Chapter 10
INDYA
Age Thirteen
Mom fluffed my hair for the millionth time.
“Stoooop. It’s fine.” I swatted her away.
“Sorry.” She held up her hands, surrendering the battle against the frizz. “I’m sorry I forgot your product.”
“It’s okay. I’ll just wear it up.” I pulled the hair tie off my wrist and quickly tugged my curls into a half updo. Since I’d chopped it all off last week, this was as much as I could get into the band. The ends at my neck bugged me a little, but at least it was mostly out of my face.
It usually looked cute when it was down. My stylist had taught me how to fix it and given me a special product, except Mom had forgotten the balm when we’d been packing.
Dad clapped his hands together as he walked out of the bedroom.
“Who’s excited for dinner?”
“Me.” Mom smiled as he walked up behind her and pulled her into a hug. “I’m starving. So is Indya. She’s hangry.”
I scrunched up my nose. “No, I’m not.”
“Yes, she is,” Dad whispered to Mom.
“You guys are being annoying.” The moment the words were out of my mouth, my stomach growled so loudly that they both laughed. “Fine, I’m hangry. Can we go?”
“Yep.” Dad tossed one arm around Mom’s shoulders and the other around mine, tucking us both into his sides. Then the three of us walked in tandem to the door. Rather than let us go, he held on tighter and spun us sideways so we had to shuffle outside.
“Dad. Seriously?” I giggled but didn’t let him go either. I stayed nestled into his side as we descended the stairs and started along the stone path.
“Left.” He swung his left leg wide. “Right. Left. Right.”
We marched, our bodies jostling as our smiles widened, until we made it to the lodge, and only then did he let us go.
Dad clasped Mom’s hand, bringing her knuckles to his mouth for a kiss. They kissed all the time.
“What if we quit our jobs and moved to Montana?” he asked.
I gasped. “W-what? You want to move?”
“Grant,” Mom chided. “Be serious.”
“Think about it, Ellen. Every night, we’d get to see this.” He swept out his free hand toward the mountains.
I stopped walking. My heart hurt from beating too fast. “What about my friends? And my school? What about our house?”
Mom shot Dad a frown and elbowed him in the ribs.
“No, pumpkin. I’m just teasing. Forget I said it.”
The air rushed from my lungs. “Are you sure?”
“Don’t worry.” Dad squeezed my shoulder. “We’re not moving.”
“Good.” Montana was fun for vacations, but I didn’t want to live here.
“Come on. Let’s eat.” He guided us inside the lodge and through the lobby to the dining room.
Nearly every table was occupied with guests. Most people were dressed like us, wearing hiking boots and shorts. Some were in jeans and casual shirts. After we’d gone up Rustler’s Trail, I’d traded my hiking gear for my Air Jordans, a pair of running shorts, and a boxy neon-green T-shirt.
Mom hated my love for neon. The only version she liked was pink, but since I loathed girly colors, she was stuck with my greens and yellows and blues and oranges. At least in Montana, she never cared what I was wearing as long as I put on sunscreen.
She said that she loved my independent spirit, but sometimes, usually at school functions when there were other moms around, she’d give my clothes funny looks. I think she wanted me to be more like the other girls in my grade and not so independent.
Too bad. The girls who liked dresses and makeup were mean, and all they did was talk about boys. Even the girls on the soccer team were boy obsessed right now. It was annoying.
“Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. Keller,” the hostess greeted us, plucking three menus from a stack. “Right this way.”
It was cool that some of the staff members remembered us, even though we hadn’t come last year. Dad had had another busy summer with work, so Mom and I had gone to Paris.
That’s when she’d finally agreed to let me cut my hair. We’d been shopping at Chanel, and our associate had had short curly hair. Mom had said it inspired her.
Mine didn’t look like that pretty French lady’s hair, but it was okay.
I missed being able to pull it all into a ponytail. Every time I’d complain, Dad would tell me not to worry, that our hair grew fast.
I tucked a lock behind my ear as the hostess led us to our table.
“Enjoy your meal,” she said.
Dad pulled out Mom’s chair and mine at the same time. And when we were all seated, we reviewed the menu card and the three options for
tonight’s dinner.
“I’m getting a steak,” Dad said.
“No fish.” Mom frowned. “Or chicken. Or vegetarian. Guess I’ll go with spaghetti and skip the meatballs.”
Mom wasn’t a vegetarian, but lately, she’d been cutting down on red meat. Our chef hadn’t made us burgers or steaks in ages. But beef was a big part of the menu here, and she’d been grumbling about it for days.
“I’m getting a steak too. You can have my veggies,” I told her.
“Nice try. You’ll eat your own vegetables, young lady.”
“Fine,” I grumbled.
Vegetables were gross. The only kind I liked was squash loaded with butter.
While Dad and Mom talked over the wine list, I glanced around the room, searching for West.
I hadn’t seen him yet, and we’d been here for three days. Maybe he was gone this week? I had seen Jax playing with some other little kids yesterday. They’d all been chasing each other around by the swing sets.
But no West.
“I forgot my book,” I said. “Can I go back and get it?”
“You’re going to read at the dinner table?” Dad asked at the same time Mom said, “Sure.”
Whenever they both talked at the same time, I always picked the answer I liked best.
So I stood and smiled at Mom before weaving through the dining room.
My love for reading was the only hobby Mom and I had in common. She always let me pack extra books on our trips. In Paris, she’d shopped for handbags at boring designer stores. I’d insisted we go to Princes’ Park, where the Paris Saint-Germain football club played. But the day we’d had the most fun was when we’d bounced from bookshop to bookshop together.
Mom and Dad could talk to each other while I was reading. I was nearly finished with this book and didn’t want to quit with only fifty pages left.
I skipped down the porch stairs, about to hop off the last when a laugh stopped me.
A girl who looked to be about my age, with long strawberry blonde hair and wearing a hot-pink sundress, disappeared around the corner of the lodge.
Who was that? Was she another guest? Maybe she’d want to hang out tomorrow or something. Did she like to swim? Dad had promised I could go float on a tube in the river tomorrow. She could come along too.
I changed paths, walking to catch up and introduce myself. But just as I peered around the building’s edge, I heard another voice. A boy’s
voice.
West.
The girl was holding his hand as he pulled her toward the barn.
He was wearing a pair of jeans and a button-down shirt. His hair was longer and sort of messy on top. He looked . . . older. Taller. A lot
taller.
He was fifteen now and in high school.
The girl kept giggling as they walked toward the barn. She leaned away, smiling the way I saw girls at school smile at boys.
He grinned at her and tugged hard on her hand, hauling her into his side. Then he bent and kissed her.
It wasn’t like the kisses Dad gave Mom. It wasn’t a quick peck.
West’s mouth moved over the girl’s. He wrapped his arms around her and slid them down that hot-pink dress to her butt with both hands.
The sound of a car door slamming in the parking lot broke them apart.
The girl wiped at her lips as West’s gaze flicked toward the noise.
Before they could catch me, I slunk backward, pressing my body against the lodge’s log exterior. Then I inched away until I was out of sight.
My tummy felt strange as I climbed the porch stairs and trudged to the dining room. Was that West’s girlfriend? Did they kiss a lot?
I knew about kissing. Sort of. A few of the older girls on my club soccer team had boyfriends. I’d overheard them talking about tongues and getting fingered—I’d been too nervous to google what that meant, and no way was I asking Mom.
Did West and that girl kiss with tongues?
“Where’s your book?” Dad asked when I reached the table.
“I changed my mind. I don’t feel like reading.”
His eyes narrowed. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” I sat with a plop, grabbing the glass of root beer the waiter had delivered with my parents’ bottle of wine.
It was either the vegetables or too much soda, but my stomach felt icky all through dinner. And I couldn’t stop thinking about West and that girl.
She was pretty. Really pretty. I liked her straight hair. And I even kind of liked her pink dress.
Who was she, anyway? She wasn’t at the guest campfire after dinner. Maybe she lived in Montana and went to school with West.
“Do you want a s’more?” Dad asked from our chairs around the firepit. The other guests were passing around a bag of marshmallows.
“Nah. I’m not really hungry.”
“You okay?”
“I think I had too much root beer. Can I go inside?”
“Of course.” Mom put her hand on my forehead, something she always did when I wasn’t feeling well. “You don’t have a fever.”
“I’ll be fine.” I stood to kiss Dad’s cheek and hug Mom. Then I went to the cabin and got my book from my room. But it was too stuffy, and even with the window open, after ten minutes on the bed, I felt sweaty. So I took my paperback to the picnic table beside the lodge.
It was the same table where I’d made paper airplanes with West on our last trip. Had he ever found that plane I had left for him at the fort?
Did he even play in that fort now that he was fifteen?
“Hey, Indya.” The table rocked as West took a seat on the opposite bench.
“Hey.” I tore my gaze from my book and met his hazel eyes.
He had pretty eyes. My stomach did another weird twist.
“How’s it going?” he asked.
“Good.” I tugged at a hair that tickled my neck. “How are you?”
“Not bad. It’s been a good summer.”
“That’s good.” I fiddled with the corner of a page, not sure what else to say.
Why was it harder to talk to him? He was just West. Maybe because I’d spied on him kissing that girl? Why wasn’t he with her right now?
Had his dad told him he had to come hang out with me again?
West shifted to dig something from his jeans pocket. He slapped a deck of cards on the table. “Do you remember how to play?”
“Yeah, I remember.”
He shuffled the deck, the cards fluttering as he threaded them together. After he’d dealt us each five cards, he took out a small container of toothpicks we could use to place bets. “Think you can beat
me?”
“I guess we’ll find out.”
After ten hands, he still had yet to win. And the strange twist in my stomach had moved higher, to my heart.
“You’ve got all the luck tonight.” He sighed, trading three cards
from his hand with the deck.
“Or maybe you’re no good at poker.”
One corner of his mouth turned up. “Maybe.”
“We could play another game. Or do something else.”
“Like what?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I, um, saw you with that girl earlier. She could play a game with us.”
“She had to go home.”
“Oh.”
He stared at me from over the edge of his cards. “I saw you earlier.”
“You did?” My cheeks flamed.
“That’s a bright shirt.”
Great, he’d caught me spying. There was no point in denying it. “Is
she your girlfriend?”
West shrugged.
Was that a yes or a no? I didn’t know what that shrug meant.
“Do you have a boyfriend?” he asked.
“I’m only thirteen. Dad says I can’t have a boyfriend until I’m thirty. But some girls on my soccer team have boyfriends. They’re fifteen.”
“Vanessa is fifteen.” Vanessa. Her name was Vanessa, and she was fifteen.
That odd feeling in my stomach was back.
And I kind of wished I was fifteen.
