Chapter Twenty-One

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Mom is awake and brewing coffee in the kitchen when I return from taking Alfie outside. She offers to pour me a mug, but my desire to find out what's inside the envelope Hunter left is getting the better of me. I decline the coffee and make up an excuse about how I need to hydrate first after spending hours in the sun yesterday.

"That's a first," Mom remarks. "You always spend hours in the sun by the pool at home, and coffee is the first thing you insist on every morning."

I pretend not to hear her. "I need to find my water bottle," I call over my shoulder on my way out of the kitchen. I'm already speed-walking down the hall before I finish my sentence.

The envelope is practically burning a hole in my pocket by the time I'm inside of my bedroom and have shut the door. I take it out and waste no time sliding my finger under the flap to open it. Even folded, I can see the sheets of notepaper inside have been written on with the same blue ink that was used to print my name on the envelope.

I haven't received a handwritten note from a boy since middle school, unless you count my fan mail. It's hard to say if I would get them if I still attended an actual school, since texts filled with emojis seem to have taken over as my generation's version of note writing.

Mom has a box full of notes she saved from her high school and college days, some of them folded into origami shapes and in other intricate ways that require mad skills to open. She showed them to me once and let me read a couple my dad wrote to her before he asked her out. I romanticize the idea of handwritten notes any time I read a book or watch a movie or TV show set in a time before everyone relied on their phones. It seems more personal than a sentence or two with some emojis popping up in my texts.

Getting a note from the literal boy next door seems too good to be true, and yet I'm holding one in my hand. I'm probably a dork for this, but my spirits soar somewhere over the moon as I unfold the pages and hold them in front of me.

Good morning. Maybe. It depends when you get this, really, or if a chipmunk takes off with it and shreds it for breakfast. Let's go with the assumption it's morning and you're reading this. Cool?

Imagine a world where a city girl from California, of all places, is stuck somewhere on the outskirts of civilization while her charming neighbour and tour guide has taken off to hang out with his family and a bunch of eighth-graders in a nearby town. Let's call the city girl "Cali." That's you, by the way. If you didn't already figure it out, the charming (and did I mention humble?) neighbour is me. And yes, you have indeed seen the letter "u" where I've written "neighbour." Canadian spelling isn't up for debate, even if how you pronounce "roof" still is.

I pause for a moment to look up at the ceiling. I can actually hear him saying these words in my mind. Leave it to Hunter to find a way to tease me without physically being here to do it.

"Those are fighting words," I warn him out loud, even though he can't hear me. I continue reading.

Anyway, never fear! I wouldn't let you get bored while I'm away. What kind of person and tour guide do you take me for?

Submitted for your approval, here are four things to do for the four days I think I'll be gone. Are you ready? Buckle in.

Number 4: Hit up the amethyst mine down the road. Purple rocks are everywhere around here and you can dig them out of the open pit there. Oh, but watch out for Adam on his shift. He'll probably try to flirt with you. If you run into him, tell him I say hi.

"And why would it matter to you if Adam flirted with me?" I squint at the sentence on the page. I could be reading into something that isn't there, and Hunter could have meant it as a good-natured warning to a friend, but his callout still has me intrigued. This entire letter does, actually, and there's more to read.

Number 3: Get ice cream at the Flying J truck stop on highway 11/17. Don't even try to say you aren't into sugar-filled goodness, because we already established you aren't vegan and that you're perfectly fine with making carcinogens out of sugar by charring marshmallows to a crisp. I'm still shuddering about that. Anyway, the ice cream there is worth the drive. You probably can't set it on fire without it melting, so you'll just have to eat it as nature intended. Unlike marshmallows. We're still going to work on that.

Number 2: Borrow the pedal boat and take your mom out on the lake. It's locked up near the dock at my camp. Use this combination for the lock: 26-54-32. Maybe she'll have better luck catching tadpoles if you take her where we went? (Just kidding! I'm already sort of scared about how much trouble I'm in when I get back.)

I'll definitely find a way to get even for that joke, but I can't be mad. Did he seriously write out the combination to his boat lock and encourage me to take the boat out on the lake? He trusts me, that's for sure.

Number 1: Go stargazing. I just read that a meteor shower starts tonight, and the lake shore is an amazing place to watch those at night. The number of stars you'll see is unreal. No, not the Hollywood stars you probably see all the time, but the kind I'm guessing you don't see much of in L.A. with all the city lights. Or maybe I'm wrong about that. Tell me when I'm back.

Have fun!
-Hunter

I read the note from start to finish a couple more times, until a twinge in my cheek makes me aware I'm grinning like a fool and probably have been since I opened the envelope. I want to pinch myself in case I'm still asleep and dreaming this. It could be a dream within a dream where Alfie didn't actually wake me up, and I somehow ended up with a funny and sweet letter from the boy I almost dream-kissed. But no, I have to be awake right now. Birds chirp outside my window, and I hear the faint clink of a spoon against a mug from the kitchen.

This is a note I'm going to keep, no matter what happens this summer. I'll bring it back to L.A. with me and give it a home in the carved wooden box of keepsakes I have on a shelf in my bedroom. It's where I put mementos of things I always want to remember, like a ticket stub from the first show I headlined, and a strip of silly black-and-white photo booth pictures Sawyer and I posed for at a county fair we both played at. If one thing has become clear in the last twenty-four hours, it's that I like Hunter a lot, and I want to remember the weeks I'm spending with him here at the lake.

I take care while folding the pages back into the rectangle they were in. After I put the letter and the envelope in a dresser drawer, where Mom isn't likely to find it and Alfie won't get hold of it to chew on, I flop on to my bed.

Time has a way of slowing down and taking forever to go by when I'm looking forward to something. The next few days until Hunter is back are going to feel like an eternity, even with his list of things I can do to entertain myself, and even with the video call I have planned with Sawyer this afternoon.


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