by Molly Booth
The top half was pulled back so you could see my face, and the bottom curls fell down around my shoulders. It looked really cute, but I couldn’t enjoy it, because Donald? Donald?! It didn’t make sense. He was like an older brother.
“So…do you like him?”
I turned to Margo. “No, of course not.”
“Didn’t think so.” She sounded a little relieved. “So what are you going to do?”
“What do you mean?” I said, not comprehending most of this.
“Oh, that’s the other part.” Bee grimaced. “The rumor is he’s going to tell you he likes you tonight—”
“Tell me!” My stomach plummeted. What would I say to him? Donald, who I’d known forever? Maybe I could tell him I was gay. But that was a lie—I was bisexual or pansexual. I didn’t know for sure, but I knew I didn’t just like one gender. I could tell him I had a boyfriend—but that was a lie too. And if Claudia heard that…
“I don’t think I should go.” I felt tears well up in my eyes.
“No, you have to go!” Margo turned away from Bee’s cheeks.
“Hana.” Bee waved Margo’s brush away and put her hands on my shoulders, looked straight into my eyes. I relaxed a little. “If Donald likes you, and you don’t like him, it’s okay to tell him that.”
“But—”
“I know he’s our friend, and he’s great, but you can’t control how you feel,” Bee continued.
“Totally.” Margo came over and slipped an arm around my waist. “And I’m pretty sure you feel things for a certain salt-and-pepper babe.”
“And wasn’t tonight kind of, like”—Bee smiled at me gently—“kind of a big night?”
I smiled, my ears burning a little. “Well, yeah…maybe. But what if Claudia knows that Donald likes me?”
“It doesn’t matter how many people like you, it matters who you like back.” Bee hugged me.
“Real.” Margo nodded.
Bee pulled back. “So if Donald confesses his love, just tell him you like someone else! We can’t let dramatic boys ruin the evening.”
“Okay.” I smiled and wiped the beginnings of tears off my lower lids. I checked my eyeliner. Waterproof—I was good.
“Besides…” Margo had slipped back in front of the mirror and was applying bright red-orange lipstick. “I could probably be persuaded to comfort Donald.”
Bee rolled her eyes. “Could you really?”
We all laughed.
We finished up like everything was normal. I took some deep breaths while Margo fussed over Bee, finishing up dusting some shimmery powder on her cheeks.
As we walked down to the dock, I tried to calm down and push away thoughts of what might or might not happen. You can’t control or predict what comes next, my therapist’s voice reminded me. Just take it moment to moment.
THAT NIGHT, AS the sun disappeared into the tree line, we fitted on our headlamps and headed down to the docks. As we got closer to the waterfront, something buzzed in the air. Probably Claudia’s nerves. She and Donald had been scheming all through dinner. I wished there was some kind of anti-drama product I could use—like bug spray, but for feelings.
With some help from the others, we pulled a handful of paddleboats off the rusty racks. Kayaks were faster, but much harder to steer drunk, and Donald was counting on everyone being hammered for the trip back.
We sat on the dock, dangling our feet over the water, waiting for Bee and co. Everyone but Claudia, who paced up and down, her footsteps rattling and clanging against the metal slats. I checked my watch. Who’s late now, Bee?
Claudia’s pacing made me antsy. I got up and pulled aside Dave, Doug, and Jen, our new first-year counselors, to talk about the one beer per hour rule. I’d now been to enough unmonitored drinking parties (one) at college to understand why it was important.
“And drink water. We don’t want any of you throwing up,” I explained. “Throwing up from drinking is not actually cool. It just makes you smell bad and feel like shit the next day.”
They nodded at me, eyes wide. This was their first party, their first summer as real counselors. The CITs weren’t here yet, but even if they had been, they wouldn’t have been included. “Babies” were never invited out after sunset.
Finally, just as Claudia looked like she might explode, Bee, Hana, and Margo arrived, carrying backpacks I hoped held marshmallows and chocolate. I saw Claudia freeze. I guessed not out of excitement at the possibility of s’mores.
“What’re you all standing around for?” Bee called out.
“We got the boats, Your Highness!” Donald called back.
They leaped out onto the dock. Margo and Hana were all dressed up, but Bee just looked…Beeish. I couldn’t look anywhere else, so I attempted to look everywhere else. Water. Trees. Boats. Donald. Awkward eye contact with Doug. Whoops.
“You’re late!” Donald announced. “Let’s go! I wanna get drunk!” The younger counselors giggled nervously.
“Not drunk.” Bee walked up and pointed her flashlight at him. “Just buzzed.” Donald batted the light away.
“Listen, Bee,” he said, climbing into a paddleboat and motioning for me and Claudia to follow. “You need to learn how to drink, for school. Don’t worry—Ben and I can teach you.”
Claudia hopped in the front next to Donald. I paused. Logically, I knew these paddleboats were sturdy. I’d ridden in them every year and supervised other kids riding in them every year, for seven years. Nobody’d ever drowned off a paddleboat. But God, in the dark, gently bobbing in the water, they just looked straight out of a nautical horror movie. The “trustworthy” boat would randomly spring a leak, and a shark would be waiting, right under the surface, in five feet of water—
“Thanks for the offer, Donald.” I woke up to Bee’s voice, sounding annoyed, standing right next to me. “But I think I know how to drink.”
She’d crossed her arms. Donald grinned at her, which made me want to punch him.
“Not like us,” he insisted, looking at me. “We’re gonna get hammered, like a real party. Right, Ben?”
Bee raised her eyebrows at Donald, then me. I looked away quickly, before I turned to stone.
“Um, yeah,” I agreed. “Long week. Let’s get hammered.”
Bee looked almost disgusted as she strode over to her own boat. Hana followed, but Margo stopped to whisper, “Hey, teach me to drink?” She winked.
“You got it!” Donald whooped. “Let’s get fucked up!” She laughed and jumped in the back of Bee’s boat. Almost everyone was seated now. I needed to get in before they noticed I wasn’t and started in on me. With as little a hop as humanly possible, I lowered myself into the back seat. The boat wobbled slightly to the right, but hardly made a splash. My sneakers planted on the slimy plastic. Success.
Once settled, I glanced around—it seemed like nobody’d seen my awkward entrance. But then I felt someone staring: of course, directly across, Bee sat in the front seat of her boat, facing me, eyes laughing. She’d seen the whole thing.
Just as I saw her, something bumped our boat, and I almost screamed.
“Where’s your yacht, bro?” John asked from the boat that had just grazed ours.
“Hey, bro.” Donald whipped around. “Fuck off.”
“Can we get that again for a sound bite, Senator?” Bobby quipped, as they moved along past us. They cracked up at their own hilariousness.
“Bastard,” Donald muttered.
Bee’s right, I thought. All we need now is this fun bunch to get drunk.
“Whatever, let’s go,” Donald decided, and we sped off into the moonlight. And by that I mean we slowly paddled away from the dock like a school of geriatric turtles.
I watched the silhouette of Bee’s faux-hawk against the navy-blue sky, just starting to sparkle with stars.
Maybe we just needed more moonlight. Maybe that could fix everything.
IT TOOK TWENTY minutes to get the fire going, but in the meantime, we got a show: Ben and Bee attempting
to start it together.
“Shouldn’t we be building a pyramid?”
“Are you seriously using a lighter?”
“That kindling is green.”
“Back up. Do you want to burn your eyebrows off?”
I thought about helping, but their arguing actually produced a well-constructed campfire.
The island is small, maybe less than half a mile across, and in the middle, there’s a fire pit with log benches circled around. I sat across from Hana, too nervous to attempt sitting next to her. The fire popped, the stars came out, and Donald passed out beers like it was Halloween and we were trick-or-treaters. Bee let him, and then situated the beer cooler in the clumps of bayberry bushes behind us.
“Stop being paranoid!” Donald laughed. “The police are not going to show up on the tiniest island ever in northern Maine and card us.”
That got a laugh from the group. But I kind of understood it. Bee was the camp directors’ kid. She needed to set a good example. Of hiding the alcohol.
Once everyone was settled in around the fire, and the bug spray had been passed around, Bee opened a beer for herself and raised up the can.
“To Camp Dogberry, the most beautiful place in the world.”
A murmur of agreement.
“To old friends returning, new CITs coming—”
“Our fresh crop of servants,” Donald interjected, to a round of cheers.
“And our beloved campers, soon to be here, to make us want to give up and torch the place.”
Another cheer.
“And to summer.” She paused, to look up at the sky. Then she grinned at Hana. “This summer.”
A toast of cans smacking into each other.
Bee was right. We only had one summer. Who knew what would happen after that?
Across the fire, I watched Margo whisper something to Hana. She smiled in reply. Hana didn’t laugh a lot, not unless she was really comfortable. She mostly smiled. Tonight, her dark curly hair was pulled back from her face and hovered loosely on her shoulders. Her skin was already starting to tan from hours on the water this week. I wanted to run my fingers down her arms, then catch her hands at the bottom.
“Hey, Claudia, can you pass me a beer?”
I looked up. John. I grabbed him a beer from the cooler and another for myself. I opened mine and drank half in one go. I needed to calm down.
Hana, so pretty. So perfect. Calm down.
“Claudia?”
I looked up again. John was still there.
“Did you get your beer?” I asked, checking around me. “I gave it to you, right?” Who knows what I’d done with it.
“Yeah.” He stared at me for a second and then walked away. Weird. Bee passed around a bag of marshmallows, and I found a stick and roasted one, on autopilot.
Hana sat across the fire, carefully rotating two at a time. I wanted to be sitting over there, talking to her. I felt like it was an attainable goal, but how to get from here to there?
Donald. Wasn’t he supposed to be helping me? He was talking to Ben. I reached forward and tapped his shoulder. His shoulder was so much bigger than mine. I needed to work out more.
Donald turned away from his conversation with Ben to look at me.
“Yeah?” he asked.
I widened my eyes. Bat signal.
But he just raised his eyebrows back, like he somehow did not recognize the bat signal. Shit.
“No, umm . . can you umm…go talk to…”
Expressionless, he watched me fumble. Maybe he’d forgotten about the entire plan. God, it was so annoying to bring it up again. Stop it, Claudia. Then Donald suddenly cracked a smile and shoved my arm.
“I’m just kidding, Claud, I got this.”
He hopped up and sauntered his way around the fire pit, like I never could. I am rarely, rarely attracted to dudes, but Donald was so good looking it hurt. Dark, smooth skin; Afro; and a loud, infectious smile. Teased you all the time. He was unstoppable. And it wasn’t just me—he had that effect on the younger counselors, CITs, even the campers. They swooned over him.
John might be like that too, I thought, if Donald wasn’t around. He was kind of good looking, too—smooth, tan skin, buzzed hair on the sides, black curls on top. But he had none of Donald’s confidence.
As I watched Donald approach Hana, I felt my legs start to shake, knees almost knocking.
What if, on this moonlit walk, Donald charmed the hell out of Hana? He did say Hana was really cute, and he had offered to talk to her…and how could you not like a guy like Donald?
But I noticed Hana’s smile faltered, just a little, when Donald offered her a hand. She glanced at Margo, who glanced at Bee, who nodded at Hana, encouragingly. What the hell? Were they all secretly shipping them, and nobody’d told me?
Wait, didn’t I want Donald to talk to Hana?
Donald laughed, made some joke, and Hana looked a little less terrified. As they disappeared from the firelight onto the trail, he slung an arm around her, in a friendly kind of way, like he’d done to me or Ben or Bee a thousand times.
Okay. Calm down. It’s Donald we’re talking about. He’s got your back.
I took a breath, switched gears. A walk-around couldn’t take more than fifteen minutes. After a year of waiting to see her again, of hanging suspended between text messages, I could make it fifteen minutes. No problem.
The group had dispersed some. I noticed Connie and John wandering onto the trail. Maybe they were an item too. And a few younger counselors were missing. Ooo freakin’ la la.
“Claudia, that’s your third beer in, like, twenty minutes.”
I looked up. Ben stood over me. I hadn’t even realized I’d opened another one, but there it was, half-finished in my hands.
“Slow down, yeah?” He sat down next to me. “And if you don’t stop staring longingly at the trail, I will vote you off the island.”
“You don’t have the power to do that,” I countered. “And I’m taller than you now.” I’d grown a couple inches, and now I totally looked down at shorty Ben.
He snorted. “Just wait till Capture the Flag. We’ll kick your asses.”
“Not this year,” I vowed.
It must’ve come out really serious, because Ben cracked up, which admittedly made me smile and forget about Donald/Hana for half a second. But then it came back—I glanced at the trail entrance again, wondering where they were on it. Ben started talking about something, school maybe, but I couldn’t really hear him. I jiggled my leg. Then the other leg.
“I’m gonna pee.” I stood up. I needed to move, and conveniently, when Ben had pointed out I’d had three beers, I’d suddenly felt them in my bladder.
Ben sighed and went to go sit with Rachel and Doug. He was friendlier to the younger counselors than the rest of us were. Guess it was all those little sisters he carted around. I was pretty grateful to be an only kid, even if that made the gay thing more intense with my parents. Sometimes I found myself wishing I had a nuisance older brother, the kind that always got detention.
I wandered onto the trail, and then off it a ways. As I went to unzip my shorts, someone’s voice scared the crap out of me.
“Whoa, whoa!”
I jumped—to my right, in a bayberry bush, Bobby.
“Dude!” I yelled.
“Sorry!” he yelled back. “I was looking for somewhere to take a leak.”
“I’m leaking here,” I protested. Whelp. I was definitely drunk.
Bobby laughed. “Right, sorry, man.” He waved his hands in apology and started to walk toward the trail, still talking. “With all the hookups, it’s hard to find a spare tree.”
“Sure.” Wait. I turned. “Who’s hooking up?”
“Dave and Jen.”
Oh. First years. Who cared about them?
“And Doug and Ellie…and Donald and Hana…”
I immediately didn’t have to pee anymore. Or maybe I’d peed myself. I wasn’t sure. Everything had gone numb.
“Dona
ld and Hana?”
Bobby paused at the edge of the trail and yawned. “Yeah. I heard him asking her out. And then—you know where that big rock is on the other shore? I saw them over there.”
He didn’t say it, but we both knew that was the kissing rock. What the hell was happening? My face felt hot as a sunburn. Something boiled in my stomach, like I might puke.
“Cool,” I heard myself say. And then I pushed past, our shoulders thunking into each other.
“Hey, are you—”
I ignored him. I rifled through my options: I had to get back to the campfire. Act normal, grab another drink if Ben would let me. I couldn’t paddle back and disappear. People would notice.
Don’t explode, Claudia, don’t explode.
Donald and Hana, his fingers in her hair, his lips on her lips—
I stopped on the trail. I couldn’t go back there. I was still too hot. My insides churned. I reached up to a smaller, low-lying branch on the nearest tree, and tore it off, stepped one leg up onto a stump, and split the branch over my knee. It hurt, but I felt a little better. I wrapped my arms around my stomach, trying to hold myself in place.
The ocean roared to my left. Hana was the water, and I’d been pulled under. As I was sinking, she’d made me forget the rest of the world.
And now I’d never be hers.
Well, who wanted that, anyway? I could barely remember the Claudia who did.
“Claudia?”
It was just Ben, with his dopey, concerned face. He had a beer in his hand. I wanted another beer.
“Are you okay?” he asked, walking up.
When I didn’t respond right away, he poked my foot with his.
“Did something happen? You look like crap.”
“Thanks,” I bit out. A shiver went through me. It was cold. I’d worn a ribbed tank top because I thought Hana would like how it looked.
Ben didn’t say anything, but he shuffled off his sweatshirt and held it out. I took it, fought it on. He sipped his beer, waiting.
“Donald’s kissing Hana,” I whispered finally.
“Wait, that’s what this is about?”
I hated the laughter in his voice.
“It’s true.” Hot tears blurred my vision. “They’re down on the kissing rock.”