Page 150 of Without a Clue

They all ignore me.

“And half of them were two stars!” I add.

“They lived to write those two stars, didn’t they?” Neena says, as though this is an excellent point.

Neena hops off next.

Then Gordon.

Then Hugh (who isn’t quite so “retired” after all).

“C’mon, Pip! It’s your turn!”

Crystal’s voice echoes through the trees. I can’t see her. All I see is the green foliage everywhere. The thick scent of mangoes and fresh dirt and slithering snakes hidden in trees.

“Want me to nudge you?” Nash says with a whisper in my ear. I feel his hand gently on my back and turn toward him.

“Don’t you dare,” I hiss.

As it turns out, I have a natural fear of two very logical things: being underwater in confined spaces, and being one hundred feet in the air zipping through tree lines and narrowly avoiding death by tree trunk.

Gordon’s nearing seventy-six and did this like a breeze.

But they all have an easier time living than me.

Just in general, I have to work harder in life to be free.

“We’ve got time,” Nash says. He leans against the tree trunk of the tiny stand we’re on as if to say, No really, Pip, we absolutely can be here all day. I smile a little because he means it, and for that reason, and roughly a thousand more, I love him.

“I can do this,” I say, bouncing my shoulders. Hyping myself up.

“You can do this,” he echoes.

“Why are we here again?”

“Because Crystal wanted to do research for her YA series while celebrating your induction, and you said last week, and I quote, ‘Oh wow, that sounds like fun.’ Despite the fact I told you we would end up in this situation—”

“At the time, she implied we would be staying at a resort—”

“Sleeping on the ground in tents.”

“She said the food would be unparalleled.”

“And now here we are. In a tree.”

“Can someone explain to me why I continue to go on all these things?”

Nash grins. “Because you’re a part of the group now, and like seven-year-olds in a treehouse club, we’ve decided to take our secret-yet-completely-public club entirely too seriously. And,” he adds, “life’s more fun with people who aren’t afraid to be completely and utterly, and eccentrically, themselves.”

“Of which this lot certainly is.” I sigh and look down just past my toes to the bitter, bitter fall one hundred feet below.

I bite my lip and swivel round. “Nash.”

“Yes?”

“I love you.”

Nash’s eyes crinkle as he smiles.