“Nothing’s wrong,” I tell her. No way am I bringing up the humiliation that is my father’s affair. “I’m just thinking about something.”
“Yeah, sort of figured,” she says with a brief smile, crossing her arms over a T-shirt silk-screened with Neil deGrasse Tyson’s face and the words NEIL BEFORE ME. “You’ve been ‘thinking’ all the way through Viramontes’s meteor shower plans.”
Most of the club members are filing out of the auditorium now, but a few hover around Dr. Viramontes’s podium. Avani is waiting for me to explain my mood, so I say the first thing that comes to mind to placate her curiosity.
“I’ve been invited to go on a camping trip with Reagan,” I tell her.
To my surprise, she brightens. “Oooh, I heard about that.”
Wait, she knew, but I didn’t? And since when had she started talking to Reagan again?
“I overheard Brett Seager talking about it,” she explains excitedly, twisting sideways to face me in the auditorium chairs while she sits cross-legged. “He was at the drugstore with his older sister earlier today.”
“What?” Now I’m interested. Very interested.
She nods quickly. “I was behind him in the checkout line. He was talking to someone on his phone, saying that he was going camping near King’s Forest with some other people from school. I didn’t catch any names but Reagan’s. He was trying to convince whoever he was talking to on the phone to go with him.”
Brett Seager is a minor celebrity in our school. His parents don’t have a ton of money, but somehow he’s always doing things like skydiving, or going backstage at cool concerts, or jumping off the roof of some rich friend’s house into their million-dollar pool. But he’s not just a party-boy daredevil. He reads Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg . . . all the American Beat Poets. Most guys I know don’t even know what a bookstore is.
So yes, he’s pretty and popular, but he’s more than that. And I’ve been nursing a crush on him since elementary school. A crush that turned into a small obsession ever since he kissed me at a party over spring break. Sure, he got back with his on-again, off-again girlfriend the next day, which was humiliating and upsetting for me at the time. Reagan tried to cheer me up by playing matchmaker, introducing me to a couple of boys. Guess it wasn’t meant to be for any of us, because I never clicked with those boys, and then Brett and his girlfriend broke up over the summer.
The important thing here is that if what Avani overheard is true, it sounds like Brett could be going on Reagan’s camping trip. And that makes the great outdoors a lot more enticing.
More panic-inducing, too, because Brett was not a factor in my mental plan for this trip. Reagan’s mom had said it would be all girls. No way would my parents let me go on a weeklong unsupervised camping trip with boys. My father would flip the hell out.
Guess this information is under the table.
“Are you sure Brett said he was actually going?” I ask Avani.
“Yep.” She hikes up her shoulders to make herself look muscular and pretends to be Brett. “ ‘Bruh, you’ve to go with me. I need to jump off that wicked waterfall. We can Instagram the whole thing.’ ”
I snort at her bad imitation.
She shrugs. “I’m just telling you what I heard.”
“Who was he talking to on the phone?” I ask.
“No idea. Probably his latest bromance. He’s always changing friends, usually to whoever’s parents are out of town and have a house big enough for one of his legendary blowouts.”
“That’s just an act,” I argue. “He’s not really that way.”
Her face softens. “I’m sorry. I know you like him, especially after that party . . .”
I wish I’d never told her about the kiss. It feels like a weakness.
“Anyway, I guess he’s been expanding his friend list this summer. Katy even said she thought she saw him in the passenger seat of Lennon’s car a couple weeks ago.”
Wait, what? Lennon and Brett, friends? Surely that’s a sign of the apocalypse. “I seriously doubt it.”
“Maybe not. Lennon seems way out of Brett’s league, if you ask me.”
“I think you have that turned around,” I say with a snort.
“And I think whatever happened between you and Lennon is—”
“Avani,” I protest. I don’t like to talk about Lennon. Avani doesn’t know about the Great Experiment. All Avani knows is that we were supposed to meet up with her for homecoming. She doesn’t know why that never happened. No one does. Not even me, really. But I stopped trying to figure out Lennon’s motivations a long time ago.
It’s easier not to think about him at all.
“Never mind,” she says. “I’m sorry I brought it up. It’s none of my business.”
After I’m quiet for a few seconds, she elbows me. “So . . . camping. Alone in the woods. Maybe this is your chance with Brett. When is this trip?”
I texted Reagan earlier, but she only confirmed that the trip was happening and said she’d get back to me later with details. Normally, that would drive me nuts, but I was busy freaking out about hiding the photo book of my dad’s affair. Now I wish I had pressed Reagan for more information. All of these Unknowns and Possibilities are stressing me out.
“I think it’s in a couple of days?” I say. “Pretty sure she’s planning on staying a week.”
Avani’s face falls. “That’s during the meteor shower. I was kind of hoping you were going on the weekend trip with the group.”
“What group?”
“Our group. East Bay Planetary Society,” she says, brow wrinkling. “Weren’t you listening at all?”
I wasn’t.
She fills me in. “Instead of gathering here at the observatory, Dr. Viramontes is
