Chapter 5

Ada's bed was empty when Sutton woke on Saturday morning. Sutton blinked herself into the day, her legs prickling against the scratchy lodge sheets, and scrolled through her cell phone to coax herself into alertness.

The faucet was running in the bathroom. Sutton rolled onto her side and looked: Debbie was still asleep in the other bed, her face smushed into the pillow. Ada was the one in the bathroom.

Sutton dragged herself out of bed and shimmied into an old pair of jeans. She would shower later, when she had the cabin to herself. Right now, all she wanted was a glass of water and an empty place to think.

At nine, everyone met in one of the lodge conference rooms to start the "Strategic Planning Session." Sutton watched her colleagues pull themselves around in a daze, blinking through their hangovers and medicating themselves with coffee. Debbie was quiet for once--Sutton suspected she was both exhausted and hungover--but she kept a smug look on her face that made Sutton mentally roll her eyes.

Ada nodded at Sutton when she strode into the conference room. Sutton nodded back and even allowed for a fraction of a smile.

Wyatt looked torn when he stepped away from the coffee stand and assessed his seating options. Sutton could tell he wanted to be somewhat close to Debbie and yet as far away from Sutton as he could get. He settled for sitting diagonally across the circle of chairs, next to Javier and Mikey P. Ada sat on Mikey P.'s other side.

"Everyone chipper this morning?" Marta asked. She stood at the front of the room, where the chair circle broke to allow for a whiteboard. "Should we do some jumping jacks to get our energy flowing?"

Her suggestion was met with a uniform groan.

"Alright, never mind that, then. Sit comfortably but make your brains stand up. Holly-Ann is going to lead us off with a history of Cyntera and an overview of our mission."

Holly-Ann took Marta's place, trading her Activia carton for a whiteboard marker, and Sutton leaned back to let the information wash over her. To her right, Debbie visibly sighed.

Sutton actually enjoyed Holly-Ann's overview. She had always liked to know the history of the organizations she belonged to. When they were founded, why they were founded, trivia bits, that kind of stuff. She knew everything about UT Law's history and even everything about her grade school's history. While her colleagues sat with glazed eyes and vacant smiles, Sutton hung on everything Holly-Ann said. She even asked a question.

They did a company mission assessment after that. Marta wrote each part of their company mission statement on a piece of white butcher paper, and as a team they discussed whether or not they were meeting that mission. Debbie seemed to think they were spot-on in every aspect. Wyatt had a more cynical view. Javier got bogged down in the details--"But why does it say 'within' in that sentence? I think that's the wrong preposition"--and wouldn't stop griping until they collectively told him, in terms inconsistent with the company mission, that he ought to shut up.

Marta granted them a break after that. People stood up and stretched, ambled off to the bathroom or the coffee station, and milled about talking in low, hushed tones that indicated everyone was still recovering from last night.

Sutton felt someone join her at the coffee station. She looked up from pouring half-and-half to find Ada watching her.

"So you're still a nerd?" Ada said.

"What?"

Ada didn't meet her eyes while she filled a Styrofoam cup with French roast. "You still geek out over history."

Sutton smiled into her coffee. "Is this you giving me another example of how I haven't changed?"

"This is me noticing things when I'm bored in bullshit meetings."

"Yeah, well. I've noticed you're a coffee drinker now. Since when?"

"Since right now, because this meeting is excruciating."

"It wouldn't be so bad if you liked history."

"I hate history," Ada said, following Sutton's lead of turning toward the room. They stood side-by-side, facing everyone. "You know that."

"I do," Sutton said. "You hate it almost as much as you hate art."

"Art," Ada laughed, rolling her eyes. "I don't hate art, though. I just wish I could do it. Paint something or craft something."

"I know. You have a love-hate relationship."

"Like you and sports," Ada teased, smiling behind her coffee cup.

Sutton's lungs seemed to swell inside her. It was like--standing here with Ada, acknowledging the stupid little things they knew about each other, jiving in their conversation, facing the world the same way--it was a piece of heaven Sutton had thought she would never reclaim. Her mouth didn't want to do anything but smile, even though a rational part of her knew she shouldn't give in to these hopeful feelings.

"I'll see you later," Ada said, glancing sideways at her. "Enjoy the rest of the history lesson. Let your inner nerd shine through."

They were scheduled for a canoeing excursion later that morning. Marta told them briefly about it as she wrapped up the Strategic Planning Session. She then introduced their adventure guide, Evan, who had stepped into the conference room a few minutes before. Evan had wild curly hair and a gap in his front teeth, and he looked like he was probably the same age as Mikey P.--a fact that Mikey seemed threatened by, judging by the scowl on his face.

Evan led them out of the main lodge and across a series of nature trails. Sutton walked in step with Debbie, swatting at bugs and shielding her eyes against the late morning sunshine. When a bee suddenly buzzed close to her ear, she startled and clutched at Debbie's elbow, her heart sprinting beneath her skin.

"Oh my god, Sutts, calm down," Debbie laughed, steadying her.

Sutton chanced a glance behind her. Ada was smiling knowingly, her eyes reflecting sunlight.

They reached the river and Evan gathered them together on the small dirt beach that melted into the water. He launched into a safety talk, but it was hard to take him seriously when he looked so giddy and eager, his face ruddy and his curls bouncing. Sutton looked away from him and watched the water instead. It streamed past the lodge grounds, glistening in the summer light.

Evan finished his safety talk and matched them up with canoes while they groused around in the dirt. He assigned On-Delay to hand out life jackets and seemed confused when On-Delay took a full 20 seconds to agree.

"I feel good about this canoeing venture," Javier said, puffing out his chest. "I was always skilled at crossing the river in Oregon Trail."

"This is a real river, though," Wyatt said.

"Computer game skills are easily transferrable," Javier replied, his tone impatient.

Evan asked them to divide off in pairs. Debbie turned readily to Wyatt, and he agreed right away.

Sutton looked without meaning to at Ada. Ada was looking at her, too, her mouth parted uncertainly.

They held eyes for an infinite second. It felt like staring into the sun.

Sutton flicked her eyes away and settled them on Javier.

"Be my partner?" she asked him, before she could think about it.

He pulled on the straps of his life vest. "Okay."

She didn't look back at Ada.

Evan gave them a rudimentary tutorial, showing them how to use the paddles to steer the canoe. Wyatt crossed his arms over his chest and nodded his head importantly the whole time, like he was expecting Evan to say everything he was saying. Marta took pictures of them while they listened. On-Delay stood motionless and expressionless the whole time.

Then they stepped into their canoes, all of them strapped into cardinal-red life vests, and pushed off from the dirt beach.

The water was calm and a balmy breeze flowed across it, trickling along Sutton's arms and her eyelashes and her hair. She pushed her paddle through the water and glanced back at Javier, who appeared to be struggling despite his Oregon Trail prowess."Get it together, Jav!" she yelled. "Before the oxen die!"

Javier shook his head in laughter and swept his paddle harder. Sutton grinned and turned back around to follow the other canoes.

Everyone warmed up after the first half hour. Suddenly they were cheery and giddy, buoyed from endorphins and the calming beauty of the river. People called ahead and behind to the other canoes, teasing each other, shouting at Javier that he ought to paddle at the front of the pack so he could show them his river-crossing skills.

They paddled to a denser section of the river, where Evan informed them it was deep enough for them to swim if they'd like. He drifted to a stop and showed them the boulders along the riverbank where other canoers would sit and picnic in the sun.

"Forget the boulders, I'm going in!" Wyatt said. He hopped over the edge of his canoe and into the water, yelping as he was submerged up to his ribs.

"How is it?" Debbie called. "Cold?"

"It's refreshing!"

"Probably full of flesh-eating bacteria, though," Javier muttered.

Debbie hopped in next, shrieking as the water covered her up to her chin. Everyone laughed; Marta paddled over to capture a photo.

Wyatt pulled Mikey P. in after that. He sputtered and cursed in the water but grinned like he couldn't help it--like he felt properly hazed and included.

"Sutton and Javi are next!" Wyatt said, his arms stroking toward them.

"No! No way!" Sutton protested.

"I'm not offering myself to that bacteria, man!" Javier shouted, springing out of his seat.

Wyatt barked out a laugh. "Sorry, y'all, but I gotta get all the young folks to join me."

And with that, he gripped the sides of their canoe and flipped it over.

The water hit Sutton in a good way. Wyatt had been right: it was refreshing. But the suddenness of tumbling into the river had caught her off guard, and she gasped as she bobbed in the water, the breath coming fast into her lungs. Across from her, Javier was sputtering and doggy-paddling, his eyes wild as he looked around him in the water.

"Javi," she gasped, laughing, "there's no flesh-eating bacteria."

"Not that we can see," he rasped, "but wait until your arm falls off."

"If your arm falls off, we'll buy you a new one," Wyatt said. "Come on, come join everyone else."

They swam over to the nucleus of the group, where Debbie and Mikey P. were bobbing in the water. Marta, Holly-Ann, and some others had docked their canoes and were sitting on the boulders, watching them all.

"What I wouldn't give to be young again," Marta said, tinkering with her camera. "I'd be in that water with you all!"

Ada was still sitting in the back of her canoe, her arms balanced on her knees. She was partnered with On-Delay, who gazed up at the sky, ignoring them all.

Sutton turned away from the others and blinked at Ada through the haze of water and sunlight. "Aren't you coming in?"

Ada gave her a small smile. "I'm okay."

She had a look on her face that Sutton couldn't place. It was almost vulnerable. Sutton blinked at her a second longer, but Ada broke eye contact and spun around to face the people on the boulders.

Sutton turned reluctantly away and doggy-paddled back toward the others, but she couldn't fully engage with them. Not when Ada had that look on her face that Sutton couldn't understand.

But after a minute of laughing with the others and watching Ada out of the corner of her eye, she did understand.

"Wyatt," she said under her breath.

He looked nervous at her direct address, but she gestured him toward her and whispered behind her hand.

"Are you sure?" he said.

"Trust me," she promised.

Wyatt lifted his eyebrows uncertainly, but then he swam over toward Ada's canoe. Ada watched him warily, and Sutton watched Ada.

And then Wyatt toppled Ada's canoe.

The air swelled with shrieks and high-pitched laughter and applause from the folks on the boulders. Sutton watched Ada surface in the water, her eyes wide with surprise, her dark curls already frizzing. She yelled and splashed water at Wyatt, but there was something in her expression that Sutton recognized as joy.

"Come over here!" Debbie yelled, and Ada and Wyatt swam to join them, Ada meeting Sutton's eyes.

None of them said anything about On-Delay, who had trudged, soaking wet but silent, up to the beach. Marta snapped his picture, and to everyone's surprise, he smiled.

Lunch was a much more exuberant affair than breakfast had been. After everyone had changed out of their wet river clothes, they returned to the lodge conference room, where the lodge staff had laid out sandwiches, salads, and Coca-Cola drinks for them to choose from. Everyone was loose and jovial as they moved through the sandwich line, and Sutton was starting to understand how these retreat weekends actually could meld companies into better, stronger teams.

Ada surprised her by sitting next to her at one of the lunch tables. They didn't look at each other, but Sutton was hyperaware of everything Ada was doing. How she picked her fork through her salad, where she laid her elbow, how her voice sounded. It was all achingly familiar. She and Ada could easily have been sitting side-by-side in their high school cafeteria, trading snacks and tag-teaming jokes like they had done for so many easy years. Sutton felt elated and disoriented at the same time.

They spent the afternoon working through a Goal Session. Marta outlined the five big goals for Cyntera as a whole, then asked them to separate into small groups to define their individual goals.

Debbie turned to Sutton and Ada. "Roomie group?" she beamed.

Sutton looked to Ada, who smiled in confirmation. They grabbed poster board and sharpie markers, then followed Debbie to a corner of the conference room to work.

At first they stayed on task, laying out their ideas for goals and asking each other for feedback. But after the first 15 minutes, Sutton lost focus. She and Ada had somehow fallen into teasing Debbie about her adventure with Wyatt the night before.

"Was it as racy as everyone expects an office romance to be?" Sutton jibed.

"You and Wyatt brought new meaning to the term happy hour," Ada added.

Debbie blushed in a pleased way. She turned away from them to scribble a goal onto the poster board, shaking her head like she was so above their immature teasing. Sutton smirked at Ada, who smirked back at her.

When Debbie got up to use the bathroom, Sutton noticed her stop halfway across the room to say something to Wyatt. Sutton looked sideways to see if Ada was watching them too. She was.

"Why have we always gotten so much amusement from other people's cheesy attempts at flirting?" Sutton whispered.

"Because we're childish idiots," Ada said, without missing a beat.

"We always have been, I guess."

"Yeah," Ada said, "we have."

After the Goal Session ended, they were free to spend the late afternoon and evening however they liked. Sutton thought she, Ada, and Debbie might hang out all together, but Debbie scuttled off to go on a nature walk with Wyatt.

"'Nature walk,'" Ada laughed, watching Debbie go. "If they're gonna get down and dirty in the woods, I think I'll stay as far away from the trails as possible."

"You don't want to see Wyatt's tighty-whities?" Sutton asked.

"Not today, not ever."

"Me neither. I mean, I don't want to see them again, so..."

They fell silent. Most of their co-workers had already left the conference room. Sutton stood awkwardly across from Ada, wondering where to direct her eyes.

"Um," Ada said. "I think I'm going to read for a while. Are you...heading back to the cabin?"

"Uh--yeah, sure. Yeah, I can go with you. I mean, if that's okay."

"Oh, yeah, that's fine, I mean, unless you were gonna do something else--"

"Oh, no, it's okay, I thought maybe I'd take a nap."

"Okay."

"Okay."

Ada pivoted on her heel, gesturing toward the cabin path with her arm. Sutton laughed awkwardly and fell in step beside her.

Sutton wasn't sure what to say on the walk, even though it was only a minute or two long. It was still foreign to be alone with Ada. It was stressful. She wondered how she had done it for so many years.

She settled on an easy, shallow question to fill the silence. "So...what are you reading?"

"Oh," Ada said, not looking at her. "Nothing fun. Just a book about developing your leadership capabilities."

Sutton raised her eyebrows at her. "Seriously?"

"Yeah."

"Sounds...riveting."

Ada kept her eyes on the path. For some reason, she seemed embarrassed. "Like I said, nothing fun."

Sutton hesitated. "Are you--why are you reading it?"

Ada tried a look at her, but she didn't fully commit to it. She cleared her throat and said, still not looking at Sutton, "I'm just--you know. Thinking about how to be more than just a sales person."

Sutton digested this. "Do you like business that much?"

"I love it," Ada said, her voice vulnerable.

Sutton's limbs felt heavy all of a sudden. Here it was, a reminder that no matter how close the past seemed to be, she had fallen far away from knowing the girl next to her.

"Wow," she managed to say. "So are you, like--gonna get your MBA or something?"

"I want to," Ada said, finally glancing at her as they reached their cabin. "I already took the GMAT. But don't tell anyone."

"Of course not."

"Thanks. So...how about you? Are you going to get your own apartment?"

"Yeah," Sutton nodded, following Ada into the cabin. "I wanted to wait until I had a job and an income stream first, but yeah, I think I'll start looking this week."

"Do you know which part of the city you'll live in?"

Sutton shrugged. "We'll see. I think everyone expects me to be in a rush to move out of my parents' house, but it's actually been kind of nice to have time with them."

Ada smiled as she riffled through her big leather bag. "I always loved your parents."

Sutton waited for a beat. "They loved you, too."

"Do you remember that fleece blanket they gave me for high school graduation? The monogrammed one? I used it all through college. I still keep it on my bed."

An ache spread through Sutton's stomach. "My mom will love to hear that."

"You know...my mom still updates me on your family all the time."

"Really?"

"Every time she sees your mom somewhere, she'll always tell me about it. 'Oh, I saw Mrs. Ely at Publix, she said Sutton's loving law school, I wish you'd gone to law school, Sutton's doing so well they're going to make her the dean--'"

"Shut up," Sutton laughs. "Your mom doesn't say that."

"I was reading between the lines. I wouldn't be surprised if she actually did believe that--she always thought you were amazing. Whenever she brings you up, I can hear that unspoken reprimand in her voice, how she thinks I'm an idiot for--"

Ada cut herself off. She sucked on the air, like she was shocked at herself, and then licked her lips and looked down at her feet.

Sutton's neck flushed. The empty silence of the cabin swelled in her ears.

Ada cleared her throat. "Sorry," she said, in her business voice.

"'t's okay," Sutton muttered.

"Um. You know, I actually think I want a water--" she stepped back toward the door with her book in her hand--"so I'm gonna go back to the conference center real quick--"

"Oh, yeah, for sure," Sutton said, nodding and lifting her shoulders. "I'm just gonna lie down--"

"Cool, I'll see you in a little bit."

"Cool."

Ada shut the door, and Sutton was alone with the present and the past.

When she woke from her nap, the cabin was still empty. She checked her watch. It was after six. Dinner time. She was missing it.

She hurried out of bed and over to the conference center. She found everyone right away. The group she had eaten dinner with yesterday--Wyatt, Javier, Mikey P., Debbie, and Ada--were sitting in the same small garden as before. And they had saved her a spot.

And it was next to Ada.

"Oh," Sutton said, breathing hard from her speedy walk through the grounds. "Thanks, y'all. Let me just get a plate and I'll--"

"Ada got you one!" Debbie said brightly, waving Sutton down with her hand. "Now sit down and let me tell you about the waterfall Wyatt and I found--"

Sutton wasn't listening. She was looking at the plate Ada was offering her. It was full of things she liked to eat. Cinnamon apples and corn and Caesar salad and--

"I didn't know if you'd prefer chicken or beef," Ada said, her eyes uncertain.

Sutton took the plate out of her hands and sat down beside her. She looked disbelievingly at the food on her lap.

"Chicken," she said, a smile spreading across her face. "I love chicken."

Ada ducked her head and grinned. "Lucky guess."

They had another team bonfire that night. On-Delay played the banjo again, this time leading them through a series of James Taylor and Neil Diamond songs. Sutton was content to stand in front of the fire and watch her colleagues drink and sing. It had been a long, jarring day, and she was emotionally worn out from everything she was feeling.

Ada's voice spun her out of her reverie.

"I like your sweatshirt," she said. She spoke so only Sutton could hear her. "I always wanted to visit you there."

Sutton glanced down at her white University of Tennessee hoodie. "You did?"

Ada broke eye contact with her and looked back at the fire. "I know we didn't talk through undergrad or the years you were in law school, but anytime someone brought up Knoxville these past three years, I would think about you and wonder what it was like for you to live there."

Sutton let this admission settle over her. "I wish you had visited," she said quietly. "You would have liked Knoxville."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I could have taken you to see the Smokies."

"You hate the outdoors."

"I would have gotten over it. For your sake."

Ada was quiet, looking out over the fire. After a moment, she said, "Thanks."

"Sure."

"Do you want a beer?"

"Okay."

They stood together in the midst of their coworkers, with the fire making everything more magical than it actually was.

Sutton didn't want the weekend to end. She didn't want the night to end. She could sense it, somehow, that what she and Ada were experiencing was conditional, that it was only working because they were in this liminal space away from the reality of the present.

But when they were back in the city, with their own lives and their different college diplomas and their separate friends and the seven years that had grown between them, what would happen then?

"I'm going back to the cabin," Ada said after a while. "I'm completely out of energy."

"Okay," Sutton said. She wanted to go with her, but she didn't want to overstep. "Sleep well."

"Thanks," Ada said, her eyes lingering. "I'll see you in the morning."

But Sutton didn't want to hang around the fire now that Ada was gone. It was like Ada had taken a piece of Sutton back to the cabin with her.

She drew out her campfire experience as long as she could, and then she turned away with sudden haste and announced to the coworkers near her that she was going to bed, too.

Ada was still awake when Sutton tiptoed into the cabin.

"Oh," Sutton said, surprised to find Ada perched on her bed reading. "I thought you'd be asleep by now."

"I needed to mentally wind down," Ada said, rubbing a hand down her face. "How was the rest of the fire?"

"Uneventful. On-Delay sang an acoustic version of 'Royals,' though, so that was...unexpected."

Ada laughed through her nose.

"Is that your business leadership book?" Sutton asked.

"Oh. Yeah. It calms me down, for some reason."

"Huh. Odd."

"Yeah. Anyway, I was just about to get ready for bed."

She shifted onto the floor and riffled through her leather bag, pulling out carefully organized bags of make-up remover and face wash and lotion and Listerine.

Sutton reminded herself not to watch her. She stepped over to her bed and started taking off her jewelry while Ada crossed to the bathroom. Then she fetched her own bedtime things out of her suitcase and sat on Debbie's bed, near the bathroom, waiting for Ada to finish.

Ada ran the sink. She peeled the contacts out of her eyes, then smeared makeup remover across her eyelids. Sutton watched her for a few seconds before she remembered to look away.

"Sorry," Ada said, glancing at Sutton with soap lathered over her face. She stepped back from the sink. "You can squeeze in here if you want."

"It's okay," Sutton said. "Take your time."

She watched Ada pat her face dry, using a powder blue hand towel she had clearly brought from her own apartment. She watched her dab nighttime lotion into four spots on her face--forehead, right cheek, chin, left cheek, like the four points of a clock--and rub it in with small, circular motions. She watched her slip her glasses onto her now-clean face and squeeze a perfect pea of toothpaste onto her electric toothbrush.

Sutton's stomach contracted. The past and present were melding together, confusing her.

"Are you okay?" Ada said, when she had spat out her toothpaste. "You're being way too quiet."

Sutton hovered over her answer, deliberating what to say. She settled for the truth.

"It's just weird," she said, watching Ada to cup water into her mouth. "You still get ready for bed in the exact same way."

"What?"

"You do everything the same. Your routine hasn't changed one bit since high school."

Ada's eyes turned doubtful behind her glasses. Sutton ached.

"Should it have changed?" Ada asked, her tone somewhere between curious and defensive.

"No, I just--" Sutton said, grappling with the words. "I don't know, I was just thinking, a minute ago, how I know so little about you now. With the business thing. You've clearly become focused on business, and you're ambitious, and you have all these goals--and it's amazing, it's exciting...but I never would have thought you'd turn into this business-savvy person, from knowing you ten years ago. The Ada I knew hated school and wanted to go travel through Asia, remember? So catching you reading that book, and hearing you talk about it--I felt kind of--stupid, I guess. Foolish. For thinking we could be friends like we always were, when clearly I stopped knowing you a long time ago. When clearly you've grown into someone different."

Ada dropped her arm to her side and held it, listening.

"But just now," Sutton went on, "watching you get ready for bed...it's like you're still the same. So much is the same. We could be 17 years old right now, the way you're getting ready for bed."

"Sutton."

"What?"

"You're overanalyzing this. Come on, of course I'm going to be different in some ways, and of course I'm going to stay the same in others. That's what happens when you grow up."

Sutton licked her lips. "Maybe it's the growing up part I'm nostalgic for."

Ada breathed out, a long breath like she was deliberating saying something. "You're different too, you know."

Sutton looked at her, asking with her eyes for a further explanation.

"You're self-assured," Ada said. "You don't have that same sort of--lost-ness--that you had when we were younger. You always had this look in your eyes back then. Like you were searching for affirmation everywhere."

"Maybe. But I think we all become more self-assured as we get older."

"Not me. I feel like I'm more uncertain now than I was at 16. But you seem--more self-possessed. Like you've experienced things and made up your mind about them."

"Well," Sutton said, thinking back to her college years, to those first months of law school when she had to come out to all her new friends. "That may be true."

Ada hesitated. She folded up her blue hand towel, her long, skinny fingers moving delicately over the cloth. "You still sleep the same."

"What?"

Ada kept her eyes on the towel. "I woke up before you this morning. You were lying on your stomach, with your head buried in your arms, like someone trying to protect herself when she thinks the ceiling is going to fall in on her." Ada paused for a beat, smoothed her thumb over the towel. "You've always slept like that."

Sutton experienced a warm feeling come over her, like sunlight blanketing up her body, from her toes to her stomach, from her heart to the crown of her head.

"Anyway," Ada said, suddenly all business-like, "we should go to bed. We have that ladder climb thing in the morning."

"Right," Sutton said, her mind still processing everything had Ada said about her sleeping.

"Goodnight," Ada said, brushing past her. Sutton shuffled into the bathroom, wondering how to keep this conversation going, wondering how to prolong the closeness that had suddenly cropped up between them.

But she heard Ada climb into bed on the other side of the room, and when she turned around to see her, Ada was facing the other way, her head on the pillow in a way Sutton could have described even if she was blind.

It's summertime and the swings at Joey's neighborhood clubhouse are still warm with leftover sun, even at 10 o'clock at night. It's early June, which means summer is still vast and mysterious and not anywhere close to the point when Sutton will have to think about how scared she is for high school. She and Ada sit on adjacent swings, toeing the dirt with their flip-flops, while Joey and Derek stand across from them, begging them to jump into the clubhouse pool with them.

"No way in hell," Ada says, a smirk on her face.

"Why don't we just watch you two idiots jump in?" Sutton says. "We'll have just as much fun doing that."

"Y'all are being so lame," Joey says, throwing his arms forward. "People do it all the time. No one ever gets caught."

Ada snorts. "That's not what we're worried about. You think Sutton and I are afraid of getting in trouble?"

"How cute," Sutton says.

"We don't want to get soaking wet and have to walk back to Sutton's house like that."

Joey keeps his feet planted but twists his torso to face Derek. His face shows his impatience. "We should have invited Bailey and Jessie instead."

"No shit," Derek says, eyeing Sutton and Ada. "They would have jumped in before we even asked them to."

Ada's eyes narrow. Sutton watches her out of the corner of her eye, knowing what will come next.

Ada hops off the swing and marches past the boys, who shout after her. "Where are you going?" "Are you leaving?" "Aw, Ada, c'mon, we were just messing with you--"

But Sutton knows she's not leaving. She hops off her own swing and follows Ada's path right to the edge of the swimming pool.

Ada looks sideways at her. "This is so dumb."

Sutton shrugs, smiles. "I'll hold your hand."

They clasp hands--Sutton knows the feeling of Ada's dry palm, her bony fingers--and jump in at the same time, without even counting down to it.

Sutton hears the boys' whooping when she resurfaces. She rubs at her eyes and gulps a deep breath, then searches for Ada.

Ada blinks the water out of her eyes and looks at Sutton, her defiant expression softening to a grin. "So dumb," she repeats.

"Then why are you smiling?"

"Because this is dumb."

Sutton laughs a pure, giddy laugh, which derails into a shriek when the boys cannonball into the pool a second later. She rubs the water out of her eyes again and waits for the boys to resurface so she can fake yell at them.

They swim in the pool for a while, she and Ada and Joey and Derek, sweeping water at each other and dunking each other's heads and shushing each other when their shouts of laughter ring out too loudly. Joey swims toward Ada with a devilish expression on his face--Sutton remembers playing sharks and minnows in elementary school--and Ada ducks behind Sutton, grabbing her shoulders and molding her front into Sutton's back, knowing instinctively that Sutton will protect her.

Sutton's stomach feels buoyant all of a sudden, like it could propel her out of this pool with all the good feelings inside of it.

Ada shrieks with glee and protests against Joey's attack. She knows how to play this game. Sutton still struggles to understand the rules.

Joey manages to wrestle Ada away from Sutton's protection. Sutton thrashes after him, sweeping water at his face and yelling at him to let Ada go, but Ada, though she squirms in his arms, makes no real attempt to free herself. She lets Joey carry her to the opposite end of the pool, where the two of them tickle each other and touch each other's faces and disappear into a world all their own, a world far away from Sutton.

Sutton looks to Derek, who shrugs. He seems like he expects this behavior from Joey--like he has become so used to it that it doesn't even register.

When Sutton looks back to the shallow end, Ada and Joey are kissing, their bodies pressed close together.