Kiera puts her hands on her hips and starts to pace around the room, her feet padding along the green carpet. “Three words.” She spins around, her hair swaying behind her. “Truth or dare.”
“Truth or dare?” Blake asks, raising her eyebrows.
“Yes,” Kiera says, nodding eagerly. “Truth or dare. I start a game around the bonfire. No one is going to pick Emily right now since she’s the school pariah.” She stops pacing and shoots me a sympathetic look. “No offense.”
I roll my eyes. “None taken.”
“So,” Kiera continues, zeroing in on Blake. “Whoever gets picked first between the two of us dares Emily to kiss someone—”
“Uh,” I say, cutting her off with a raise of my hand. “Quick little thing. Given the fact that I… kissed… another guy publicly, is this really the best…?”
Kiera waves her hand, brushing my words away. “That’s kind of why this’ll work, you know? It’s a good way to make amends. Right the wrong, by kissing the right person this time.”
I frown, processing. Does that make sense? It probably would in a movie, but this is real life.
“Okay,” she continues, zeroing in on Blake again. “So, we dare her to kiss someone, she kisses Matt, there are fireworks in the sky, bing bang boom, mission accomplished.”
Mission accomplished. Just like that, everything will click back into place.
For a long moment Blake doesn’t say anything. She’s quiet, and the two of them are pretty much left just staring at each other.
I watch as Kiera blinks, waiting for Blake to match her enthusiasm. “So, are you in?”
Blake runs her fingers through her hair, hesitating, her expression unreadable. I get distracted by the faint highlighter on her cheekbones as I try to decipher it. “Yeah. I mean… I know how much the list means to Emily, so… of course I’m in.”
“Sweeeet!” Kiera claps, satisfied, throwing herself onto my bed and checking her phone.
“We’ve got half an hour until midnight,” she says, rolling over onto her back. “This is the first time in my life I’m actually early for something.”
“If you want to kill some time, I found something cool this afternoon,” Blake says as she turns to look at me. “I think you’ll probably want to see it.”
With nothing else to do, we creep quietly out of our room and tiptoe down the long hallway after her, phone flashlight guiding the way as we loop through the lodge. Around one corner, we come face-to-face with a ginormous stuffed bear, its pointy teeth illuminated in the light.
I let out an unintentional squeak, and Kiera claps her hand over my mouth, shushing me.
“Emily Clark,” she hisses. “Shut up.”
Stifling our laughs, we head around another corner and up two flights of steps before squeezing through a tiny, dusty door to the attic.
Blake feels her way to the corner and flicks a light switch. A tiny light bulb pops on, and the sloped, cobweb-covered walls are brought to life in the soft light. They’re filled with writing, words and pictures carved into the ancient wooden rafters.
“Oh my gosh,” I say as I take a step closer, finding a heart, and HUCKABEE LAKE TRIP 1966, and HEATHER AND TIM 4EVER. “This is so cool.”
“It gets cooler,” Blake says, walking over to the corner and tapping a section of the wall. Kiera and I shuffle over, squinting to read in the dim light.
No. It can’t be.
I gasp, reaching out to touch the initials in front of me. J. M. + J. C. ’99. My parents. They were up here all those years ago, on the weekend they officially got together.
It’s the final sign. That this plan, that Matt, that all of it is the right thing to do. Four-leaf clover or not. That this is my way to my own version of what they had.
We’re all silent for a long moment, Kiera slinging her arms around me and Blake as we stare at the wall, taking it all in.
“We should carve our names up here!” Kiera says, whipping a pocketknife out of her pocket like this is an episode of Naked and Afraid.
“Whoa, there, buddy,” I say, holding up my hands.
She grins sheepishly. “My bad. Still in Misty Oasis mode.”
We find a free spot by my mom and dad’s initials, going one at a time, our own small part in this massive tapestry spanning generations and generations. Kiera giggles excitedly, peeking out the tiny attic window as Blake finishes her C.
“I see people heading out. It’s time!” She turns and grabs me firmly by the shoulders. “You ready, Em?”
I look at my parents’ initials on the wall and all of ours below it, nodding. “Let’s do this.”
27
This is exhilarating.
My adrenaline is pumping as all of us pour out of the building, tiptoeing our way through the halls and through the forest as we find our way down to the lake. We’re near the back of the pack, Kiera leading, Blake just behind me, the night alive around us with whispers and laughs and the sound of twigs snapping underneath our feet.
Ahead of me, I see the light of the bonfire start flickering through the trees, and finally a whoop echoes through the air. We made it.
I’m surprised when Blake’s hand grabs on to mine, stopping me. The feeling of her fingers lacing through my own is familiar enough to recognize.
I look back at her in the soft glow of the moonlight as people slide around us.
There’s an uneasiness in her gaze I’ve never seen before. Something is unsettling her.
“Can I talk to you?” she whispers, an unfamiliar twinge of urgency in her words.
I hesitate as a wave of nervousness blindsides me, my excitement swallowed whole. I look between her and the light of the bonfire, debating.
Finally, I nod, calling out to Kiera to let her know we’ll be there in a second. Kiera yells something back to us over her shoulder, but her words
