"I-" Danica opens her mouth to protest, but I finish before she can.
"You bulldozed them. You're a bulldozer, Dani."
I think about continuing my lecture-about unleashing all of the feelings I've bottled up since I moved in with her two months ago, back in August-but I don't. Just like the band's video wasn't about Danica, her question wasn't about me. If I can get her to understand this, if I can get her to see why she was wrong in this one, tiny situation that doesn't even involve me, that would be a humongous step in the right direction.
Danica stands there for a long time, her arms crossed tightly as she digests everything I said. Her long hair dances around her shoulders with the breeze, the rest of her prettily statuesque. With my sleeve finally freed from the brambles, I face her, listening to time tick in the space between us.
"But you did agree with what I said?" she finally asks.
"Huh?" I'm not sure what I expected-a revelation?-but her question throws me off guard.
"You think the video would be better with a lead ghost?"
"Yeah," I stammer. "I guess. I mean, I think-"
"Okay, good," Danica interrupts, a smile settling in her happy brown eyes. "Then maybe you can help me." She links her arm with mine as we continue walking through the forest, and I lose all sense of direction as I chase her train of thought.
"Help you?"
"Help me convince them to go with my idea. I know I went about it the wrong way, Hailey. You were right." She bumps my shoulder in a disconcerting show of affection. "But it is a really good idea. It will make the video more popular, which will help the band. And I bet they'll listen to you. Plus, I'll owe you one."
I trip over a rock, but Danica catches me with our linked arms and helps me find my balance. "Why would they listen to me?" I ask as I find my feet.
"Because you don't lie," she says, turning her head to smile at me.
"But you do?"
"Of course not," she says with a too-big smile just as we step from the tree line. The afternoon sun crashes into me, and my gaze swims over waves of golden grass to a large dock in the middle of a pond, where all of my friends are still laughing and carrying on.
"I thought-" I thought you had to pee? I start to ask, but I never get the chance.
"Come on," Danica peeps, dragging me toward the dock and, consequently, toward the confused looks I get once we arrive there.
Since when are you best friends? Rowan's look asks.
Why are you letting that she-devil touch you? Kit's look presses.
I glance away from both of them, to Dee's pinched brow, narrowed eyes, and tight lips. Did she make you drink the Kool-Aid? Are you brainwashed? Are you silently screaming for help? Should I drown you in this pond and put you out of your misery?
"Did you two get lost or something?" Mike asks, and I let his deep voice kidnap my attention. I turn to see him smiling up at Danica and me from the end of the grated platform, where he's sitting on a plum-purple blanket with Joel. He's wearing a black and green Dallas Stars snapback hat and a matching green hoodie, and looking at him now feels like staring into the sun.
I've tried to avoid doing it too much since meeting up with the group today. It's strange, hanging out with him in person. Listening to him talk. Watching him laugh. Just . . . being around him.
I've ended every night this week by playing Deadzone with him. And every single night, with the exception of the nights we've talked on the phone, my phone has dinged with a text from Sexy as Fuck Drummer just before I've drifted off to sleep.
Sweet dreams, Hailey.
I find myself waiting for those three simple words. The text doesn't always come right away, and on those nights, I've tossed and turned, trying not to think about him.
I know I shouldn't fall asleep thinking about my cousin's boyfriend. I probably shouldn't even play games with him. I never mention our Deadzone games to Danica, and I'm pretty sure Mike doesn't either, seeing as how I haven't been axed in my sleep.
Deep down, I know she wouldn't be okay with it. But if Mike is okay with it, why should that matter? We're just friends. He knows we're just friends. Even if he wasn't with Danica, we'd still be just friends-because Mike likes girls like Danica, and I am so not her.
Only . . . standing here breathing the same air as him, I don't feel like Mike and I are friends at all. This Mike is someone I can't talk to. This Mike belongs to Danica, and the other Mike is someone else. Someone who texts me to wish me sweet dreams.
I wonder if he does that for Danica . . .
"Hailey got stuck in a thorn bush," my gorgeous older cousin teases, finally dropping my arm to go and sit on her boyfriend's lap. He makes room for her but doesn't take his eyes off of me.
"Are you okay?" he asks, and the genuine, open concern in his voice makes my cheeks heat with embarrassment. The two Mikes I know come together in those three little words-the gamer I spend my nights with, and the rock star dating my cousin. The guy my little brother idolizes, and the man who commands venues full of screaming girls.
"Yeah." I attempt a laugh, but it sounds so awkward, I try to transition it into a cough instead, earning me confused looks from everyone who hears it.
"Are you getting sick too?" Shawn asks, referring to the plague that seems to be spreading within the group. His nose is red from wiping it with his sleeve all day, and Patient Zero-aka Kit-still looks like she could just lie down and die right where she's standing. Joel is fighting a cough, Adam has exhausted Rowan's entire supply of travel tissues, and even Dee looks like she had to put on extra makeup today to accomplish her normally effortless Covergirl glow.
"No," I hurriedly answer, willing my cheeks to return to their normal pale color.
"Are you sure?" Shawn presses, his brow crinkled with worry. "You look kind of flushed."
"You do look really red," Mike agrees, and I consider jumping into the pond and living at the bottom forever and ever and ever.
Why did I have to laugh like that? What kind of loser pretends to cough?!
"Are you running a fever?" Rowan asks, pressing the back of her hand against my forehead while everyone watches me turn from blush red to beet red to really freaking just-kill-me-now red.
And just when I think things can't get any worse, Danica proves me wrong. "Was that a fake cough?" she accuses, and I'm sure the look on my face must be something akin to a slow loris about to be obliterated by a steamroller.
"What?" I squeak, scraping at a cover that's about to be blown to bits. "What the hell kind of question is that! Of course it wasn't a fake cough. Why would I fake cough? Why would anyone pretend to cough? God, Danica! Who would do that?"
Me. I would do that. Me me me me meee, oh God.
"I'm fine," I insist when everyone just stares at me-including Mike, with his concerned brown eyes, his frowning lips, and a perfect layer of scruff on his jaw that might make a smarter girl try not to act so stupid. "I just, I mean, I'm, it was-" Oh my God. I've forgotten how to use words. I've forgotten how to sentence! "It was a really strenuous walk," I finally manage, wiping nonexistent sweat from my brow simply because I need something to do with my hands that doesn't involve hiding behind them.
I don't know why I can't speak or laugh or cough or even breathe like a normal person right now, but the suspicious look on Dee's face doesn't help.
"Do you want to sit down?" Mike asks, gesturing to a spot beside him on the blanket that Rowan spread out earlier. My eyes flit to Danica, who watches me from his lap with just as much bewilderment as everyone else.
"Uh, yeah," I say, taking Mike up on his offer simply because I don't trust my knees to keep doing their job of holding me up if I don't sit down soon. "Okay."
I plop down cross-legged next to him, feeling like the biggest idiot in the history of idiocy. Why did I fake a cough? What the hell was that even supposed to accomplish? Like a weird fake cough is any better than a weird fake laugh? Why am I so freaking weird?!
"Water?" Mike asks, holding his half-finished bottle of water out for me, and I shake my head while trying to figure out some way to get everyone's attention off of my nonexistent, delirium-inducing fever.
Luckily, Danica rises to the occasion. "So Hailey and I were in the woods talking about your video, and-"
"Motherfucker!" I interrupt, my pointer finger wiggling inside the hole I just found while nervously fiddling with the sleeve of my hoodie. I don't know why I have the worst luck with clothes lately, but I was counting on this hoodie to be one of my go-to jackets for fall. And now it has a freaking hole in it. A goddamn hole. A mother-