Float

Original Edition: Chapter Thirty-One

I wish I could say that my second to last week in Holden was a montage of ice cream cones, car rides with all the windows down, aloe vera on sunburnt skin, and shaking sand out of every piece of clothing I owned. I wish I could say it was everything I'd imagined and more.

But I'd honestly never imagined a tropical storm could put me under house arrest.

The first few days were the worst, because the flooded roads meant that none of us could really go anywhere. At least not in a car. Blake and his new iPhone jogged over to Rachel's house every morning so he and I could FaceTime with the others while we collectively lounged around and bitched about the weather.

When the torrential rain eased up on Wednesday, we were finally able to congregate in one place and partake in the kind of mundane indoor activities that I'd imagine kids from the 1950s wasted their lives away with—card games, hide-and-go-seek, Pictionary (which was mostly Blake and Jesse competing to see who could come up with a more phallic depiction of whatever they were supposed to draw).

On Friday afternoon, the rain stopped.

Which was good, because our creativity—and patience—had also run dry.

"Left foot blue!" Jesse said. "Honestly, Blake, are you color blind?"

Blake, who was spread across my aunt's floor with one hand on green, another on blue, and both feet on red, groaned in frustration.

"Not color blind," he grumbled. "Just—not—flexible—"

Lena, whose right arm was tangled around Blake's left leg, sighed in annoyance.

"Don't you dare kick me in the face," she warned.

On cue, Blake's foot slipped out from underneath him (I'd told him not to wear socks) (dumbass). He keeled to the side, knocking into me. For one glorious moment, I thought I might actually be strong enough to hold him up—and then my wobbly little arms gave out and we both went crashing to the floor.

Two hundred pounds of boy landed on top of me.

Lena whooped in triumph. It was her fifth consecutive win of the day.

"Not fair!" I croaked. "I was doing so well."

I'd been getting lucky with the easiest spins. I was about as flexible as uncooked spaghetti, so it truly felt like a miracle that I'd just had to hold a downward dog position for a good ten minutes.

"Can we play something else now?" Alissa huffed from Rachel's couch, where she was painting her nails powder blue. "Something less physically demanding?"

She held her hand up to her lips and blew against her third coat of polish.

"I second that," I wheezed as Blake rolled off of me.

There was a moment of silence as we all tried to think up a good idea.

"Wow," Jesse murmured. "It's really quiet right now."

We all realized, simultaneously, that Jesse was right. It was really quiet.

Because the rain had stopped.

Alissa slapped her bottle of nail polish down on the coffee table and lurched off the couch.

"Toss me my flip-flops," she said to no one in particular. "I'm out of here."

"Can we go to the beach now?" Jesse piped up.

"Sure, yes, fine," Alissa blurted. "Whatever. Last one in the water is a rotten something."

"Egg," Blake mumbled.

"Bless you," Jesse told him.

This friend group is a train wreck, I thought.