Monday, July 4

AMSTERDAM

When Rae finally woke up, Aubrey was gone and Clara was still burrowed under her blankets. The window was open, a breeze skittering over Rae’s top sheet. She got out of bed and grabbed her clothes to take to the bathroom—no way in hell was she getting changed in here. What if Clara woke up?

Way too awkward. So not worth the humiliation.

She brushed her teeth and stared at herself in the mirror over the sink. It was humid, which made her hair even curlier than usual. Rae thought she looked young. Or like a creepy horror-movie doll. She held her hair behind her neck and spat into the sink.

After she got dressed, she headed down the creaky stairs into the lobby. Gabe was sitting on a threadbare couch wearing headphones and reading a creased paperback he must have picked up from a pile by the window. She considered slipping past him—after all, he wasn’t exactly her favorite person right now—but there was something undeniably sad about the fact that he was sitting by himself. His shirt was rumpled, and the skin around his eyes looked dark, like he hadn’t slept much.

Rae walked over and sat down, kicking her feet onto the coffee table. “Happy Fourth of July,” she said.

He pushed off his headphones. “Are you even allowed to celebrate that? Because you’re, like, British.”

“Come on. I’m American, too,” she said. “But honestly, I celebrate nothing until the matriarchy takes over.”

“Sounds about right.”

“So,” she said. “Where is everybody?”

“Out,” he said. “Leah came to the hostel, and Jonah and Aubrey went somewhere with her.”

“Why didn’t you go, too?”

He shut the book and leaned back in his chair. “Would you voluntarily spend an entire day in a foreign city with Leah?”

“Fair point.” Rae reached over to snag his book and skimmed the back cover—it was a true-crime story from the 1980s. “Is this what you’ve decided to do for a living?”

“Become a serial killer? Nah. Too messy.”

“Um, no. I meant, like, read books. Or, you know, study books. Whatever it is people do.”

“Reading books,” he said. “I don’t think they offer that exact major at Reed. But who knows? The world is our oyster, right?”

“That’s what they keep telling me.” Rae flipped through the onionskin pages, swishing them against her fingers. She wasn’t sure what to say to him now. He’d hurt Aubrey, which meant she was supposed to hate him. But he also seemed so pathetic. She couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for the guy.

She kicked the underside of his foot. “Okay. Let’s go out.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I was getting pretty into that book.”

“Oh please. You can read all the time in college. But we’re only in Amsterdam until tomorrow. There has to be a better place to hang out than this hostel.”

The skepticism vanished from his face. “Fine.” He hopped out of his chair. “You win.”

“I’ll text Clara to let her know we’re heading out.” Rae got up, too. “That way she won’t think we got serial-killed.”

The morning was gorgeous. Rae put on her sunglasses and took in all the adorable brick houses lining the sidewalk, their windows and doors trimmed in white. It was cuter than Paris and quainter than London, but it still felt like a city. Sunlight bloomed over everything.

“I can’t handle how precious this is,” she said. “It’s like the whole place is made of gingerbread.”

“Except less edible,” Gabe quipped, dodging a cyclist who’d momentarily ridden onto the sidewalk.

They picked up breakfast at a coffee shop with beech-wood walls and then followed the map on Gabe’s phone toward a ring of nearby canals. Light sparkled in the water, and trees on the banks shook out their airy, green branches.

Gabe stopped at a railing, and since Rae had left her camera at the hostel, she tried to remember a few details she could draw later: potted plants on the decks of houseboats, red doors on brown and gray buildings, grass growing through the cement by the canal’s edges.

“Uh-oh,” Gabe said. “Someone’s got Drawing Face.”

Rae slushed her straw around her iced coffee. “What the hell is that?”

“It’s when you’re thinking about something you want to sketch.” Gabe let his mouth soften and brow furrow and squinted around them, like he was trying to memorize what he saw. “See? Drawing Face.”

“I am not that obvious.” Rae propped her elbows on the railing. Gabe was wearing neon-framed sunglasses and a Nirvana T-shirt, which made him look extra hipster—even more so than usual. Rae could already picture him in Portland, riding bikes or hanging out with Fred and Carrie on the set of Portlandia.

“You know what I’m going to love about Melbourne?” she asked. “How little people will know about me. I’ll be a complete mystery.”

“Me too,” he said. “Such a mystery even I don’t know what classes I’m taking.”

“I’m not talking about school.” Rae watched a couple of bikes whip over the bridge. “I’m talking about important stuff. Meeting new people. Figuring out a city I’ve never lived in. You must want all of that, right? I mean, why else would you pick Oregon when you don’t know anyone else there?”

“You’re the one going to Australia.”

“Yeah, but now we’re talking about you.” Across the canal, Rae spotted a cute girl walking out of a hair salon, wearing low-slung jeans and a tank top, her hair dyed bright pink.

“Fine,” Gabe said. “I picked Reed because it’s part of a city but there’s still wilderness around.”

“You like wilderness?”

“I like the concept of wilderness. But I’ve never lived in it.” He paused. “Your turn. Why Australia?”

Rae sipped the last of her coffee and shook the ice in her plastic cup. “Why did we stop? We should be walking.”

They headed down the red-brick sidewalk. White and blue flowers hung in planters attached to the bridges. A group of kids their age sat at an outdoor café, smoking cigarettes and eating pastries.

Rae felt a little bad for avoiding Gabe’s question when he’d answered hers. She decided to throw him a bone. “I want to be somewhere new,” she said. “That way, I get to be completely different, too.”

“Different how?”

“In—lots of ways.” The number one way being that she could actually move on from Clara. But she wasn’t about to bring that up. Suddenly, she remembered the girl from the hair salon. “Like, I really want to cut my hair short, but my mom would probably think I’d betrayed her or something.”

“Betrayed her? That sounds pretty extreme.”

“Trust me, she’d hate it. The Rae you see now is the one I’ve been my whole life.”

Gabe stretched his arms over his head, which reminded Rae of exactly how tall he was compared with her—her head barely reached his upper arm. “You could totally pull off short hair,” he said. “Why don’t you just do it?”

“I will. Someday. But I’ve already mentioned it to Aubrey a few times, and all she says is, You wouldn’t be Rae anymore.”

“Huh,” he said.

She could hear him retreating from their conversation. It had happened the second she mentioned Aubrey.

God, he was confusing. She still couldn’t tell if he wanted nothing to do with Aubrey or if it was the exact opposite. Honestly, that would explain why he’d told Aubrey he didn’t want to be friends anymore. Not because he didn’t like her, but because he liked her too much. Because the idea of staying just friends was painful to consider.

Rae could definitely relate—which was maybe why she decided she had to snap him out of it.

“Okay, fine,” she said. “I’ll do it. I’ll go full Roman Holiday.”

“What? Right now?”

“Yup. Before I change my mind.” She stomped off in the direction of the salon, dumping her empty coffee cup in a trash can along the way. A few seconds later, he raced to catch up with her. The bell above the door rang as they entered a room decorated with retro pink wallpaper and chairs upholstered in green vinyl. A girl with a half-shaved head sat behind a desk at the front. Immediately, Rae’s palms began to sweat. This was so stupid. She didn’t want to cut her hair. Not on a whim. And definitely not to make Gabe feel better about Aubrey. That made no sense!

But here they were. The girl at the desk spoke perfect English and told them that, yes, she could fit Rae in now. She stood to get a black gown and Velcroed it around Rae’s neck before leading her to one of the chairs.

“I’ll be right back,” she said, turning to answer the ringing phone. Rae focused on a comb in a jar of water in front of her. She squeezed the squeaky vinyl armrests.

Gabe took the chair next to hers. “You look nervous,” he said. “I thought you wanted to do this?”

“Of course I do,” she said. “It’s going to be great. Chin-length. With a shaved patch right at the back. It’s going to be rad and radical and super queer.”

“You sound like you’re trying to convince yourself.” Gabe shoved his sunglasses onto his head. “You can always back out. I won’t judge you.”

“Seriously, bro. Stop talking.” Rae scowled at her reflection— at her small, slightly upturned nose (her aristocratic nose, Lucy called it) and her pale freckles. She pulled her hair out of its topknot, and it fell past her shoulders, all horizontal and fluffy, like Hermione’s in the first Harry Potter movie. “I’ve always had long hair. Always. What if I hate it?”

He snapped his fingers. “You should try to distract yourself. Quick. Talk about something else—the first thing that comes to mind.”

“Good idea.” She took a deep breath and said the one thing that had been bugging her all morning: “So, are you going to stop ignoring Aubrey or what?”

In the mirror, Gabe’s eyes widened. He seemed embarrassed, which made Rae feel kind of bad. But whatever. She couldn’t stop now. And besides, he needed to hear this—if it didn’t come from Aubrey’s best friend, who would it come from? “Remember graduation?” she said.

“You mean that big important ceremony we had?” He sounded wry. “I have a vague recollection of it, yeah.”

“You barely spoke to her. Couldn’t you tell how heartbroken she was?”

Gabe sighed and looked down at his hands. “She really hates me, doesn’t she?”

Rae swiveled her chair to face him. “I know for a fact that she doesn’t. She misses you. She wants to talk to you again. Do you even know how jealous I got when you started hanging out with her freshman year? I thought you were going to replace me. You were Best Friend 2.0. A taller, more masculine version. But then I realized she just had a big, stupid crush on you and…”

Rae choked on her words. Gabe’s eyebrows shot up.

Holy. Shit.

Holy shit!

What the hell had she just said? She’d been so determined to protect her friend that she’d blabbed one of her biggest secrets?!

The stylist walked back from the phone. “Let’s get your hair washed,” she said.

Rae stood and opened her mouth, but her mind went blank. And Gabe wasn’t paying attention to her anyway. He was sitting forward, staring at the mirror like he was trying to look through it. Like he was watching something Rae couldn’t see.