“And what if that makes me stop loving it? I can’t take the risk, man.”
“My dad loves building things and he loves movies, so he builds movie sets. That’s badass, right?”
“He does seem happy,” Clark said. “But, like, what are the chances someone would just hire me to play games all day? I wish that were realistic but I’m sure it’s a tough job to land.”
“I wonder if I’ll ever have a job,” Solomon said.
“You could work online I guess.”
“If I never get better, you mean?”
“Oh. No . . . I just . . .”
“Hey, I’ve accepted it. Maybe it sounds crazy to you, but that backyard may be the farthest I ever go.”
“Do you ever think about being out there again? Like all the way out there?”
“I didn’t use to,” he said. “Not much anyway. Just the thought of it would give me a panic attack.”
“And now?”
“It’s still terrifying. But I can at least talk about it without crying, so that’s a win.”
“Well, maybe you could just picture being with us, huh? Like if we’re out there with you, then it won’t be so scary.”
Solomon had good days and he had bad days, but the good had far outnumbered the bad since Lisa and Clark had started coming around. Sometimes, though, they’d show up and he’d look completely exhausted, drained of all his charm and moving in slow motion. They could do that to him—the attacks. Something about the physical response to panic can drain all the energy out of a person, and it doesn’t matter what causes it or how long it lasts. What Solomon had was unforgiving and sneaky and as smart as any other illness. It was like a virus or cancer that would hide just long enough to fool him into thinking it was gone. And because it showed up when it damn well pleased, he’d learned to be honest about it, knowing that embarrassment only made it worse.
“Clark,” he’d say. “Feeling loopy.”
It was the best way to describe it. Loopy. Anxiety works a little differently for everyone, but it certainly always comes with cycling thoughts. Looping images that you can’t control or stop, not easily anyway. Sometimes Solomon would start thinking about one of his parents dying. And then it would turn into both of them dying. And before he knew it, thoughts of something tragic happening to them—a car wreck, a random shooting, an earthquake—would swirl around in his mind so fast and so heavy that the only thing he could do was clench his fists and try to breathe as slowly as possible to not let it get to him, to not lose control the way he had so many times before.
Clark’s way of dealing with it was to become a master at distraction therapy, which didn’t work every time, but was always appreciated. When Solomon seemed particularly anxious, he’d try his best to keep his friend busy and over time, it seemed to be working.
“We need a project,” Clark suggested the day Lisa left for camp.
“You’re right. I can’t play one more card game or I’ll freak out.”
“You know anything about cars?”
“What do you think?”
“I think that was a dumb question,” he said. “Does your dad?”
“I don’t know. Probably. Yours doesn’t?”
“I’ve been asking him to help me fix up that van for six months and he still hasn’t done it. So, I give up.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Well, it’s a total piece of shit. I paid three hundred bucks for it last November and, honestly, I can’t believe it hasn’t blown up yet. I’m too scared to take it on the freeway because sometimes when I go over fifty, it starts smoking.”
“That can’t be good.”
“I need to clean it out, too. It smells like wet socks and I think there’s something dead in the back, but I’m too afraid to look. Lisa won’t even ride in it anymore.”
Solomon walked over to the kitchen window to look at Clark’s van in the driveway. It was painted dark green, not professionally, and just on the side facing him, it had two hubcaps that didn’t match and what looked like a mostly flat tire.
“Can you back it into the garage?”
“You mean the holodeck?” Clark asked, sounding offended.
“It won’t hurt anything,” Solomon said. “I can’t help you fix it, but I can help you clean it out. And then maybe my dad can have a look at the engine when he gets home.”
A few minutes later, with just the one single, dingy lightbulb casting its faint glow all over the garage, Clark climbed into the back of the van. It was disgusting, to say the least, so Solomon stood just outside of it, holding open a large black garbage bag with his face turned away.
“You okay?” Clark asked, amused.
“Just make it quick and don’t throw any dead body parts at me.”
“What about live body parts?”
Half an hour in, Solomon was tying up the first trash bag and walking into the house to get a second. He ran into his dad in the kitchen and nearly jumped out of his skin.
“Holy shit!” he yelled.
“Watch your mouth,” his dad said. “Who are you, your mother? What’re you up to anyway?”
“We’re cleaning out Clark’s van.”
“Clark’s here?”
“He’s in the garage.”
His dad followed him back and helped hold the trash bag while Clark tossed in soda cans, crumpled fast-food bags, and weird random things like a ripped pair of blue jean shorts and a deflated basketball.
“Are you teen wolf, Clark?” Solomon’s dad asked.
“Only on the weekends.”
They eventually took a break to have dinner, something Clark stayed for most nights of the week now. Valerie loved it, feeling like she had two fully functioning sons instead of one that just got by. Of course she didn’t say it aloud like that, but Solomon was smart enough to see it on her face. And he saw it on his dad’s, too. They hadn’t made it to dessert before Clark had convinced him to take a look at the van. By midnight, Jason was covered in oil and grease from his elbows to his fingertips. He’d been picking around the motor and listing things they needed to get it running right. Solomon jotted down everything his dad said, contributing the only way he knew how. But, mostly, he watched Clark as he nodded his head to these very technical things Jason was describing and pretended not to be clueless.
“You may need a new carburetor,” his dad said.
“Right, right,” Clark agreed. “Totally.”
And maybe it was because Lisa had been gone for so long or because fumes were leaking from the van’s potentially toxic motor, but that was the night Solomon realized how he really felt about Clark Robbins. He’d ignored it for weeks—that feeling he got in his stomach when Clark was around, that rushing in his chest that he’d mistaken for panic so many times, but had actually been something else, something he hadn’t felt before. Clark didn’t care where he was or where he was going. And even though Solomon was afraid to call it love, what else could it be? It was there. It was real. And if he didn’t watch out, it would eventually find a way to ruin everything.
EIGHTEEN
LISA PRAYTOR
Summer camp had been so much fun when Lisa was younger. She’d get to meet interesting girls from faraway places like Phoenix or Salt Lake City and their cabins would come up with secret little languages and songs about the wilderness. But as she grew older, and reached that pivotal age where being a counselor was her only choice, Lisa found herself constantly nostalgic for the way it once was.
Now, as a junior counselor, she was in charge of her own cabin, complete with ten girls and one senior counselor. That senior counselor was Janis. And she had a hard time forgetting that this camp, one of the three she counseled at every summer, wasn’t a Christian one like the other two.
“Let us pray,” she said on the third night just before lights-out.
“Keep it secular,” Lisa whispered from the bunk beneath her.
“I mean . . . sweet dreams, campers.”
The first week of camp went by pretty quietly, with only one canoe mishap and no reports of stomach bugs from the other bunks. And even though she wondered how Clark and Solomon were doing without her, Lisa was having fun being around some other girls for a change. She hadn’t heard the words Star Trek in seven days and it felt amazing.
The only thing that was a little off was Janis. Lisa knew it wouldn’t be easy, but she’d thought setting aside her very important time with Solomon to come to camp last minute would put the things back to normal between them. She was wrong. Janis was still pouting about it, constantly making little jokes about Lisa disappearing or being flaky. She kept her mouth shut, not wanting to argue in front of the young campers, but now Lisa was starting to get pissed. Still, though, she knew the last week of camp would be much easier if she tried to keep the peace—at least for as long as Janis would let her.
“Listen,” Lisa said, sitting down across from Janis in the mess hall, “we’ve got to talk to Chloe. If she doesn’t learn to steer a canoe, she’ll have to take the class all over again next summer.”
“Lisa, just do it for her. We’re not training her for the Olympics.”
“I can’t do that and you know it. Where’s your Camp Elizabeth pride?”
“Sorry. But, the girl’s hopeless. She sunk three canoes and a kayak last summer.”
“Oh, I remember that.”
“So, are you having a good time? Glad you came?” Janis asked blandly.
“Maybe,” Lisa said.
“It was the least you could do, really.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know exactly what it means,” Janis said. “Plus, I’m trying to save you from that crazy kid. I’m sure you needed a break.”
“He’s not crazy,” she said. “And I do not need you to save me from anything.”
“You know, maybe I’m too normal to be your friend. Not enough problems for you to fix, Lisa?”
“You’ve got plenty of problems, believe me.”
Janis was completely caught off guard that Lisa had finally stood up for herself. She leaned closer, putting her palms on the table, and with that mean look in her eyes, the one she used to get before she found Jesus, Janis smiled a little before she began to speak.
“Don’t take out all your anger on me. I can’t help it if your boyfriend’s in love with that crazy kid. I tried to warn you.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“You act so smart, Lisa. You’re always talking about how you want to help people and become this amazing psychiatrist someday, but you can’t even see what’s going on right in front of you. Where do you think Clark is right now?”
“He’s with his friend. Our friend. Don’t make stuff up just because you’re jealous.”
“All right. I’m out,” Janis said loudly, throwing her hands up.
“You’re out?”
“That’s right. Have fun wrangling Cabin Twelve all by yourself.”
Janis stormed off and Lisa was left standing outside the mess hall with a group of young campers staring right at her. She flashed them a forced smile and walked back inside to get some lunch. She kept that same smile on her face all day, taking on the role of two counselors until the camp leaders could shuffle someone around to help her. Janis had stormed right to the head counselor’s office and demanded she be moved to another cabin. Lisa was sure Janis had told some lie about her to make it easier. But, what good would it do to go tell them the truth? At least now she wouldn’t have to be reminded of how bad a friend she was every fifteen minutes for the rest of camp.
Later that evening, as the campers were eating dinner and watching the camp improv group, two other counselors, Tara and Lydia, sat down beside Lisa with a hungry look in their eyes like they always got when gossip was floating around camp.
“I heard she called you a bitch. Is that what happened?” Tara whispered.
“No, I told you. She called her boyfriend gay,” Lydia added.
“She did? Why would she do that?” Tara asked.
“Will you two shut up?” Lisa said, her whisper a little louder than theirs. “It’s not a big deal. She’s just jealous.”
“I heard your boyfriend’s been spending all his time with a gay guy,” Lydia said. “Is that true?”
“They’re like best friends,” Lisa defended. “He’s my friend, too. There’s nothing wrong with it.”
“Do they hang out without you?” Tara asked.
“Of course.”
Then Tara and Lydia quickly shot each other a look and turned back to her with sad eyes.
“Are you okay?” Lydia asked.
“Damn it. Will you two listen to me? My friend Sol is gay. My boyfriend Clark isn’t. I know, because he’s my boyfriend. So drop it and please stop listening to Janis.”
“Just let me ask you this,” Tara said. “Do you have sex?”
“That would be none of your business.”
“Just answer the question,” Lydia ordered.
“We’ve come close a few times.”
“Oh, no,” Tara gasped, shaking her head.
“You poor thing,” Lydia added.
Lisa gave them a blank stare and then fixed her eyes on the performance stage, pretending they weren’t beside her. Janis had gotten to them first—probably to everyone first—so now Lisa was the girl at Camp Elizabeth with the gay boyfriend, no matter how much she denied it. Gossip works that way. It makes fools out of everyone but the source. Lisa was relieved, though, that Janis hadn’t told them about the essay. Maybe that meant she hadn’t completely lost her oldest friend for good.
That night, she lay awake for a while after lights-out, following a firefly that had found its way into the cabin as it floated and hovered above her. She wondered if Clark was at Solomon’s. She couldn’t help picturing them together. Janis and the other counselors had somehow etched it into her brain like a drunken tattoo—something that should’ve never been there, but was impossible to erase. And no matter how many times she convinced herself that it couldn’t be true, she still kept coming back around to the possibility that it could.
NINETEEN
SOLOMON REED
The day before they finally put water in the pool, Solomon called Lisa hyperventilating. Since she’d gotten home from camp the night before, he was hoping she’d come over and convince him that going into the backyard wouldn’t make the world end. And as he listened to her calm voice reassuring him, he felt a pang of guilt for kind of liking it. Maybe this was just his version of getting better, of accepting that sometimes he needed help. He’d missed her, especially the way she took charge of things. If he couldn’t be in control, he knew she could, and without her, things were starting to get weird.
“You hear about the van?” Solomon asked a while after he’d calmed down. “That thing is part of my home now.”
“Your dad can’t fix it?”
“I know my dad,” he said. “And the look on his face when he’s out there taking that motor apart tells me he doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing.”
“That’s hilarious,” Lisa said.
“It is, isn’t it?”
“It doesn’t matter that much to Clark,” she said. “I think he just wanted another reason to hang out with you.”
“You think so? Because I’m in such high demand socially, right?”
“What did you do while I was gone? Besides taking a van apart.”
“Same ole same ole,” he said. “TV, games, watched a movie or two.”
“Clark said you started Lost again.”
“Yeah. We’re on Season Two. I think it’s better the second time.”
“I wish you guys had waited for me.”
<
br /> “Oh. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. I can jump in, I’ve got a good memory anyway.”
“Sweet. So, tell me I can do this again.”
“You can do it, Sol. You’ve been waiting months for this pool and all you have to do now is remember how that water will feel as you’re gliding through it.”
“Gliding?”
“I’m trying to be inspirational,” she said.
“Sorry.”
“Remember that it’s no different from being inside. Nothing can happen out there that can’t happen in your house.”
“I could drown.”
“It has been a while since you’ve gone swimming, I guess.”
“A long while.”
“Do you want us there? We should be there, right?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Part of me thinks it would help, but another part of me doesn’t want a bigger audience to disappoint.”
“It’s not like that,” she said.
“It is, though. It is. And you guys would have the right to be disappointed. I want to just say yes, I can go outside and get in that pool, but I can’t yet. I won’t know until tomorrow.”
“I think you’ll be fine,” she said. “I really do.”
“Okay. Here’s an idea. I want you guys there, but you have to promise to swim. Even if I can’t. Maybe that’ll distract my parents from the heartache.”
“Promise,” she said. “I’ll talk to Clark.”
“Awesome.”
“No matter what, you’ll finally get to see those abs in person. They’re majestic.”
“Can I tell you a secret? I’ve been doing crunches for weeks so I won’t be too embarrassed.”
“That’s hilarious. How’s that working for you?”
“I don’t have the muscle,” he said. “He really is from Krypton, isn’t he?”
“Superman would never drive that van,” she said. “Hey, does he ever talk about me?”
“Are you kidding? When is he not talking about you?”
“Be serious,” she said. “I want to know if he talks about me. Good or bad. Just tell me.”
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