Extraordinary Means

I’d never been so wrong.

The next weekend was the lower-seniors dance, and the girls in my cabin wouldn’t shut up about it. They practiced their hair and makeup in the bathroom for days. They acted like it was a formal prom, not some lame thing with bug juice and a disco ball and the horrible boys from 7B and 8B.

“Has anyone asked you yet?” they’d say, giggling, and then discuss which boys they wanted to make out with.

Back home, I went to the K–8 school down the street, so I could walk my little sister. The neighborhood kids who went to the actual middle school called where I went “baby school.” I hadn’t understood what they’d meant until camp, where I suddenly felt years younger than everyone else in my grade. I had lip balm and pastel panties, while they had lace thongs and eyeliner.

The night before the dance, this girl Meghan from my cabin caught up with me on the way to di

“I’m supposed to give you this,” she said.

It was a note, folded into one of those footballs, with my name on the front in cramped boys’ handwriting. I unfolded it. The note asked if I would go to the dance with him, and if yes, he’d pick me up at my cabin. It was signed Lane Rosen, from 8B.

I couldn’t believe it.

“Well?” Meghan asked.

“Did you read it?” I asked.

“Duh, I don’t have to. He likes you. Or maybe he just waited too long and you were one of the few girls left.”

I put the note into my pocket, trying not to grin.

“And he said to give you these,” Meghan told me, producing a pair of sunglasses from the pocket of her hoodie.

They were Lane’s Ray-Bans, the red ones he’d been wearing in the pool. I couldn’t believe he remembered. Bethie had “accidentally” stepped on my sunglasses at the lake the other day and had broken them.

Lane had seen. Everyone had. And now he wanted me to have his sunglasses. He’d been watching me in the woods because he liked me. Maybe, if he thought I was cool, the girls in my cabin would finally leave me alone.

The night of the dance, I got ready early and sat on my bed reading while everyone else jostled for the mirror. Finally, the first boy arrived. It was this buzz-haired guy, Zach, who’d asked Bethie. She sashayed off with him, and the rest of the girls rushed to make last-minute touch-ups before their dates arrived.

And their dates did, in a trickle, the boys wearing short-sleeved button-ups and khakis and looking underdressed in comparison to the girls in their strapless dresses. I was the last one left, so I took my book out to the porch to wait.

I waited a long time, and Lane never came.

Just as I was about to go inside, this girl Sarah came back to the cabin.

“Note for you,” she said, handing me a folded thing with my name scrawled across the front.

I tore it open. Sorry, it said. Changed my mind.—Lane.

Something in my face must have given it away.

It had been a joke all along. A cruel prank he wanted to play on me to show everyone he wasn’t interested in the weird, nerdy girl who kept asking about him.

“God, I’m so stupid,” I whispered, half forgetting that Sarah was there.

Sarah sighed.

“News flash,” she said, “boys suck. It’s why our cabin sticks together. It’s like, we’ve known these boys for years, and they’re all pigs. Most of them have girlfriends back home.”

I could feel the tears bubbling up, my chest constricting so tightly that it hurt to breathe. Wordlessly, I turned around and ran back into the cabin, and for the first time that summer, I let myself cry.

Standing in Latham’s dining hall with him, four years later, had made time melt away. I was back there again, thirteen years old and sobbing in my best dress, alone on my bunk with the meanest note a boy had ever written.

And I didn’t want to be. I’d spent a long time walking away from that summer, that loneliness, that version of myself. And then Lane Rosen had found me by the tray return, and it turned out all the walking I’d done had been in a circle.

CHAPTER FIVE

LANE

AFTER DINNER, AS I walked across the grounds back toward the cottages, I had to admit, Latham was beautiful. The dorms looked like fairy-tale ski lodges, and the lake glittered, and the classical revival buildings felt exotically collegiate. Even the stone benches along the pathways were charming. We might have been anywhere. Any place where grades mattered and students had bright futures, instead of, well . . .

I’d thought Sadie would be happy to see a familiar face, but she’d reacted as though I was a ghost. I supposed the fact that I’d almost impaled her with a cafeteria tray hadn’t made me particularly endearing. I’d only wanted to say—well, I wasn’t sure. It wasn’t like I knew her. But I wanted to. Sadie and her friends seemed interesting, and anything was better than sitting at Genevieve’s table, which I was starting to suspect was a faction of an overeager prayer group I really didn’t want to join. I mean, it’s not like you can pray for something to un-happen.

I touched my med sensor to the scan pad outside my dorm, but it flashed red and beeped, refusing to open.

“Come on,” I muttered, sca

It stayed locked.

I sca

“You’ve got to be kidding!” I cursed, banging my fist against the scan pad.

I don’t know why, but that stupid red light got to me. I couldn’t do anything right. I’d been ditched by my tour guide, and then Sadie couldn’t wait to get away from me. I’d failed breakfast, and now I was going to fail the goddamned front door.

Suddenly, everything that had happened over the past twenty-four hours came crashing over me in this horrible wave. I gave the door a frustrated tug, but it was no use.

“Dude, calm down. We’re locked out,” someone said.

It was the punk kid from the woods. He was sitting on the porch, his back against the railing, a Moleskine notebook propped over one knee. He looked frail and exhausted up close, not so tough after all.

“What?” I asked.

“Locked out,” he repeated, gesturing toward the crowd of people standing around.

I’d been so lost in my own misery that I hadn’t realized. No one had gone inside. It looked like half the dorm was congregated around the porch, their expressions ranging from resigned to upset.

“What’s happening?” I asked. “Fire alarm?”

The punk kid snorted.

“Someone checked out. They’re doing housekeeping.” He said it darkly, like he’d deliberately chosen the wrong words. When he realized I didn’t get it, he sighed. “You know, cleaning out his room for the next lucky occupant.”

“Someone died?”

“Oh, you get used to it. Just wait until they bring the body out.” He nodded toward the front door.

I must have looked freaked, because he laughed, coughing a little.

“Nah, I’m messing with you,” he said, and then added, “They have tu

I didn’t know whether I believed him.

“So we all have to stand around until his stuff is removed?” I asked.

“Pretty much.”

He went back to scribbling in his notebook while I stood there in shock. Someone had died. I mean, I knew it happened at Latham, but I hadn’t expected it on my first day. It felt so . . . sudden. Like I was being thrown headfirst into the deep end of tuberculosis before I’d even gotten used to the water.

“Who was it?” I asked.

“Grant Harden,” a wiry, mustached kid said. “Wasn’t at breakfast. Went to the medical building and never came back.”

I couldn’t believe it. Grant. He was supposed to show me around.

My tour guide hadn’t ditched me. He’d died.

After the nurses let us back into the dorm, I watched in shock as people staked out places in the common lounge, turned on the television, and set up board games like nothing had happened.