Read Online Proof of Forever by Lexa Hillyer - Free Book Online Page A

repeated three summers in a row, once when she was an Eagle, once as a Hawk, once as a Wolf. And if all was going to happen like it was supposed to, she’d be giving that same exact speech again this year as a Blue Heron. It never struck her before how repetitive summer camp had been for her. Always the same badge, always the same speech, always the same tepid applause, always the mild sense of accomplishment that got quickly washed away like a shell by the tide.
    Andrew smiles at her sheepishly. “I remember it all, babe. Everything about
you
,
anyway. Besides, it’s one of the things I like most about you.”
    â€œWhat, how freakishly predictable I am?” she asks, half-wondering if this is in fact what he means.
    â€œNo, Goofy,” he says, touching her nose. “How you alwaysdo the right thing.” He touches her chin now, moving her face slightly closer to him, and starts to kiss her. The kiss is sweet—tender and nervous. An early Andrew-Luce kiss. He tastes of salty pepperoni, mozzarella cheese, and root beer. She tries to enjoy it. This is Andrew—
her
Andrew. The one she fell in love with two years ago and is still in love with to this day . . . whatever
this
day actually is.
    But for some reason, his words bug her.
You always do the right thing
.
    She has got to stay focused on her goal. Stay in control. Somehow or another, she must manage to win the badge back from Jade—do something so honorable that it forces her mother to change her mind and reassign the honor to Luce. There’s got to be a way to undo this mistake. It can’t be that hard. She can still fix this.
    Luciana Cruz can fix anything.

7
    Unsurprisingly, Tali takes the longest time to shower, despite the fact that the rickety wooden stall is lined in a faint slippery sheen of green mildew, its corners draped with ancient-looking spiderwebs. By the time she trudges back to her bunk with her plastic shower caddy in hand, wrapped only in a threadbare standard-issue camp towel that feels far too meager for her body, the other girls have gone to dinner without her.
    Other than Sarah Hawking, rummaging fruitlessly for a lost sock behind her bed, the rest of the cabin is empty. Even so, Tali feels self-conscious as she towels off and slips into her bra, an A-cup, one strap at a time, trying hard not to look at her young, not-fully-developed-yet boobs and her awkward, bony shape. She misses her subtle curves, her ability to raise one shoulder slightly at a guy or give him a certain look, and know, deep down, that she can have him if she wants him. It’s like she’s been completely stripped of her superpower, and now she’s back togangly-skinny-loser Tali. The Tali who doesn’t get noticed by boys and doesn’t get invited to the best parties and who, when she steals her mom’s credit card to buy a new outfit, is then teased for trying too hard and wearing the wrong thing. It took years of effort to
learn
how to be effortless.
    And now it’s all lost, like some higher being accidentally hit a big fat PREVIOUS PAGE button on the invisible screen of life.
    Camp Okahatchee has a serious lack of mirrors, but she can easily tell by touch that her hair is frizzy. Once it dries, it will be
too
frizzy. She rummages through her top cubby, the one filled with all the products she can’t cram into her shower caddy, looking for her magic hair balm. Her heart starts racing. She can’t even
remember
the last time she was seen in public with her hair like this. She removes every bottle and tube from the cubby, lining them along her top-bunk blanket.
It’s not here. It’s not here. It’s not here.
Was it really fewer than two years ago that she discovered the best product to civilize her pre-straightening locks? This cannot be happening. The panic that’s been hovering like a dark cloud threatens to break into a full-on storm.
    And then, with a whoosh of relief, she