Truest (13 page)

I saw a little of Laurel and a lot of Elliot in the days that followed. Laurel—who had, for the time being, ceased sobbing—begged me to invite Whit to watch fireworks from their roof, and I was happy to comply. Elliot, for his part, seemed to connect my good mood to Silas's absence, and I chose not to correct him.

On Wednesday night, Elliot took me out to Ciatti's restaurant in St. Cloud, the same place we'd had our first official date back in sophomore year. Big booths and skylights and lots of bread and oil. Silas would return later that evening, so I kept my phone on me.

“I've been emailing with that coach I told you about in North Dakota,” Elliot said, pushing his empty plate back. “Some recruiters are coming to watch me play this fall. We should go tour there, don't you think?”

I wrinkled my nose as I tore a piece of bread in two. “What's in North Dakota?”

He laughed. “What's in
Green Lake?
”

“Touché.”

After a pause, Elliot said, “
Me.
”

“Huh?”

“Me.
I'd
be in North Dakota. I mean, if I went to school there. And maybe that'd be a reason you'd like to be there too.” He looked at me and pressed, “Right? I mean . . . maybe?”

“Yes. Totally,” I said automatically.

Elliot looked so serious. “Tell me where you'd rather go, West, and I'll contact their athletics office and see if they're interested in me.”

“No, it's not that,” I said. “I don't have anywhere in mind. I just . . . you know I don't like thinking about all that. It stresses me out.” I pulled my phone out of my pocket—just to see if Silas had gotten in yet. No text.

“Are you waiting for a call?” Elliot asked.

“No. Sort of.” He waited for me to explain, but I couldn't. “From Trudy,” I lied, and took a big drink of water.

“What if I took next week off?” Elliot asked.

I swallowed wrong and it hurt going down. “What do you mean?”

“What if I just told my dad I needed a week to have a real summer? We could road-trip out to the Dakotas and visit some colleges, see what we think.”

“I don't know; I have some detailings scheduled.” A road trip? With Elliot? We'd probably have to stay in hotels. And
next week?
Silas was just getting back.

“They wouldn't be that hard to reschedule though, would they? Or maybe Hart could handle them alone.”

I pursed my lips. “I don't know,” I repeated.

“Okay, so no road trip,” he amended. “Just a week to spend at the beach and at the movies. Hell, we'll go bowling. We'll do the kind you like with all the neon—”

“Cosmic,” I said, my voice quiet.

“Yeah, cosmic! And we'll drive out into the country and listen to your radio show under the stars. What do you think?”

Panic pulled at me, and I didn't know why. Here was my boyfriend, offering to do all the things I had wanted him to do this summer, and it made me feel nervous and suffocated and overwhelmed. I chose my words carefully. “That all sounds amazing—and I'm holding you to cosmic bowling, which is the
only
appropriate way to bowl—but you don't need to sacrifice a week of pay for me. I want you to get your car.”

“I don't care about the car,” he said.

“I do!” I teased. “If Whit drives, he'll stay to bowl and kick my ass. I know I can at least beat
you.
”

“West.”

I exhaled deeply. “Elliot, please don't give up a car for a few days on the beach.”

“But I
miss
you,” he said, reaching across the table and taking my hand.

“I miss you too,” I said, squeezing it. “Look, you're the hardest worker I know. This summer might suck, but this fall . . . everything will be different. Trust me.”

Later that evening, I lay in bed listening to the sound of Chuck Justice coming from Libby's room down the hall while I thought about Elliot. The handful of lies I'd told him lately made me sick. Ours had never been a relationship like that—or, before we were dating, a friendship like that. The bell tower was my one big secret; other than that, I'd always been an open book.

Until now.

Silas Hart. My friend, nothing more.

Besides, Silas had a girlfriend. My stomach turned as I realized that he had probably spent the last three days with Beth Öster—and her short skirts. I thought I might throw up.

This was ridiculous.

Trudy would be home tomorrow. Trudy would sort me out. I'd lay out my summer like a knot of tangled necklaces and let her go to work.

Knots intrigue me.

I was going to drive myself insane.

I had said one very, very true thing tonight: Elliot was the hardest worker I knew. Busting his ass on the farm, on the
football field . . . making ridiculous offers to keep me happy. I didn't deserve him. I reached into my desk drawer and pulled out my “wedding ring,” slid it onto my pinkie, and stared at it, letting the weight of years build a fortress around my heart.

Then I thought of Beth Öster in the pictures I'd seen of her online: beautiful, tiny, perfect. An unbelievable math whiz, according to Silas. I wondered what they'd done this week. Had they been attached at the hip after so many weeks apart? Silas would be full of stories—would I be in any of them? Had they spent the days talking? Holding hands? Kissing?
More?

Stop it, I told myself. It doesn't matter anyway.

But it did.

I slipped into uneasy sleep until that hazy space between late night and early morning, when Silas called. “Hey.” His voice was soft, tired, relieved. Close.

“Hi,” I said, doing a full-body stretch like a satisfied cat.

“Did I wake you up?”

“Mmm, yup.”

“Sorry.”

“It's okay,” I said, yawning. “You home?”

“I am.”

I pulled off the ring, which was pinching my finger. “Good.”

As she had promised, Trudy also came home, and we hugged like long-lost sisters. “Tell me everything,” I said to her as we
climbed into her family's paddleboat from their dock just before lunch. It was an ancient aluminum pontoon Sgt. Kirkwood had made before we were born. “Are the campers crazy? Do you work with any cute boys?”
Why do you never call me back?

She laughed, put her arm through mine, and straightened her sunglasses. Her pixie hair and big eyes made her look just like a young Michelle Williams. “The campers
are
crazy . . . but also super sweet. I help with the zip line—can you believe it?—so I had to get over my fear of that pretty fast. You wouldn't believe how much we pack in to every day, West. I'm out like Sleeping Beauty every night.”

“And is there a prince?”

She took a drink from a sweating water bottle. “Actually, there are
two
boys I have my eye on: Alex and Adam Germaine. They're, um, brothers.”

“Trudy Kirkwood!” My jaw dropped as we pedaled the pontoon, side by side. My legs felt strong from all the biking Silas and I had been doing. “Is this summer going to have a happy ending?”

Trudy smiled at me. “I think so.” She looked thoughtful and stopped pedaling for a moment. There were people grilling, swimming, and playing Frisbee at the public beach, just north of Trudy's house, and some kids playing with sparklers at the end of a nearby dock. “But what does a happy ending really look like?” She pedaled again. “Know what I mean? One person's happiness is another person's grief.”

“If you date Alex, that's his joy and Adam's grief, and vice versa?” I teased.

She nudged me and laughed. “I think that
is
what I meant, yeah, but it sounds silly when you put it that way.”

On the shore, Jody Perkins rode by on his lawn mower, and we waved at him, lazy with July heat. He waved back. “So what are they like?” I asked.

“Hmmm, Alex starts college this fall at Tellham and Barr University; they recruited him for their crew team. West, you should see this guy—he's really strong and so
shy!
And he's going to be a humanities major, which just strikes me as the sweetest thing. Adam is the younger one—he's our age. He's crazy. So loud and funny, the total opposite of his brother. Every time I think I've settled on liking one of them, I'll spend time with the other brother and change my mind. They invited me to spend the weekend at their house in Eau Claire. I said yes—I hope you're not mad. It means I leave again tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?!” I complained. “You just got here!”

She grimaced apologetically. “I know, I know! Some of the other CITs are going along. Ami too.”

“Ami Nissweller?”

“Yeah,” said Trudy. “She's way cooler than we ever thought. Really sassy and funny, even though she uses chess terms all the time and then I have no idea what she's talking about.”

“Isn't that annoying?”

“Not really. She's thinking about Tellham and Barr, too,
and so Alex told us all about his campus visit, and Ami and I have been plotting and thinking if I end up dating Alex, then maybe she and I should go there too and be
roommates.
How cool is that?”

“Roommates?” I stopped pedaling.

“Yeah, you know—like in the dorms.”

“I know what roommates are, Tru.” I made a face at her. “I just mean—I don't know—I kinda thought
we
would end up being college roommates.”

Trudy looked uncomfortable. “Oh. I mean, yeah, that would be totally cool. But you never really talk about college. And I figured you'd want to go somewhere around here. I mean, you didn't want to come with me to camp, so I thought . . .”

“I didn't want to go to adventure camp because I don't like zip lining, rock climbing, and all that other stuff you guys do there. I thought you didn't either.”

She shrugged. “It's actually kinda fun.” My stomach roiled with a strange sense of detachment from my best friend. “Anyway, don't worry about the roommate thing. It was just an idea to room with Ami. If you were to come to Tellham, I would totally room with you instead.”

I felt a little better—even though there was no way I'd be following Trudy and her camp friends like a little puppy. Oh well, I thought. Tru would probably change her mind after she was back in Green Lake for senior year and fell out of touch with all those Camp Summit friends—and remembered that
Ami Nissweller's place was with the chess club. What was one summer compared to a lifelong friendship? We had a foundation of years stacked on years. We shared clothes and stories and this whole town.

A tiny voice inside me reminded,
But you haven't known the Harts for very long.
That's different, I argued, but it wasn't, not really.

“Your turn,” she said. “I've gotten all your voice mails and texts and emails, by the way, and I'm dying to meet the new kids. What happened with Elliot?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I don't know. You always sound so hopped up on this Silas guy.”

This was it—my clear opportunity to talk through things with her, to have Trudy make sense of the confusion that had been stirring in me every time Silas smiled. But I was still stinging from the whole “roommates with Ami Nissweller” thing, and besides, Tru didn't even know Silas. I had to at least wait until they had met.

“Elliot and I are fine. He's just really busy, but we call each other most nights,” I said. “Speaking of, why do you never call me?”

“Oh, I know,” Trudy said apologetically. “It's madness at camp from dawn to dusk. And half the time I'm on night patrol.”

What about the other half?
I wanted to accuse.

“So, who will be there tonight?” she asked. “Elliot?”

“Yeah,” I said, “and Whit. Laurel asked me to invite him.”

“That's the sister?”

“Yup. She . . . she's really cool.” I caught myself withholding information from Trudy, and it felt so foreign to me. “To be honest, I've spent most of the summer so far with Silas and Laurel; I've hardly seen the girls, and Whit and Elliot are so busy.”

Trudy smiled a little sadly. “Green Lake is changing. So are you.”

It sounded a tiny alarm in me, especially with her sad smile. I rushed to correct her. “False,” I said. “Nothing has changed. Pocket Swanson won't shut up. Jody Perkins drives that lawn mower around like it's a frickin' Porsche. It's all just the same old Green Lake.” I breathed in the lake air, smelling of fresh algae and water reeds.

Trudy smiled, her eyes narrowed into clever slits. “Somehow I don't believe you.”

For dinner, Sgt. Kirkwood grilled, and I sat with Trudy and her parents on their deck, enjoying the weather, which would have been far too hot without the breeze coming in from the lake. “West, I see that you've been getting by splendidly without Trudy,” said Sgt. Kirkwood.

I looked at him, confused, about to bite into my hot dog, which was a tiny bit burned, just the way Sgt. Kirkwood knew I liked it.

“It's always nice to have a little company for after hours in the park,” he said, then winked and took a bite of his hamburger.

Trudy looked at me wide-eyed as I blushed. “Same old Green Lake, eh?” she accused with a hint of a smile.

“Silas and I were hanging out at the beach the other night,” I explained. “We were just
talking
.”

“Whatever you say,” Sgt. Kirkwood said. He pointed at me with his burger. “If that new kid gives you any trouble, West, you just let me know. Teresa Mayhew was no perfect angel back when we were in school together. Although I don't think Lillian ever found out about any of that, or Teresa wouldn't have lived to tell the tale. But I'll handle the new kid if he gives you trouble. You just let me know,” he repeated.

I laughed. “You got it.” Trudy was still looking at me skeptically. “We were just talking,” I repeated.