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“No, you don’t.”
Nick scrubbed a hand across his brow, messing his floppy fringe. “I so don’t want to be here.”
Evie’s heart dipped. For the first time in a very long time, she didn’t want to be anywhere else.
“And I can’t even do a runner. Mum’s assistant is waiting outside.”
Evie gaped, horrified. “She’s spying on you?” None of her friends, boys or girls were kept on such a short leash. “That’s awful.”
A peeved frown dipped his lips. “If I don’t stick this out, Mum will make me stay in Orkney for the rest of the summer.”
“And that’s…bad?”
He avoided her gaze. “I don’t like it here.”
Nick’s confession felt like a sharp kick to Evie’s gut. Orkney wasn’t the most happening of locations, but it was safe, postcard picturesque, and well, home. “But…what don’t you like about it?” Her eyes washed over his Adam’s apple as he swallowed.
“It’s nothing but wind and water, birds and ruins.”
“But you like the outdoors.”
Nick met her questioning squint. “What makes you think that?”
“Dunno, read it somewhere?”
Nick’s slow nod released a brief but good-natured laugh. “Ahh, right. Those magazine Q&A thingies. I don’t fill them out. My PR people do.”
“Oh?” Maybe she didn’t ‘know’ Nick so well after all.
But perhaps that was okay. Scratch that, maybe it was more than okay, better even. They could build a friendship based on truth and honesty instead of misguided assumptions, magazine exposés, and island gossip. After all, isn’t the best part of making new friends discovering what makes them tick? Finding out their joys and disappointments, what they love, what they hate?
Evie relished the opportunity.
She forged ahead with a curious smile. “So what do you like?”
“I like high streets and shops and—and conveniences.” Stretching out his long legs, Nick’s gaze dropped, settling on his shoes. His trainers were blindingly white, obviously fresh from the box and wallet-flinchingly expensive. “Being in Orkney is very…inconvenient.”
Evie balked, letting out a croaky “Oh!” Maybe Nick was being a little bit too honest.
“You like it here?” he asked, his eyes shifting, landing on her mum’s red, yellow, and green Swatch.
“I don’t know anything different. I’ve never been anywhere. I was supposed to go to Inverness last fall for my brother’s track and field meet but came down with something.”
Evie left it at that. Nick didn’t need to know she spent the October school holidays two hundred and fifty miles south in an Aberdeen hospital being fed liquid nourishment through a tube in her nose. Upon release, the feeding tube remained as she resumed normal activities and returned to school where curious classmates posed non-stop questions: “Why is the tube taped to your cheek?” “Does it hurt putting it in?” “When can you eat real food again?” Not all were supportive, though. A few bad apples, older kids mostly, teased her relentlessly with a demeaning nickname: Noodle Nose.
Twelve weeks later, Evie’s inflamed intestines had healed and the tube was removed. She’d gained an inch in height and seven desperately needed pounds, and pasta and chicken were back on the menu. However, the remission was short-lived. Evie’s Crohn’s was slowly waking up again.
“I was excited about going, too,” she continued. “Seeing Urquhart Castle, Loch Ness.”
“Nessie the monster?” added Nick.
Nodding enviously, Evie tugged on her name pendant, her fingers pressing each individual letter.
“You’ll get there one day,” said Nick.
Music campers flooded back into the room, some carrying drinks and snacks from the vending machine while others straggled in, engrossed in the last throes of clandestine conversation.
“How’d your brother do at his competition?”
