I did a double take of the guys….They were twins. They might not have dressed the same—one dressed more prep-cool and the other one went straight-jock, and the prepster’s hair had clearly been carefully and craftily sculpted, while superjock’s was cut closer to his head—but their faces were identical: flawless tan skin, wide-set blue eyes with a serious fan of lashes, and prominent cheekbones. It was a good thing they were both built like a couple of gladiators to balance out those pretty faces.
“Hey,” I said at last, while Callum continued shuffling things around in the truck. I wondered why he didn’t holler at the four of us to pitch in.
Ethan/Evan leaned in my direction. His smile was something else. Something else that had no doubt killed it with countless girls before…just not this girl. “Pick a side, New Girl.”
I was unfazed. I knew his type. California was chock-full of them. I also knew the sooner I made my point that I was not interested now or ever, the sooner he’d move on to the next female thing on legs. “I’d rather ride the fence.”
“New Girl’s smart,” the jock twin said, elbowing his brother.
“New Girl’s hot.” Bold and Brazen Brother elbowed his twin back.
“New Girl’s got a name,” I said, noticing Callum stick his head out from the canopy.
“I’d be a fool to think otherwise,” Ethan or Evan said. “What is it?”
I frowned. “Not Interested.”
One brother laughed, shoving his twin. The other one looked like he’d just been issued his first reality check ever. “Funny. What is it really?”
From the truck, I could tell Callum was watching us, listening, but he didn’t seem interested in contributing anything to the conversation. “As far as you’re concerned?” I said, blinking. “Really Not Interested.”
The twin holding the grand name inquisition covered his chest with his hands. “I think I’m in love.”
His brother grunted. “She hates you, so of course you are.”
Smitten Brother’s smile didn’t dim. “Unhealthy relationships are my specialty.”
Naomi leaned in to me and whispered, “More like his Achilles’ heel.”
She and I shared a grin right before Callum leaped from the truck. “Time to head out,” he said. Stiff voice, stiff walk, stiff shoulders.
That was the camp-counselor-on-duty Callum I knew. Fun, considerate, mellow…that was the camp-counselor-off-duty Callum I thought I knew. Total opposites. North pole, south pole. Right, left. Heads, tails. Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde.
Who was Callum when he wasn’t here at Camp Kismet? What was he like back home? Why did I care? Why did I want to find out?
Questions: in abundance. Answers: nil.
“I will find out your name before the morning is done,” Relentless Twin stated.
“You already know my name,” I replied.
“It’s probably something that starts with a J,” he went on like he hadn’t heard what I’d just said. “Jamie or Jessie or Julie. Yeah, definitely a J.”
“Give it a rest already, Ethan. New Girl isn’t picking up on your game, so call it and move on.” Evan crawled over the front seat of the truck and pretty much crashed into the backseat.
Callum had the driver’s side door open and waved me into the front seat. I got the feeling sitting in the front was less of a privilege and more of a punishment.
“Thanks,” I said to Callum, crawling across the old cloth interior of the front seat to the passenger side. He wasn’t smiling in the way most people noticed, but his eyes were. Glad he found this all so amusing.
“Welcome” was all he said.
Ethan loped toward the truck, looking like he hadn’t just been rejected—repeatedly. As I buckled up, I could tell he was watching me, that smile still in place. Right before he started to crawl into the back, he opened his mouth, no doubt taking his first jab in Round 5 of trying to TKO my better judgment.
“Ethan?” Callum said in the tone that would have made the president sit up straighter in his seat. “Shut the hell up.”
He didn’t say a single word to me the entire drive to the river. He didn’t say a single word to the other three, either, so at least I didn’t have to obsess over why he was singling me out in the silent-treatment department.
The three in the backseat, however, didn’t shut up. Not once. Not even for a fraction of a fraction of a second. It was irritating, but I had to give them credit for creativity in their conversation topics: from which adolescent campers were getting it on with other adolescent campers, to supported theories on if Ben was a boxers or briefs kind of guy, to whose college mascot would come out the victor if they were thrown together in some sort of to-the-death match.
Naomi, Ethan, and Evan were all heading off to college in the fall, and from the sounds of it, they’d peaked out at peeing-their-pants levels of excitement. If nothing else, I could relate. I still had another year plus a few months before I’d be riding the freedom express, and I already had a daily countdown going.
When we arrived at the parking lot, the three of them teamed up carrying down rafts, leaving Callum and me to tag-team the other equipment. Even after the rafts and paddles and life jackets and the rest of the heavy, cumbersome crap Callum had shoved into the canopy had been hauled down to the river’s edge, the three of them worked together getting everything laid out.
I didn’t get the feeling that they’d divided themselves off from Callum and now me because they were being mean…but more out of familiarity. They were used to Callum doing his thing while they did theirs. I was fast learning that Callum kept to himself while the other counselors hung out together, which led me to wonder why I was laying out paddles beside him right now. Was it more a matter of me not taking a hint that he liked to fly solo? Or more an issue of him tolerating me…in the twisted, confusing way he did?
More questions, I thought with a grumble. No more questions. Not until I wrangled up some answers. I was already so filled with unknowns I was about to rip apart at the seams.
I was in the middle of counting life jackets, making sure that number matched the number of paddles in the raft in front of me, when a burst of laughter exploded from down where the other three were.
“Dude! It totally looks like I just pissed my pants!” Ethan was thrusting his arms in the direction of his crotch area, where a very prominent dark stain was splattered across his light blue shorts.
“You wet the bed until you were ten. Just giving New Girl a little vindication that she totally snubbed a bed-wetter.” Evan laughed, pointing at his twin’s shorts like it was the funniest damn thing he’d ever seen.
“We’re twins, asshole!” Ethan threw back.
“What’s your point, pant-pisser?” Evan nudged Naomi, who was trying so hard not to laugh she was turning purple.
“We’ve done everything the same since Mom tells the story of us shitting our first diaper within a half second of each other. Including wetting the bed until we were ten.”
Evan’s laughter rolled to a pause. “Yeah, but you’re older. Which means you pissed the bed longer than I did.”
“Older by twenty-three seconds, buttmunch.” Ethan pinched his shorts in the water-stained area, shaking to dry them.
When Callum caught me watching them instead of counting the next raft’s life jackets and paddles, I braced myself for what I expected to be a get-back-to-work warning or at least the dreaded raised brow. Instead, he stayed quiet, continuing to work on what he was doing.
I cleared my throat. “Wow. Great group.” Right then, Ethan splashed his brother’s shorts, returning the favor. There. Now they both looked like juveniles with idiotic tendencies.
Callum glanced their way before getting back to checking the raft next to me. “They’re great at what they do. Acting their age and charming the pants off the opposite sex aren’t requirements of the job.” It almost looked like he was about to smile, but it never quite got there.
“That’s good. Otherwise those guys would be ou
t of a job.”
“Those guys never would have gotten their jobs in the first place if those were the requirements.”
When I glanced over at him this time, it was definitely a smile. Not a big one, but one that qualified. That might have been why I asked him the question I had no intention of asking him ever.
“Why don’t the other camp counselors like you?”
Instead of disappearing, his smile grew. “Other camp counselors?”
He’d caught me off guard. I’d been expecting him to argue it or deny it or play the indignant card, but I hadn’t expected him to answer my question with a question of his own—that question especially.
“I don’t know what you mean….”
“You asked why the other camp counselors don’t like me, meaning one of them does.” He didn’t have to look up from the knot he was tying to get his point across.
“Yeah, and the other one I was talking about was you.” I grinned victoriously over at him. Nice try, but he couldn’t dissect and twist my words until I was too turned around to remember where I’d started.
“Oh, then I’m afraid you’re wrong.” He paused, no doubt for dramatic effect, before adding, “Because I don’t like myself. Not even a little.”
I huffed. “Why do I find that hard to believe?”
“Because it isn’t true.” Callum popped up from the rocky river’s edge he’d been kneeling on and held his arms out at his sides. “Because I’m the shit.”
I was going for another huff when a laugh burst free instead. “More like full of it.”
Callum laughed a few beats of his own before a shout rolled down the river at us. “The cries of torture again! What’s the deal? Is New Girl killing you down there, Big Kahuna?”
We both ignored him.
“So?” I pressed.
Callum lifted a shoulder, moving down to the next raft to check it over. “I don’t know if it’s that they outright hate me—”
“That’s not what I meant,” I interrupted, because it was clear they didn’t hate him. They just kept their distance.
“It’s just a weird position to be in. I’m the person they report to, but also a peer. It’s easy to blur the lines in that kind of a situation, so I just choose to draw a thick, uncrossable one instead. Makes it easier for them.”
That wasn’t the explanation I’d been expecting to hear from him. I’d been more expecting half the honesty and a quarter of the words. “But not easier for you. Right?”
He shrugged the other shoulder and kept working. “Ben doesn’t like giving lectures or talking-tos or pointing fingers. He doesn’t like dealing with the downsides to running a business—he’d rather pretend the world is all blue skies and rainbows—so I take some of that burden off of him when it comes to the counselors.”
I nodded. “That can’t be easy for you.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t map my life around what’s going to be easy, so it’s not a big deal.” Callum’s attention moved up to the parking lot, where a brightly colored bus with the Camp Kismet logo painted onto the grille was pulling into the parking lot. For the first time that morning, I felt nervous. “Besides, if I’m not busy working, I’m busy with other things. I don’t have time for a social calendar.”
I thought of the past two mornings and the way he’d shown up looking like he’d spent the night any other way than asleep. What was keeping him so busy he didn’t have time to hang with the other counselors after he’d punched out?
I was trying to be all composed-looking, but either I was failing or he could sense it, because before he started for the parking lot, he strolled up beside me and gave me a gentle nudge. “It’s okay. You’ll be fine.”
“But what if something bad happens?” My throat was dry, making my voice sound all high and pitchy.
“What if it does?” he replied, heading for the bus. “What’s going to happen is going to happen. It’s your choice if you sink or swim.”
Cynthia Ainsworth was rafting. Mom was rafting, down a river, with a paddle in hand, getting sprayed by water, and instead of crying out in horror that her hair and silk blouse were ruined, she was laughing. Not nearly as loud or often as Harry was beside her, but it had been a long time since I’d heard my mom laugh. I wondered where Dad was, although I supposed I could make an educated guess—glued in front of his laptop, hiding inside the cabin.
They were in a different raft than the one Callum and I were in, which I knew was intentional because Callum had straight-up told me it was. He said he thought I’d be better off if they were in a different raft so I wouldn’t be hovering over them and ignoring the other rafters. He had a point. I might not have liked it, but he had one.
Although it wasn’t like I wasn’t not focused on them because they were in another raft, being guided down the river by Naomi. Every few strokes of my paddle, every couple of checks of the six campers in our raft, I’d find myself checking to make sure they were both still smiling and, most important, still firmly in the raft.
Mom had made it pretty clear before coming to camp that she wasn’t going to sign off on Harry participating in these types of things. You know, types of things that ten-year-old boys lived for. Like rafting. It was cool of her to change her mind—on this activity, at least.
“We’re getting close to the take-out point,” Callum announced from the back of the raft, that ever-calm and resolute look on his face. The river hadn’t exactly been what I’d call a serious adrenaline rush—I’d heard someone say the rapids were considered class two—but the water was fast, moving with just enough whitewater to make my stomach drop.
I wasn’t sure how many times he’d rafted this section of the river, but from the way he seemed to know every bend up ahead and memorized every rock jutting out of the water, he could have spent the last decade of summers rafting this river every single day. He wasn’t just good at his job—he was great.
He wasn’t the only one, either. He’d been right about the other three counselors being pretty great at what they did, too. After this morning, I wouldn’t have guessed any of them were capable of taking something seriously, but I’d been wrong. They might not have had Callum’s same level of familiarity on the river, but they definitely knew what they were doing.
“Did you four have to get some kind of special training or certification to do this?” I asked Callum when we hit a nice, smooth stretch of water. Like the five hundred times before, a chorus of disappointed groans circled the rafts. From the way they made it sound, it was like they were all a bunch of adrenaline junkies who couldn’t wait a whole five minutes for their next fix.
“Yeah. We all had to go to some special training camp and pay for the certifications.” Taking advantage of the calm water, Callum used his shirt to wipe off the water spray dotting his face. And no, it totally wasn’t distracting that while he was doing this, half his stomach was exposed. “Well, Ben paid for the camp and certifications, but it was pretty hard-core.”
The experience of rafting was “hard-core,” so I could only imagine the training. “Are all the counselors able to guide a raft down the river?” I asked.
He shook his head, his eyes intent on the river ahead. “No, just the four of us. It would be a waste of time and money for Ben to get every counselor trained, so he picks the regular returners to get certified.”
“How many summers have those three been counseling?” I glanced at the other rafts, waving at Harry for the millionth time, but he was too busy pointing down or up the river.
“This is their third year.” Callum’s gaze moved from the river to circle the rafters in our boat. It was quick and thorough at the same time, before his eyes flickered back to the river.
“Will they be back next summer?”
“Maybe. Some of the counselors who leave for college come back and some don’t.”
I stroked with my paddle gently, inspecting the rafters like Callum did.
“How many summers have you been counseling?” I asked him.
This time when I waved over at Harry, he noticed. He whipped his arm back and forth like he was flagging a 747. Mom smiled at me and waved the dignified version.
“Will you return next summer?”
“Probably,” he answered without a pause.
“The summer after that? The one after your first year of college?”
This time there was a pause. A long-enough one I looked over my shoulder at him. His eyes were still focused down the river, but they were somewhere else. “Probably,” he said. I didn’t think he was going to say anything, but that was when he added, “But I’m not sure about college.”
“What do you mean, you’re not sure?”
“Exactly that. I’m not sure.”
I did another scan of the raft. These campers were like the rafting equivalent of teacher’s pets. They were the rafting guide’s dream: followed directions, seemed to value their lives, and oohed and aahed in all the right places.
“Like you’re not sure which ones you want to apply to?” I asked after I was satisfied everyone was safe. For the moment.
“Like if I want to go at all.”
I glanced at him to see if he was being serious. I hadn’t quite figured out his humor yet, and when he was pulling my leg or being dead serious. Made it harder to know when it seemed like I was dealing with two personalities in a constant battle of tug-of-war.
“Really?” I said after taking a guess that he was serious.
“You sound like this is going to make the world news or something.” He adjusted the bill of his ball cap a bit lower to shield his eyes from the sun…or to shield them from me. One or the other.
“Well, no, I’m just surprised.”
“Why? I wouldn’t be the first person to take a pass on college.”
“I get that, but, I don’t know…you just seem so…” I paused. What is the right word? “Driven.”
“And there’s more to being driven than just taking a couple of standardized tests and filling out a few applications and four years later coming out the other end with a piece of paper and a hundred grand in debt.”
Trusting You and Other Lies Page 8