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“I had been borrowing someone else’s. And I just thought I could charge on the bus.”
“Wait, is the bus still here?”
He shook his head. “They towed it.”
“Oh.”
He pulled out his own phone and looked down at it. “But mine’s nearly dead too. So we’re about to be in the same boat.”
“It’s not a good boat. I’d prefer not to be in this boat.”
“There have been worse boats, though. Like the Titanic.”
“The one in Life of Pi.”
“I’m unfamiliar with that boat.”
“There was a tiger in it.”
“That is a bad boat.”
I laughed again. It felt like something was bubbling up inside my chest, making me feel buoyant, like my feet could start to leave the ground and I might not even notice. I didn’t even really care that I was down one person who might have a charger. “What do you think?” I nodded toward the sleeping man sprawled on the bench. “Should we ask him?”
“You mean… wake the stranger up and ask for a favor?”
“Uh… kind of?”
The guy took a tiny step toward me, causing my heart to start pounding triple-time. Not in a bad way—in an excited way. It suddenly seemed to me that there should be another option for adrenaline besides fight or flight. A more positive one, for good exciting things. Like dance party. Fight or flight or dance party.
“I just don’t know if he’s going to be in a good mood if we wake him up. He has a sunburn on his head.”
I burst out laughing, then clapped my hand over my mouth. The guy was smiling—and it was a great smile, too, taking over his whole face and revealing perfectly straight, impossibly white teeth. “And how did that even happen? Like, if you don’t have hair, how do you not at least have a hat?”
“These are all questions I’m sure he’s asking himself right now.”
“I mean, they were selling them all over the festival. He could have picked one up for the reasonable price of thirty bucks.” I waited for him to chime in about how expensive everything at Silverspun had been—I had a rant about how a twenty-dollar burrito was contrary to the very spirit of what a burrito was supposed to be all ready to go—but he just nodded.
“Right, totally.” He took a step closer to the guy. “I think what we need to do first is a recon mission.”
“See what we’re dealing with.”
“Exactly. We should assess the situation.”
I thrilled at the we. “I’m Darcy, by the way. Darcy Milligan.”
He startled a little at that. “Darcy?”
“Yeah. Like the song.” He just stared at me, his expression blank. “The Nighthawks song?” I was aware not everyone my age knew the band, but they had been the closing act of the festival.
He nodded, like he was trying to call the song to mind. “I think I’ve heard it.”
“It’s total dad music,” I said with a laugh. “But—my dad was the one who named me, so…” I looked at him, expectant, and after a second he seemed to realize he was supposed to say something.
“Sorry! Right. I’m Russell.”
“Russell,” I echoed, tasting the name in my mouth. It was a great name. It somehow evoked autumn and guitar solos and road trips under wide-open skies. And best of all, I’d never met another one before, which meant he was minting this name in real time. My first Russell.
“Russell. Henrion,” he added after a moment. He pronounced it with a slight accent—En-ri-on.
