She leaves, but she doesn’t close the door. I sit there for a long time, too long maybe, but when I look up finally, I see that Parrish is watching from his own doorway.
My blood chills slightly, and I wet my lips.
“Did you hear that?” I ask, wishing that he didn’t, that he hadn’t.
He just keeps staring at me. Everything about his face, about the way she’s slouching against the doorjamb says he doesn’t care. But his fists? They’re clenched tight by his sides.
“I heard,” he says, and then he steps back and slams his bedroom door.
When I hear him blasting Ashnikko’s Slumber Party, I know we’ve taken three steps forward … and about a hundred steps back.
“Bridge of the gods,” I murmur, looking at my phone as Lumen guns her pretty pink sportscar and I end up plastered against the front passenger seat. Sounds like the title of a dope ass book, huh? But it’s not: it’s the name of the trailhead we’re looking for.
“Can you slow down, please?” Danyella grinds out from the back, leaning forward to glare at her friend. “I know my car is stuck at thirty miles an hour, but I know for certain that yours isn’t glued to ninety.”
Lumen rolls her eyes, but she slows down thankfully.
“This is our exit,” I say, just before the GPS chimes in. “Apparently, it’s easy to overshoot the parking lot for the trailhead and end up on the bridge.” I lean forward, so eager to see Maxine now that my grounding is over that I could spit. I’ve tried to sneak out a few times in the last four weeks, but to no avail. Tess has been all freaking over me, and Parrish hasn’t been of any help.
He’s been even more pouty, even more annoying than usual. And Chasm? Well, Chasm seems just fine, back to normal, like nothing at all ever happened between us. I can’t decide which one of them I hate more right now—the one who’s acting like a spoiled brat or the one that’s acting like nothing matters. Both are equally infuriating.
“Who drives three hours to hike a trail anyway?” Lumen murmurs, just as we zoom past the parking lot, and I sigh.
“You just passed it,” I say as Danyella lets out an exaggerated sigh from the back seat. The more I get to know the girls, the more obvious it is that their constant back and forth is part of their charm. They love to hate each other, and it shows. Kind of like you and Parrish? I think, but then … he won’t let there be anything else between us.
“We’ll have to turn around then, won’t we?” Lumen quips, dressed head to toe in some fancy Kardashian-brand outfit. Frankly, I can’t tell any of the Jenners or Kardashians apart, nor do I care to. But Lumen loves them. Danyella says they taint popular culture with unrealistic body standards, and are so greedy that the next Christmas Carol remake that comes out should feature a Kardashian-Jenner instead of Ebenezer Scrooge.
“We now have to cross the entire bridge,” Danyella murmurs, sighing as we pull up to the toll booth and Lumen pulls forward enough that it’s Danyella that has to hand her debit card out to pay the toll. Both Lumen and I have super strict parents: we’re supposed to be playing tennis at the country club then spending the night with Danyella. Anyway, she’s the only who can use her debit card without a parent scrutinizing the charge and asking where she’s been.
After we’ve paid our two dollars, we continue on past the booth and start across a metal bridge. On either side of us, Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge stretches as far as the eye can see. I find myself plastered to the window with my mouth hanging open. I’m not an outdoorsy type of person, but I can appreciate a view.
Danyella and Lumen meanwhile grew up in the Pac Northwest so they just sort of accept this as normal.
“Let me pick a song for once,” Danyella complains, trying to reach past Lumen to grab her phone. We’ve spent the last three hours listening to Yung Baby Tate. Mostly, we’ve spent the last three hours listening to the same song on repeat—“Eenie Meenie”—to the point that it feels like my head’s about to explode.
“So we can listen to Italian opera?” Lumen spits out, pretending to gag. “No thank you. I’m driving, so I get to decide on the music.”
“This is hardly music,” Danyella mumbles, sighing as she leans back and gives up the fight. We’ve been over this argument already, about twenty times.
“Thank you both for bringing me here,” I say, turning the volume down carefully and doing my best to break the tension. Lumen whips a sharp U-turn at the end of the bridge, and I swear to god, my life flashes before my eyes.
