by Britney King
Finally, she spoke quietly. “Do you believe in things you can’t see, Jack?”
He frowned. “No. But what does that have to do with my question?”
“Everything.”
That summer was the first of many where he’d fight the urge to let the girl in and lose, after giving it his best shot. What he couldn’t understand then was that, for the rest of his life, he’d be fighting to keep her in.
Over the course of those first few summers, they became fast friends—but with them it was always two steps forward, two steps back. She’d get too close, get on his nerves, and Jack would cut her off. That’s the thing about Amelie. She always was an inquisitive little thing and damn it if she didn’t incessantly hit the nail on the head when it came to people. She never pried. She didn’t have to. She was the kind of person who made you want to tell her things. And what people didn’t tell her, she somehow just knew. This quality fascinated Jack. He found himself drawn to it, to her.
The summer after Jack met Amelie, he still hated Camp Hope and put up resistance when his father made him go—but he never again hated it quite as much. For the next six years, his father insisted on sending him, and each year, he found himself putting up less and less of a fight. By the time June rolled around, he had looked forward to telling Amelie about all of the stuff he’d done during the school year, all the people he pissed off, and how much trouble he had avoided getting into. If he remembered correctly, it was somewhere around the summer he turned sixteen and Amelie fourteen that things began to change. Most of that summer he had been busy chasing a girl named Kristy (he was determined to get to second base) and Amelie was busy doing what Amelie always did, writing poetry and taking photos.
One particularly hot day, Jack found Amelie sitting on the edge of the dock alone, staring off into the water at nothing. He had also been particularly hot and angry that day as he’d tried and failed once again to make it to second base with Kristy. “What are you doing out here, kid?” he remembered saying. He had started calling her kid that summer because it made him feel somehow better than her. It made him feel superior—older and wiser, as if putting a name to it would make it so. In typical Amelie fashion, she didn’t seem to mind in the least.
She didn’t turn to look at him. “I’m thinking, JACK. You should try it sometime.”
Jack plopped down next to her, playfully shoving her shoulder. “What’s your problem?”
“I didn’t have one. Until you showed up.”
“Whoa. Have you finally gotten your period or something?” Jack held his wrist out motioning at the watch his mother had given him. “Because you know, kid, it’s about that time.”
She stood and glared right through him. “You know what? Fuck you, Jack.”
“Geez, kid. Calm down! I was just joking. What’s your deal, anyway?”
She retreated a little. “I don’t have a deal. Just stay away from me, ok.”
“What are you always staring at out here, anyway?” Jack pushed himself up and grabbed at her camera. She managed to grasp it behind her back where he couldn’t quite get to it, so he picked up her bag instead. She deadpanned. “Give me that, Jack.”
Amelie continued trying to wrestle the bag from him as he playfully kept it away, holding it high in the air above her head. He was amused, and to her detriment, much faster, taller, and stronger than she was. “What’s in here anyway? Your tampons?” She grabbed at it once more as he lowered it and raised it above her head again suddenly causing the contents to spill out. Jack’s jaw dropped, and he stared at everything before him. There were dozens of photos of him. Of him and Kristy. There they were, plain as day—he and Kristy swimming. He and Kristy playing volleyball. He and Kristy eating lunch. He and Kristy around the campfire. Him laughing. Him frowning. As Jack stared at the photos, he noticed a strange look play across her face, though he wasn’t sure what it meant. Was it pity? Remorse? Hatred?
“What the fuck is wrong with you, Amelie? This is sick,” he shouted.
She stared at the ground, either unable or unwilling to meet his eyes. “You’re wasting your time with her, Jack. She’s not into you.”
Jack glanced down at the photos once more. He watched a few of them scatter in the wind and felt the rage as it rose in his chest. By this time, a small crowd of onlookers had gathered. He could see the surprise on her face as he grabbed once more for the camera. Maybe it was pure shock, but she didn’t resist too hard as he took it from her hands. Jack turned the camera over in his palm, swallowed his anger, and then chucked it as hard as he could into the lake. Even now, he could still hear the audible gasp and picture Amelie falling to her knees.
“No, Amelie. Fuck YOU,” Jack called over his shoulder as he made this way back up the dock.
“Jack.”
He turned around slightly, but he didn’t respond.
“That was the last thing my father gave me.”
Fuck. Jack dove in head first, clothing and all, and swam harder than he ever had in his entire life.
Those words would be the last Amelie would say to him for the next three hundred and eighty-seven days. He knows because he counted. After the ‘camera incident’, Amelie refused to talk to him. Jack tried desperately to see her, but that summer, he learned another valuable lesson about women—when they’ve been publicly wronged, they tend to stick to together. There was no way any of them were going to let him get within two feet of her. Three days later, her mother picked her up a full month early from camp. Over the next year, Jack did two things: he wrote to her twice a week, and he worked his ass off to buy her a new camera. And it wasn’t just any camera he planned to purchase—it had to be the best camera on the market. Up until that year, money had never been all that important to Jack. He despised any talk of money—mostly because his father seemed to be obsessed with the topic. But looking back, Jack saw the ‘camera incident’ as one of those life-changing situations you couldn’t have possibly seen coming.
Jack’s father was old school. If you wanted something, you had to earn it. End of story. His father was a successful stockbroker, hell-bent on teaching his son ‘the business.’ Up until that year, Jack couldn’t give two shits about business. At the same time, he also abhorred having to ask his father for anything. In the case of the camera though, he found himself with little choice.
After a lot of persuading on Jack’s part, his father finally agreed to front him the six hundred dollars he needed to buy Amelie the camera he wanted her to have. He’d taken the bus downtown several times in search of the perfect camera. He talked to sales guy after sales guy in order to discern which camera would be best. If he could just get that camera for her, he felt certain she’d be so blown away that she’d finally forgive him, and they could finally go back to the way things were. Before.
The caveat for his father loaning him the money was that he had to ride the bus to downtown Dallas every day after school and work for his father at the brokerage firm he owned. That was the year that Jack learned three things. One, his old man was an even bigger ass than he’d originally thought. Two, with money came opportunity, and without opportunity (such as with the new camera purchase debacle), you were nothing. And three, being successful in business provided one more power than you could possibly imagine.
That year, the year Jack turned sixteen, was the year he fell in love with the pursuit of money. Nothing mattered more, nothing less.
He was a quick learner, mostly because he had two things his older counterparts didn’t: youthful charm (or perhaps it was ignorance, because he didn’t know quite when to take no for an answer) and two, he had the drive they seemed to have lost somewhere along the way.
After three days, he’d earned enough to pay his father back, and after three weeks enough to buy his first car. A car, which his father insisted he negotiate the deal all on his own. When he showed up in his brand new car, and told his father what he’d paid for it, his old man laughed in his face, insisted he read the terms of the agreeme
nt, and return the car if it were plausible. He was a fool, his father said, laughing in his face. It was that experience, the experience of heading back to the dealership and handing over the keys, that made Jack sure of one thing: it was the last time he’d allow himself to be screwed over in business. Ever.
With the second car, Jack did his research. He put in phone call after phone call, learning the base-price car dealers paid manufacturers to obtain the vehicle he wanted to purchase. He then negotiated solely by phone, refusing to set foot in the dealership until the said base price was agreed upon. When Jack showed up in his brand new Mustang GT and told his Pops the price he’d paid, and exactly the method he used to arrive at that figure, his old man patted him on the back. It was the first time in as long as Jack could remember that his father put his hands on him for anything good. He never did forget that feeling.
THREE
June 1996
Jack put the top down on his GT, turned up his Kurt Cobain c.d. on the stereo and let the wind blow through his now longer grungy, dirty blonde hair as he drove the nearly two hundred miles from Dallas to Camp Hope. He’d been caught up by work stuff. There were just too many deals to close, and it had set him back by a week. Although he’d called several times, he still had yet to speak to Amelie. Her mother always insisted she was out, but Jack was pretty sure she hadn’t always been telling the truth.
He pulled into camp shortly before dusk, checked in, and then asked around for Amelie. There were so many new faces that year. Jack hardly recognized any of them. Seventeen was the maximum age for campers at Camp Hope, and he’d just about aged out of the program. His only option for returning after this summer would be to come back as a junior counselor, which was pretty much the last thing on earth he wanted to do. He was here now for one reason and one reason only. He needed to get this situation off his conscience. His plan was to give Amelie the camera, and then get back to business at home. Unsure where else to look, Jack headed for the dock. He pulled the camera from his backpack and double-checked the wrapping to make sure it was still presentable. He’d wrapped and re-wrapped it several times each time a little more satisfied, but he decided he just wasn’t good at that stuff. It was times like these he wished his mother were around. She had been the best gift wrapper around. Jack remembered how he’d admire his Christmas presents simply for no reason other than that she had made them look so damned good. It was these kinds of things you forgot about a person after they died. Mundane things that no one thought to remember until you needed them. But Jack found these were also the sort of things that cut the deepest. It was funny that a task as simple as wrapping a gift could throw him off kilter for an entire week—but it could.
Jack made his way down the big hill and took in the sight of the fiery orange sun setting against the fading blue sky. Just below, he could make out a few figures sitting on the edge of the dock with their feet in the water. He slowly headed in their direction, but the two seemed oblivious to his forthcoming presence. Sure enough, it was Amelie and with her tracing his fingers along her palm was none other than the douche bag, Connor Levine. Connor was a year older than Jack and now served as a camp counselor… Jack was almost sure. He had always been well known around camp for ‘picking up’ the younger campers. Obviously, picking up had little to do with what it was Connor really did. Jack stopped in his tracks when Amelie threw her head back and laughed at something just out of earshot. He swallowed hard and cleared his throat. Amelie turned, and then cocked her head to the side as though she might not be seeing what she thought she was.
Her eyes lit up with recognition, and she smiled that smile. As always, it cut right through him. “Jack. Hey. What are you doing here?”
Jack shoved one hand in his pocket. The other held the wrapped camera. “I… I called, and you never called back. I wrote… and you never wrote back. “
“Guess you can’t take a hint then, can you, bro?” Connor chimed in.
As Amelie stood, her eyes met Jack’s briefly, before she lowered them toward the ground. But Jack never took his eyes off her. “I just came to give you this…”
Amelie glanced up and hesitantly accepted the package. “Thank you,” she said, though it was almost inaudible.
“Open it.”
Connor stood. “Dude, get a clue. Can’t you see? She doesn’t want you, man.” He nodded at the package. Jack dared him with the expression on his face to touch it. She doesn’t want your shit, either. Tell him… Amelie.”
Jack felt his face growing hotter. He took a step closer. The girl standing in front of him wasn’t the same girl who’d walked away last summer. She had changed. She’d grown up. She was just somehow very… different.
Amelie frowned. She seemed to be studying him just as intently as he was studying her. “You grew your hair out,” she finally said.
“Yeah.” He touched the camera. His hand brushing against hers caused something within him to light up. “Are you going to open it?”
She looked down as though she’d forgotten she’d been holding something. Slowly and meticulously, she began unraveling the paper. Her eyes lit up when she removed the last piece. “Wow. Thank you, Jack. This is really, really nice. I mean… wow. You really know your stuff. But… you totally didn’t have to do this...”
Jack smiled. He hung on every word she’d said. “Yes, I did.”
Connor sighed loudly. “Are we done with this little reunion? Amelie and I here were discussing something important.”
Amelie stepped forward and threw her arms around Jack’s neck. “I mean it, Jack… thank you.” Unable to help himself he inhaled her scent then pushed back abruptly. He grabbed her by the shoulders and glared into her eyes. “Amelie. Are you fucking high?”
She laughed. “Maybe. A little...”
Jack dropped his hands from her shoulders and lunged for Connor. Unfortunately, Connor was quick. He ducked. So Jack drop-kicked his ass straight into the lake. “Jack!” Amelie screamed. “What is wrong with you?”
Jack turned to face her, his eyes boring into hers. “Ha. I guess I could ask you the same question. I really didn’t take you for stupid, Amelie.”
Amelie raised her voice. “Well, I’m so very happy to have proved you wrong.”
“I never got the chance to say I was sorry… but I wanted you to know. In person. Clearly that was my mistake. Anyway, I hope the camera is ok.” Jack shook his head, turned, and walked away.
If he thought this was going to be an in-and-out trip, though, he’d been dead wrong.
For the next week, Jack observed ‘Douchebag Connor’ parading his friend, his only friend—by the way, around camp. Connor was making a fool of the both of them. Jack kept his head down and tried to stay out of trouble, which for the most part meant keeping his distance. Until a few days later when Amelie left several photos for him in his camp mailbox. One of them was of her and with it a note that read: I’m sorry. Truce?
Jack turned the piece of paper over and wrote six words: Tomorrow, noon. Dark Room. Come alone. He stuck the note back in her box and spent the rest of the day alone in his cabin working and doing whatever it took not to think of her.
The next day, he showed up to the rickety shack, which had been turned into a dark room, where he found Amelie, already working. He stepped inside and leaned back against the counter. He crossed his arms and watched her as she worked. The longer he stared, the less it seemed he could make out what it was about her that had changed so much. Over the past year, she had grown several inches and quite obviously, filled out in exactly the right places. This bothered Jack more than he wanted to admit. She’d changed in other ways, too. The shy, lonely girl he remembered had somehow blossomed into a social magnet. He hated this newer version of Amelie so much that it pained him to admit just how attractive she’d become. From the way she laughed to the way she moved to the way the tiny blonde hairs stuck to the back of her neck—it was too much. It made Jack want to touch her, and it made him picture her in ways he never co
nsidered—and for this, he hated himself.
She nodded in his direction. “What’s up, buttercup?”
Jack shrugged. “Nothing.”
She raised her brow. “You wanted to see me… here… for nothing?”
He crossed and uncrossed his legs. “I think you should stay away from Connor Levine.”
Amelie laughed. “Really? Because I was worried that you hadn’t made your feelings transparent enough already.”
Jack studied her for a second before speaking. “You’ve changed.”
“It happens, Jack. People change…”
“And why are you smoking pot, anyway? You’re too smart for that shit, Amelie.”
“Says who?”
Jack moved closer. “Look. I know what I did last summer on the dock was wrong. I came here to apologize… and to try to make it right. Whatever that means. I’m leaving in the morning but before I go, I need to know that you’re going to stay away from Levine. He only wants one thing from you, kid. And we both know what that is. It’s no different from the others.”
“And your point is...?”
Jack sighed. “That you’re too good for him.”
Amelie pinned the photographs up to dry and turned to him. “I happen to like Connor. And I also happen to like getting high. Why do you care so much, anyway? Is Kristy too busy for you this summer?”
He rolled his eyes. “This has nothing to do with Kristy.”
Amelie hurled a clothespin at him and picked up another. “Oh, but doesn’t it?”
He ducked. “What are you talking about?”
“Seriously.” She cocked her head and put her hands on her hips. “Seriously? You really don’t get it, do you? I liked you, Jack. Hell, I may have even been in love with you. But you don’t give two fucks about me. And what I realized later was that maybe you never did. Even before Kristy. It’s as if I’m invisible, Jack. It’s always about you. What does Jack want? What does Jack think? You never ask about me. Hell, you’ve never even asked how my father died. Everything has always been about YOU. And you know what? I’ve been ok with that. I let you be who you are because I care about you. I looked up to you. But you can’t just stroll in here with your ‘holier than thou’ attitude and expect me to change who I am just because you’re uncomfortable with it. You need to grow up, Jack. The world doesn’t revolve around you.”