Lovesick Falls

by Julia Drake

Genres: YA Coming of Age; YA LGBT & Pride

Synopsis

This queer take on As You Like It features first loves, friend breakups and madcap mix-ups, from award-winning author Julia Drake.

Celia Gilbert is the perfect friend—loyal, trustworthy, and committed to mending her best friends’ broken hearts.
 
She’s the reason the trio is spending the summer in Lovesick Falls, the idyllic little town where Touchstone’s sort-of-uncle’s cabin was waiting to be house-sat by three unsupervised (but totally responsible) teenagers.
 
After all, Celia, Ros, and Touchstone have been best friends since childhood. Sure, Celia is in love with Ros, and Touchstone was once in love with Celia — but that’s the beauty of a place like Lovesick Falls. If you fell in love, you could fall out.
 
Unless you can change the other person’s mind.

They started the summer closer than ever. Will living together tear them apart?

Release date: June 3, 2025

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Print pages: 400

Sample

Touchstone warned us a thousand times that the cabin was not very nice. It was old, for one thing, and not terribly spacious, for another. Persistently damp, with sluggish plumbing and a total lack of insulation, though hopefully that would be less of a problem in the summer. There was also the matter of his uncle’s1 unusual taste, plus the temperamental oven—cakes came out soupy in the middle, roasted vegetables blackened. Sometimes, for seemingly no reason at all, the house would lose power for a few days, and everything would have to be done by candlelight.

“Sounds like hell on earth,” said Ros on the drive up there. “I’m so glad I agreed to come.”

“It’s romantic,” I insisted. What did I care about an oven? I was about to spend the summer with my two best friends, just us, and while I enjoyed an occasional bake, I was fairly confident I could survive eleven weeks without making a pie.

“One year, my mom pulled a sock out of the dryer, and it turned out to be a bat,” Touchstone said, leaning between the two of us like a back-seat gargoyle.

We were nearly there by that point—I was driving down a bumpy, pitted, dead-end road that I wouldn’t have trusted as an actual thoroughfare had Touchstone not promised me it was. We were only two and a half hours from home, though the drive had felt longer, the roads through the forested hills twisty and slow going. And the drive seemed even longer now that Touchstone had launched into great detail about the length and girth of the needle required for a rabies shot.

“This is up your alley, Celia! Disaster preparedness!”

“I know, but please don’t say girth,” I said.

“Or anything else vaguely phallic,” Ros said.

“Or anything else to make us regret coming,” I said.

“Look, I’m just trying to manage expectations,” said Touchstone. “I don’t want anyone thinking we’re going somewhere fancy and magical. I don’t want anyone thinking this is some kind of charming picnic or enchanted wonderland. I don’t want anyone thinking—oh, look, we’re here.”

My jaw full-on dropped. Ros snatched me by the forearm before I’d put the car in park.

“Holy shit,” they said.

“It’s a fairy tale,” I agreed.

“What did I just say?” said Touch—but Ros and I were already out of the car.

The cabin was a darkly shingled A-frame cottage with an overgrown lawn and cinder-block steps, a twisted tree in the front yard with a hollow big enough to hide in. Ros and I barreled past Touch as he unlocked the front door. A full tour might’ve taken a normal person three minutes; Ros and I, hopped up on independence and gas-station snacks, saw the whole place in thirty-five seconds flat. Downstairs, a living room with a picture window that went all the way to the ceiling, with a view of the river; a potbellied pellet stove; a kitchenette. A bathroom and what would be our room, Ros’s and mine, a single tiny room off the kitchenette with matching army cots, the space between the beds narrow enough that our knees would touch if we sat on our beds at the same time. The place was furiously green, houseplants stashed in every corner, some even taller than we were, some so small they could fit on a fingertip. We squealed like pigs. We jumped up and down. We could hardly believe our luck.

Up the stairs—a spiral staircase, a death trap, especially if you took the stairs two at a time, as we did now—was Touchstone’s room, which was really more like a sleeping nook in a grown-up, rococo tree house than a true bedroom, with a bedspread that looked like Persian rugs and a deep blue velvet headboard and pillows, endless pillows, so many that Ros and I each snatched one for our beds downstairs and there were still enough to build a pillow fort that was more like a castle.

In the kitchenette, Touchstone called his uncle-who-was-not-his-uncle—Hi, Henry, it’s Andrew, we made it, yup, we’ve found the plant-care dossier—while Ros and I made faces at him and tried our feverish best to remember how his uncle-who-was-not-his-uncle was related to him, which had become our favorite game since we’d found out we’d be staying at the cabin.

“Okay—the cabin belongs to Henry, and Henry isn’t related to Touchstone.…”

“Henry is cousins with Freddie!” said Ros.

“No, he was married to Freddie,” I said.

“And Freddie was Touchstone’s second cousin?”

“Or Freddie’s mom was Touchstone’s second cousin?” I said.

“Yes—the mom—but there’s a divorce in there somewhere!”

“We can’t forget the divorce!”

“Can you two shut up?” Touchstone hissed.

We cackled and continued to run around gleefully, now noticing details we hadn’t before: the outrageously opulent stained-glass chandelier; the heavy leather high-backed chairs; the antique trunk full of plush blankets we draped around our shoulders like cloaks worn by royalty; the crowded art, the sepia-painted wooded landscapes and prints of peacocks and a quail; and an actual stuffed pheasant standing on a little ledge built into the wall.

“Let’s name him,” I said.

“Angelo,” Ros declared, and it was so.

At some point we started noticing the frogs. Here was a tiny pewter one sharing the ledge with Angelo; here was a pair of brass lamps in the shape of two elongated frogs with twisted legs; here were frog-patterned hand towels in the bathroom, and frog salt-and-pepper shakers on the table, a frog pattern on Ros’s blanket turned robe. By the time Touchstone had ended his phone call, we’d christened the cabin the Lily Pad. Who cared about the dampness? It was ours for the summer, and it was perfect. It may not have been an actual fairy tale, but it was close enough.

We left our stuff in the car, texted our parents we’d made it, and walked down to the water, a five-minute trek that was slightly steeper than expected and hot, exposed to the sun. The grassy hill gave way to a sandy, flat beach that was cupped in the palm of the woods, and we stood marveling for a moment, our arms around one another’s shoulders. Straight ahead, the far side of the river met the road and then turned quickly into forest. To our right, an old bridge spanned the river, once copper but now weathered the perfect teal green—we could walk that bridge to cross into town, according to Touchstone. To our left, the river continued and then bent, disappearing behind a rise in the land. Ros pulled off their heavy lace-ups and yanked off their mismatched socks—one pea-green ankle sock, one thicker hiking sock, a sartorial choice I simply could not support no matter how much I loved them—and waded into the water. The river lapped at their ankles, and I nearly felt the coolness on my own feet, delicious, chilling.

“Can we swim here?” I half spoke, half called, half to Touchstone, half to Ros, who continued to walk deeper into the water. “Ros?”

The water had risen over their ankles by now, their unshaven calves, and then their spiky knees, where it darkened the gray of their cutoffs. I thought maybe they’d stop there—I yelled their name, but they just kept walking—but the water was up to their ribs now, soaking the baggy forest-green sweater vest they’d found in the men’s department of our thrift store, cashmere for ten bucks, with a slight Mr. Rogers vibe that Ros made cool, though the vest itself was no doubt ruined now with river water—and then the water was up around their ears and their unruly, unwashed hair, and then they were gone, swallowed whole by the water.

Touchstone did an impression of me later that would make my sides split. He captured my panic perfectly: my bulging eyes, my shrieking voice, like some horrible seabird’s. Ros! Ros! Ros! But what was I supposed to do? I was worried. We didn’t know anything about currents or local sea monsters, and somewhere I’d heard that river otters were highly territorial and a pack of them could work together to drown a human if they perceived them as a threat. Ros had had a horrible year, and they could be reckless. Once, at one of our swim meets, they’d gotten out of the pool and they were bleeding; they’d hit the flip turn so hard they’d sliced open their foot, but they kept swimming anyway. Our meet was canceled, and they’d tracked blood all over the tile; the two of us, me in my bathing suit and Touchstone in his swim-team managerial role, had chased after their bloody prints with our towels, mopping them up.

When Ros popped back up, they were halfway across the river. Their hair was slicked back, reminding me of a seal—it was only ever tame when wet—and even in the distance I could tell their golden eyes were sparkling. They whooped, a shriek of pure joy, and there was that smile that I hadn’t seen in months, that smile I’d waited and waited for, that smile with one fanged canine tooth and slight crookedness that—though I’d barely admitted it to myself, let alone anyone else—had started setting my ears on fire a little over a year ago, at the end of tenth grade, when they flashed it at me on a totally regular day in chemistry and my stupid stomach crashed and careened toward my crotch, and I thought, No, please, come on, anyone but them.

“Come on in!” Ros yelled. “Don’t be a wuss, Celia; it feels amazing!”

And so—even with all my reservations about the river, disease-carrying algae blooms, currents, shrieking eels, etc., I followed them into the water while Ros cheered me on. The bank fell away from my feet, and I paddled with my arms and legs, feeling like my dogs at home. My clothes billowed out, ballooning, heavy. I’d never jumped in anywhere in all my clothes, and the river felt cool and amazing inside my overalls, and as I swam toward Ros, I couldn’t believe this was ours for the summer.

“She’s doing it, she’s doing it!” Ros cheered. “Touchstone, now you!”

“No, thank you,” called Touch. “Call me crazy, but I’d rather not get giardia!”

Ros laughed and then swam to meet me. We met in a part of the river where neither of us could touch the bottom, and they wrapped their arms around me in a strange water hug. We both half laughed, half drowned, deliriously happy.

“How deep do you think this is?” I said, paddling to stay afloat.

“Sometimes all you have to know is that it’s too deep to stand,” Ros said, but they humored me. They took a deep breath and plunged down into the green depths.

“Too deep to touch,” they said when they popped back up, and I felt a little flurry of fear. Maybe we would get giardia. Maybe there were snapping turtles or other foes in the water that were waiting for us. Maybe…

“Don’t freak out,” Ros said, noticing the expression on my face. “If some horrible river monster comes to drag you away, I’ll save you. I promise.”

That was all I needed to hear.

Later, Ros washed our clothes (the washing machine was bat-free) and then hung them to dry on the porch railing. We curled up on the outdoor couch, and they collapsed against me in laughter while we made Touchstone do impressions of us and our history teacher, Mr. Greeb, and my big bulldozer black Labs, which I already missed. When the temperature dropped—dramatically, as we started to lose the light—Touchstone pulled on his fleece jacket and made himself comfortable in one of the far chairs, and Ros brought the frog-patterned blanket outside and spread some of it over them and some of it over me too. Even after our showers, we both smelled faintly of river.

“You look so cozy,” Touchstone said, and he snapped a photo of us on his phone.

“Let’s see,” said Ros.

Touchstone passed his phone to Ros, and they held the device between us. We might have still smelled like river, but we looked, frankly, gorgeous as hell, clean and pink cheeked from our showers with twisty, semidried hair, comfortable in leggings (me) and a soft pair of jeans (Ros), me in my Power Jam T-shirt that Ros had given me for my last birthday, Ros in a navy-blue striped tee that was the exact right amount of loose. The blanket was draped across us in a perfectly cozy, casual way, and the light from the setting sun made us look resplendent, like Greek gods. That photo looked like what I’d been envisioning all spring, the sort of image that kept me going through convincing our parents; through the long school days when we’d whisper Lovesick Falls to one another to boost morale, the name alone enough to inspire wild daydreams; through finding our way here on an old road atlas (my parents’ rule for driving was that I needed to know how to read a map). The long and short of it was, we’d done it: Under my leadership, I’d spirited us away to this wondrous, plucked-from-myth place called Lovesick Falls, and we looked beautiful.

I should’ve felt ecstatic. But what I felt, seeing that photo as the sun went down, was a pang of homesickness.

“What’s wrong?” Ros said. I could feel them looking at me, distressingly close, but I kept my eyes glued on the photo.

“Nothing. I’m fine,” I said. I didn’t want to admit it to them. Homesick on the first night, even though the whole thing had been my idea! My feelings felt like a betrayal. Captain Ahab was never homesick, I thought bitterly. He never told the crew how much he missed life on land: his evening ritual of ice cream in front of the TV with his parents, watching the dogs fall asleep and twitch, chasing rabbits; sleeping in his own bed.

“You miss home?” Ros said.

“No,” I said. “Just tired.”

“If you’re upset I’m not in the photo, you can admit it,” said Touchstone.

“We should take another one with you in it,” I said, passing him his phone back, and he wedged himself in between us and snapped an unflattering selfie.

“Celia?” said Ros, and their voice was gentle. “It’s normal to be homesick.”

They reached for my hand under the blanket and squeezed.

“Right, Touchstone?” said Ros.

“I couldn’t do sleepovers until the seventh grade,” Touchstone said.

“That’s such a lie, Touchstone. You slept over at Neil Carmichael’s in fifth grade.”

“Do you have to remember absolutely everything?” he said.

“My memory is both a blessing and a curse,” I said, and right at that moment I remembered how Buckets would barge into my room in the middle of the night, even though he wasn’t allowed, because he wanted to sleep in my bed, which also wasn’t allowed, except when I let him. I felt myself go pale with homesickness.

“Do you want to call home?” Ros said.

“I’m worried that will just make it worse,” I said, my voice cracking.

“Okay,” Ros said, and they clapped their hands together. “Enough outside time. As a wise woman once said, we need a change of scene. This is a situation that calls for Power Jam.”

Touchstone looked horrified. “What? No! You promised we’d watch other stuff! We’re not going to seriously spend the summer watching ‘the worst show on television’?”

“You know we don’t give that review any credence,” Ros said. “The guy who wrote it barely even watched the show!”

“He’s an extremely well-respected TV critic,” Touchstone said. “And he clearly struck a nerve, since it went viral.…”

“Yeah, because people love to see popular art shredded to pieces! Besides, that critic is a thousand years old, and of course the show is ridiculous—that’s the whole point!”

“The whole point is that it’s bad?”

“The whole point is that it’s fun,” Ros said. “What’s that word—Celia, you know what I’m thinking of—”

“Campy,” I said. “Over the top.”

“See?” Ros said. “Celia has spoken. To the TV. We shan’t delay.”

The TV was small, but it had about seven different remotes, and it took my extremely competent friends an awful long time to figure out how to get Power Jam playing. I volunteered to help a few times—Lord knows I was good at problem-solving—but Ros insisted that they and Touchstone could figure it out. After about twenty minutes of punching buttons, swearing, and intermittent googling, Ros and an extremely reluctant Touch finally figured out how to play episode three of Power Jam by signing in to one of the nine hundred streaming services using Touchstone’s dad’s password. Episode three, one of the best, was when the story really started to take off, with the introduction of Blade Mendoza, the show’s villain.

“I think this might be my favorite episode,” I said from the couch.

“Duh,” said Ros, tossing Touchstone a bag of gummy bears for them to split. Between the two of them, they could put away an unholy amount of sugar. “That’s why I put it on. Now watch and enjoy.”

I tried to follow their directions. Power Jam was a British TV show about the cutthroat world of Roller Derby that had made its way to the US in the middle of our sophomore year, whereupon Ros and I started watching it and became obsessed. It had everything—extremely hot queer characters, convoluted plotlines, a sense of humor, great costumes, incredible montages of the aforementioned extremely hot queer characters roller-skating passionately and dramatically. The show had been a balm to us after Ros’s dad skipped town, even though the critical reception was not always favorable. Ros’s favorite character was Kenna, the rough-and-tumble captain of the squad played by the smokin’ Ronnie Ruthless (that was her actual real name). Touch, who was a reluctant fan, liked both the tough-as-nails coach and Louisa, Kenna’s wisecracking love interest. But the best character, in my humble opinion, was Blade Mendoza, the villain, played by Oliver Teller. Blade was a bad boy from the wrong side of the rink who was always getting in trouble for punching someone or checking someone too hard, who’d deigned to join the scrappy Roller Derby team called the Soul Crushers after being kicked off the soccer team for stealing his coach’s car and joyriding it into a tree.

On-screen, Blade stumbled from the car. His forehead was split into a gash. His light gray eyes glittered like two agates. He looked back at the wreckage, then down the empty street, then back at the camera, and then he fell into a crouch and grabbed his head in disbelief. Blade was a villain who on the rarest of occasions seemed to have a heart of gold, and even when he performed nefarious deed after nefarious deed, I couldn’t help but love him. Plus, it helped that he was blisteringly hot. On the couch, I tried hard not to drool.

“I can’t believe you think that guy is attractive,” said Touchstone. He’d left the couch for me and Ros and was sprawled on the ground in front of us, propped up on one elbow, in a position that reminded me, not unfavorably, of my dog Tabitha (my other dog, Buckets, preferred the couch).

“I can’t believe you don’t,” Ros said. “I’m not even into guys, and I think he’s good-looking.”

“He looks like a fish,” said Touchstone.

“A fish,” I yelled. “Are we looking at the same person?”

“It’s his eyes! I can’t believe I’ve never noticed this before. He’s got weird googly eyes, like a fish. They should call him Old Fish Eyes,” said Touchstone.

“If he’s got fish eyes, then sign me up,” I said. As if I even had a shot in my wildest dreams; he and Ronnie were dating in real life.

“We know, Celia; you’re obsessed with him,” said Touchstone.

“I’m not obsessed,” I said. “It’s just that he’s objectively hot.”

“I have to agree,” said Ros.

“Y’all are out of your minds,” said Touchstone, and settled back in to watch the show. He was, for the most part, a good sport about watching episode after episode of Power Jam.

We watched as Blade was punished by having to join the Soul Crushers, much to the dismay of Kenna, the captain. “He’s never skated before in his life!” she said. “In spite of being named Blade!” She thrust her old roller skates at him, and then came the wonderful moment when Blade turns out to be a natural, a roller-skating savant. We sang along to the song that played over the montage of him skating beautifully, and Touchstone plugged his ears, and miraculously, I started to feel a little better.

“Thank you,” I said to both Ros and Touchstone—though Touchstone still had his ears plugged, so Ros was the only one to hear.

“Anytime,” Ros said, and they wiped an errant piece of river grit from my temple.

We finished episodes three, four, and half of five before we decided, as a group, to turn into a deep, homesick-less sleep.

1 He was not technically Touchstone’s uncle. Henry, as was his name, was technically an ex-cousin by marriage, the particulars of which were so convoluted they might as well have come straight from Power Jam, a British show about the cutthroat world of Roller Derby that Ros and I watched religiously. We could never remember Touchstone’s exact relationship to Henry, just as we could never remember how all the plot points of Power Jam fit together. Had the stalker arrived before or after regionals? Had Blade Mendoza, the villain, cut Kenna’s laces before or after he’d discovered that she’d sold her hair to buy him new wheels? But here’s the thing: Never getting it right was part of the fun with Ros. They remembered some things, I remembered the others, and between us, we cobbled together a story that might not have been right, but it was ours.

Lovesick Falls had been my idea. I’d never been there myself, but I knew about it because Touchstone had been, and because of the theater festival that happened there over the summer, one big enough to attract minor stars and minor enough to discourage a big fuss. The town was a tiny blip beside the Russian River, nestled in a national redwood forest. One especially gray lunch period in February, Touchstone mentioned visiting his uncle-who-was-not-his-uncle at the cabin he owned, and I had an epiphany. If I were the sort of person who believed in visions—in other words, if I were more like my mother, who wrote horoscopes for a living—I would’ve called it just that. The idea just came to me, like a solution to a problem I didn’t know needed solving, one I knew straightaway was the right answer. If my life had been a math test, I would’ve put a box around my Lovesick Falls idea and moved on to the next problem witho. . .