She and Pika were helping ILP with the artwork. Ashley wore overalls that were splattered with an obscene amount of paint even though the paintbrush she held in her hand was smaller than a pencil. She was happy to see me, smiling big.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Helping I Like Paint. I don’t know the first thing about painting, but I did win an art competition once in an episode of Smarty Pants, so I think I’ve got this. Plus, I find that painting works wonders to relieve stress. Isn’t that right, Pika?”
Pika nodded but did not look away from the intricate design of the flower he was painting. The tip of his tongue stuck out of the corner of his mouth as he concentrated. The world took over most of the wall, looking similar to how it had before, but now there were arrows that almost circled the globe. There was an arrow that started at a point in what looked like the Mediterranean and stretched all the way to New York. And there was another arrow that went from New York to California.
“What’s with the arrows?”
Ashley stepped back to contemplate them, biting down on the end of her brush. “I’m not sure,” she said. “It must have something to do with bringing the world together. Perhaps arrows have a special symbolic meaning where ILP’s from. I’m just going to embellish them a little.”
She began painting over one of the arrows, decorating it with her own flower designs. “How’s that look?” she asked ILP.
ILP looked at her flowers and frowned. He shook his head and got down off his stepladder to paint over them. Ashley sighed. “He’s a little difficult to work with, but the collaborative process is often choppy. One must navigate it carefully.”
“Maybe he’s trying to tell us something with the arrows,” I said. “Maybe we should listen.”
“Maybe,” Ashley said. “And maybe people like flowers more than they like random arrows. It’s one of life’s mysteries.” She tossed her paintbrush into one of the cans on the ground and wiped her hands on her overalls. “Why have you been avoiding me?”
The directness of her question startled me, even though I was expecting it. Ashley’s eyes bore down on me, waiting, and my response was to step back. I found an overturned bucket close by and sat on it. “You know why.”
“I really don’t.”
She was going to make me say it. Fine. “I saw you kissing Poe.”
Her lips formed a little O, but then they went back to their usual state, with corners upturned, and she sat on the ground beside me. “You’re not really angry about that, are you?”
“Not really angry?” I repeated, indignant. “Ashley, you kissed Poe. You knew I … liked her.”
“I was doing recon for you,” Ashley said, “finding out if Poe likes girls. Turns out she does. But good news for you, she could still like boys. She does hang out with Win a lot.”
That hadn’t gone unnoticed by me, but I shook my head, getting back to the point. “You kissed her for recon?”
“Well, no. ILP was singing that song, and Poe really did want to kiss me, so I went with it. You’ll never be closer to someone than when you kiss them for the first time.” Ashley’s eyes twinkled and her voice took on that mystified tone it sometimes did, like she was amazed simply by the memory of it. I could feel it myself too, hearing the music Save the World With Song was playing and ILP’s voice as he sang. I could see Ashley’s and Poe’s faces, tilted and pressed against each other, parted lips connecting perfectly. I could see their cheeks, rosy and tinged with that summer glow that girls seemed to get. I could see the underside of Poe’s bottom lip, shiny with smeared clear gloss. Ashley had a quintessential camp experience. The one I was so desperate for. I’d never considered that my summer of firsts could also be Ashley’s summer of firsts.
“So you kissed Poe because you felt like kissing a girl?” I said, carefully considering this. It wasn’t like they liked each other, which made me feel less bad about it. But still. “That seems so … dishonest.”
“Why?” Ashley said. “Poe kissed me because I’m her celebrity crush. She told me so.”
“Oh,” I said. “Really?”
“Yeah,” Ashley said. “My New York Times Eat Dirt ad is hanging in her cabin.”
“It sounds like you were using each other.”
“We were enjoying each other’s company,” Ashley said. “It’s camp, Gregor. If movies are to be believed—and it’s my philosophy that they always should be—everyone kisses everyone at camp.”
And I had still managed to kiss exactly zero people.
“So you’re not mad, right?” Ashley said. “I’d really hate it if you were angry with me. You’re too good a friend for us to fight.”
I shrugged. Now that we’d talked about it, I actually did feel better. Ashley didn’t want to stab me in the back or anything. She just wanted to kiss a girl. And really, who among us didn’t? Who was I to make her feel bad about that? “It’s fine,” I said.
“Great!” Ashley said breathlessly, slapping both of her knees. “Now, you haven’t come to the clearing in a while. What do you say I hold up my end of the bargain and help you with that talking to girls problem?”
How could I say no?
* * *
Since the last time I was in the clearing, Ashley had outfitted it with weatherproof throw pillows and coolers full of snacks and drinks. There were even string lights that hung in zigzags through the branches all around us. I was pretty sure I could thank Pika and some hidden portable generators for that. Per Ashley’s instructions, it was the only time Pika was allowed into our little circle in the woods: when we weren’t in it. Right now, the light around the trees was caught in Ashley’s eyes. She scooted so that we were now directly facing each other.
“When you kissed Poe,” I said, “you had your hand in her hair.”
“Yes,” Ashley said. “It was a proper make-out.”
“Right. Of course,” I said. “Is that what makes a proper make-out? Hands-through-hair moments?”
“Duh, silly.”
I nodded. Of course I absolutely already knew that. “I absolutely already knew that.”
It felt strange, talking about this, the technical side of how to properly kiss a girl. We’d met in the clearing so that Ashley could teach me the finer points of talking to girls, and somehow we’d landed on the physical side of things. It felt strange but I wanted to continue. Ashley scooted even closer, which automatically seized me with fear, but I did not scoot away. “You have had proper make-out sessions, haven’t you, Gregor? You’ve run your fingers through a girl’s hair?”
I had definitely made out before. Vanya Reechles in eighth grade. We would meet every day for a month in the playground behind school. She very adamantly wanted to make out with me, and I very adamantly wanted to make out with a girl, so the arrangement worked out. But our kisses, on reflection, were of the chaste variety, with my hands, useless and inexperienced, jammed into my pockets every time. Vanya Reechles had beautiful, long black hair. In our monthlong courtship I had never once touched it.
“No,” I admitted. “Not really.”
“Well, maybe we should start with how to be with girls, before I school you in the art of attracting them,” Ashley said.
“How to be with girls” sounded incredibly vague and incredibly like exactly what I needed to learn. It sounded like an impossibility and yet like it might solve every single problem I’ve ever had and would ever encounter. I wasn’t sure how Ashley planned to teach me that, but she moved even closer to me and I wasn’t about to stop her.
“Lesson the first: how to be close to a girl.” Ashley was so close that she was practically on top of me. “When people get this close, one of two things happen. One person totally jumps all over the other, or one person totally clams up, closes off, and gets really awkward.”
I guess I knew which category I fell into. “I’m not totally awkward.”
“You’re sweating.” Her fingertips were suddenly on my temple. I flinched involuntarily.
/> “It’s hot out.”
“Your heart is beating really fast.”
“How do you know?”
“I can hear it from here.”
She couldn’t possibly, but she took the hand that was at my temple and brought it down to my hand, her fingers slipping over my knuckles. “Feel for yourself,” she said. She brought up my hand with her own and pressed it against my chest. My T-shirt was on the verge of damp, and my heart was indeed clattering against my chest cavity. Of course she could hear it. I wouldn’t be surprised if all of the creatures in the woods were skittering away from us, thinking there was an imminent earthquake where I sat.
“Relax,” Ashley said.
“I am,” I lied.
“You can’t even look me in the eye.”
So I looked her in the eye. She was so close. Just a few inches from me. It was a weird thought, but it dawned on me that she had “close-up” eyes. The eyes of an actress. She looked the way girls in movies looked when the camera zoomed in on their faces at crucial moments in the story and we were just viewers, separate but invested, locked on their gazes. I looked in her eyes, feeling invested but not so separate. I was lost in them.
“You’re fine, Gregor. You’re a great guy, and you happen to be really cute too.”
“You think I’m cute?” I’d always had doubts about this. My mother always told me I was handsome, but she also told that to Anton, who definitely wasn’t. Objectively, I had a pretty symmetrical face. Everything was in proportion, though I wasn’t sure if that really amounted to anything.
“You’re very cute, Gregor.” Ashley probably thought everyone was cute, but I chose to believe her, and my heart slowed down.
“Try putting your hand in my hair.”
Her word was law. I reached up behind her head to touch her hair, but she smirked and shook her head slightly.
“Not on my hair, in my hair,” she whispered. She moved my hand from its resting place over her shoulder and placed it on the side of her neck, so that my palm touched skin but my fingers were deep in the strands of her hair. As tangled as her hair always looked from the outside, inside it was smooth, thick. Lanes of locks between my knuckles. I never knew long hair could feel like this.
I didn’t even realize her hand was over my heart again. “A nice, steady rhythm,” she said. “Only a little quick.”
I didn’t stop looking in her eyes, and only briefly lingered on the quickly fading moment of Ashley Woodstone saying the word “rhythm,” which should have been a totally innocuous word but only made me want to move even closer to her.
Looking at her, with my fingers in her hair and the side of my hand touching her warm skin, I realized this was just the cusp. This was just a peek at something I’d never been privy to before. I was standing at a door and behind it, there was truth, and I’d only just turned the key. There was so much about girls that I didn’t know.
“Are you comfortable?” Ashley asked, voice low, not much more than a breath.
“Yes,” I said. And the thought hit me like a bolt of lightning. I could kiss her if I wanted. I was close enough. Even the sky wanted me to. It clapped for me. And then it broke open and beat us with rain.
Ashley yelped, but not without delight. “It’s a rainstorm!” She leapt to her feet, but I stayed frozen to the ground, rusting. Ashley grabbed my hand and pulled. “Let’s go!”
I chased her through the forest, winding through pitch-black trees and bullets of water. The woods really were her home, and I had the distinct feeling that even blindfolded she’d be able to lead the way. We burst through the door of her yurt and didn’t stop until we fell onto the bed. We caught our breath in the thick silence of the room. Ashley sat up. “You’re soaked.”
I sat up too. “So are you.”
She laughed and swept her hand over her arm, past her elbow. “I love the rain. It makes the world smell like earth.”
Of course she would love the rain. Truth is, I was kind of loving it too at the moment. The first time we met up in the clearing, I asked Ashley why she lived in a yurt instead of in one of the cabins with the other girls. She’d said that it was because she was a late addition to the camp and there wasn’t any more room in the cabins. She’d wanted to join the other girls, but Jimmy had this yurt made especially for her. She couldn’t turn it down. It was good that she had a place to herself. “So are we going to continue the lesson?”
Lightning exploded outside. The yurt lit up in a flash, revealing Pika, standing in a shadowy corner of the kitchen. I nearly jumped out of my skin at the sight of him: arms crossed and scary pale in the sudden blaze of light. “A place to herself” wasn’t exactly correct. The room went dark again.
“I think we pretty much covered it,” Ashley said. “You don’t want to be the guy that jumps on top of a girl too quick.” The lightning hit again and Pika appeared again, inches closer now, looking way too hungry. “But you don’t want to be closed off either,” Ashley went on. “Just be comfortable. When you’re comfortable, the girl you’re with will be too. And then you can both figure things out together.”
The lightning again. Pika again. He was right behind Ashley, leaning over her and staring directly down at me. His teeth were bared. This time, a loud clap of thunder accompanied his countenance.
“Comfortable,” I said. “Got it.”
At calisthenics in the morning, Jimmy told us all to expect “something special.” And then he said a “certain someone” might be paying a “surprise visit.”
You haven’t seen someone stretch until you see them doing it while using air quotes.
Jimmy’s announcement was pretty big. So obviously, I knew not to expect anything. But the rest of the camp was abuzz about Robert Drill coming. Whispers bounced around between activities. I, of course, didn’t believe any of them. But they got louder as the day wore on, and by the time I was finished with Mindful Basketball the rumors had materialized into fact: Robert Drill was here, on the premises, taking a tour of the grounds.
No one knew where exactly. He could’ve been spending the morning taking care of business matters, holed up in the counselors’ office, or taking a tour of the cafeteria. But a little after lunch a whole group of campers swarmed together near the main entrance. They moved slowly and in unison as if they were in a hive, all reverently surrounding someone in their center. It had to be Drill.
I set out toward them, quickening my step the closer I got. I tried to wedge my way past some people, though my height was definitely an advantage. But I couldn’t see anyone. And then someone stepped aside and there he was: Robert Drill.
Well, his face.
On a screen.
Mounted on a telepresence robot. Nothing more than a tablet on a stick, which in turn was on a couple of wheels, reaching the height of a middle schooler and rolling itself over the bumpy terrain of the main dirt road.
“And over there are the girls’ cabins,” Rights said. He was jockeying for space in front of the screen, effectively cutting off any view as he played tour guide.
“Wonderful,” Drill said.
I stepped back, leaving my place in the hive, and watched as the rest of the campers followed a telepresence robot as if it were the real thing. Jimmy stood beside me, watching the hive of campers too, but with a much more satisfied expression on his face. “He made it, Children. He finally came.”
“I’m pretty sure he’s still in his office.”
“He’s taking time out of his lunch to do this,” Jimmy said. “Do you know how many times I’ve asked to see him for lunch and he’s said he’s too busy? This is huge for me. I mean, for this camp.”
I’d known this for a while, but now it was finally starting to hit me.
This camp was fucking weird.
And I’m not just saying that because Robert Drill deigned to visit in the form of a telepresence robot. Or because out of the corner of my eye I spied a trio of girls sharing what appeared to be a snack bag of dirt. Everything about here was weird
. The people. The camp itself. The way it made me look at things. After lunch we had a brand-new activity, and it proved my point. It was run by Jimmy, and he called it The Art of the Handshake.
“I bet you guys never thought about having to fund-raise or network or meet important people,” Jimmy said, addressing us from the head of the clubhouse. More than a few murmurs around the room suggested that that was exactly what people had already been doing for their campaigns. “But guess what!” Jimmy continued. “That’s an important part of activism! And the way you shake someone’s hand will say a lot about you.”
He paired us all off and now weaved through us as he spoke. “You’re going to want to be firm, but not too firm,” Jimmy said.
I was paired with Legalize Marijuana, who was currently using the entirety of his palm to wipe snot from his nose.
“You want to look them in the eye with a fair amount of confidence, but don’t be intimidating,” Jimmy said. “So go on and try it with your partner. All different styles and speeds are recommended until you find what feels right to you.”
“That’s what she said!” someone called out from the group, his comment followed by titters and snorts from everyone.
“Come on, guys, I thought you were the most mature teenagers in America,” Jimmy said.
I could see Rights shaking Diabetes’s hand so fiercely that his whole body shook. Next to them, Poe and Win had bypassed shaking hands altogether to play an impromptu game of what looked like Miss Mary Mack. In front of me, Legalize Marijuana looked annoyed at having to stop wiping his nose so that he could present me with his hand.
I spotted Ashley. She was shaking hands with Pika. Why was she always paired off with her bodyguard? I wondered if it was because she wanted to or because her presence at any camp activity caused the campers’ numbers to be uneven.
I left Legalize Marijuana standing with his hand sticking out and made my way to Ashley.
“Can I cut in?” I said to Pika. As was her custom, Ashley’s eyes lit up. And as was Pika’s custom, his eyes tried to kill me with the force of their stare. He stepped aside, though, and I took his place.
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