Page 10 of Three of Hearts
“What, the convocation thing?” Ellery asked. “It was fine. I ate weird salmon and then when I got back, Susie wouldn’t stop talking about how she could smell it.” She waved away a cluster of tiny blackflies hovering between them. “Your dad didn’t even show, for what it’s worth.”
Camp huffed a sound that wasn’t a laugh, exactly. “I guess something must have come up.”
Ellery took a deep breath. “He doesn’t deserve you,” she said, all in a rush before she could talk herself out of it. “You know that, right? Your dad, I mean. Like, whatever else—” She broke off. “He just. Camp. He doesn’t.”
Camp nodded, though all at once he wasn’t quite looking at her. “Yeah,” he agreed unconvincingly. “No, of course. I know.”
“Okay.” Neither of them said anything for a moment. Ellery could hear the birds chatting back and forth up in the trees. “Well. Have a good summer, okay? I’ll see you.”
“I’ll see you,” Camp said, hugging her goodbye hard and quick.
Ellery headed across the lawn, stopping briefly to watch as a sparrow made its nest in the eaves of Honors House. As she climbed the sagging steps to the porch, the front door opened and Danny stepped out, barefoot in shorts and a Preston Athletics T-shirt, his dark hair golden in the light of the late afternoon.
“There you are,” he said easily, looking at Ellery and then at Camp, still standing alone on the grass, like he was waiting. “You guys want to come and play cards?”
