Ranger's hand reaches over the seat and he carefully shuts my notebook. When I lift my eyes up, I find his sapphire ones staring at me in the dark, backlit by the lights on the dash.
“Take a break from that for a minute,” he says, his fingers brushing up against mine. “We're here; you're safe. We'll worry about this later. I think we could all use a mood lightener.”
“How long?” I ask, and at least I think Ranger knows what I'm talking about. He curls his fingers over mine and gives them a squeeze. There's nothing here, I tell myself, swallowing hard. There's nothing happening between us but friendship.
“This trip, just three nights. But after, you have us for the whole summer. Now that we know it's not safe here either, I want you back at Adamson.”
“We want you back at Adamson,” Church says in an almost cryptic sort of way. “And I think I've figured out a plan to make that happen.”
I perk up at that, and Ranger withdraws his hand.
“Which is?” I ask, setting my notebook aside for the time being.
“You'll see.” Church's cryptic answer infuriates me to no end, but then I see the sign up ahead, and my mouth pops open in surprise.
“Disneyland?” I ask, and his smile gets wide. Ranger, too, actually flashes a small, rare grin of his own.
“Fucking Disneyland,” he says, and I swear, I squeal, throwing my arms around Ranger’s neck, and then Church's. Both boys stiffen up like I've slapped them, but I'm too excited to care. I've never been to Disneyland, despite my close proximity. It was never really in Dad's budget. That, and any of my friends who could've afforded to take me with them—like Monica for example—had no interest in going.
“Really?” I ask as we make another turn and head straight for the Disneyland Hotel. “Are you guys messing with me?”
“We've got something else for you,” Ranger says, grabbing a small velvet box from inside the dash and handing it back to me. My heart is thundering because it looks like he's trying to hand me a wedding ring. Of course, I know that's a bunch of bull, but there's still some weird part of me that likes the fantasy of it.
“This is a Student Council pin,” I say, opening the box to find one of the little enamel pins featuring the Adamson Academy crest. It has a griffin inside a shield, and it's topped with a crown. “Why are you giving me this?”
“Because Ross just graduated, and we need a new assistant.” Ranger throws a look my way, and I give him a narrow-eyed glare in return.
“Wow, the privilege of being your assistant? How could I resist?” I take the pin out of the box anyway and hold it in the palm of my hand. “Besides, isn't the Student Council an elected position? Don't you have to get voted back in?”
“We'll get voted back in,” Church says, turning into the parking lot. “And we get to choose our own assistant. Congratulations, Chuck the Micropenis.” He says this last part as he rolls the window down to greet the attendant. The man gives me a very curious sort of look over Church's shoulder, but I'm too excited to care.
We pull up to the front of the hotel, and the first thing I do is give Tobias, Micah, and Spencer each a hug as a thank you.
“Wait'll you see the room,” Micah says under his breath, giving me a grin. I swing my backpack onto my shoulder, and we wait as Church checks us in.
“Are we even allowed to stay here by ourselves?” I ask, meandering over to the gift shop area. There's a sign announcing an early park closure tomorrow, an entire display of mouse ears in varying styles, and a sign discussing some of the history of the hotel.
“Why wouldn't we be?” Tobias asks, putting a pair of rainbow Pride ears on my head. He teases my hair with his fingers for a moment, his green eyes bright under the white lights of the gift shop.
“Don't you have to be, like, twenty-one to rent a hotel room?”
Tobias grins at me as I grab a pair of rose-gold ears with a bow, and lift up on my tiptoes to put them on his head.
“Maybe some people do. Not us. We have our ways.” He lets me adjust his red-orange hair around the ears, and then captures my wrists in his hands when I go to pull away. “Remember how we talked about that kissing course I was going to give you?”
“Kissing course?” Spencer asks, putting on a red baseball cap with rainbow ears of its own as he looks between the two of us. The hat pushes strands of silver hair into his face, adding to that cheeky look of his.
