The Unexpected Everything - Morgan Matson Page 0,127
there for a few minutes, looking up at the stars though the open door, listening to the low hum of the cicadas in the grass.
“What’s that?” I asked. He must have gotten some sun today—the skin on his neck was warm, and I rested my lips there for just a moment before putting my head on his chest. I felt the soft cotton of his T-shirt under my cheek and just breathed in that Clark smell I loved so much but hadn’t yet adequately been able to describe to my friends. It was just him, and it made me feel wide awake and really peaceful, all at the same time.
“You guys,” Clark said, turning to face me a little more fully, moonlight and reflected streetlight falling across his face. His glasses were carefully folded and placed against the window, and he reached for them now and slipped them on, then smiled when he saw me, like I’d just come into focus. “Your friends. This is what you guys do.”
I looked at him. “I’m going to need more than that,” I said after a second of trying to figure out what he was talking about. “I thought you were supposed to be good with words.”
“Sorry,” Clark said, giving me a quick, embarrassed smile. It faded, and I realized in that moment that this was actually something more serious—probably not something I should be teasing him for trying to ask about.
“No, tell me,” I said, propping myself up on an elbow. “What do you mean?”
“Just . . .” Clark gestured to the bag propped by the wheel well, the one that contained half of the scavenger-hunt items, including eight blue gum balls that were all his. “You guys. You do things like this. It’s like the coin of the realm with you.” I smiled at that. “You create quests—”
“Scavenger hunts.”
“You hang out together all the time. You have these games and inside jokes and nicknames and adventures. . . .” Clark looked down at his hands, and I got the feeling he was weighing every word before he spoke, trying to find the one that would let me understand what he was feeling.
“Well, not all the time,” I said, not wanting him to get a false impression of things. “During the school year, there’s a lot more homework and a lot more of Tom attempting to grow a beard so he’ll get cast in the Chekhov play.”
“I guess I just . . . ,” Clark said as he adjusted his glasses. “I’ve never had a group of friends, so I didn’t . . .” He shook his head. “I didn’t know it could be like this.”
“Oh,” I said quietly, finally understanding what he meant. I didn’t want to tell him that it wasn’t always good, or wasn’t always like this, because the fact is that most of the time it was. I’d sometimes look at other people at my school—the girls who seemed to thrive on drama and were always fighting with their friends, the ones who didn’t even seem to like their friends that much—and know just how lucky I was. But I wasn’t sure that was what Clark needed to hear at the moment. “Well,” I said, as I moved closer to him, laying my head back down on his chest and hooking my foot over his, letting our legs tangle together. “Maybe you missed having a group before,” I said. “But you’re part of one now.”
Clark didn’t say anything for a long moment, and it was like I could practically feel him turning over these words, thinking about their implications. Finally, I felt him kiss the top of my head and rest his chin there. “How about that.”
“So next summer,” I said, “you’re going to want to refine your strategy early. If you want a chance of winning, that is, because—” It was like my brain caught up to what I was saying just a moment too late. Clark wouldn’t be here next summer. He’d be back in Colorado, or he’d be somewhere else, but he would not be in Stanwich, doing a scavenger hunt with my friends.
“Oh,” Clark said, pulling away a little so he could look at me and dashing my hopes that he had just not been paying attention to the last thing I’d said. “Um. Are you—”
“Never mind,” I said quickly, feeling like this was a conversation I really didn’t want to have. We had been having a nice moment, and the last thing I