You Have a Match

by Emma Lord

And it’s illegal to talk about homework on Saturdays.”

“I can’t imagine anyone not wanting to know you.”

Savannah Tully, who the DNA site identifies as my full-blooded sister.

I miss taking this place for granted, because now I can’t.

I hesitate, trying to think up an opening line. Something other than Hey, may I just be the first to say, what the actual fuck?

If you learn to capture a feeling, he told me, it’ll always be louder than words.

Words always fell short. Made the feeling cheap. Some things, I think, there weren’t supposed to be words for at all.

I’ve known Mickey for all of two seconds, but as we take off on the overly crowded gravel path, I somehow genuinely miss her.

I can’t decide what’s weirder, the parts of her I recognize or the parts that I don’t.

But there are some things in life you don’t have a choice about.

the way he is smiling, a full-body smile, the kind that might have started in his lips but clearly goes all the way down to his toes.

“I forgot they renamed the place when Victoria took over and they collab’d with that academic thing.”

He’d said the words probably a thousand times. But this time was different, because this time when I looked at him—eyes bright, cheeks flushed, with that knowing smile pressed into his lips—it seemed far more ridiculous not to kiss him than to kiss him. As if it was something that wasn’t just inevitable, but long overdue.

Camp Reynolds is a scam. And for the record, so is Savvy.

“Likewise—Liam, was it?”

“Tell me about Italy.” “Oh, it’s whatever. Only the best food I’ve ever tasted and breathtaking views and fascinating ancient history around every corner.

“Nah. You came here for a reason,” says Finn, touching the tree. “And I brought you here because I’m bored and I want to know the reason.”

I was prepared to lose him, maybe. But I wasn’t prepared for what happens after the losing.

no view I can capture will ever compare to this feeling—seeing it through my eyes while seeing it through his, letting us both bleed into a world where those two things can be the same.

Maybe we were supposed to find each other.”

“First week of camp is always kind of rough.”

Same magpie charm.

Aware that he knows it so fully and doesn’t want any part of it.

“I want you to be happy,” he says. Of all the things he’s ever said to me, this might be the worst.

The plan is far from foolproof (I blame the SAT prep for somehow, against all odds, making us all a bit stupider), but none of us really cares.

“What, you made her a fake Twitter?”

“So he did tell you he liked you.”

talk to them about the boring parts of my day that nobody else cares about, and feel that warm feeling of being theirs, without everything else getting in the way.

Mick + Sav,

“Ugh, fine,” says Finn. “I’ll go find a secret sister of my own.”

Savvy is a trophy child. I’m more of a participation award.

Our eyes connect, and through the chaos, there is a pulse of understanding that goes deeper than friendship, deeper than sisterhood: it is the pulse of understanding between two people who are simultaneously and extremely fucked.

I’m scared I’ll always feel like I’m not good enough.”

“I wish you saw yourself the way I see you.”

We’re both trying to catch up to people who seem like they’re already gone.

You don’t like me enough to want me, but you don’t want me to be happy with anybody else.”

The truth is there are very few parts of me that Leo hasn’t had a part in.

“We were going to call it Magpie.”

“Love makes you do things you never thought you would.”

My mom and Pietra both get so immediately teary-eyed that there is no mistaking it for nostalgia, or that specific brand of weepy you get when you’re thinking about your best friend. It’s quiet and ancient.

I think in life you can know you’re loved without peering too closely at the edges of it. It’s almost scary, seeing that there aren’t any—it doesn’t have a beginning or an end. It just kind of is.

My mom’s eyes are watering. She’s thinking of Poppy, and not the shop. But to me they were always kind of the same thing.

“Connie, nobody could ever third wheel you. You’re like four wheels all on your own.”

There’s nowhere you could go that would change my mind.”

you’re a forever kind of person to me.

“He and my mom bought Bean Well.”