The Summer I Wasn't Me

by Jessica Verdi

  I’m just really uncomfortable right now.

  But wait—maybe holding hands is against the rules? Maybe it’s considered inappropriate conduct or something. Maybe if Barbara saw, she would make us sit apart from each other. I turn my head to look at Barbara in the row behind us, trying to nonchalantly get her attention, but she’s sound asleep, her head tilted back and her mouth wide open.

  So I just stay like that, in Daniel’s arms, my hand getting sweaty in his, counting the seconds until the end of the movie.

  I finally get my hand back when the lights come up. Daniel is still grinning at me, but the best I can do is give him an unsure eyebrow raise. We stand on the sidewalk outside the movie theater, a bubble of weirdness surrounding us, waiting for the bus to come. I never thought I’d actually be looking forward to seeing Mr. Martin and getting back to New Horizons, but at this point, I’ll take it. I just want this night to be over.

  I rock back and forth on my heels impatiently, my arms crossed over my chest.

  “Are you cold, Lexi?” Daniel asks.

  “No,” I say a little too forcefully. “I mean…no. I’m fine.” I muster up a little smile.

  “I’m going to go run into the convenience store to see if they have the candies I like,” Barbara says to us suddenly. “Are you two okay to wait out here on your own?”

  No, I try to say with my eyes. No, please. Stay!

  But Daniel says, “Of course, we’ll be fine. Take your time,” and Barbara disappears through the store’s automatic doors.

  The second she’s out of sight, Daniel turns to me. “Lexi, I had such a wonderful time tonight,” he says shyly. He grabs both my hands, and I watch in horror as, in slow motion, he closes his eyes and leans toward me, lips puckered.

  No no no no no! It’s not exactly the word no that’s going through my head—it’s more like every fiber of my being, even the New Horizons–altered parts like the grown-out roots of my hair and my baby-pink manicure, is screaming out the essence of no. This is so wrong. I don’t want this. I will never want this.

  Daniel’s about an inch away from my face when I finally come to my senses. I yank my hands away and leap backward, putting as much distance between us as I can.

  Daniel’s eyes are huge, his body frozen in that same going-in-for-a-kiss position. “What’s wrong?”

  “You were going to kiss me!”

  “I know…I…”

  Let him down easy, I remind myself. “This isn’t a real date, Daniel. I’m sorry, but it’s just an exercise.”

  “But…” His hands start shaking and he nervously folds them under his arms. “But I thought…I thought you liked me.”

  His face is flooded with hurt, and I immediately feel like a complete jerk. I take a small step closer. “I do like you. As a friend. But that’s all.”

  He shakes his head. “No. You put your head on my shoulder that night outside the rec cabin! And you kissed me during your Father Wound exercise!”

  But after we kissed at Vinny’s party, I’d said to Zoë. I thought…maybe…you might feel the same way? About me?

  God, how did things get so turned around?

  “Oh, Daniel, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to give you the wrong idea. I kissed you—on the cheek—because you were playing the role of my father. It was all part of the exercise. And I put my head on your shoulder because I was drunk and sad and you’re my friend. That’s all it was.”

  Tears are filling his eyes, and his lower lip is beginning to quiver. He takes his glasses off and wipes the lenses on his shirt—I get the feeling he’s just doing it so he doesn’t have to look at me.

  I take another step closer to him and gently place my hand on his shoulder. I quickly check to make sure Barbara isn’t coming back yet, and then I whisper, “Daniel, do you really have those kinds of feelings for me?”

  He chokes out a sob. “I don’t know. I’m so confused.”

  “I know,” I say. “I know. Me too.” And at the risk of giving him the wrong idea yet again, I pull him into a hug.

  He cries into my shoulder, and I just stand there and hold him and let him get it all out. After a few moments, I see Barbara exiting the store from the corner of my eye. “Barbara’s coming,” I whisper, putting a safe distance between us once again.

  Daniel nods, wipes his eyes and nose on his sleeve, and manages to get a pretty good hold of himself by the time she reaches us.

  “Did you two have fun tonight?” she asks, giving us a grandma-like wink.

  “Yes,” I say, answering for both of us. “It was great. Thank you.”

  And then the bus pulls up to take us home.

  Chapter 22

  “How was your date, lovebirds?” Matthew asks at breakfast.

  Daniel just stares at his untouched eggs.

  “It was good,” I say. “The movie was terrible, but the dinner was pretty good. Right, Daniel?”

  He nods.

  “How was yours?” I ask Matthew and Carolyn.

  They grin at each other. “It was so much fun,” Carolyn says. “We went to this big arcade place. Matthew won me a little stuffed monkey.”

  “Well, if there’s one thing I know, it’s how to treat the ladies.” Matthew winks. “And this girl”—he jerks a thumb in Carolyn’s direction—“is the best Skee-Ball player I’ve ever seen in my life.”

  “What can I say? It’s a gift.”

  For the second time, I feel that irrational surge of jealousy. I want to switch places with Matthew so badly. I want to be the one who played Skee-Ball with Carolyn last night and won her a stuffed monkey and be reminiscing about it with her this morning.

  But I laugh along with them anyway.

  For the next few days, the girls focus on childcare. We have to carry around these creepy little electronic babies that cry randomly and won’t stop until you hold a key in its mouth for a certain amount of time.

  Brianna and Kaylee demonstrate how to change a diaper on a dummy, and we each take turns mastering the process. Mrs. Wykowski shows us how to use a food processor to whip up our own natural baby food. And over the course of several sessions, Barbara teaches us the basics of knitting and sewing, so we can make things like baby blankets and booties and stuff. I actually really enjoy that last part. I get permission from Brianna to go to the rec cabin and get some stuff from the arts and crafts corner to add to my booties—sequins, different colored thread for adding colorful stitching around the ankle. They actually turn out really adorable and I get a lot of compliments from the other campers. It might not be high fashion, but for now, it’s as close as I’m going to get.

  Toward the end of the week, Mr. Martin announces that we’ll be leaving the camp again, this time with our group of four.

  “We’re going to take a day-trip into the city tomorrow,” he says. “It’s a major step in the reintegration process. You will still be chaperoned, but the plan is a lot less structured than it was for date night. You will be the ones who decide where you want to go and how you want to spend your time.”

  “I vote for a gay bar,” Matthew whispers to us.

  I giggle. “Shhh!”

  “This outing will be all about experiencing the world through new eyes. Where will you go? What will you do? How will you interact with others? Remember your lessons as you make all of these choices, because the temptations out there in the real world are much, much greater than they are here. As it says in Philippians four, verse nine, ‘Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.’”

  That night, the four of us hang out in our hidden spot outside the rec cabin. Daniel flips through a Washington, DC guidebook and suggests ideas to the rest of us.

  “There are free shows on Saturday mornings at the National Theatre,” he says. “Or we could go see the butterflies at
the National Museum of Natural History.”

  “I was serious about the gay bar,” Matthew says. “They have ones that are eighteen and over. I bet they wouldn’t even ID us.”

  “Oh sure, I’m sure Kaylee would be totally cool with that,” I say.

  “There are ways to ditch a chaperone, Lexi. Haven’t you ever been on a school field trip?”

  “It’s not gonna happen, Matthew.”

  “I’ve always wanted to go to the Smithsonian,” Carolyn says as she practices her purl stitch.

  “Which one?” Daniel says, looking it up. “There’re so many.”

  “Oh. I don’t know. Isn’t there a pop culture exhibit? I heard that somewhere.” She scoots over to look at the guidebook with Daniel.

  Matthew glances at me. “Can I talk to you for a minute?” he asks and nods his head toward an area of the field several yards away.

  “About what?”

  “It will just take a minute.” He starts walking away and, curious, I follow.

  “What’s up?” I ask once we’re out of earshot of Carolyn and Daniel.

  He sits on the grass and pats the spot next to him. “Sit.”

  I do.

  “I just wanted to see how you’re doing. We never get a chance to talk.”

  I smile. “I’m doing okay. How are you doing?”

  “Oh, you know. I’m fine. Looking forward to getting the hell out of here.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So what’s going on with you and Carolyn?” There’s an eager glint in his eye.

  I sigh. “Nothing’s going on, Matthew. And you really have to stop looking at me like that.”

  “Bullshit. You’re completely smitten. And who can blame you? She’s hot.”

  I raise an eyebrow. “Mr. Kinsey Six, thinking a girl is hot? Maybe Mr. Martin has gotten to you more than you think.”

  Matthew rolls his eyes. “I might be gay, Lexi, but I still have eyes. And that girl is gorgeous. And the two of you together…that would be hotness overload.”

  My stomach twinges a little at the thought. “We’re just friends.” I tie a blade of grass into knots.

  “Why?”

  “Why?” I repeat.

  “Yeah. Why are you just friends?”

  “Why do you think?” I tick off the reasons on my fingers. “Because we’re here to learn to become straight. Because there are more important things in life than having a crush on somebody. Because she doesn’t like me like that. Because New Horizons is the last place on Earth that we could be together. Because some things just aren’t worth the risk.”

  “I disagree,” Matthew says. “If there’s anything worth any risk at all, it’s got to be love, right?”

  I shake my head. “I might have thought that once but not anymore.”

  There’s a pause as Matthew lies back on the grass, leaving me to consider what I just said.

  “You do know you’re not going to leave here straight, right?” he says after a minute.

  “I know.”

  “So why do you keep going along with all of this stuff?”

  I tell him my plan to fake being “cured.”

  He stares at me, bewildered. Then he says, “Lexi, when you first realized you were gay, like really acknowledged it on a conscious level, how did you feel?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, what did you think about the whole thing?”

  “I don’t know.” I shrug.

  “Think about it,” he pushes.

  I pick a dandelion and pluck its little yellow petals off one by one, thinking back to fourth grade, when I finally realized why I had never understood my friends’ excitement about the first boy-girl parties. Might as well tell the truth while I can. “I was terrified.”

  “How come?”

  “Because all I knew, everything I’d been taught, was that gay people were sinners. I didn’t know what would happen if people found out.” I still don’t know how the town would react, actually, if they all knew. I toss the bald dandelion stem.

  Matthew shakes his head. “That’s not what I mean. I don’t mean what did you think other people would think. I mean what did you think? Deep down. Apart from all the small-town bullshit.”

  Oh. Hmm. I push away the fear of the unknown, the fear I’ve been living with every day for eight long years, and really think about Matthew’s question. The answer kind of surprises me. “I guess I felt kind of relieved in a way.”

  Matthew smiles. “Why?”

  “Because I finally understood why my feelings never seemed to match up with my friends’. Everything finally made sense.” I lie down now too. Fluffy cotton-ball clouds drift across the sky.

  “Were you ashamed?” Matthew asks.

  “No,” I admit.

  “Were you sad?”

  “No.”

  “Embarrassed?”

  “No.”

  “Did you hate yourself?”

  “No.”

  “You were okay with it?”

  “Well…yeah.”

  Matthew turns to face me. “So what the hell, Lex? You’re already so much better off than most of the kids here. Why would you want to go backward?”

  I hesitate. “My mom…”

  “I know. It’s a shitty situation. And I get it, I really do. But Lexi, this is your life. It’s not your mom’s. You have to do what makes you happy too.”

  I don’t say anything.

  “What do you want?” Matthew asks.

  He wants me to admit that I don’t want to change. That I don’t want to live a lie. That I’m happier being me, as is, even if it means I have to move away from my hometown and never go back. That I want to be with Carolyn. But I can’t. I’m not ready for that.

  “I want my family back,” I say, sticking with the only part of the truth that I’m comfortable speaking aloud. Then a troubling thought occurs to me. “You don’t say this stuff to Carolyn too, do you?”

  “Nah.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t think she’d listen to me,” he says. “She’s still hoping for a reparative therapy miracle.”

  I let out a groan of frustration. “So then why the hell would you think it would be a good idea for me to tell her how I feel?”

  “Because I think she likes you too. And it would be a lot more effective if it came from you.”

  I watch as a cloud slowly morphs from an ice cream cone into a pirate ship. A minuscule spark of what if has ignited somewhere deep inside me, and I hate Matthew for putting it there.

  “You know what I think?” he says after a long stretch of silence. “I think you’re scared.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of telling Carolyn how you feel and being rejected. And I think you might be hiding behind the mom excuse so you don’t have to put yourself out there again.”

  I feel like I’ve been punched straight through my stomach. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Very possible. But one thing I do know is that Carolyn isn’t Zoë. And you’ll never know for sure until you try.”

  Chapter 23

  I float through the morning drive to DC; Matthew’s words have been branded onto my mind. You’re scared. This is your life. You’ll never know until you try.

  But even though the conversation keeps replaying in my head, presenting itself from different angles, I’m still in the same place. Because no matter how good Matthew’s points might have been, what he doesn’t seem to understand is that my feelings don’t matter. It’s the circumstances surrounding them that hold the power. The way things are back home, both in my town and in my family, the rigid structure of New Horizons, Carolyn’s dedication to the process, the scars still fresh on my heart. So maybe he’s right: maybe I am scared. But if my choices are safety and
security versus certain pain, I know which one I’m going with.

  The bus drops us off at the Capitol building. “Remember, everyone!” Mr. Martin calls out before we all disperse. “Meet back here at six p.m. sharp! Don’t be late!”

  Daniel, Matthew, Carolyn, Kaylee, and I set off on foot. Daniel has a whole itinerary mapped out for us. First stop: the Capitol Reflecting Pool, followed by the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials and the Washington Monument. He reads aloud from the guidebook, telling us all the important dates and facts.

  “History is fun,” Matthew says sarcastically, as we stare up at the giant obelisk that’s somehow supposed to pay tribute to our first president.

  The big event for the day is the National Zoo, which beat out the Smithsonian after Matthew presented a pretty convincing case against spending our one day of freedom stuck in a museum, so after all the history, we walk to the Metro red line.

  As we walk, Matthew whispers to me, “I have a plan.”

  I give him a sidelong glance. Matthew’s plans are never a good idea—it’s a miracle they haven’t gotten us into trouble yet. “Can’t you take a break from all the scheming for one day?”

  He grins. “No way. This is my best plan yet!”

  “But we’re having such a nice time—”

  “Just trust me. You’ll like this one. I promise.”

  His eyes are bright and excited, and I know there’s no talking him out of whatever he’s got up his sleeve. “If you say so,” I say.

  We buy our Metro tickets, and a few minutes later, the train rolls into the station. We all get on, and Matthew starts up a conversation with Kaylee and Daniel about which animals they’re looking forward to seeing most at the zoo.

  Then, just as the doors are about to close, Matthew turns away from his conversation, grabs me and Carolyn, and pushes us off the train. I trip over my own feet and fall onto the platform, skinning the heels of my hands. By the time I gather my bearings, the doors have closed, Matthew is waving at us from inside the train with the biggest, dopiest grin I’ve ever seen, and Kaylee is pounding against the door, futilely trying to get to us. The train pulls away, and I look up at Carolyn, who somehow managed to survive Matthew’s surprise attack in one piece. She stares back down at me, her eyes huge. We’re alone now. In the city. With no group, no chaperone, and no way to get in touch with them.