Page 58 of How to Hide in Plain Sight
“I see. Well. What’s yourconcentration, then?” I asked, wrapping the word in the same biting sarcasm that he had.
He smiled. “Biomedical engineering.”
“Oh.” As usual, I felt somewhat helpless before his brilliance.
“Yep.”
Just then, we rounded a tree trunk and found ourselves face-to-face with the first ribbon. This ribbon was bright green and tied to a thick branch of an oak tree. Below it was taped an envelope.
“We made it,” I said.
“Try not to sound so surprised.” Manuel reached into the envelope and pulled out a little blue note card. Scrawled on the front in Wendy’s familiar handwriting was:217º. “That’s that, then,” he said, sliding the note card back into the envelope. Then he reached out one hand, palm flat to the sky.
For a moment, I wasn’t sure what he was doing. Was he offering to hold my hand?
But then he said, “I’ll take this round,” and thankfully, just in time, I remembered the compass in my hand. I scrambled to pass it over to him. He readjusted the needle, and away we marched, leaves and sticks and daddy longlegs crunching beneath our feet.
“So,” I said again. I saw the corners of his mouth tug up into a faint smile. “What does a biomedical engineer do for fun at Harvard?”
“Well,” said Manuel, lifting a pine branch to let me pass underneath. “I think you remember Karma referencing the Spree, as you called it?” His tone was teasing.
My face reddened. “Yes.”
“Well, theSpeeis my Final Club.”
“Oh. I remember those.”
I did, actually. I remembered the week after Manuel received his acceptance, when we sat on the couch in his basement and binge-watched every piece of content we could find that took place at Harvard. I remembered learning strange new words—WidenerandAnnenbergandHasty PuddingandWigglesworth—most of which felt, to me, as foreign and inaccessible as a dinner menu written in Mandarin. “You’ll have to learn a whole new language,” I’d said as the end credits rolled forThe Social Network. “You’ll betri-lingual, now.”
Final Clubs, I remembered, were Harvard’s equivalent of fraternities. “What does one do at the Spee?” I asked.
“Oh, you know,” Manuel said. “All the usual Final Club things. Drinking Keystone and beheading sacrificial lambs and snorting lines of flaked gold.”
I burst out laughing. The sound echoed against the tree trunks and fluttering leaves, as loud and genuine as the laughter that came out of me the day before when Clarence scooped me up and spun me around in Sunny Sunday.
After passing beneath a thick cluster of tree branches—again held up for me by Manuel’s long arm—we found ourselves staringat a tall face of rock. I glanced down at the compass in his hand. Its needle pointed directly into the rock.
“Well,” I said. I looked up at Manuel. “Guess we’re climbing, then.”
He laughed. Its sound pleased me more than I wanted to admit. When I lifted one leg to step up onto the first ledge of rock, he didn’t argue or suggest we go around. Instead, he offered his hand. This time, I knew it was to hold mine.
When our palms touched—mine draped over his like a snug blanket—warmth flooded my hand, passing my wrist, traveling all the way up my arm. His other arm wrapped around my lower back, hand grabbing the bottom of my elbow to help push me up onto the wall. I shuddered slightly, an involuntary response that I tried to still before he noticed.
There it was again. The bodily reaction I needed so desperately to avoid.
With every minute I passed in his presence, it was getting more and more difficult to do so.
We scaled the rock, a short climb that spat us out atop a ledge with a view out to the lake. I straightened, catching my breath at the sight.
“Damn, Beck,” said Manuel, and at the sound of that nickname, my stomach did a stupid little flip. “Do you recognize this place?”
I blinked and looked around, taking in the smooth rock and juniper bushes that covered most of the island. “Sort of?”
Manuel crouched next to a long patch of juniper. He dipped both hands into the bushes and pushed them aside. A mischievous grin curled up the sides of his mouth. “Check this out.”
I walked over and peered inside. There, among the tangle of prickly armed bramble, was a pile of bottles, beer cans, and handles of liquor, all worn and wilted by years of snow and rain.
I looked at Manuel, who was still grinning. “No way.”
