Page 40 of That Summer Feeling

“Dara!” I yelled, acting like I hadn’t overheard her fighting with Mason. “Come on the rowboat with us! It’s going to be so fun!”

It would be the perfect chance to get them to connect. I would be their orchestrator. That was what I shined at best. Lifting my sister up. Putting her best foot forward for her. Making others see the good in her when she tried so hard to keep it a secret.

“It’s too windy,” she told me, using the exact same tone she’d used on Mason.

“No, it’s not,” Mason muttered.

Dara really brought color to his personality in a way that I did not. It made so much sense. Too much sense! It sparked me forward, eager now to see this through.

“We won’t know who is right about that until we get out there, now will we?” I challenged. As expected, it was the exact prompt that put us where we needed to be. Dara loved being right, which was basically the same as winning. She couldn’t resist.

She headed for the supply room to get us life jackets. When she returned, she tossed one to me, and right when I pulled it over my head, she said, “Look! It’s Garland’s best friend. I better go get her so she can join us too.”

I got lost in flotation device foam upon hearing that, scrambling like a headless zombie, waving my arms around. Who should assist me but Mason, who took the opportunity to try and make the moment meaningful. He eased the life jacket down over my head, then pulled my hair out from the back so it was no longer trapped. It would have been sweet if I weren’t seeing all his decisions under a blacklight. The choices had stains on them I couldn’t help noticing now that I’d uncovered the full truth about my vision.

He’d only taken a shine to me because Stevie had told him he should. She’d said he needed direction, and she’d pointed his compass the wrong way. He wasn’t here with me because he wanted to be. He was here because someone he trusted had told him it was a good idea. It was up to me to point him in an even better direction. Focus his attention on my secretly sweet, privately generous, quietly hilarious older sister. Hisrealsoulmate.

I broke out of the moment Mason had tried his hardest to make meaningful by issuing a perfunctory “Thanks” and shifting my gaze to Stevie.

Seeing her felt like jumping in a moving elevator, a surprising gravity tug that jolted my heart. She still wore her Blue Team shirt with her usual braids under her ball cap. She hadn’t gone to our cabin to sleep off her supposed illness. She’d been talking to Allison by the mess hall. I hated not knowing what any of it meant.

“We’re going out in the rowboat,” Dara told her. Not a request but a fact.

“It’s pretty windy,” Stevie noted.

Dara almost injured herself cranking her neck to glare at Mason, who said “It’ll be fun” and started tugging the boat into the water.

Stevie had no reason to say no. What was she going to do? Tell my sister and her brother that she was avoiding me? She’d never be able to explain why, because she hadn’t even explained it to me.

“Fine,” she said.

I felt sure that if I so much as touched her, it would shock me. Not only because I had so many feelings for her, but because shedefinitelyhad some feelings about me. What they were, I didn’t exactly know, but they made everything heady and tilting, slanting the flat ground enough to make me feel perpetually off-balance.

Mustering up as much bravery as possible, I started to ask, “Do you want me to get you a lifejack—” and she cut me off with a quick, incisivenothat made me go very still.

“Let’s go!” Mason waved us forward, blessing us with an escape from the awkwardness that had settled atop our strained interaction.

My sister took one side of the oars and Mason took the other. They were seated directly across from each other on the boat, with me behind Dara, and Stevie behind Mason.

Mason and Dara worked together in a seamless way, matching each other’s pace without any discussion, gliding through the choppy water with ease. I wanted to highlight how impressive I found this, but Stevie’s presence set me more and more sideways the longer we spent together. Soon enough I’d be flat on the ground, incapable of fighting the force.

My goal was to make Mason love my sister. Stevie’s goal was still to make Mason loveme. What a colossal mess I’d made.

Once we got a sufficient distance from shore, the wind made everything incredibly loud. “DARA’S VERY GOOD AT ROCK CLIMBING,” I yelled to Mason, determined to accomplish what I’d set out to do.

He said, “YEAH! I’M REALLY GOOD AT ROCK CLIMBING!”

“NO! DARA!” I screamed so hard my throat felt raw. I pointed at my sister. “DARA ROCK CLIMBS!”

“OH! COOL!” Mason yelled back.

I imagined their life together. They would make their fancy pour-over coffee for each other with increasingly unique, hard-to-source beans, forever in a competition over who could brew the best cup. On Dara’s grumpier days, Mason would bring her smiley face pancakes in bed. When Mason got a little too intense about something, Dara would put a hand atop his and say, “I’m here. What do you need?” They’d take thirty-mile bike rides together for fun. It would be perfect.

If only the wind would stop trying to ruin everything with its violence.

The boat rocked. I hated every single second of it, but no one else called chicken, so I pressed on with my mission. Another thing to add to my tally of risks.

I nudged my sister, who rowed valiantly, putting every ounce of muscle she had into it, scowling at the water while very likely thinking Mason was a brainless sack of muscle for proposing we do this.