“That’s too much—I could never go that short,” I say, though I’m already picturing it and I don’t hate what I see.
“The summer’s young,” she says with a smile, stepping back and handing me a petal-pink lip gloss from her bag. “It’s always a good time to get brave and make some fun changes.”
I dab on the gloss and hand it back, patently ignoring the little chill of excitement at the thought of coming back to Stratford with a different look—one that wasn’t advised, evaluated, and picked apart by my friends first. Then I smile, pout, and otherwise pose my way through a photo shoot with Jasmine mock-barking commands at me every time I move my limbs. “More duck face!” she demands, taking shot after shot of me pushing my lips up and out until they take up half my face. “More! Duckier! I said duckier!”
Eventually, we have to stop because I’m laughing too hard, and Jasmine goes back to taking her more official photos while I scramble to take light meter readings and rearrange stems.
After a couple of hours in the sweltering heat, I’m sweating like a pig and mentally begging for Jasmine to call it a day, but she doesn’t seem to notice the temperature. There’s no moisture beading on the skin above her tube top, and her flowy skirt dances as she moves, making it look like she’s bringing her own breeze with her wherever she goes. Even the dark, honey-highlighted hair piled into a bun on top of her head isn’t sticking to her face.
“Middle Eastern blood,” she says with a shrug, and I curse my Russian DNA for leaving me unprepared. Next to her, I look like a panting sheepdog.
When she finally declares it’s time to pack it in, I’m beyond relieved. I can already feel the air conditioning in her Jeep. But at four o’clock, there’s plenty of daylight left, and I have no idea what to do with it. I want to ask, “Now what?” but she’s already taken me under her wing for the day, and I imagine she must want some space.
Sure enough, there’s no mention of evening plans on the way home, only twenty minutes of indie rock followed by “Thanks for the help” when we get out at her house. I’m halfway to my room when she says, “Owen’s having some people over for a barbecue tonight, if you wanna come.” Before I can answer, the main bathroom door shuts. A few seconds later, the shower turns on, and I realize she has completely taken my “yes” for granted.
God, I must radiate loneliness.
I take a shower in the smaller bathroom I share with my mom, then check the phone I’ve barely glanced at all day. There are a couple of pictures from Shannon on the group text chain—a selfie with a croissant between her teeth and a shot of her linking arms with a cute guy while drinking champagne—a video from Gia of her falling on her ass during a routine, and a notification that Kiki posted a new episode of her podcast. I smile at the latter and queue it up after posting my favorite selfie from the gardens, letting Kiki’s familiar, soothing voice surround me as I moisturize.
“What is that?” a voice asks, and I nearly jump out of my towel when I realize Jasmine’s standing in the doorway to our little suite. I hadn’t realized I never closed the door, and now I’m standing here half naked, though thankfully only the two of us are home.
I wrap the towel tighter around myself and swipe at my face to clear any visible dabs of lotion. “My friend Kiki’s podcast, Kiki on the Case. It’s fun—it’s like a gossip column where she plays detective, and she posts a new episode every week.”
“Ooh, cute.” Jasmine comes in and sits down on my bed, privacy clearly not a dominant word in her vocabulary. “What’s this episode about?”
“Our school librarian is having kind of a dramatic breakup, and Kiki’s a little obsessed with it,” I say with a smile because it’s so silly and so Kiki. “I mean, she didn’t originally say it was our school librarian on the podcast, but we all know it is, because Ms. Adams is always on the phone in the library and she doesn’t follow her own ‘Shhh’ very well. Rumor is she’s hooking up with the librarian at our town’s middle school, and Kiki’s trying to confirm it, with the help of her little sister, who’s in sixth grade.”
“That … is bizarre.”
“Isn’t it?” God, I miss my friends. They’re so weird. I have to remember to message them later about my new job and about how much I love this episode of the podcast; Kiki lives and dies by her fandom. “Kiki’s obsessed with mysteries. It’s her thing. She has to find out if it’s really him so she can dig into how they met and what went wrong, because of course she does.”
Jasmine laughs. “You should bring her to Roanoke.”
“Roanoke? Isn’t that in Virginia?”
“Different Roanoke. Haven’t you ever learned about the lost colony in school? The settlers who disappeared?”
Oh, yeah, this is vaguely familiar. “I think so. Maybe.”
“Guessing history is not your subject,” Jasmine teases, and I confirm that it’s definitely not. “Anyway, it was this whole thing in the late sixteenth century—the first attempt at a colony. These people came over from England, set up a town, and then … completely disappeared. Nothing left but a single word: CROATOAN. There are all sorts of theories about whether they were murdered or just moved to another place, but no one’s ever been able to definitively say. There’s a theater right near the gardens we were at today that
