Page 25 of Finding Her

poppy

“Just tell me!” Lilah demanded.

“We have to wait for Saylor to get back,” I reminded her. I turned back to snooping around Saylor’s dorm. After living with her for a year, I was pretty sure I knew everything about her, but what else was I supposed to do when she left us alone in here?

“How long does making a stupid bag of popcorn take?” Lilah asked. When I glanced over my shoulder, I saw her sprawled out on the bright pink rug in the middle of the room, her blonde hair going everywhere. I laughed and shook my head.

“I’m surprised you’re not taking advantage of this opportunity,” I said.

I walked over to the dresser and started rifling through the stuff on top of it.

A jewelry tree, too many bottles of perfume, a picture of her with her horse from two years ago.

Nothing that interesting. I moved on to her desk.

Her laptop had auto-locked in the couple of minutes she’d been gone so nothing there, other than the desktop picture—surprise, surprise—of her horseback riding last summer.

She’d taken her phone with her, so there was no going through that either. All I could do was go through the drawers of her desk again. Not all that interesting—mostly textbooks and binders, things for school. I sighed and wondered aloud, “Who keeps school stuff in their desk?”

I put my hands on my hips and looked at Lilah, who just shrugged. “Whenever I want to keep something, I keep it in my nightstand.”

My eyes lit up. “Perfect.”

Lilah watched me a little warily as I walked over. “Are you sure you should be going through her stuff like this?”

“I never would have expected you to be the one to suggest that I shouldn’t go through people’s personal lives,” I said as I opened the top drawer. “In fact, I thought you’d be all for this.”

She propped herself up on her elbows and looked at me, her blonde hair falling down her back. “Yeah, but…” Her face scrunched up. “I guess I just don’t really know Saylor all that well.”

I felt a little twinge of guilt at that, although I wasn’t sure why.

I guess because I’d really been pushing Saylor and Lilah to be friends, but I hadn’t done much work to make sure that they actually liked each other.

I just decided that since I was friends with each of them, they had to be friends with each other.

I paused with the drawer open and glanced at her.

“You don’t mind that we hang out with Saylor so much, do you?”

“Of course not,” Lilah said immediately. Not so quickly that I thought she was saying it in a hurry, but with no hesitation either. I sighed in relief. Lilah laid back down. “I guess I just don’t know either of you all that well, do I?”

“You mean you didn’t know me that well when you decided to drag me into being your roommate?” I started rifling through the top drawer—nothing that interesting. Just a novel, a sleep mask, and some melatonin gummies.

“You don’t mind that I did that, do you?”

I just shrugged. Honestly, I had minded a little bit at the beginning, just when I first found out that I wouldn’t be living with Saylor. But now, looking around Saylor’s room, I could see that she was living her best life having her own space, so maybe it worked out.

“Nah, it’s been fun,” I said.

Lilah nodded and then turned to look at the ceiling.

I glanced at the door just to make sure that Saylor hadn’t somehow opened it without me noticing.

Although even if she had, it would probably be a little bit late for me to lie about why I was rifling through her nightstand.

What could I say? Oh, I was just looking for your nail clippers?

Still, I hurried to go through the bottom drawer, in case she got back soon.

I wasn’t expecting to find anything, which is why my eyes widened in surprise as I realized there was only one thing in there: an old Polaroid photo.

“Well, well, well,” I said, picking it up. “What do we have here?”

I guess that intrigued Lilah enough, and she no longer cared about going through Saylor’s things because she was at my side in a second, her head resting on my shoulder as she glanced over. “What is it?”

The Polaroid was a little hard to make out. It was a dark photo, but based on her outfit and the lights behind her, it seemed like it was at a party. It was a selfie, with Saylor posing with a boy. When I flipped it over, I realized there was something scrawled on the back:

Saylor and Crossy

New Year’s Eve

“No way,” I murmured. I flipped it back over, and now that I was looking at it through that lens, I realized it made sense that it was Crossy. His face was partially obscured from how he was tilting his head toward her, but the dark wavy hair and glasses were the same.

“Crossy,” Lilah said slowly. “That’s one of the hockey boys, isn’t it?”

I nodded and glanced at her. “It’s Bear’s best friend.”

Her eyes widened, but before I could talk about it any further, there was the sound of the electronic key at the door.

I quickly put the Polaroid back where I found it and shoved the drawer closed.

We both dove towards the rug, looking like we had been laying there the whole time.

Well, actually, it probably looked more like we had dove and landed there just a second ago because that was exactly what had happened.

But at least the drawer wasn’t open anymore, so Saylor had no reason to suspect that was why we were acting so weird.

It didn’t matter anyway because when she walked in, she was staring at her phone.

She casually tossed her lanyard with her key card to the side and came to sit in front of us with a bowl of popcorn balanced precariously in her arm while her phone was in the other.

She finally turned off her phone and put it down as she sat down in front of us and said, “Okay, let’s hear it. ”

She looked at me bright-eyed, and immediately I forgot why we were here.

“Let’s hear what?”

I couldn’t remember at all. Not after seeing that photo. I was too curious about her and Crossy—where they had met so long ago, if that was why she was acting so weird around him at the beach, if he had to do with her feelings on love. What was it about that? I was so curious.

But she said, “How it went with Bear today, obviously!”

“Oh, right. That.” I ran my hands over my face as I thought about gym class today. It had been so awkward walking out there in those shorts. “I don’t think it bothered him at all.”

He’d been a hot mess in gym class today, but I didn’t think that had anything to do with the shorts. And anything that happened in gym class was overshadowed by what had come after… “I mean, he was kind of a mess, but I don’t think it was because of me.”

“Of course it was because of you!” Lilah said. “He was probably thrown off by how cute you looked.”

“What a freak I looked like, you mean,” I replied, glancing at her.

She rolled her eyes. “Okay, whatever. We can come up with other plans.”

“There’s no point,” I said. “We’re leaving on that camping trip in a few days anyway. What’s going to happen between then and now?”

The camping trip was a time-honored tradition for the gym classes every year.

It was part of the unit that we’d have to go on an overnight camping trip with our whole class.

I wasn’t sure whether Bear was actually coming or not, given that he was the only boy in the class, and it seemed kind of weird to force him.

Plus, he would have to take time off hockey, but I’d been too scared to ask.

“That’s perfect!” Lilah yelled. She put her hands to her forehead and looked at me. “Poppy, don’t you see what this means?”

I just stared at her and shook my head.

“It means that you are going to have Bear alone in the wilderness!”

“But we won’t be alone. Our whole class is going to be there.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Lilah brushed that concern off with a wave of her hand. “The point is, this is the perfect time to make your move.”

“I am not making a move. I am so far from making a move. Absolutely not.”

“But—”

“No, Lilah,” I said firmly. “If this ridiculous plan is going to work—and I don’t think it’s ever going to work—it will only be because Bear asked me out, not the other way around.”

If she pressed me, I would tell her it was just because that was the technical terms of the bet. But I knew in my heart that it was because a little part of me hoped this failed, because I didn’t want to break Bear’s heart by revealing none of it was real.

Lilah sighed, sounding put out. She sat down, and I was glad that she didn’t argue the point any further. “All right. But still, I think something’s going to happen on this camping trip.”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, I’m sure that will be deeply romantic,” I muttered. “Oh well, in the dirt with no good showers. Perfect time to start dating someone.”

She shook her head. “You never know, Poppy. Stranger things have happened.”

When my phone lit up with a call from Bear, I was sure it was a mistake.

There was no conceivable reason I could think of that Bear would be calling me.

At first, I thought someone had messed with my contacts and changed the names, so it wasn’t really Bear calling.

But the only person who could have done that was Lilah, since she was the only one ever alone with my phone, and I couldn’t think of a single reason why she would do it.

She might have messed with something on my phone as a joke but not like this.

Not to change a contact to make me think Bear was calling when it was actually someone else.

Why would she bother? And she’d have to go out of her way to change the contact photo too.

I’d set it after I got his number the other day—a photo I’d taken of us, with him staring at the camera and me smiling widely, both of us wearing my scrunchies.

Then I wondered if he had butt-dialed me accidentally—or worse, if he meant to call another girl and just hit the wrong name.

It was possible, right? But there was no way to find out unless I answered.

And if it really was Bear calling, part of me didn’t want to answer.

But if I ignored him, and it actually was Bear, he’d never call me again.

There went our tentative friendship we’d struck up lately.

So, I swiped “answer.”

It immediately became clear Bear had, in fact, meant to call me.

There was a lot of noise on his side of the call.

It looked like he was tucked away in a corner of the locker room.

I could hear everyone else getting ready for the game I knew was starting in about an hour.

I’d been on my way out the door to head to the game myself.

“Hi,” I said timidly. I wasn’t really sure how to answer a call from Bear. People didn’t call me much. Ivy and I would call each other every day, but other than that, most people just texted. I wasn’t used to this kind of thing, especially not with someone like Bear.

“Help,” Bear said immediately. I blinked.

What? Was something wrong? Was I imagining that the sounds behind him were good sounds?

Could something actually be going wrong in the locker room?

But I couldn’t think of anything that might go wrong there—or why he’d call me for help instead of, you know, 911.

But then he held up the scrunchie. That stupid scrunchie he hadn’t given back to me after that day. “I don’t know how to tie it back. Help. Help.”

I stared at him, flabbergasted. There was no reason I could think of that he would need to use my scrunchie.

“What?” I asked slowly, my voice as confused as I felt.

“I need to tie my hair back,” he said. “And it’s not working. How did you do it? I don’t understand.” He held the scrunchie between his index finger and thumb, looking at it like it was something evil. “I don’t get it. How do girls do this?”

I laughed. I could understand why it might be confusing for him. Girls learned how to do it so early on that it became second nature. But a guy who’d never tied his hair back wouldn’t have a clue.

“You might have trouble doing it yourself,” I said. “I’m not sure how well I can explain it to you. Is there someone there who can help you?”

Bear looked past the camera. “Crossy, come here!”

I had to stifle my laugh. I didn’t want him to think I was laughing at him, but the idea of Crossy tying a pink scrunchie into Bear’s hair before he played a full-contact sport on the ice? Hilarious.

Crossy appeared a second later and waved happily at me through the camera.

“I need you to tie this in my hair for me,” Bear said.

Crossy stared at the scrunchie, looking as confused as I’d felt earlier. “What?”

“My hair’s been getting in my face. You’re gonna tie it back,” Bear said.

“But your helmet?—”

“I can’t risk it. Now, come on, help me out here.”

Crossy glanced between him and the camera. “Is Poppy here for moral support, or...”

“She’s gonna explain what we do,” Bear said. “Come on, chop-chop.”

Crossy moved behind Bear and looked at me quizzically. I laughed again but talked him through pulling Bear’s hair back and how to hold the scrunchie. It took him a couple of tries, but he got it to work.

“I’m not sure how well this scrunchie will fit under a helmet,” I said apologetically. “You might have done better with a regular hair elastic, but?—”

“You’re speaking gibberish, Poppy,” Bear said. “But thank you. We’ll make it work.”

“Good luck,” I said. He gave me a thumbs-up and ended the call. I chuckled to myself as I turned my phone off.

It was funny to think nobody else in the arena would know their favorite hockey player had my pink scrunchie under his helmet for the whole game. But I would know. And that was good enough for me.