Page 71 of Everything All at Once

“This isn’t happy,” he said. “This is cold.”

“Itispretty cold, isn’t it?”

But it also somehow didn’t bother me—even as I shivered I felt happy, exhilarated.

“You definitely have to pay my bail money if we get arrested,” Sam said.

“Deal.”

“What are we doing out here, anyway?”

“Getting our minds off things! Loosening up a little! All of the above!”

Sam ran his arms through the water and dipped down up to his neck. “Okay,” he said. “I’m warming up.”

“Great! Okay, what’s the maddest you’ve ever been?”

“Maddest. Hmm. When I had to readWuthering Heightsfor an English class. That’s a terrible book.”

“You’re not answering any of these truthfully!”

“I’m trying,” he said, laughing. He let his feet rise up and performed an admirable dead man’s float. “What about you? How come you get to ask all the questions?”

“Because it’s my game, and I make the rules. Now—what’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?”

“I can’t tell you,” he said. “It’s too bad.”

“Come on. It can’t be that bad.”

“If I told you—”

“Right, right, you’d have to kill me, whatever. Just tell me.”

“The last person I told didn’t take it too well,” he said seriously and stood up in the water again. In his floating he’d moved around me, and I saw him look past me to the shore, his eyes growing wide. “Oh shit,” he whispered.

“What?”

“Shh!” he said and grabbed my hand, spinning me around to look toward shore, to where a flashlight bobbed over the grounds of the Glass House.

“Oh shit,” I repeated.

“It doesn’t seem like he’s coming down by the lake. Just be quiet,” Sam said. He took a step toward me and put his arms around my shoulders; we sank into the water so just our heads were above the surface.

It wasn’t an excellent time to be wondering what Sam had meant bythe last person I told didn’t take it too well, but still, I couldn’t help myself. Had he been joking? It didn’t really seem like it.

I couldn’t lie, though; this was kind of nice. My heart was beating straight out of my chest, sure, as I watched the security guard and his flashlight make his rounds around the property, but Sam’s arms were still resting on my shoulders and it felt... really nice.

“We’re going to jail,” Sam whispered dramatically, and I couldn’t help but laugh (he pressed a hand over my mouth and rested his chin on the top of my head). I felt the same rush of adrenaline, the same sense of fear and excitement as when Em and I had jumped off the cliff.

I peeled Sam’s fingers away from my mouth. “Look, silly, he’s walking away.”

I turned around in Sam’s arms and became acutely aware of how close we were, how wet Sam’s face was, how his hair dripped little beads of water onto his shoulders.

And for one second I thought maybe he was leaning closer—but then no, he had pulled away, he was wading silently back to shore.

I wondered again what he had meant and whether the worst thing he’d ever done was actually bad, like more-than-I-had-expected bad.

I followed him to shore and searched his face for that sad smile again, or for any sort of hint as to what he was thinking. But he was harmless, smiling to himself as he rolled up the blanket and slung his T-shirt over his shoulder. We crept away from the Glass House by moonlight, and I tried to tell myself the chunk of doubt wedging itself into my brain was an unwelcome intruder, unfounded and meaningless. I wouldn’t give it any more fuel.