The Way Back to You by Michelle Andreani Page B

time as any.
    It’s always in February; the first outdoor festival after a long, frigid few months, and the whole town comes out for it. There’s this eagerness to everyone, like we’re ready to burst, and I felt it, too, especially last year. After wallowing over the cheer team not qualifying for Nationals—which had been a couple of weeks earlier—not to mention everything else, I needed to have fun and forget for a while. So when Lita and Izzy proposed the idea, I went with it. Enthusiastically.
    We’d camped beside the amphitheater, waiting for the bands to start playing. There was already a huge crowd on the main lawn, and farther behind us, booths were set up with fire pits, local shop owners selling food, and people showing off their boarding skills on the snow imported from Mount Bachelor. The moon was a shiny silver and the wind was whipping off the Deschutes River. The alcohol was helping with the cold, though. That was the one and only part of the plan: to sneak it in, mixed with juice, in our travel thermoses—andnot get so hammered that we got caught.
    Izzy mentioned Ashlyn once, to see if she was joining us, and I quickly waved it off. Ashlyn was somewhere at WinterFest with Kyle, I’d told her. They’d casually dated up until Formal, and a few days after, Kyle had asked Ashlyn to be his girlfriend. So Ashlyn was occupied that night. Ashlyn didn’t need to forget.
    My eyes went heavy and pinched, like I would cry right there. I didn’t want to be that person, someone who wished her best friend away, whose muscles clenched at the thought of her best friend’s happiness. It felt like a turning point, a place I could never come back from. So I took another gulp to get the bitter taste out of my mouth, and hoped I wouldn’t remember feeling that way the next morning. But then I got hungry—and annoyed that my teammate Danielle had shown up and been a total sober downer.
    It was while I was waiting in line for homemade pretzels that I lazily glanced to my right and saw Kyle. He was only a few feet from me, around the corner of a large canvas tent and out of the crowd, staring down at his phone. His other hand was in his pocket, and it was probably warm. I thought if I held it, I’d be able to touch the tiny scar on his knuckle, and he could—
    My brain yelled at me to ignore him.
    Except the rum had snipped any connection between my body and my brain—and the truth was, I really, really wanted to talk to him. We hadn’t done much of that since our teacher switched up our class’s lab partner assignments at the beginningof January. Standing there, it felt right to go to him, like I had the power to be okay near him. So I scurried over, swerving around a small group until I stood opposite him in the shadow of the tent.
    “HEY!”
    Kyle started at the noise. “Cloudy,” he said sharply. “Where did you come from?”
    “I’ve been waiting in the looooooongest—” I gasped. “Oh, shit, I got out of my line.”
    He barked a laugh. “I guess so.”
    I sighed, jerking a thumb over my shoulder. “I was standing in the pretzel line and then I saw you and . . . now I’m not standing in the pretzel line.”
    He was watching me, his eyes narrowed. “Have you been drinking?” he whispered.
    Cupping my hands around my mouth, I said in a perfect—at least I’d thought so—impersonation of our biology teacher, “A-plus for observation, Mr. Ocie.”
    He held up his phone, smiling. “That explains why you never answered your boyfriend’s texts.”
    “Oops.” By then, Matty and I had been together for over a month. And it’s not like he was a consolation. Matty was fun and hot and actually into me.
    I spotted a row of folding chairs lined up against the tent and hopped on top of one, the seat shaking under my feet. “I left my phone with Lita.”
    “Well, he’s been attempting to tell you he’s running late. And Ashlyn’s in this never-ending bathroom line,” he said, glancingdown at his