“Jules?” I choke on my laughter. “No. He’s intimidated by girls, especially ones like her.”
“Like her how?”
“Gorgeous, popular, sexy. No, he’ll be pissed because the group is down a person, and that means a bigger workload.”
“What do you think she is doing instead?”
“I have no idea. Maybe something just came up. She’s been posting things about an exhibit in Paris online. Whatever it is, it’s got to be better than this place.”
Faye blinks. “So why are you here, if you hate it so much?”
“It’s important to Julian. He was a runner-up last year.” And I might have had something to do with him not winning, but I don’t tell her.
“So, where he goes, you go?”
“Yeah.” I sigh. “Our parents are on a sabbatical retreat in England, and they think I’ll get into trouble if I’m alone in the house, so here I am.”
“So how does one have fun at a summer scholastic program?”
A guy in a muscle shirt nearly walks into us. He’s the teacher’s assistant who hauled Ethan out of the cafeteria yesterday; today he’s got a whistle around his neck and a soccer ball trapped in a tanned elbow.
“Careful,” I tell him, lowering my lashes with my trademark smile. “A girl might think that you don’t notice her.”
He swallows air and blinks, flustered and cute. I walk around him, pulling Faye after me. She glances behind us, watches him walk away, her mouth turned up in an appreciative smile. “Ah,” she says. “That’s how.”
Yeah, she’s getting the hang of this place. Now if I can only get her into clothes that don’t look like she’s going to a funeral for the general of the Salvation Army.
5.
Exposure
“Ready?”
“Let me just finish this last chapter.”
I sigh, but this kid does read faster than Justin Bieber can crash a Ferrari. I sit back down on the bed in my scratchy new swim trunks, holding my never-been-washed, rainbow-striped beach towel. My caseworker had bought everything I needed before she dropped me off at camp. The detention center sure didn’t have a lake or a pool and every time I get tossed into lock-up, my belongings scatter like the wind. Mary holds on to my camera, but that’s it.
“Hurry. I’m starving,” I tell Julian.
I turn on my camera and flip through the photos from earlier that day. Nothing too impressive, just some shots of campus. The architecture is interesting and makes for some neat shadows in the stones. I thumb the forward button until I get to a series with Memory and Faye. The zoom is pretty good on the camera, and I was able to catch them walking across campus. I had made fun of Cherry’s heels earlier, but that was all bluster. They make her legs stretch for miles, ending in shorts that would have her kicked out of a high school for strippers.
I need to find a distraction.
“I was serious before,” Julian says, tapping the camera as he walks past.
“Come on, she’s hot.” I grin at his grimace, and add, “Seriously, she is. Give me a break.”
“What you see on the outside is barely a scratch of what goes on in the inside. Trust me, there are better ways to amuse yourself.”
I shove my camera and towel into my bag. “I hear you, loud and clear, but I can’t say I won’t look.”
He opens the door to the hallway. “And I can’t say she won’t grab you by the balls and twist until you beg for mercy.”
I’m trying to decide if this is a bad thing, the next time I see her. Keeping my eyes off Cherry is going to be hard enough with all her clothes on, but the minute we arrive at the lake I know I’m in trouble. And so is the rest of the male population currently mingling around the edge of the sandy man-made beach, doing whatever they can to catch a glimpse of Memory in her black bikini.
“I’m getting some food,” I tell Julian after we claim turf on an empty picnic table.
The place is decked out like a luau, plastic palm trees with pink flamingo lights, and the smell of a roasting pig has my mouth watering hard.