Proof of Forever (13 page)

Zoe screams and then leaps on her, and soon, the three of them are tumbling backward into the water in a giant heap of squeals and shouts and arms and legs.

In that moment, Tali really is fifteen again. Who cares if she has changed history irrevocably? Over her last two years in Liberty, it was like she won the popularity lottery, and she has had to be super careful not to screw it up by saying, doing, or even thinking the wrong thing. Now that she's back in time, she has nothing to lose. It doesn't
matter
what anyone thinks.

She leaps up and falls back into the water again, making a huge splash, smiling at the sky. She has never felt so free.

“The court's clear. He shoots!” Rob Gurns says, standing in perfect form for a shot at a basket.

Luce looks up just in time to see his wadded-up popcorn bag sailing in a high arc through the early-evening sky, right toward her head.

“Ew!” she screams, dropping the garbage bag she's been holding open and dodging to the side to avoid getting hit in the face with the trash.

“Air ball,” Rob says with a shrug, going back to collecting more litter strewn across the sand. He's so tall, his body looks something like a question mark as he bends over the ground looking for forgotten garbage. With his warm complexion and twin dimples, Rob should be cute, but there's something wild-eyed and goofy about his face, and his arms and legs always seem to be moving in contradictory directions like a giant octopus.

“Look, neither of us is happy to be here, okay, Rob? The
faster we get this done, the sooner we can go in for dinner.” It's all Luce can do to keep her voice steady. She's annoyed, tired, depressed, and on the verge of a meltdown. While the other campers were leaping wildly, half-clothed, into the swimming area of the lake, including her three best friends, she and Rob have been collecting trash on the opposite shore for what feels like hours. Today's punishment is even worse than yesterday's, when she had to spend the afternoon helping Kelsey from Bunk Coyote peel gum off picnic tables.

She saw Tali's antics from afar an hour ago and wonders if her mother will see fit to dole out punishments for her, too. It looked like so many of the campers had gotten involved that there was probably no way the Cruz could make
all
of them face the consequences. Besides, they might have been streaking, but none of them was the Cruz's daughter. None of
them
was expected to be perfect.

“What're you doing time for, anyway?” Rob asks, slacking off again on his duties by kicking a lost Nerf ball.

“None of your business.” She scrunches her face, watching as he retrieves the ball, which looks like it's been half-eaten by vultures, and pokes his thumb into a hole in its yellow foam. “And this
isn't
‘doing time.'”

She knows she's being huffy, but who cares? Rob Gurns is a basketball player, an all-around slacker, and fruit of the loins of not just one but two Okahatchee alums. He's been at camp as many summers as Luce has, and she's steadfastly stayed out of his way for just as long.

“We're out here by the lake cleaning up other people's shit. That's doing time,” Rob insists, ripping the Nerf ball into two mangled halves.

“Well, I guess
you
would know,” Luce snaps bitterly. “You're always in trouble for something, right?”

“Yeah,” Rob sighs. “But it's such a deliciously delightful, herbally stimulating something. Just can't help myself.”

Luce puts the garbage bag back down again. It's getting heavy. They've been out here for almost three hours, collecting everything from used food containers to empty sunscreen bottles. She can't believe what a wreck the lakeshore is. But that's nothing compared to what a wreck
Luce
is. After getting caught in just her underwear two nights ago with Andrew, she never thought she'd hear the end of it from her mom. She can't help but think she's getting
extra
punished.

First, there was the humiliation of
how
they were caught: the midnight “moon walk” for the under-tens. Second, the unfairness of the punishments—all Andrew had to do was scrub down the tennis courts. But third, and far worse, was the look on her mother's face. Luce can't take it when her mom looks at her like that, and she has been trying to avoid her since.

Usually, Luce is the one who can be counted on—to make sure Julian and Silas have had their dinner and finished their homework, to give Amelia her medication before bed, to leave the light on for Dad. And not just at home, either: if it weren't for Luce, there would
be
no SAT-prep course at Brewster, the Trivia Team would be no match for the Massachusetts Mathletes, and
the National Merit Scholars would have no local spokesperson.
Luce
is the number-one problem solver, the girl who gets things
done
.

Now here she is, that same girl everyone relies on, that girl who
never
screws up, doing community service with Camp OK's most notorious pot dealer, with utterly no hope of ever laying her hands on the merit badge.

Tonight is the fateful talent show, where Joy has to be voted Miss Okahatchee. And then tomorrow is the end-of-summer carnival and reunion. After tonight there's only one day left to make sure they have everything they need for the photo booth. Twenty-four hours to make it back to the present, back to their
real
lives. And then, if their plan doesn't work . . . well, it's going to be two more years of doing everything exactly right—applying to Princeton all over again. Getting straight As. The tutoring, the babysitting, the committee leading, the student organizing, the plans, the rules, the—

“So let me guess,” Rob says, interrupting her thoughts. “You broke into the kitchens at night and scarfed all of the chili dogs?”

“Ew,” Luce says.

Rob shrugs. “Tell me, then. Imagination's worth a thousand words.”

“That's not the phrase,” Luce mutters.

“Huh?”

“It's a
picture
. A picture's worth a thousand words. Anyway, it's nothing. I was just, um, out past curfew.”

Rob turns his face toward her. “Alone?”

“With Andrew,” she admits, her face flaming.

“Ah. Got it,” he says, and even though he's clearly assuming wrong, she lets it go.

“Okay, let's cut west,” she says with a sigh. “We still need to cover the area by the volleyball—”

“Why do you
care
so much?” Rob asks, cutting her off. He's looking at her like she's a science experiment—some chemical that could either explode or dissolve when placed into a substance.

“What do you mean?” Luce can feel her face heating up. “I'm just trying to clean up the beach, like we're supposed to.”

“Do you always do everything you're supposed to? Forget it. Don't answer. I know you do.” He turns his back to her.

“You don't even know me,” Luce says, fighting down the urge to slap him.

“I know you're the Cruz's daughter. Total good-girl type. Nerd.
Cute,
but still a nerd,” he says, adding up the facts as though he hasn't completely insulted her. “Anyway,” he goes on, locating another mangled ball, tossing it into the air, and catching it. “It's human nature to screw up. So just chill out already.”

Luce huffs out the breath she's been holding. “Even
you
wouldn't be chill if you knew what I have to deal with,” she says angrily, quietly, balling her hands into fists and then flexing them again.

“Oh yeah?” He still hasn't turned around. He lets the ball drop, then fumbles in his pocket and—she can't frigging believe
it—actually
pulls out a joint
, lights it, and begins smoking. “Go on. Try me.”

Luce just stands there, uncertain. Should she report him? Finish cleaning up alone? Go back before the dining hall closes and give up for the night? Instead she says: “You wouldn't get it.”

“Ah. So it's girl stuff.”

“
No
, actually, it isn't. It's . . . it's way more complicated than that.” She squints out over the lake, which has gone dark in the waning evening, the mountains swallowing the sunlight with one final shrug.

“Dude, what could be that complicated?” he asks, letting the smoke out of his slack-jawed mouth, like he can't even be bothered to purse his lips around it. “Come on, Cruz. What's got you so wound up?”

“Wound up?”
Suddenly Luce is intensely, uncontrollably enraged. She throws her garbage bag into the sand, not even caring that some of the trash billows out of the top. “Oh, I'm not
wound up
, Rob. I'm freaking
furious
, okay? First you accuse me of caring too much, when really, ya know what? I'm the
only
one who cares. I
have
to care. When I don't, when I let go, everything falls apart. Does that seem fair to you? Do you think I
like
being stuck out here with
you
? I mean, I
never
break rules. Never. I'm supposed to be Little Miss Merit Badge. Everyone else is always skipping curfew and never getting caught, so what are the chances? Why me? Is the whole freaking universe against me right now? Because that's what it seems like, Rob. I didn't
ask
for this. I didn't
ask
to be trapped back here in this horrible rehash of a life.”

Realizing she's gone too far, Luce cuts off her own tirade. She shouldn't have said that stuff about the universe, about rehashing her life. But it's true, she
is
furious at the universe, or the unknown, or whatever it is, for throwing her back into the past without any say-so. She remembers how she used to go fishing with her dad, and they'd always have to toss the small ones back into the lake. That's what she feels like: some rejected little fish, not good enough, tossed back into the murk. A furious fish. A furious
fucking
fish, who everyone takes for granted—her boyfriend, her family, her friends, even Rob
fucking
Gurns.

Finally, she registers Rob's face—one of complete calm, as though he's just channel surfing, as though she didn't just fly off the handle and completely insult him in the process.

With a small heft of his long, awkward limbs, he moves closer to her. She stands there, numb, as he takes the joint out of his mouth—thinner and shorter than a cigarette—and wordlessly offers it to her.

She takes it automatically and holds it before her like a laboratory specimen.

“Don't inhale too deep,” he says.

Luce stares at the rolled stub in her hand for a second longer. She's done being angry, done worrying, done
thinking
. She pinches the rolled paper between her thumb and index finger like she's seen Rob do, and tentatively puts it to her mouth. As she breathes in, she has the sensation of inhaling the overpowering scent of her aunt Alice's matcha green tea while simultaneously choking on an ashtray. Her chest seizes and she begins coughing hard.

Rob pats her on the back roughly. “Okay, now try again,” he says, his voice strangely soothing. It feels good to just take orders from someone else, to not be the one running the show. This is Rob's game now, his territory, and she can sense his authority taking over. “This time,” he adds, “go gentler, let it fill your mouth.”

She does what he says, mechanically, with precision, as though practicing playing the clarinet. This time it goes a bit better, and he coaches her on how to let the smoke back out of her mouth slowly; she still coughs but not as harshly as before.

Rob retrieves the joint from her and takes another hit, then says, “You're a swimmer, right?”

Luce is startled—surprised that he knows this fact, when, even after almost ten summers of camp together, she knows so little about
him
. “Um, yeah. I am.” She wonders what else he knows about her.

“Okay, so it's kinda like swimming. You breathe in, you hold, you release gradually. It's pretty comfortable once you get the hang of it. Here, try again.”

He hands it back and she takes another hit, then imagines herself going under, delving into the tranquil turquoise of the Brewster athletic pool, the reassurance of water pressing in all around her, filling her ears and drowning out the whistles and shouts of the spectators above. Drowning out everything, until it's just Luce and the water, and the constant push forward.

“Nice,” he comments as she releases the smoke. “Like a pro.”

In the middle of breathing out, Luce laughs. She didn't expect
to laugh, but there's something so absurd about being told she did a good job by
Rob Gurns
, of all people. King of fuckups. Master of failing. She hands the joint back to him.

“So what's this Red Badge of Courage that's gotten your panties all tangled up?” he asks, and sits down on the sand, stretching his long legs out in front of him.

Luce does the same, with a long sigh, not even caring that he said
panties
, a word she usually can't stand. By now it's gone from dusk to darkness and cool wind from the mountains wraps around her, the same wind that's gently rippling the lake's surface. But she isn't cold. The warmth of the weed is winding through her, making her feel like she's floating just a centimeter above the ground.

She shakes her head, twisting the cheesy plastic purple ring around her finger—the one she's been wearing ever since Andrew won it for her on the cruise. The one he gave to her, promising to be good to her forever. Its painted-on smiley face almost seems ironic to her, like a taunt.

Finally she says, “Jade Marino has been promised the merit badge this summer, but I wanted it—I
needed
it. I still do.” She takes another slow breath—
in, hold, release. In, hold, release
. “I've always won it: three summers in a row. But this summer, for some reason, everything's gone differently.” She explains it all as though it's a story about someone else, not her. “And it's not even about actual
merit
. It's sort of, like, a promise I made to someone else. I can't really tell you why it's important, but it is.”

Rob juts up his lower lip in thought. “So what you're saying is, it's the
having
it, not the
meaning
of it, that you're after.”

“Exactly,” Luce responds as he hands the joint back to her. Some of the tension restricting her chest releases. It feels good to tell someone.