Maybe he was thinking what I was thinking, because he took my hand, holding me back as the rest of our crew filed out of the house and into the yard. It was dim in the house, and it smelled like fresh lumber. Andy pulled me against him, slipping his hands around my waist. I love you, I thought . . . but I didn’t say it. Girls should never say it first.
“What if this were our house?” he said.
I joked about how it wouldn’t be ideal, with no indoor plumbing or electricity. I could hear the other kids laughing as they got on the bus, and Alex grumbling as she gathered discarded canvas gloves. Andy hugged me, and I rested my head on his chest, remembering a cartoon I’d seen, a Lynda Barry comic where a girl, grotesque and freckled, sat in her bedroom and watched the boys play basketball in the twilight, how she stared at the boy she loved and thought, We are married, secretly we are married now.
We are married now, I thought, and Andy took my hand and squeezed it, and we walked slowly, side by side, out of the doorway and into the twilight.
•••
To celebrate our last night, there was pizza for dinner, and they showed a movie in the gym, The Princess Bride, one of my favorites. If there hadn’t been chaperones stationed at all of the doors, Andy and I would have found a way to get out of there and be alone. As it was, we found a spot in the deep shadows in the corner and sat together, Andy with his back against the wall and me leaning against him, my back to his chest, pressed so close it would have been hard to slip a piece of paper between us, kissing and kissing until the taste of his mouth was as familiar to me as the taste of my own.
When the movie ended, Andy walked me to my dorm. “Can you stay awake?”
I nodded. I’d never felt less like sleeping. I would stay awake all night, all week, if that was what it took.
“I’ll come get you,” he said. I nodded again and kissed him, standing on my tiptoes, not caring when kids walked past us, calling, “Get a room!” Maybe he’ll take me back to the house, I thought. There was no way that could happen, of course—the site was twenty minutes away, there were no cars, no cabs, no buses. But that was what I imagined, Andy carrying me in his arms, the two of us alone together in the empty rooms.
“Are you sure?”
I touched his cheek, then squeezed his hand. “Yes.”
•••
I hurried back into my room, stripped off my clothes and jewelry, wrapped myself in a towel, and trotted to the showers, where I scrubbed everywhere I could reach, washed my hair twice, then stood in front of the mirror with my mousse and blow-dryer, wondering where we would go, wondering if we’d go all the way, and if it would hurt, feeling my heart gallop like a pony. I was so glad that I’d waited, that this hadn’t happened with Derek or Scott or Jason or Troy, that I had held out for true love.
When I came back to the room, my heart necklace wasn’t next to my clothes on the dresser. I looked on the floor to make sure it hadn’t fallen. I shook out my sleeping bag and each piece of clothing that I’d worn. I searched the drawers and the floors, checked my overall pockets, then ran back to the bathroom to make sure it wasn’t there, on the shower floor or the edge of a sink. Marissa was still out—she’d been spending a lot of time with a guy from Baltimore named Pete. Bethie Botts was lying on her bed, in a cloud of misery and funk, paging through Cynthia Voigt’s Homecoming, another one of junior high’s greatest hits.
“Bethie,” I said, still out of breath from running back and forth, “have you seen my necklace?”
“What necklace?” asked Marissa as she loped into the room. Her cheeks were pink, and there was a single dogwood blossom stuck in her hair.
“My heart,” I said, feeling frantic and a little sick. “I left it on the dresser and I went to take a shower and now it’s gone.” I went over to my duffel and emptied it onto my sleeping bag, jamming my hand into the front pocket, praying that my fingers would find the heart. Marissa, meanwhile, had walked over to the edge of Bethie’s bed. She held out her hand.
“Give it up.”
“Go away,” said Bethie, without raising her eyes from her book.
“Bethie, do you have it?” I asked. My voice cracked. “Or do you know where it is?”
“Oh, she knows,” said Marissa. A coolness was slipping over her face, making her look very adult and very frightening. “Bethie,” said Marissa. “Beth-eeee. Come out, come out, wherever you are, and give Rachel her necklace.”
Bethie didn’t answer, but her greasy moon-face looked flushed. Her knees were propped up under the covers, and she started to move her thighs back and forth, in, then out. In a single swift motion, Marissa grabbed the top of her blanket and yanked it toward the bottom of the bed, exposing Bethie’s unicorn nightshirt and powder-blue sweatpants. The pants had no pockets that I could see.