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“Oh yeah?”
He nodded, and I pushed myself up to standing—and sure enough, my legs felt wobbly. Russell reached out his hand to steady me, and I gave it a squeeze. “In that case, lead on.”
CHAPTER 6 Sunday
7:45 P.M.
It turned out that the Silver Standard Hotel was only a ten-minute walk from the high school. Russell had seen the sign from the top of the bleachers, and we found the hotel with only a couple of wrong turns.
It was a three-story, smallish building done in a faux Old West style. There was a front entrance with a circular driveway and a parking lot around the back. The name of the hotel was spelled out under a neon ten-gallon hat that needed some repair—the brim of the hat seemed to have trouble staying on. FREE HBO! was painted on a sign that hung from the hat, and something about the font—and the fact that they were advertising this at all—made me think it was a few decades old. The VACANCY in the sign was illuminated, the NO dark—presumably, everyone who had been staying here for the festival had headed home as soon as it was over.
“Okay,” Russell said to me as we stood just off to the side of the entrance. “So I’m betting the bathroom is past Reception—there has to be one somewhere in the lobby. I’d just go in, walk fast but not run—just like you have somewhere to be. They’re not going to stop you.”
“Are you sure?” I asked as I peered through the sliding glass doors, trying to get a look at the reception desk but just seeing a potted plant blocking my view. I looked down at my tank top and jean shorts, my Silverspun bracelets. Was I immediately going to be pegged as an interloper?
“Do you want me to go in first? I could scout it out, give you the lay of the land.”
“Really?”
“Sure,” he said with a smile as he squeezed my hand and leaned down to kiss me. Then he took his phone out of his bag and held it to his ear as he headed inside. “Uh-huh,” I heard him say to nobody as he walked through the automatic glass doors. “Right. Interesting.”
I took a step away from the door, still feeling Russell’s kiss on my lips, and leaned back against the brick of the building, taking a moment to try to process everything. How was this happening?!
Oh my god! Katy shrieked.
Calm down, Didi muttered.
No. Shan’t. OH MY GOD!!
It is exciting, Didi acknowledged. I just don’t want Darcy to lose sight of reality. She’s not in one of her movies.
Maybe she is, Katy swooned. Lose sight of reality, Darce. Lose it entirely. Who needs reality? How often does something like this occur?
What’s going to happen tomorrow? Didi asked, startling me.
Which really shouldn’t have been so startling, since this whole conversation was taking place inside my head. But I hadn’t even allowed myself to think past one moment at a time, taking things as they came.
And I realized a second later that I didn’t want to. This whole night felt like a miracle—it was turning me into the heroine of a cinematic love story all my own. Worrying about the future, by contrast, felt like the antithesis of sweeping romance. And a sweeping romance was what I had, for the first time ever, found myself in.
Darcy’s deciding things again, Didi said with a sigh.
But she’s right for once, Katy protested. She shouldn’t worry about tomorrow. Maybe there won’t even be a tomorrow. There could be an apocalypse! There could be the Rapture! This could be the last night on Earth, and I think Darcy would really regret it if she didn’t spend it kissing a cute guy.
“Okay.” Russell had returned, and as soon as I saw him, I smiled—automatically, like a reflex. He smiled back at me—maybe he’d just experienced the same thing. “So there was no problem at all. I just walked straight past the desk, and then the bathrooms are off to the left, down a little hallway.”
“Awesome. I’ll be right back.”
I pulled out my (dead) phone and stepped through the doors into the lobby. A second later, though, I wondered if it would look suspicious for Russell and I to have done this back-to-back. One teenager walking through a lobby having a one-sided conversation was one thing. But two? In quick succession? I decided maybe I shouldn’t risk it.
I dropped my phone in my canvas bag, but that half second of not looking where I was going must have been enough, because when I looked up again, I saw that there was a large dog barreling toward me, towing a small child who did not look like they were at all capable of handling this dog. The dog probably weighed more than the kid did. I tried to step out of the way, but the dog—it looked like some kind of Lab, but with a more squashed face—lunged toward me, jumping up, tongue flopping out of its mouth and tail wagging fast, whapping the kid every time.
“Down,” I said, taking another step to the side and trying to give the dog a pat on the head. “Good dog. Nice buddy.” We’d never had a dog. I’d begged for one every year until I realized sometime around fifth grade that we weren’t ever getting one and stopped asking.
“Did you fill out the pet waiver?” I looked over and realized that the woman behind the desk was talking to me. She looked like she was in her forties, with red hair that appeared dyed, cut into a blunt bob. This hairstyle—and her expression—contrasted mightily with the cowboy hat that was perched jauntily atop her head.
There was a guy on the phone next to her and I saw he was also wearing one, so clearly this was part of the uniform at the Silver Standard hotel, not just a fashion choice.
“Oh,” I said, taking another step away from the kid and his happy, drooling dog. “No. I’m not… with them.”
