“Nope,” Ellery said, and climbed into bed. For the first time since the night of the Harpswell project meeting backin September, Ellery felt the yawning emptiness of her own aloneness, of knowing she didn’t belong here. Tears trickled down her face and leaked into her ears. She was trying to be quiet about it, but at last Susie rolled over, propping herself up on both elbows.
“Are you okay?” she asked into the darkness.
“I’m fine,” Ellery said, her voice cracking.
Susie rolled her eyes—Ellery could feel it. “Yeah,” Susie said, “because you sound really fine.”
Ellery sucked in a snotty breath. “Can you mind your business, please?”
“You know what, Ellery?” Susie said. “Have it your way.”
Ellery opened her mouth, then closed it again. She looked at her sketch pad, which was sitting on her desk at the very bottom of a shadowy pile of books. She thought of the Prismacolors, still factory-sharp in their box in her desk drawer, about going downstairs to the parlor of Honors House and trying to finish her bird. Instead she rolled over, wrapped her arms around herself, and held her own body until she fell asleep.
She spent more and more time with Danny, the two of them like children who’d been left alone at home. Danny was a normal person from a normal family, Ellery consoled herself. Danny probably knew how to pump gas. “He doesn’t even have a driver’s license,” Ellery announced one afternoon in April; they were sitting in the boys’ room, Camp nowhere to be found. “Did you know that? His family has a chauffeur who just sits outside their house full-time in one of those big SUVs.”
“Ellery,” Danny said gently. “Come on.”
At last Ellery sighed, unfolding herself from the leather armchair. “Okay,” she said, scooping her hair into a knot on top of her head, “fine. I need to go work, anyway.”
“What are you working on?” Danny asked.
“The Harpswell,” Ellery deadpanned.
Danny laughed, then stopped abruptly. “Wait,” he said. “Are you really?”
“I don’t know,” Ellery said. She’d had an idea, during one of those long nights playing gin rummy last winter, for the beginnings of what might be a creative project. “Maybe.”
He wrapped his arms around her as she was going, pulling her close. Ellery rested her head against his chest for a moment, listening to the thud of his heart inside his ribs, and when he tipped his face down to kiss her, it didn’t even feel like a transgression. Instead it seemed insane that she hadn’t spent the entire year kissing Danny. It seemed ridiculous that they hadn’t been doing this exact thing all along.
That was when the door opened and Camp walked in.
“Uh,” he said—standing there in the doorway, reaching a hand up to yank at his hair. “Okay. Um. Wow.”
Ellery stood and waited for the panic to hit her, was surprised when it didn’t come. In fact, she felt calmer and more sure than she’d been all year, like everything that had happened since she got here had been leading to this moment. Like they were never going to wind up anywhere but in this place. “Camp,” she heard herself say, “come here.”
Camp didn’t move.
“Camp,” Ellery said again, holding her hand out. “Come here to us.”
At last Camp came, the door snicking shut behind him. For a moment, none of them breathed. Finally Ellery put her hands on his face and kissed him; he tensed, but he let her,his mouth cautious and familiar against hers. Then she turned and kissed Danny. Then Camp. Then Danny again.
“Okay,” she said at last; both of them were watching her, dazed looking, their lips red and bee-stung. “Now you.”
It took them a moment to figure out what she was getting at. “Ellery,” Danny started.
“Stop.” Camp looked nakedly terrified. “He doesn’t want—”
“Don’t be stupid,” Ellery said, then turned to Danny. “Tell him not to be stupid.”
Danny opened his mouth, then closed it again, rubbing a hand over his head. “Don’t be stupid,” he said quietly, and Camp’s entire body went visibly boneless with relief. When they kissed, it was like they’d been doing it for lifetimes. Camp reached for Ellery’s hand, pulling her toward them, the three of them a single heartbeat as the light slanted in through the blinds.
Both of the boys fell asleep more or less immediately after it was over, like they had hit the limit of what they could process in one afternoon and needed to power down for a while to let their motherboards cool off. Ellery watched them for a while—their long limbs everywhere, their faces gone smooth and young—then got up, slipped her clothes back on, and let herself out of the room. She padded down the steps in her bare feet, the wood floor of Honors House still freezing cold even though it was the end of April. She opened the door to her room, where the afternoon sunlight was streaming in through the window. She sat down at her desk, and she started to draw.
It was strangely easy not to see them anymore, Camp and Danny: She changed her routine by just a few minutes, and it was like they lifted out of her life entirely, like possibly they’d been her imaginary friends. She kept waiting for one or both of them to show up at her door, but they didn’t. She was waiting for the gut punch of sadness, but it didn’t come. In fact, she felt like she’d gotten something out of her system. She felt like she’d had a terrible fever but it broke.
One week went by, and then another. She made iced coffee in the dining hall. She drew. That was the other surprising thing, the way her hand wouldn’t seem to stop moving all of a sudden, like some secret window had opened inside her that had been painted shut since the beginning of the year. She filled her entire sketch pad. She drew on napkins and in the margins of her planner. She submitted her creative project to the Harpswell Committee, a hand-drawn deck of playing cards: Birds and trees and apple cider and sunsets, a king of diamonds drawn to look like Danny. A king of hearts drawn to look like Camp.
When she got back from her last class before reading week, she found Susie sitting at her desk finishing a paper, birdsong faintly audible through the open window. “All done?” Susie asked.
