CHAPTER 1
“Norah, breathe,” Willow said with a laugh. “I swear I’ve never seen you this excited in my life. I’m starting to get jealous.”
I swatted her arm with a folded blue sweatshirt, then added it to the open suitcase on my bed. “Youshouldbe jealous,” I teased. “He was my best friend for most of my life. You only just passed three years.”
“I thinkwasis the key word there.”
She was right, of course. I hadn’t seen Skyler since the summer before eighth grade. That’s when he and his family moved across the country to Ohio. We’d Snapped and messaged and texted a lot that first year, but every year since, we’d drifted more and more apart until we basically had zero communication. Now all we did was occasionally like each other’s posts on Instagram.
“I was kidding,” Willow said. “Bring back your super-cute excited face. Tell me more about taking over Pokémon gyms and gummy worm dioramas and video game marathons and how you did all this without kissing this boy, not even once.”
I laughed. “He left when we were thirteen.”
“And?”
I dug through the top drawer of my dresser and scooped up a handful of socks. I threw them in the air like confetti. “And now he’s coming back!”
“For three weeks,” she reminded me. “Where you will be crammed in an RV together. Sounds”—she picked up a sock ball from where it had landed on the floor next to her and half-heartedly threw it in the air—“fun?”
“This trip is going to be amazing. I get to see my childhood best friend. I get to visit my future college. It’s like my past”—I held up my left hand—“and my future”—I held up my right—“are coming together!” I joined my hands in a dramatic clap.
“What did you just do with your hands? That didn’t look good. Are you getting in a major traffic accident on this trip?”
I frowned at my hands, which were still clasped, fingers intertwined. “No, it represents a magical combination where magical things are going to happen.”
“It looked like a major collision—glass and twisted metal everywhere.”
I rolled my eyes. “You really are jealous.”
“Yes, I am. He will not take back best friend status from me. I will fight him to the death for it.”
“Weapon of choice?” I asked, collecting the socks, then dropping them in my suitcase.
“Probably a long sword. Or a throwing ax. It depends. Is hetall?”
“He wasn’t four years ago.”
My phone buzzed on the bed with a text. Behind me, Willow’s phone buzzed too. It was a message from Leena in our group text.Who’s going to the party this weekend?
My initial instinct was to type,Not me, I’ll be in a magical collision with my childhood friend.But that was dumb. Nobody else would get that and I’d sound ridiculous. I only said stuff like that around people I felt perfectly comfortable with, like Willow…and Skyler. I never worried about how I sounded around Skyler; he was just as weird as I was.
I looked out the window again, my anticipation almost unbearable now, but the street was still empty. My phone buzzed.
I’m in,Willow had answered. She wasn’t one to analyze everything she said.
I’ll be out of town,I finally typed. A perfectly normal response.
“You won’t have to fight him,” I said, back to our conversation. “Like you said, it’s only three weeks. And technically we won’t be crammed anywhere together. He’s going to be in an RV with his mom and siblings, and I’m going to be in our RV with Mom and Ezra.” But Skyler was coming to see me! Well, not specifically to see me, but it felt that way.
“Why now?” Willow asked.
“What?” I studied my suitcase and the backpack beside it, trying to decide if I had remembered everything I’d need. I had my sketch pad and pencils. Skyler would want to see all my drawings. He’d be surprised at how much better I’d gotten. I hoped he brought his sketch pad, too, so we could draw together likewe used to. I’d even brought the charcoal pencil he’d loaned me before he left that I’d forgotten to give back.
Willow’s voice drew my eyes out of my suitcase. “You said your moms have been talking about doing an RV trip since they were in college.”
“Yeah.”
“So why spring it on you now? After all these years?”