They stopped for breakfast at a diner in Yorktown Heights and had lunch at a park in Brewster. Abby saw ducks and geese shepherding their goslings across the path, sometimes hissing at cyclists as they went by. There was also the occasional turtle sunning itself on a rock. Once, Abby saw a deer, standing in the forest maybe ten yards from the trail. It stared, wide-eyed, watching as Abby rode closer, before turning and bounding away.
It was another hot day, eighty-three degrees by noon, and humid. But fall was on the way, even if it still felt like summer. The leaves were beginning to change; the days were getting incrementally shorter, and the drugstore in Yorktown Heights, where they’d stopped to buy Lily some Bengay, had back-to-school supplies and Halloween candy on display.
Abby was riding sweep again. All the riders were up ahead, Sebastian and Lincoln in the lead, the teenagers behind them, the adults and senior citizens spread out in their wake, and Abby bringing up the rear, lost in thought.
Andy and Morgan, she saw, were riding side by side. Abby smiled to herself, remembering what it was like to be sixteen. She would pull out her phone after every class to see if Mark had emailed her on her AOL account, and she’d check the mailboxes at her parents’ houses every day after school, because he’d send her little gifts—a bag of Fritos once; a small box of Godiva chocolates for Valentine’s Day. He had wooed her at summer camp, and he’d never stopped, still never quite believing that she wanted him, always trying to win her heart.
* * *
Abby hadn’t been excited about the prospect of Camp Golden Hills’ boys. Back then, her heart belonged to Josh Hartnett and Adam Sandler. But Marissa had insisted that fat boys were better than no boys at all. “And you never know,” she’d said. “Maybe some of them will be hot by the end of the summer. Come on!” she’d said, leading Abby and Leah down the path. “They’re probably almost all here, and you’ve got to have someone picked out by Friday night.”
Marissa and Leah had explained to the other camp newbies the importance of staking a claim on a boy to go out with （what “going out with” as tweens at a summer camp meant, Abby would eventually learn, was treading water together during afternoon Free Swim and, eventually, attending the end-of-camp dance as a couple）。
“What’s Friday night?” asked Abby as Marissa towed her up a hill that overlooked the track and the athletic fields.
“Movie night,” said Leah, with a doleful sigh. “They give us popcorn. Unsalted popcorn,” she added.
Marissa tossed her hair and turned to Abby. “You just go to the nurse on Thursday and tell her you’ve got a sore throat. They’ll give you salt for salt water to gargle with, and you save the salt for the popcorn.” She rolled her eyes at her bunkmate. “Have I taught you nothing?” Turning back to Abby, she said, “I know all the tricks. Movie night is makeout night. They hand out blankets to sit on…” Another eyeroll, this one for the counselors’ stupidity. “But kids just get under the blankets. And the counselors are supposed to, like, patrol, and break things up.” She lowered her voice. “Only they’re usually too busy sucking face with each other.”
Leah said something in reply, but Abby didn’t hear. She’d stopped listening, because that was the moment she saw Mark Medoff.
On an eighty-five-degree day, where the air was thick and hazy with humidity, Mark was wearing a Yankees sweatshirt, made of heavyweight cotton （to disguise his man-boobs, he’d later confess）。 His Air Jordans came up high on his shins, his board shorts hung almost to his knees, and his baseball cap was creased to keep as much of his face as possible in its shade. But he had the sweetest smile as he looked at her from beneath the brim of his cap. The sweetest smile and the kindest eyes.
“Ugh. No,” Marissa hissed, when she saw where Abby’s gaze had gone. It was cruel, and ironic, but at Camp Golden Hills, as in the outside world, the heavier you were, the less status you had… and Mark was one of the heaviest boys at camp.
But by then Abby had seen Mark’s smile. She’d also noted the goofy, slightly dumbstruck look on his face, a look suggesting that he’d seen her and had fallen instantly in love, just the way Eileen’s Harlequins and the spicier novels her mother kept in a drawer in her bedside table had taught Abby that, someday, a man would.
She had also realized that, beside him, or in his arms, she would feel as dainty as Princess Buttercup when André the Giant carried her. Abby couldn’t remember ever feeling dainty in her life. This boy could be her chance.