Girl in a Bad Place Read online

  My dad is a major goofball and a huge dork. In an endearing way, usually. But right now he’s finding it super hilarious to have a puppet show with a chicken and an oven mitt, and I would rather be in the dark about the unsanitary things he does with the food I eat.

  So I’m relieved when I hear the rumble of Gavin’s beat-up truck outside. “I’ll be back in time for dinner!” I yell as I run for the door.

  “Have fun!”

  He doesn’t ask where I’m going. My parents only care about that stuff if it’s an overnight thing. They do the kind of parenting that people are now calling “free-range.” I’ve always been trustworthy, and until I’m not, there’s no reason for them to worry. Cara jokes that if I ever decide to do something untrustworthy, I’d better make it really good.

  So far, nothing worthy’s come up.

  Gavin smiles at me when I hop into his truck. Half of me would love to skip out on my friends and spend the day just the two of us. The other half of me is already sweaty from the five seconds I’ve been outside and can’t wait to go to the beach. There’s a shirt and some towels strewn haphazardly across the backseat of the truck, but Gavin’s wearing only his swim trunks right now. Given that we’re on our way to the beach, I obviously knew I’d be seeing him without his shirt today, but I wasn’t expecting it already. I feel a little thrown off. There’s something uncomfortably vulnerable about liking someone as much as I like Gavin. About knowing you’ve opened your heart to the chance for complete devastation.

  But you can’t live in a world where you cocoon yourself from feelings. At least, I can’t.

  I like to experience every emotion as intensely as I can. I like to dissect them, analyze them, memorize every aspect. Take notes on them in my emotions journal. The deeper my understanding of every emotion possible, the better actress I’ll be. It’s not memorizing lines that’s the hard part. Not saying the words or going through the motions. It’s feeling what your character feels, and showing it to the audience. Making it real.

  I’ve had other boyfriends before, but none of them ever made things feel real quite like Gavin does.

  Before he starts driving, Gavin leans over to give me a kiss. “You look pretty,” he says.

  I roll my eyes. I’m not wearing any makeup and my hair’s in a messy bun, because there’s zero point in trying to look hot when you’re about to go jump into water. But I did spend a while deciding what shorts and tank top to wear over my bathing suit.

  Gavin backs his truck out of my driveway onto the road. “You do,” he insists.

  “And so do you.”

  “Thanks. Took me a long time to style my hair.” He pats the top of his head gingerly, as though he actually has styled hair. It’s just regular boy hair, cropped short. Barely worth even running a comb through (which I doubt he did).

  Gavin doesn’t need to be a high-maintenance guy anyway. He’s got dark hair, dark eyes, and long lashes. He’s several inches taller than me and he’s lean but muscular. He does a lot of manual labor on his family’s ranch, and let me tell you, it has paid off.

  I reach out and take his hand. He smiles at me. His teeth are just crooked enough not to count as perfect, but not so crooked that he ever had to get braces. When he smiles at me like that, I can’t help but feel like this is going to be my best summer so far.

  Jackson and Cara are already at the camp somewhere when we arrive. Jackson’s impractical two-door sedan sits in the driveway of the camp. Gavin pulls his truck in behind it. My friend Samantha and her girlfriend, Margaret, pull in just as Gavin and I are getting out, and behind them is a carful of Jackson’s friends.

  Samantha greets me with an enthusiastic hug. I haven’t seen her since school ended a couple weeks ago. Margaret’s greeting is a shy wave. They’ve only been dating about as long as Gavin and I have, so Margaret and I don’t really know each other that well yet.

  “It is ridiculously hot today.” Samantha plucks at the tank top she wears over her bathing suit.

  “I’m sweating out of my skin,” I say. “Let’s get in the water.”

  Jackson’s friends come with us, but they don’t really say anything. They’re all super into sports and we don’t have that much in common. Gavin gets along with them fine, but he has his own group of friends, so I don’t think he’s bonded that much with these guys.

  Jackson’s family owns the end unit on a strip of close-packed camps. It’s reached by stairs cut into a steep hill down from where we parked, and it’s got tan siding and big windows. Nothing too exciting about it; your typical inherited-from-grandparents beach property. It felt weird coming here last summer, but I’ve been enough times now that I’m not uncomfortable anymore.

  Inside the house, big sliding glass doors lead out to a deck. We all flow out back, where Cara sits on the beach, facing the water, and Jackson wrestles pool floats out of the storage underneath the deck.

  Ten minutes later, I’m on one of those pool floats. Cara, Sam, Margaret, and I have wound a water-skiing rope through the arms of our floats and turned ourselves into an island. We tied the end of the rope around a tree on shore so we can’t be carried out too far by the waves. The boys are all sitting on the deck, which, in my opinion, defeats the purpose of coming to the beach. They’re cooking us burgers, though, so I can’t complain.

  “Are you guys getting excited for theater camp?” Sam asks.

  “Yes! I’m so excited that I even wrote out a list of all the stuff I need to get before we go,” I tell her, taking a sip from the cup of lemonade I stowed precariously into the float’s cup holder.

  “You made a list?” Cara’s tone is disbelieving.

  “With little boxes next to each item and everything. So I can check them off.” I grin at her. “You’ve done good work on me.”

  “I guess so.” She unscrews the cap from her bottle of water but doesn’t drink.

  “If Mailee made a list,” says Samantha, “then you’re probably already packed, huh, Cara?”

  Now Cara drinks from her water. Slowly. She screws the cap back on just as slowly, then sweeps her eyes across the three of us. “I’m actually not going.”

  My stomach falls out of my body. “What?”

  “It’s not a big deal.” She shrugs. “Just wasn’t in my family’s budget this year.”

  I furrow my brow. Theater camp is pretty expensive. I’m aware of that. My parents put away money for it all throughout the year so they don’t have to come up with a big chunk all at once. But Cara’s family doesn’t have money problems. Her dad’s a manager at a company that sells vacation packages to tourists and her mom is an actuary. Cara has never once mentioned financial difficulties before.

  But if she’s lying about finances being the issue, then … why isn’t she going? And why didn’t she say something before now?

  “How come you didn’t tell us?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. They asked me a while ago how bad I wanted to go, and then I kind of forgot about it.”

  Sam and I share a glance. Cara doesn’t forget anything. And it sounds to me like it’s only not in her family’s budget because she didn’t make them think she wanted to go. Did she … not want to go?

  “Well, that’s a bummer,” Sam says. “It won’t be as fun without you.”

  “Oh, stop. You don’t even see me that much while we’re there. You two will be fine.” Cara smiles. It’s sterile.

  Samantha and I both go to theater camp for the acting, and Cara goes for production. It’s true that a lot of the time we’re apart, but everyone comes together for the big play we put on at the end of the week. Plus, there’s meals and free time and all that.

  “It’ll be weird,” I say, but I leave it at that.

  “You can hang out with me that week,” says Margaret, saving us all from the web of awkwardness.

  “Sure,” Cara says, with that same empty smile as before.

  I don’t know what her problem is today. Lately. All summer. She’s been so hard to pin down. I can’t
get her to do anything if we haven’t planned it in advance. I’m afraid she needs something more out of our friendship, only I can’t figure out what.

  “What a nice day.” Sam relaxes against her pool float, eyes closed. “Pretty sure I’m gonna regret not wearing sunscreen, though.”

  “Told you,” says Margaret dryly.

  “Yeah, yeah. You’re always right.” Samantha opens one eye and peeks over at Margaret with a fond smile. Margaret laughs and squeezes her hand.

  “Remember when my brother convinced us that we should put on coconut oil instead of sunscreen?” I say to Cara.

  “Ouch!” Margaret hugs herself with her arms.

  “Yeah.” Cara’s smile is a little warmer now. “We looked like lobsters. Mailee’s mom was so mad.”

  “It was worth it.” I smile devilishly at the memory. “The sunburn only hurt for a couple days but he was in a lot of trouble.”

  My brother, Hugh, is two and a half years older than me, and when we were young, he took full advantage of how gullible I was. I thought he was so wise when he went to middle school, I would believe anything he said.

  “Hey, looks like your boy is summoning us.” Samantha points.

  Gavin’s standing at the edge of the deck, beckoning us with big waves of both arms.

  “What a dork,” I say fondly, and start to reel us back to shore with our rope.

  It is not graceful. Mainly because Sam keeps trying to help by paddling her arms, except all she’s doing is turning us in circles. We’re all laughing—and soaked—by the time we get back to shore.

  As soon as we climb onto the deck, I hug Gavin with my dripping, ice-cold limbs. He flinches instinctively.

  “Evil,” he says, then kisses me.

  We all take our cheeseburgers and paper plates and sit on whatever surfaces we can find. I’m in a camp chair and Gavin sits at my feet, his back against my shins. It’s quite a display of trust, considering that I’m eating my food just above his head. Jackson and Cara sit beside us, but they’re not talking to each other. Or touching, or anything. Actually, have I seen them speak to each other at all since we got here? I don’t think I have. Hopefully, nothing bad’s going on there.

  Cara takes a tiny bite out of her burger, chews it slowly, and sets it down.

  “Is it too rare?” Jackson asks. There, now they’re talking, at least. “I tried to make sure none of them were. I know you don’t like that.”

  “It’s fine. Just not hungry.” She picks at the bun, but doesn’t really eat any of that, either.

  When we’re finished, Jackson takes all our trash to the bins they keep at the front of the house and I say I’m going to the bathroom—but I follow him instead.

  “Hey.” I lean against the doorway, startling him as he closes the trash bin. “Has Cara seemed a little … different to you lately?”

  “Yeah,” he says with a frown. “She’s being a real—”

  “Remember,” I interrupt sharply, “that she is my best friend, so choose your words wisely.”

  “Sorry. Yeah. She’s been … unhappy, it seems like. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”

  He frowns, brow furrowed like he’s concentrating on not getting upset. I fold my arms to resist the urge to hug him or something. Jackson and I get along, but we’re definitely not at hugging level.

  It’s just, I understand exactly how he feels.

  And I don’t know how to fix it, either.

  I have been pacing the entryway of our house since the moment I received a text from my brother saying his flight landed. He goes to college in Denver, and he’s spending the summer there, interning at a wildlife refuge. Like we don’t have enough of those in Montana, but whatever. Today, he’s coming home for a long weekend, and I am so excited.

  It’s funny; when I was a freshman and he was a senior, I couldn’t wait for him to graduate and get out of the house. Now that he’s been away, I actually miss him a lot.

  I get another text. It’s just Mom: Make sure Hugh sees that Dad baked cookies!!!!!

  Hugh decided to come home pretty last minute, so neither of our parents could get the day off work. Mom is dying about it. She wanted to call in sick, but she had too many meetings. Hugh and I aren’t very similar in most ways, but our inability to plan ahead, that’s something we share.

  A car I don’t recognize pulls into the driveway and it turns out to be Hugh’s rental. I run out to greet him. He hugs me and then says, “I’m assuming you came out to carry in all my stuff for me.”

  “Please. Yeah, right.”

  He laughs, shouldering a duffel bag and handing me his battered laptop. “I’m a guest, you have to carry something.”

  “You so do not count as a guest. Dad made cookies, by the way.”

  I take his laptop, and when he sets down his duffel bag right inside the doorway, I drop the computer on top of it.

  He grabs a cookie from the kitchen and holds out another one to me.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Mom and Dad made it very clear that these cookies are for you, not me.”

  He grins. “I won’t tell.”

  I take the cookie. Truth is, I’ve already eaten two. “How was your flight?”

  “Short. Which is the best kind of flight, I guess.”

  My phone dings with another text message. This one’s from Cara, and it just says, maybe.

  I sigh. I texted her this morning to tell her Hugh was coming and she should stop by sometime this weekend to see him. A maybe from her means no, lately. And it’s pretty much the only answer she’s been giving me, too. Last time I saw her was at the lake five days ago.

  “Hey, Hugh?” I break a piece off my cookie, rocking anxiously back on my heels. “When you were a senior in high school, did any of your friends … did things get weird?”

  Hugh’s an odd choice to talk about this with. I mean, he’s a boy, first of all. And he’s never had a friendship like mine and Cara’s. He had a group, the kind where there didn’t seem to be one person he felt more strongly about than the others. But, I don’t know, sometimes he has good advice.

  “Everything gets a little weird when you’re a senior,” he says, shoving a big bite of cookie into his mouth. “Which of your friends is the problem?”

  “Cara.”

  “Huh. Well, summers are hard for her now, aren’t they?”

  “Yeah. I guess.” Maybe he’s right. Last summer was definitely rough; it was the first full summer since the car accident, and Harper’s absence was gaping. Cara had been watching Harper during school breaks since she was twelve, which meant, pretty much, so had I. And then last year, whenever we went swimming, I’d have this moment of panic where I’d scan the beach for Harper, forgetting that she wasn’t there. Forgetting that I hadn’t lost her because she was already gone. Or Cara would pick me up to go to the mall, and I’d half turn to say hi to Harper in the backseat before remembering it was empty. However keenly I felt that loss, Cara felt it tenfold. But she was still Cara. She organized things, she planned things, she helped me clean my room.

  This summer, she feels like … a shell.

  “You’ve been friends a long time,” Hugh says. “Too long. Whatever’s going on with you two, she’ll get over it.”

  “I hope so. Thanks.” I slide into a kitchen chair. “So, you need to tell me all about your internship. Mom explained it to me but I’m not totally sure she even understands what you’re doing.”

  Hugh grabs four more cookies and launches into a long explanation. He’s clearly loving the job, traipsing around in the forest all day. He’s always been the only woodsy one in our family. My parents had to send him to outdoorsy camps and endure 4-H programs and Boy Scouts because neither of them knows anything about that stuff.

  It strikes me that suddenly everyone in my life seems to be into nature—Hugh, Gavin, now Cara with the Haven, which she’s brought up multiple times since our visit. I’m pretty sure they’re all insane. Inside is where you don’t get rained on or eaten by a b
ear.

  Or trapped in a root cellar. Shiver.

  “Are you going to have Gavin come over?” Hugh asks. “It’d be cool to see him.”

  His tone is nonchalant, but my brother is surprisingly into my boyfriend. Gavin knows about a lot of stuff that Hugh is interested in. They’ve only met once, and Hugh spent about three hours grilling Gavin about cows and hunting and trapping. It was totally boring, but also gave me a strong sensation of pride in my chest. My boyfriend is so great that my college-aged brother thinks he’s cool.

  “I’ll see what he’s up to,” I say, and send Gavin a text. He replies quickly. “He said he’s doing some chores with his dad right now, but he’ll come over in a bit.”

  Hugh shrugs like he didn’t care one way or the other, but I know he’s hoping it’ll be soon.

  An hour or so later, when Hugh and I are watching reruns on TV, I get another text from Cara. I’m coming over, it says.

  That’s … surprising.

  “Guess Cara’s coming over after all,” I say.

  “Cool.” Hugh has moved from cookies to chips. He is really making the most of this weekend, already, eating his way through all the junk foods in our house. “Is she still dating that guy or should I look presentable?”

  I glare at him. “Yes she is, and ew.”

  He’s joking, mostly. But in the past couple years, as Cara and I have gotten older, he’s started to make jokes more often about dating her, and I don’t even know what I would do if he tried. Die, probably. She’s pretty, and it’s fine if he wants to notice that, but he needs to notice it from afar.

  Less than five minutes later, Cara explodes into my house, a whirlwind of chaos. Her face is blotchy, eyes bloodshot.