by Elliot Joyce
Wren held the skewer out to him. “Want it?”
“Wait, are you for real?” Kyle asked, brightening, and Wren nodded. “Hell yeah!” Kyle took it and didn’t even bother to make a s’more, just started eating marshmallow crisp off of the stick. “I knew there was a reason I liked you.”
Felipe began walking over, and Wren waved before thinking shit, maybe that’s too much. But Felipe waved back, a small smile on his face. His marshmallows were burned to a crisp, and Wren wondered if he had just given up after what happened with the last two.
Travis made a move to get up and let Felipe sit, but Felipe shook his head.
“I feel kind of sick,” he mumbled. “Kyle, do you want—”
“Holy shit, I must be dreaming,” Kyle said as he took the offered marshmallows. Indeed, he looked like a five-year-old who had just been told his birthday, Christmas, and Halloween would all happen in the same week.
Travis had a weird look on his face, so Wren reached over and patted him on the arm. “It’s okay, Travis. We’ll just make Kyle run a few laps before sleeping tonight.”
“I’m, like, definitely not going to sleep tonight,” Kyle said with a huge grin. He jumped up and, waving around his two skewers like they were swords, ran off shouting something about being king of the world.
“Who gave Kyle more marshmallows?” Percy’s voice rang out.
Wren and Felipe both exchanged guilty looks, and Wren was relieved to see a warm smile on Felipe’s face. Things are okay. Maybe he doesn’t know.
“Seriously, Kyle, get back here!” Percy called, then stood and chased after him.
Kyle shouted and kept running, heading into the growing darkness.
“You know, if he gets lost, it’s on you two,” Travis said.
“He’ll be fine. How hard can it be to find a whole group of Boy Scouts?” Wren asked, motioning around to the large campsite the troop had settled into.
About an hour and a half later, he was eating his words as everyone got ready for bed. Everyone, that was, except for Kyle.
“Has anyone seen him?” Wren asked. “Can we call him?”
“He isn’t answering his phone, but he might not have signal,” Nico said, shaking his head slightly. He glanced back as Percy marched around the campsite, talking to one of the dads who had accompanied the troop. “I think they’re planning to send out a search party soon. It’s pretty dark.”
Wren swore, and Chris placed a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “It’ll be fine. Something always goes wrong on these trips, but it’s not really that dangerous here unless you do something stupid.”
There was a moment of silence. No one would accuse Kyle of being stupid, but he was definitely reckless and it was hard to see without a light. How long could someone use their phone’s flashlight before the battery gave out? Did Kyle even keep his phone charged? Hell, did Kyle even have his phone?
“I’m sure he’ll be fine,” Wren said, not really believing it. His mind was racing with all the possibilities. Kyle could get lost. He could fall off a cliff. He could break his leg and get bitten by a snake, or he could get stung by a scorpion and find out he was allergic. He could run into a bear, even though they tended to stay away from the area, or he could find his way to the lake and drown himself.
“Kyle’s not stupid. He went through wilderness survival. I’m not worried. Asshole’s just worrying us for fun,” Travis grumbled, though he didn’t look like he wasn’t worried.
Wren swallowed and looked at him, eyes wide. “You—you know that—”
“It’s not your fault he acts like this. Hopefully he starts to think a little more about his actions. He’s sixteen—he’s not a kid,” Travis said. He shrugged and started off toward the adults. “I’m gonna ask them what the plan is, see if we can help. I’ll let you know what they say.”
“If we can’t do anything, I’m going to bed,” Chris said, and Nico echoed his sentiment.
Wren felt a moment of anger before realizing it was stupid and petty. There wasn’t anything they could do to help find Kyle, and it wasn’t like it was their fault Kyle had run off either.
“Yeah, whatever,” Wren mumbled, not really in a good enough mood to pretend to be nice to Chris. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Good night, bro.” Chris gave him a sudden hug. “It’s gonna be fine. Kyle’s just a stubborn ass.” Before Wren could reply, Chris let go and nodded at Nico. “Come on. Let’s go make sure nothing crawled into our tent.” The two of them left, and Wren realized he was standing there alone.
He glanced around, trying to find Felipe or maybe even Percy to attempt to get information out of him. Percy still didn’t really like Wren, though it was hard to tell if that was because he was trans or because he was friends with Kyle. At the very least, he hadn’t given Wren any shit for coming on the trip, and Wren was inclined to think of himself as an honorary Boy Scout at this point.
No one was at all surprised that he had come camping, at least.
“Hey, have you seen Felipe?” someone asked. Brandon? Brayden? Wren knew he should be better at names and faces, considering, but he was drawing a blank. “He went to the bathroom, but he hasn’t come back.”
Wren realized what the guy was saying and felt a jolt of fear. “I don’t know. I’ve been talking to my brother and Nico and Travis.”
“Huh. He wanted to borrow a book from me, and I figured he’d want to start on it tonight. Tell him to come find me unless I’m sleeping, in which case he can fucking wait until tomorrow.” The guy walked off, completely unaware of the sudden rise in Wren’s heart rate.
Not Felipe too. Wren started walking around, squinting in the darkness. It was hard to tell who anyone was with the sun long gone.
Suddenly there was a commotion over by the water pump, and Wren ran over. He felt his entire body relax as Kyle and Felipe emerged from the gloom, no worse for wear. Kyle looked a bit more tired than usual and Felipe had a serious expression, but Wren figured it made sense. Everyone had been frantic, thinking Kyle had just up and disappeared.
As Kyle was spirited away by the adults for a talking-to, Wren went over to Felipe and quickly gave him a once-over.
“Dude, you fucking disappeared on me,” Wren said.
“What?” Felipe wasn’t meeting his eyes—he kept glancing away. Wren felt a rush of anger.
“Some guy was looking for you about a book and couldn’t find you, and I freaked out. Fucking hell, I thought camping was supposed to be relaxing. So far I’ve been tackled, thrown into a tree, ate dirt like three hundred fucking times, and almost had a heart attack because my best friend can’t be fucked to tell someone when he’s going off to find some other asshole who ran off. Why in the fucking hell did I agree to this?” Wren asked, his words all spewing out at once.
Felipe blinked, finally focusing on Wren. “I’m your best friend?” he asked, voice uncharacteristically soft.
Wren swallowed and slugged Felipe, but his heart wasn’t really in it. “Well, yeah. I don’t really have a lot of people clamoring for that spot.” He forced a scowl and crossed his arms. “But okay, are you gonna tell me why the fuck I almost died right now?”
“I went to find Kyle,” Felipe said. For some reason Wren felt like he was lying, but he couldn’t tell why he thought so. Just something in his gut told him that. He shook it aside. He could trust Felipe. Things were good between them, as far as Wren could tell.
Without warning, Felipe stepped forward and pulled Wren into a hug. It wasn’t bone-crushing like Travis’s, and he wasn’t vibrating out of his skin like Kyle usually was, but he was warm and sweaty and still had a thin layer of dirt over himself.
Wren never wanted to let go.
Felipe pulled back, and his warm smile and shining eyes should have made Wren’s heart soar, but instead it just ached. He looked away and swallowed, reminding himself that this was fine. There was no point in worrying about it. This was a dead end and he knew it.
He just wished that it d
idn’t have to be like that.
“SO HOW are your college apps going?” Travis asked Felipe in a way that should have sent alarm bells ringing in his head.
Instead, Felipe just shrugged, kicking his legs a little as they dangled off the pier. A few of the other Scouts were in paddle boats, but the majority of them were swimming in the lake. The dads were sharing drinks on the shore, though Felipe knew they’d keep the number down since they were watching a few dozen teenaged boys run around.
Kyle, thanks to his antics the other day, was restricted to the shore as well, and he was pouting even as he heckled the others for their technique or whatever else caught his eyes.
He’s having fun, Felipe thought, seeing his frown flicker up into a smile.
“Are you still applying to Stanford?” Travis was looking at Stanford too, but he was more interested in Berkeley for its law program… and the fact that he could play football there.
“Yeah. I won’t get in, but my abuela thinks it’s a good fit and so do my sisters. But honestly I think Manny’s excited for me to be at the same school as him.” Felipe had no illusions about his actual ability to get into a good school like Stanford, but U of A wasn’t bad either. And he wouldn’t mind being with Manny, even if it would only be for a year before Manny graduated.
“You have a better chance than you think,” Travis said. “You’re way smarter than half the guys here.”
Felipe shrugged, not really having an answer for that. He wasn’t smarter; he just finished his homework and didn’t dick around in class. That didn’t mean he was special or anything. Hell, he was a nerd. He liked to play video games and read big books that had words like orc and dragon in them. He wasn’t sure what a place like Stanford would see in him.
He wasn’t sure why Travis was bringing it up now of all times, but he had long since given up trying to understand how Travis thought.
“If you go out of state, you think you’re gonna stay in touch with us?” Travis was just full of questions.
Felipe nodded, splashing him with some water. “Of course, asshole. You aren’t going to get rid of me that easily.”
“I was thinking more about Wren.” Travis said it casually, but Felipe could feel his eyes focus on him like a hawk.
Felipe hoped his ears weren’t burning, and he scratched the back of his neck, embarrassed just thinking about it. The other night had… well, it had been a long time coming, if Kyle had anything to say about it. Kyle had taken probably too much pleasure in knowing he was right, but Felipe was just hoping he’d keep everything to himself. Felipe wasn’t ready for a lot of people to know. He wouldn’t have even told Kyle, except he’d almost given himself a panic attack and had to let someone know.
And, for all his faults, Kyle would never let anyone know another person’s secret. That was one thing that he wouldn’t mess up, and Felipe valued that more than Kyle’s sense of humor or his invincible attitude toward the world.
“What about Wren?” Felipe asked, wondering if his casual tone was too forced.
Travis gave him a look. That was definitely not forced.
“Listen, we’re just good friends. He lets me talk about my nerdy shit, and I dunno, I guess he just likes having me around for some reason?” Felipe looked over to where Wren was sitting in one of the paddle boats, currently trying to race Chris to some invisible point. Wren hadn’t meant to go swimming, but his hair was soaking wet from the time Scott pushed him into the lake.
God, he’s handsome.
How many Hail Marys is that?
“You like him.” Travis’s tone left no room for argument. That didn’t mean Felipe wasn’t going to try.
“Yeah, as a friend.”
“You and Kyle talked about him, didn’t you?” Travis, for all his bumbling and mumbling and side-tackling, was a much more intelligent person than most people gave him credit for. Felipe had no doubt that, if he wanted, Travis could outthink everyone in the troop, including the adults and Percy.
He just didn’t.
“It’s okay to like guys, you know.”
“I know that,” Felipe snapped. He sighed. “Sorry. I just… I’m not having some kind of crisis or anything, so we don’t need to talk about this.”
“Right.” Travis spoke in a perfect deadpan, his eyes conveying how unimpressed he was with Felipe’s behavior. “You’re a Mexican-American Catholic who goes to Mass every Sunday who just figured out that he has a crush on a transgender Native American guy. No crisis.”
“He’s Navajo,” Felipe added. He groaned and buried his head in his hands. “See, I know it’s okay! I know that guys don’t go to hell for liking other guys or whatever. But my abuela is gonna kill me.” He let out the world’s heaviest sigh. “This is stupid. I shouldn’t care so much. If he was a girl, I’d just ask him out.”
“But he’s not.”
“He’s not! He definitely is not.” Felipe managed a weak smile. “Don’t worry, Kyle already gave me that talk.”
“I guessed.” Travis shifted, kicking at the water. While Felipe could only get it up to his ankles, half of Travis’s shin was submerged, and he frightened a few small fish with his feet. “So what are you going to do?”
“Nothing. God, I’m not fucking stupid,” Felipe said, and Travis gave him a look. He was doing a lot of that recently. “What? We’re seniors in high school. Once we go to college, we’ll never see each other again.”
“What if you both stay in Arizona? You seem to think you aren’t going anywhere else,” Travis pointed out.
Felipe huffed, not responding for a moment because he wasn’t wrong. Besides U of A, Felipe was applying to Stanford, because he had a fee waiver, and to a few other smaller schools, but they were only to get his sisters off of his back. Felipe doubted he’d get in, and even if he did, U of A was going to be the only school he could afford.
“It doesn’t matter. This is all assuming he likes me back, which he doesn’t,” Felipe insisted.
There was a moment of silence, and then Travis just sighed. He shook his head and muttered something that Felipe didn’t catch.
“What did you say?”
“I said that you’re a fucking idiot.” Travis stood and stepped back. “Also, you should think long and hard about why you don’t want to ask him out. Is it for your pride, or are you scared?” With that, he ran for the end of the pier and jumped off. The ensuing wave hit Felipe, soaking him from the chest down.
Wren paddled by, having abandoned his race, and grinned at him. “Looks like you just went swimming,” he called over.
“I think the lake came to me,” Felipe replied, flipping Wren off. Wren laughed, and Felipe marveled at how great his smile was. Unlike Felipe, who had a big, ugly gap in his teeth, Wren’s were perfectly straight and clearly well taken care of. Felipe couldn’t even remember the last time he’d gone to the dentist. “Are you looking for someone else to paddle with?” Felipe asked, gesturing at the empty seat next to Wren.
“Be my guest,” Wren said. “I’m not gonna come to you, though. You can get your exercise in and swim over here.”
Felipe snorted, stood, and dove into the water. He was hardly an elegant swan, but he knew his strokes weren’t too bad. Raquel and Destiny had taken a kind of sick enjoyment out of taunting him when he couldn’t catch up to them in the local pool, and Manny had constantly thrown him into the deep end. They stopped when he cried at one point about almost drowning, but it still had been an extra incentive to learn how to swim properly and not just doggy-paddle.
Still, he took his damn time swimming over since he figured he didn’t have anything else to do, and it took him an embarrassingly long time to realize that he wasn’t just going slowly, but that Wren was actively moving away from him.
“Fuck you too,” Felipe shouted as he started to tread water.
Wren laughed and put his feet up, leaning back as if he was sunbathing. His binder was visible under the tank top he had over it, and Felipe wondered if he was hot in it.
<
br /> “Come on, I’m not even going that fast!” Wren waved his arms. “Hurry up and join me.”
“It’d be my pleasure!” Felipe told him, hoping his voice didn’t betray just how true that was.
DRIVING HOME, Chris wouldn’t shut up about all the cool pictures Nico had gotten. He kept going on and on about the trip, about how he had beaten Wren in a boat race and how Wren had totally cheated during capture the flag. Chris had tried showing Dad some photos, but Dad was driving and told him to wait until they were home. Of course, it was also 11:00 p.m. and they all knew Chris would become a zombie when they got into the driveway, but for now Chris was babbling on and on about everything.
“We made marshmallows too! Like, every night. Oh, and one of the kids went missing for a few hours, but we found him, so it’s okay. And we’re already planning the next trip! We wanna do it during winter break so it can be, like, a whole week. But we aren’t sure if we’re gonna do car camping or actual camping, because not everyone likes hiking but car camping is kind of boring. I really hope that we do actual camping because then we’ll go to Christopher Creek and the creek is so much fun.”
Wren didn’t think Chris took a single breath the entire trip home.
They pulled up, and as the garage door rumbled open, Chris yawned. “I’m tired. Do I have to go to school tomorrow?”
“Yes. Yes, you do,” Dad told him. “We’ll unpack later. For now just put your things in the corner. And don’t track mud inside! Your mother put out that mat for a reason.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Chris said as he unbuckled his seat belt.
It took about ten minutes to unload the car and sort everything into two piles, but then finally they were entering air-conditioning and home. Wren grinned, exhaustion deep in his bones but swimming in satisfaction. He made sure to scrape as much of the dirt and mud off his shoes before walking into the house and kicking them off in the front anyway. Chris rushed to jump into the shower before Wren could claim it, but Wren was fine taking his time.