehash their arguments for the thousandth time, and then something catches my eye at the back of the parking lot.
“Guys.” They don’t hear me. I squint at the spot, and slowly the shape becomes clear. He’s sitting on the curb directly between two streetlights, which is why he was so easy to miss before. “Guys, I think he’s outside.”
Daniel and Flynn are instantly beside me. I point him out, and Flynn groans, but before he can say anything, Daniel and I are at the door. Flynn’s right behind us, though, as we jog through the lobby and out into the dew-heavy night air. As we approach Cameron, I’m hoping that he’ll look up at us, clear-eyed, and say something like, I just went for a walk. Or even better, My parents called, and I came out here to talk to them. But instead, his eyes are glassy, and what he really says is, “What’s this?” He narrows his eyes at the starry sky. “Itzz not day yet.”
Flynn takes a deep breath, then turns silently around and marches back toward the hotel. Daniel and I both watch him deliberately retrace his steps through the lobby and around the corner to the stairs. I guess we should be glad he refrained from telling Cameron off right this second, but it’s hard to feel anything other than annoyance.
When our eyes meet over the top of Cameron’s head, we both know what we have to do. We wrap our arms around his waist, helping him to his feet. Then, one precarious step at a time, we guide him back to the hotel. We’re halfway there when Cameron says, “Where did Flynn disappear to?” He’s overenunciating now, as if that might fool us. “Do you think he’s upset?”
“My guess,” Daniel says, “is that he went to bed.”
I pat Cameron’s back and say, “You’ll sleep in our room tonight.”
When we get upstairs, Cameron pukes immediately. Luckily, Daniel’s prepared with the trash can. He catches every drop, then helps Cameron into the bathroom, where he offers him mouthwash and a spare shirt to sleep in. At some point, I ask Cameron if something happened, something that set him off, but he just stares at me like I’m speaking Greek. I don’t know what would be worse, anyway—if his parents did do something new to broadcast how little they care about him, or if they didn’t. I don’t like the idea of Cameron binge-drinking to escape a fresh wound, but I think I like the idea of him binge-drinking on a whim even less.
Once Cameron’s tucked in, I change back into my pajamas, then slip into the other bed next to Daniel. His song helped me decide that I need to start pulling away, start protecting myself from probable heartbreak, but here’s the thing I didn’t reckon on: Daniel didn’t get the memo. As far as he’s concerned, nothing’s changed. We’re still here to comfort each other in our loneliness, as friends. In the semidarkness of our hotel room, his hand finds my cheek, and he whispers, “Thanks for finding him, Bass Girl.”
Despite my resolution, I don’t move away. “You’re the one who did everything,” I say. “Got him ready for bed, brushed his teeth. I always feel so frozen when he’s like this.”
Daniel takes a deep breath and lets it out on a sigh as he says, “Poor Cameron.”
“What do you think Flynn will do?”
He rolls onto his back and smoothly tucks his arm under my head. Rather than resist, I let my cheek find a natural resting spot on his chest. Tomorrow night we’ll be in a hostel in San Francisco, so I’ll be sharing a dorm-style room with five strange women, and the guys will be in a different room altogether. Besides, I’m leaving for D.C. right after school ends. What’s the harm in giving in to this moment now, when it’ll be over in just a few days? I know where we stand. I can keep my expectations low.
“I don’t know,” he says. “Pout, definitely. Probably make some speech about responsibility and Cameron getting his act together.” His arm tightens around me. “I hate it when Flynn gets all self-righteous, but who knows? Maybe it’ll be good for Cameron, wake him up.”
“Yeah,” I say, thinking about the bottles in his duffle bag, and how quickly and furtively he must have drained them. “He has gotten out of control, hasn’t he?”
“Yeah, I think he has.”
We’re both quiet for a while, and then I say, “You don’t think Flynn will really quit Blue Miles?”
Daniel angles his face down toward mine, and our lips are just a breath apart. “Not a chance,” he says. “He knows we’ve got something special. He’s not walking away from this.”
Briefly, I think about Tessa bouncing recklessly from M. J. to Rico to whoever came next. I know better; I’ve been taught better. But maybe nature really is stronger than nurture, maybe Descartes was right, because when Daniel leans in for a kiss, I let myself melt into him. And all those voices in my head telling me to pull back, play it safe, protect my heart? They fade into just a distant, meaningless hum.
The next morning, my brain wakes up before my body. I’m no longer touching Daniel, but I can feel the warmth of him radiating from the other side of the bed. I give myself several minutes to rest inside the memory of last night—the way we kissed, the way my body naturally intertwined with his—before I force myself to face facts: he doesn’t love me, I’m getting way too attached, and my heart is going to be broken, imminently. I can almost hear Irene say, Well, duh, Nora. What did you think was going to happen? But I’m not in the mood to argue with even an imaginary version of her, so I don’t attempt a retort.
Suddenly, my need to speak to Tessa is overwhelming. Somehow, I know she’s the only person who would completely understand how I feel, and I have to believe that one way or another, she’d know what I should do next.
It would be easy to find her now. I know her last name. I know what she looks like. I can connect with her on Facebook, if I want to. But I also know she lives in Honolulu. Tessa Reynoso—how many of them can there be? How big is Honolulu? For a few moments, I let myself imagine buying a ticket and flying there on my own, showing up on her doorstep and saying, Tessa? It’s me. Summer. But my parents would never allow me to travel to Hawaii by myself, especially if they knew why I wanted to go.
I roll away from Daniel so I can check my phone, which has been charging on my nightstand, but as soon as I turn over, I see that Cameron’s sitting on the edge of his bed, looking disordered and a little bit green.
“Hey,” I whisper. “How are you feeling?”
“I’ve been better.” He presses his lips together, wincing at the sound of his own voice.
I look over my shoulder at Daniel, but he’s still asleep, facing away from us. “How much do you remember?”
He stares at me a bit longer than is comfortable, then says, “Enough.”
I go into the bathroom and fill a water glass, which I bring out to him. “Drink.”
He takes the glass from me and sips.
“There should be breakfast downstairs. We can go get you something greasy to settle your stomach.”
He nods at me, but after a pause he whispers, “You’re in love with him, aren’t you?”
I stop breathing.
He sips his water again, then says, “I saw you two last night. You thought I’d passed out, but I woke up again and saw.”
I still can’t respond.
“How long’s that been going on, Nora?”
It almost feels like a relief to admit, “Wednesday night.”
“I was afraid that might happen. You know he hates being alone.” Finally, he looks up at me, and I realize that he understands much more than I would have expected. “But you are going to hate yourself for letting it happen this way.”
I move toward the bathroom, with a vague plan to regroup while taking a shower, but Cameron gets shakily to his feet, shields his eyes from the light, and follows me. I could shut the door on him, but I don’t. I know that I need to hear whatever he’s going to say.
His voice is strained as he says, “Do you know why Darcy threw that burrito at him on Wednesday?”
I test the water, but it’s still too cold.
He goes on. “She found out that during their twenty-four-hour ‘break’ a couple months ago”—he puts the word break in air quotes—“he hooked up with a girl from the volleyball team. You know Harmony Ryan?” I nod without looking at him. “Yeah. Her.” He sighs. “This is what Dan does when he’s insecure, or lonely. He finds someone else to be insecure and lonely with him.”
“I know he’s not in love with me or anything.” My voice shakes on the word love, because even though I’ve told myself I knew what this was, I secretly hoped it might be different. “But I’m not some random girl from the volleyball team, either.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Cameron says. “He cares about you. A lot. Which makes this so much worse.” He steps between me and the bathtub, forcing me to look at him. “It would have been fine if you really felt the same way about him, but I know—and you know—that you don’t.”
I could deny it, but what would be the point? Instead, I ask, “Do you think he knows?”
“No.” Cameron sighs. “He has a unique skill for missing things like that. But you need to prepare yourself for the fact that things are going to be really hard for you when we get back to reality.”
“Well, we’ll have all summer to cool down, anyway,” I say. “Because my parents are sending me away.” The words tumble out unexpectedly.
Cameron stares at me for several heartbeats, then says, “What?”
The water is warm enough for my shower now. Steam has partially obscured our reflection in the mirror.
“That was the deal I made. I get to play the Magwitch, go on this tour, everything, as long as I do a summer internship in D.C.”
Quickly, the steam becomes suffocating. I want to dial down the temperature, but Cameron’s stare has me frozen in place.
“And it didn’t occur to you to discuss this with us?”
“You know my parents. There’s nothing to discuss. It’s happening.” My throat starts to feel tight, but I plunge onward. “That’s why it seemed important to find my biological parents. I’m so sick of feeling”—the first tear falls, rolling down my cheek to my chin, where it dangles precariously—“inferior. They keep pushing me into a box where I just don’t fit.”
I’m staring hard at my feet, so I don’t notice when Cameron steps closer. I just feel his arms wrap around me. His chin settles against the top of my head. “It’s going to be okay,” he says.
I nod, drying my tears on the front of his shirt. “I’m sorry if I’ve ruined everything.”
“No,” Cameron says. Then he repeats, “It’s going to be okay.” But I don’t know who it’s for this time: him or me.
None of us speak as we load the van for the final leg of our journey north. Even though it’s his turn to sit shotgun, Cameron opts to sit on the bench seat in back—probably because Flynn is refusing to look at him or speak to him directly. Daniel slides in next to Cameron, giving me no choice but to sit up front, even though I’d probably rather ride in the way back with the equipment.
When we stop to gas up on the edge of Watsonville, Cameron gets out and follows Flynn around to the pump. Daniel and I stay inside the van, but the windows are cracked open, so we can hear every word.
Cameron opens with, “Just say it, Flynn. Get it off your chest.” He hasn’t taken off his sunglasses since we left the hotel room, but other than that, he seems fairly well recovered.
Flynn’s jaw tightens, but he still doesn’t speak. He shoves the pump into the van and glares at his feet.
“If we’re going to get through this show tonight, then we need to be able to at least speak to each other.”
That finally gets Flynn to react. He’s still compressing the lever of the pump as he says, “Oh, now you care about our show?”
Cameron rolls his wrists out in front of him. “Get it all out, Flynn. Tell me what you really think.”
“You want to know what I think?” For once, Flynn uses the little kickstand to keep the pump in place so he can turn to face Cameron. “I think you’re so spoiled that you don’t even understand how good you have it. You don’t even comprehend what you’re throwing away.”
Cameron takes a step back. That’s not what he expected him to say.
Daniel whispers to himself, “Goddammit, Flynn.” And I know what he’s thinking, because I’m thinking it, too: This isn’t just about Cameron’s parents anymore. He has a real problem with alcohol.
But Flynn goes on. “You’re almost an adult, Cam. Nine months, and then you’ll be a legal adult. No one’s saying that your parents are going to win Nurturers of the Year, but at some point you’ll have to stop blaming everything on them. At some point, it’s not about them anymore, it’s about you.”
When Cameron responds, his voice is so low that I have to lean closer to the open window to hear it. “This from the guy whose dad helped him rebuild a van, the guy whose mom quit her job to be home full-time when he was born.”
“Yeah,” Flynn says, undeterred. “The guy who’s had a job since he was fourteen because money’s always tight, the guy who doesn’t have a trust fund to fall back on, so he has to think about his future, the guy who knows he’ll have to pay for his own college education, so he takes his grades seriously, because that’s the only way he’ll get a scholarship. And you know what? I’m also the guy who never complains about any of it.”
The pump clicks off, and Flynn jams it back into the station. As he strides toward the convenience store to get his receipt, Cameron follows him, leaving Daniel and me alone.
In the silence that follows, it occurs to me that I should warn Daniel that Cameron saw us together, just so he’s aware. I say it casually, like it’s really not that big of a deal, but Daniel doesn’t take it that way. His first response is, “But he passed out.”
“Yeah, I thought so, too. Apparently, he woke up.”
Daniel stares out the window at Cameron and Flynn, who are still arguing as they stride back across the asphalt toward the van. “You don’t think he’ll tell anyone, do you?”
My heart sinks, because he can only be thinking about Darcy. He doesn’t want her to have another reason to be upset with him, which means he doesn’t think it’s as over as he says.
“No, he wouldn’t.”
Daniel nods, relieved.
By the time Cameron and Flynn reach the van, their argument seems to have reached an impasse. Flynn gets in the front and slams his door. Cameron closes the back door softly, then sinks low in his seat and stares out the window.
The rest of the drive into San Francisco is silent.