I type up a response.
10:28 a.m.: Movie night then?? (I need to get a haircut too btw)
Tamar’s response buzzes in fast.
10:28 a.m.: OK YES
10:29 a.m.: I can be your stylist!
10:29 a.m.: Alsoooo I videoed my intermediate moves for your review
“That’s cool.” Hayden watches me text with interest. He looks like he’s waiting for me to say something.
“What about your friends?”
Hayden looks away. “I haven’t made any yet here, except for you.” He takes a few steps forward, following the tunnel’s curve.
“I mean where you used to live. Back in Minnesota.”
“Oh.” Hayden doesn’t say anything at first. His gaze moves from the phone in my hand to the tunnel walls, where the playing cards have sprouted legs and arms. “It’s—I don’t know—hard to keep in touch when we’re so far apart.”
This seems like a weird answer. Even if he doesn’t want to write letters, he could text.
The tunnel ends before I can say anything. We step out into the sunlight. Life-size playing cards tower over us, creating a barrier from the rest of the park.
“It looks like a maze,” Hayden says. “I wonder if it’s actually hard to find your way out.”
We explore it, guessing which way to take when we have a choice, backtracking when we find a dead end. Eventually, we stop in front of a wall of playing cards that have fun-house mirrors across their stomachs.
Hayden leans close to one and his head doubles in size. I jump, arms up. My reflection stretches tall and thin. We’re both grinning by the time we find the exit.
From there, it’s only a short walk to the café and the train. As Hayden orders a hot dog, I rub my hongbao between two fingers, then step forward before he can pay, and order popcorn. “I’ve got this.”
A high-pitched whistle pierces the air. Hayden and I board a compartment near the back of the train, taking a seat across from each other.
Hayden unwraps the silver foil from his hot dog. “So, I was curious about something after your mom called my parents.”
“Yeah?”
He tears off a piece of hot dog bun and leans closer. It only takes him a couple of seconds to chew and swallow, but in that time my heart leaps from my chest to my stomach and back again.
“Yeah. I was curious how good of a skater you are.”
“Um.” What does this have to do with the phone call with Mom?
I shake my popcorn bag, letting the un-popped kernels settle at the bottom. “Are you asking, like, on a scale of one to ten? Or…?”
“Anything. Like, are you trying to make it to”—his eyes drop to my shirt—“US Nationals?”
“Kind of. Except there are no more Nationals, at least, not at my level.” I purposefully don’t tell him that I won last January. I don’t want him looking up the list of champions. No one named Alex won in any division last season. “Now I’ll go to a special training camp if I qualify. If I do well at the camp, they might ask me to represent the US in another country one day.”
“Whoa.” Hayden’s eyes widen. “I so want to see you skate someday.”
An image of myself performing in my new dress flashes through my mind. I chew on my lip.
“I bet you don’t have cones to separate skaters when you’re practicing.”
“Nope. Everyone does their own thing on freestyle ice.” The train whistles again as it chugs back to the station. “My last session is about an hour before skate-school starts, if you ever want to watch. There are lots of really good skaters who train on it.”
“That’d be awesome. I’ll see if I can get to the rink early sometime.”
The train slows to a stop and Hayden hops down fast, crumpling up his hot dog wrapper as he heads away from me. He lifts his hand like he’s dribbling a basketball, jumps up, and slam-dunks his hot dog wrapper into a trash can. He turns back to me, brows raised.
I know a challenge when I see one.
Balling up my popcorn bag, I lift my arms and lunge forward into a cartwheel, spinning on my heel once my feet hit the ground. I drop my trash into the can with a flourish that’d definitely get a nod from Miss Lydia.
“Okay, you win.” Hayden grins. “I would land on my head if I tried that. Race you back to the theater!” He takes off running, and I tear after him, dodging people the same way I zip around skaters at the rink.
Without warning, Hayden slows. I skid to a stop, calves burning.
“I’m glad we met,” he says once he catches his breath. His eyes are fixed on the ground, voice quiet. “Maybe this sounds dumb, but I didn’t want to move here this summer. Then my great-aunt Becca died and gave us her house, so…” He kicks a stone. “It’s not like Minnesota was all that great, either. It’s just hard to make friends in a new place, you know?”
My pulse slows. It’s almost back to normal, but a heaviness stays, just under my rib cage. In the distance, Mattie and Elliot appear under the puppet theater’s sign. They spot us and take off in our direction.
Hayden turns to me. “I know you’ve got your skating and Tamar and other stuff, but maybe we could hang out again sometime? If you want.”
In the seconds before his family reaches us, I nod. “That’d be cool. Plus, there’s still a lot of the park we haven’t seen today yet.”
His expression brightens, and my insides twinge a little. Maybe I’m not a boy like he thinks, but it doesn’t feel right to call myself a girl, either. I need to find a word that describes this in-between feeling.
Until then, I’ll have to keep pretending.
Chapter Seventeen
“Okay, it’s official,” I tell Tamar. “Baseball is brutal. And I think I have a
