THREE

Meeting as children and looking through Uncle Clement’s books was a pleasant memory for Annaliese too. Trip’s Uncle Clement and Annaliese’s mother were lawyers who worked for the same firm. Not only did they work together, but they were close friends. Hence, on some Sunday afternoons, they met to chat and unwind. Annaliese was brought to visit the library and Trip was called over to help entertain her.

Those were essential memories, but they were not the beginning of Trip and Annaliese’s love affair.

Rushing forward, Annaliese was sixteen and she was set to attend summer camp. She had chosen the camp herself for the archery program and horseback riding. It was in a beautiful mountain range miles away from the sort of summer hideaway her mother would have chosen for her, but Annaliese was sixteen and granted the right to choose how she spent her summer.

None of her friends from school were going to be there, but that was part of the appeal. She was awkward with friends and didn’t know what to do with them. At her high school, everyone Annaliese knew was so competitive, it was cutthroat.

“What was your score on the test?”

“How many times did you get asked to dance?”

“What was your time around the track?”

Annaliese struggled because she wasn’t above average at any of those things. She was plagued by a haunting feeling that she didn’t belong there. She was an imposter, but she couldn’t tell anyone she thought that. The last thing in the world she needed was to land herself in therapy or have even one person tell her mother that she felt that way.

So, Annaliese chose her camp and she was allowed to go mostly because when her mother was researching the camp, she discovered that Trip was going to be there.

On Annaliese’s way to the camp, there was a mixup at the airport. A limousine company was supposed to take her from the airport to the camp and the mixup meant that instead of merely going from point A to point B in a shiny black sedan, she arrived at the camp in a white stretch limo.

It made quite the sensation.

All the girls and all the boys stared.

However, Annaliese was a pro at showing no emotion. That was the thing that carried her through attending a school where the average student was an over-achieving showoff. She didn’t give them any reaction and instead looked unimpressed and vacant no matter what happened.

Annaliese couldn’t see the sensation she created as she pulled up, but Trip could. He was standing on a balcony that overlooked the U-shaped drop-off point. Everyone was watching as the white limousine pulled up. When the chauffeur opened the door for her, the effect was quite dazzling. She was not dressed like a person who ought to be coming out of a limousine. She was wearing frayed cut-offs, a white undershirt with a short-sleeved plaid shirt over it, tied at the waist. She wore yellow high-top sneakers and carried a backpack. She yanked her headphones from her ears and stowed them away while the driver unloaded her luggage.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Her dark blonde flyaway hair was straightened, her tan was the perfect shade of golden and suddenly, everything about her was rich with a capital R.

“I know her,” Trip said to his friend Jamison, who was standing next to him.

“Sure, you do,” Jamison sniggered back. “What’s her name?”

“Yeah. That’s Annaliese Strider.”

Jamison clicked his tongue. “She must be famous.”

Suddenly, it struck Trip as a mistake to let on how he knew her. He had been one of the first people there and he noticed something from the way the other campers arrived. He and Annaliese were rich by comparison. It meant that his family was far wealthier than the families of the other campers, but he decided not to show it off. He got the counselors to hide all his best tech toys in the camp safe and vowed not to use them. He decided that the use of his gear was more important than whether or not anyone knew where they came from. He ripped the logos off his hiking gear and drew on his shoes with a permanent marker.

He came to the camp to have a normal summer, a stress-free summer, and he couldn’t do that if he was labeled as a rich kid. What if he was targeted by some brat who had something to prove?

Staring down at Annaliese, it was already too late for her. He racked his brain. Why had she arrived in a limo? Of all the stupid, careless…

He looked down at her and his tirade stopped. Maybe it didn’t matter how she arrived. She looked like white gold and sunshine. She probably caused a riot wherever she went.

A second later, she was wheeling her modestly sized suitcase behind her as she passed through the log arch into the camp.

Annaliese was not surprised when she saw that she was rooming with three other girls. It said she would be on the website, but still, she was surprised by her roommates. They were friendly, unlike the other girls at school.

She went to dinner with them under an outdoor canopy. She saw Trip on the other side of the cluster of tables, surrounded by his bunkmates because everyone was eating with their bunkmates for the first two days. She tilted her head at him and gave him a cool-girl salute, which he returned in the form of a wink.

There was no rush to meet up with him. She knew he had been told to watch out for her. She’d meet up with him eventually.

As she chewed on her grilled cheese sandwich, she glanced at him repeatedly. He had really changed since the last time she’d seen him. They were almost the same age. He was born on January third and she was born on January nineteenth of the same year. What right did he have to have gotten that tall? They had been the same height for as long as she could remember.

Finally, she acknowledged that it had been a while since she had last seen him. Two years? Three?

She chatted with her roommates and tried to ignore their awestruck gazes as they grilled her about what school she went to and what her life was like as a super-rich heiress.

Annaliese tried to explain that the limo to the camp had been due to an error and not because she was a super-rich heiress. She told them it was the first time she’d been in a limo, which was a lie, but it was the first time she’d been in a stretch limo, which was the truth. She wasn’t sure if she was curbing their enthusiasm, but she continued to try, while the rest of the camp did not hear her explanation.