and truck-stop knickknacks. It features a tarnished brass bed with a saggy mattress and an olive green velour blanket, an upholstered pink-and-orange chair with stuffing coming out in tufts, and a small bedside table and lamp, which casts a dim light around the otherwise dark room. Who can live like this?
I roll off the bed and stretch the phone cord toward the window. I push up the sash, letting in a breeze. The lake laps the shore as the house groans on its foundation.
“Did you find Andrew’s present yet?” Macie asks.
“What present?” Knowing Andrew’s proclivity for grand gestures, he probably sent a bouquet of flowers ahead of time, but I think I would have smelled that already. Right now all I smell is dog and mothballs. I search the room again, but there’s no obvious welcome gift, only a Girls of the Ivy League calendar that’s hanging on a nail by the door. The wrong month is showing. Miss Dartmouth must be Calloway’s type.
“It’s in your big suitcase,” she says, “but brace yourself.”
“How did he get it in there?” I ask.
“He told me your mom planted it for him.” Macie’s tone sounds like a warning, and the line picks up static.
This does not give me a good feeling. I keep digging and find, tucked underneath the just-in-case sweaters Mom made me pack, Andrew’s gift box. Judging by its rectangular shape, it’s probably clothes, but Andrew’s not much of a shopper. His mom does all that for him, which makes me even more leery about the present. Why didn’t he want me to open it in front of him?
There’s a note taped under the ribbon. It says, Just for laughs.
I pull the lid off the box and find a whole bunch of lacy, silky undergarments—but not the Victoria Secret kind. The first is a bright yellow negligee featuring Sponge Bob. I flip below it and see matching Iron Man, Green Lantern, Gollum, and Squidward bra and panty sets—two of each kind.
Andrew’s always been a sucker for a great gag gift, but why? Just…why? I mean, what kind of underwear company would even make something like this?
“What the hell?” I say, frantically digging through the suitcase. None of my normal underwear are in here anymore.
“Weird, don’t you think?” Macie asks. The line starts breaking up, but I’m too distracted to worry about that. I keep digging through my suitcase, hoping to find something normal. Anything. I’d take enormous white cotton granny panties at this point.
“What was he thinking?”
“Girl, listen,” she says. “I hate to feed your eternal optimism, but you don’t think he was buying himself a little insurance policy, do you?”
“What do you mean?” I ask, my hands stilling.
“I mean, wha— are the chances you’re going t— have a summer fling wi— some guy up th— if you’re wearing a Squidward thong?”
With the line picking up more static, my brain struggles to catch all the words, as well as catch up to her theory. Andrew wants to make sure I keep my clothes on? Interesting. “You think that’s it?”
My cell phone screen lights up—miraculously—with an incoming call. “Macie, I got to go. I got another call.”
“It’s Andy, isn’t it.”
“Andrew. Yeah.”
“What are you going to say? Maybe grow a pair and ask him flat out, ‘Are you as hot for me as I am for you?’”
“Helpful. Have a great time in Tibet. Really, really great, okay? Okay, bye.” I pick up Andrew’s call, but it goes dead as quickly as Macie’s did.
I call him back on the black phone, and he picks up right away, saying, “Hello?”
At the sound of his steady voice, my shoulders relax, and I realize how much tension I’ve been carrying around all day. “It’s me,” I say. “I’m calling from the landline.”
“How are you doing?” Andrew asks, and the way he says it tells me that he really wants to know.
“Not sure, exactly. I may have picked up someone else’s suitcase. I don’t recognize a lot of the things inside.”
“So you found my present?” I can tell he’s grinning.
“I did.”
“Do you like them?” he asks, laughing. The line goes a little staticky again, but then it clears.
I try to laugh, too. It’s my only defense if what I’m about to say goes thud like a bad joke. “Macie says you’re trying to make sure I don’t dare take my clothes off with some guy up here.”
There’s silence on the other end, and I break out in a cold sweat. Damn you, Macie. After a few seconds, he