Camp Boyfriend

by Rock, J. K.

  His warm breath rushed across my temple. “A few days, maybe. First I’m going to hike something—big. Then I’m going to my grandparents. On Friday, at the dance, we’ll see how things stand then. Okay?”

  I gulped over the daggers lining my throat. Speaking my thoughts would slice me to ribbons.

  After a wordless nod, he pressed a kiss to my forehead, gave me a final hug, then hoisted his backpack and tramped into the woods. I watched his shadow move among the trees until he disappeared from view. It felt like he’d vanished from my life as well.

  “Lauren!” I looked up and caught my friends Alex and Siobhan jogging down the beach. Alex doubled over when they reached the rock while our yoga expert, Siobhan, looked completely unfazed.

  “We’ve been searching all over for you,” Alex gasped. Her dark hair had grown so long it swept the sand before she straightened.

  “I told you she’d be watching the sky,” the ever-logical Siobhan put in. The strengthening sun glinted off of her obsidian bob. The new length accentuated the high cheekbones she’d inherited from her Cherokee father and the large hazel eyes from her Irish mother. Her face, awash in fresh light, was splattered with freckles.

  “Are you okay?” Alex asked. Both girls crowded beside me on the rock, their thin arms wrapping around me. “Were you thinking about Seth?”

  The breakfast bell sounded in the distance, and we all groaned.

  “Let’s get back to the cabin before Emily notices.” Siobhan stood and pulled me to my feet. “No matter what, Lauren. We’ve got your back, okay?”

  “Okay.” My heart swelled. I might be here with the wrong guy, and might have lost the right one, but at least I had my friends.

  * * *

  Dewy grass tickled my sandaled feet as my cabin mates and I trudged toward breakfast thirty minutes later. Shards of light stabbed through the towering pines, making us squint and draw our hoodie strings tighter. Only Alex had thought to wear sunglasses, perched crookedly on the bridge of her nose. Our collective misery was palpable after our late night. Even the singing birds quieted as we passed beneath them.

  “So where’s your medal, Miss National Scholastic Decathlon Winner?” Alex nudged Siobhan.

  Siobhan kicked an apple core at Alex’s foot. “If I’d brought it, you’d probably take it to Arts and Crafts and make it a head piece.”

  “Or a belt buckle.” Jackie dragged a twig behind her in the dirt, her tall, willowy grace obvious even in warm-up shorts and an oversized tee. “Remember when she went through that cowboy phase after watching True Country?”

  “Who could forget the summer of a thousand ten-gallon hats?” groaned Siobhan. “She wouldn’t even take them off during swim.”

  A couple of us snickered, and Alex swatted Siobhan. “Hello. I had serious hathead and Rob was the lifeguard that day.”

  We all sighed, imagining one very crush-worthy counselor.

  Piper picked up the discarded fruit. “I got my school to recycle leftovers in a compost pile. I should talk to Gollum. See if we can start a camp community project.”

  “Gross. Put that thing down.” Alex wrinkled her nose, making her glasses rise.

  Piper dropped it in the paper sack she always carried for litter and shrugged. “One man’s trash is—”

  “Piper’s treasure,” we chorused with gusto, making Piper laugh and a couple of blue jays fly squawking from a nearby tree.

  Jackie leapt in front of us with cat-like grace. “Want me to take care of the litterer?”

  “Oh, so now that you won your volleyball division, you can take on anyone?” Alex shoved Jackie in the shoulder. “Besides, you’re too smart to start dumb fights. We all know you took four AP classes and aced your PSATs, so don’t even start.”

  Wow. My friends really had accomplished a lot in a year. I studied the leftover polish that colored my toenails a delicate pink as I shuffled along in flip-flops. For the first time, compared to the rest of the group, I felt like a failure. What would dating the most popular guy in school and making the cheer squad mean to them?

  “I started an art club and we painted a mural on the auditorium wall.” Trinity twirled a dandelion before blowing its white seed pods. She turned my way. “Lauren, you’d love it. We did a night scene complete with the constellations and an aurora borealis. When the lights are out, the stars twinkle.”

  “That’s so cool.” I put an arm around her and gave her a squeeze. Finally. Friends who knew what the aurora borealis was.

  “So have you applied to that NASA thing yet? It was all you talked about last summer!” Siobhan stopped and waited for Trinity and me to catch up. “I’m sure you’ll get in.”

  “You mean the ‘once-in-a-lifetime opportunity’ she wouldn’t shut up about?” Alex laughed, her smile taking the sting out of her words. They were proud of my accomplishments.

  I shrugged, feeling uneasy. “I finished the application, but I still need my letters of reference. My dad’s getting one from our congressman.” At least I hoped so, I silently added.

  “Cool.” Jackie grabbed a branch and swung from it before landing ahead of us.

  The mess hall’s roof appeared through a gap in the trees and unease squeezed my stomach. I imagined what would happen when Seth didn’t show for breakfast. I had to get to Matt before the rumors got to him.

  Immune to the chilly air and ungodly hour, Emily pranced ahead.

  “Come on, girls! Last one in is a rotten egg.” Her high-pitched laugh ended in a snort that sent a descending squirrel scurrying back up a white oak tree, or as Seth had taught me, Quercus alba.

  An exuberant cartwheel revealed Emily’s hot-pink bike shorts beneath her oversized Camp Juniper Point sweatshirt. “Mornings rule!” she shouted, thrusting pine needle-coated hands upward. Her side ponytail bobbed in agreement. At least that made one of us. I already wished I could skip the day, crawl back into bed, and pull my sleeping bag over my head. If my life had an eject button, I’d hit it now.

  “Is she for real?” mumbled Siobhan as she trailed beside me in flip-flops and frog-printed pajama bottoms.

  “Someone needs to take the batteries out of the Energizer Bunny.” I swiped at a mosquito trying to land on my nose.

  Trinity turned around, her round face pale. “Her aura’s like a kaleidoscope on speed. My eyes are aching.”

  Alex passed Trinity her sunglasses as boys jogged across our path. Like bird dogs, we froze, Alex’s mouth dropping at the sight of the boys’ counselor, Rob. We’d all drooled over him since we’d hit puberty; right now, he was showing off exceptional six-pack abs, his camp shirt tucked into the back of his running shorts.

  I looked for Matt, worried that his bunkmates had filled him in on my Seth history. Matt smiled at me as he came around the bend, white T-shirt plastered to his steaming body. His friendly expression relieved some of my anxiety, but it was just a matter of time before everything exploded in my face.

  Emily completed a round-off, knocking out Rob. They landed in a pile of last autumn’s brown leaves, Emily on top. The boys stopped short while we gaped at the spectacle and tried not to laugh.

  “Oh my God. I am, like, so sorry. Seriously. Are you hurt? Because I know someone who knows first aid,” Emily babbled, her hands running up and down his hardcore body. Was she checking for injuries or feeling him up? Either way, she was scoring some major points in my book.

  “Go Emily,” Alex whispered next to me, obviously thinking along the same lines. “I should try that move on Vijay.”

  I shot her a look as I envisioned the boy from Seth’s cabin. “Didn’t your parents forbid you to date until you were married? And since when do you like Vijay?”

  “Since he got ten times hotter than last year. A lot of the boys are way cuter this summer—didn’t you notice?”

  It was a running joke that should have made me laugh. We said the same thing every year. But I thought of Seth’s newly cut body and averted my eyes.

  “Not really.”

  �
�And you know I don’t do my parents’ ‘Wholesome Home’ thing here. That’s their blog, not my life. At least not at camp, where I can have fun for two months of the year.” She pointed to the tangle of limbs still on the ground, oblivious to my dark mood. “How gorgeous is Rob?”

  Piper leaned over and sighed. “Do you have to ask?”

  My gaze went back to Rob whose blue eyes twinkled up at Emily, the left-sided dimple we adored appearing in his cheek.

  “I’m fine, Emily. Are you okay? Maybe I should check you out?” But before his hands made contact, Emily sprang back, practically knocking over Matt, who hadn’t taken his green eyes off me.

  Alex shot me a wide-eyed look. Had Emily actually dismissed resident hottie Rob? Any girl would give her weekly fudge pop to be with him. Even ten-year-old campers twirled their hair and pushed out their training bras when the twenty-something camp god came around.

  Rob’s muscular thighs flexed as he got to his feet, eliciting a sigh from Piper.

  He flashed Emily a white smile and rejoined his group.

  “Let’s go, ladies! Ten minutes to clean up, then breakfast,” Rob shouted to the boys and sprinted away. All but Matt scrambled after him. He jogged in place for a second, gave me a quick wave, and dashed off after the rest of his cabin.

  “Ladies?!” Emily stomped ahead of us. “Is that supposed to be a putdown? Male chauvinist.”

  We lingered behind.

  “Was that ‘the other man?’” Jackie turned to me, an undercurrent of tension in her tone. “He’s not as tall as Seth.”

  “That’s definitely him—you should have seen his pink aura when he spotted Lauren.” Trinity grinned.

  Because she was happy for me? Or because of the crush I knew she’d had on Seth all these years? She’d never shared it, but one time Alex told me she caught her writing about it in her journal. Luckily, Girl Code meant she’d never act on it. Thank God. No way could I handle that on top of everything else.

  “How did he end up in Warriors’ Warden? Sucks for him.” Piper picked up an empty water bottle and tucked it in her bag.

  “He’s hot.” Alex surveyed me. “But not what I pictured. He looks like a jock head.”

  Okay, there was no disguising it. That sounded judgmental. Why did they assume all athletes were bad? Jackie was a jock, after all. But, of course, she was a girl. My friends had all had issues with popular male jocks at one time or another.

  Taking a deep breath, I blurted, “He’s a varsity quarterback.”

  For his sake, I hoped that missing a week of strength training this summer wouldn’t jeopardize his spot on the squad. If I’d broken up with him in Texas, he wouldn’t be at risk. And maybe that would have been the right thing to do. But I’d acted on instinct, not wanting to hurt him more than he already had been. No matter how noble I thought I was, however, I’d committed a major no-no in the dating world—leading a guy on. I needed to fix this before more damage was done.

  “A quarterback? Shut up!” Alex lightly punched me in the shoulder.

  “Seriously.” I wished their surprised looks weren’t fading into…dismay?

  Maybe they were just concerned. For me. I hoped that was all.

  “Trippy.” Trinity resumed walking. We followed after her, our silence awkward.

  I trailed behind the group, my anxiety over the Matt-Seth situation turning my feet into lead. If my friends reacted this way—their comments quickly fading into tense silence—what could I expect from Matt?

  We caught up to Emily on the wooden steps of the dining hall. She whirled, light sparkling off her gold-spangled scrunchie. “Everyone take seconds. I don’t want anything left for that chauvinist pig. ‘Ladies’ my a—” she broke off and marched us inside.

  Wow. Our counselor was the only female at camp immune to Rob the rock star’s charms. And from the interested look on his face, she was the first he’d flirted with in a while. I couldn’t wait to see how this played out, especially since someone else’s love life drama would distract me from my own.

  The sound of scraping forks, pouring juice, and the dull roar of one hundred or so chattering campers filled the room, seeming all the louder now that an uncomfortable silence stretched between me and my friends. Long wooden tables lined up in three rows that ran the length of the high-ceilinged, exposed beam room. Fly strips dangled from the rafters, already full of black insects. An appetizing decorative touch.

  We lined up and grabbed plates. On each one rested a wheat pancake with a raisin-patterned smiley face surrounded by sliced strawberry petals. A sunflower. It was a cute way to trick the little kids into eating healthy. I looked at Piper to share a grin over the breakfast, but she seemed suddenly deep in thought over which flavor syrup to pour on her pancake, ignoring me.

  We sat shoulder to shoulder on worn wooden benches at a table topped with a “Munchies’ Manor” sign. Thankfully, having to sit with our cabins spared me from sitting with Seth or Matt’s cabin. My trembling hand grabbed a pitcher of OJ and poured for the uncharacteristically mute group. Juice splashed on my grey sweats.

  I set down the last cup. “Okay. Is it just me, or did things get awkward after we saw Matt?” Eyes flitted around the table, the tension so thick you could cut it with a spork.

  “It’s nothing.” Siobhan peered around the table as the rest of my friends lowered their heads and started cutting their pancakes.

  “Seriously. Why is everyone acting weird?” I stabbed my pancake in its beady raisin eye and took a bite.

  “It’s just that you’re different. The new look, the new boyfriend. Give us a little time to get used to everything, okay?” Piper picked up a strawberry slice and nibbled.

  The rest of the group nodded, making my chest tighten. Alex and Siobhan had said they had my back. Did the rest of my friends? Since they’d been friends with Seth as long as me, I understood why they’d be protective. Prefer him even. But still.

  “Look. My mother hijacked me into this make-over, and the Matt thing is too complicated to explain right now, but trust me, nothing’s changed that counts. I’m still me.” And I still want to be with Seth, I added silently.

  Siobhan nodded and gave me a genuine smile. If anyone understood mother pressure, it was Siobhan. Her mom had force-fed her piano, dance, and art lessons since she could walk, and demanded perfection in all things. Siobhan’s implied acceptance of the situation unleashed a firing squad of questions from the others.

  “So Matt is really a jock?”

  “When did you meet?”

  “How long have you been going out?”

  “Is he good in bed?” Emily gulped Piper’s juice as she joined us, twirling a chair around and straddling it.

  I nearly choked on a raisin. “Excuse me?”

  Emily shrugged, her left clavicle bared through her sweatshirt’s one-shoulder cutout. “It’s on the D.L., girls. Fo’ shizzle. So what’s the sitch?”

  Was she speaking Greek?

  “There is none. I mean, we haven’t—that is—it’s private.” I sputtered. How had our counselor gotten this job? Clearly she’d left “wildly inappropriate” off her resume.

  At that moment, a hush fell as the top of the camp food chain entered the hall and shoved their way to the front of the line. The Warriors. They must have finished their morning jog. I was glad when Matt hung back and waved a young girl ahead of him.

  He might be a jock, but he wasn’t full of himself the way some star athletes could be. I looked to my friends to see if they’d noticed, but they were still staring at Emily with wide eyes.

  “Yo, Butler. Over here!” hollered one of the guys from his cabin’s table.

  Of course, that made my friends notice.

  Matt gave the little girl in line an apologetic look and joined his new friends. So much for decency. I shot him a dirty look, which he missed when Eli Rogers, their cabin’s undersized comedian, squirted him with syrup. Matt blasted powdered sugar at Eli but hit another bunkmate instead. Eli straightened and laughe
d, pointing at the white coating on the other kid’s beefy shoulders. I held my breath, wondering if Matt was about to get hammered by the biggest guy at camp. Instead, the overgrown Warrior hooked an arm around Matt’s head and knuckle-rubbed his hair. His booming laugh shook the rafters.

  Finally, Matt spotted me and waved. I waved back as he pointed me out to his bunkmates who, for the first time in the eight years I’d known them, smiled at me.

  The screen door banged open. I held my breath, heart hammering as Seth’s cabin mates entered—without Seth. Nauseous, I stopped chewing and met my friends’ worried eyes. If I told on him, he might get in trouble, especially with Emily being all ears about everything.

  “Where’s Seth?” Siobhan whispered.

  “Garrett!” Alex called, always impatient for information. Garrett’s perfect features, wide-set hazel eyes and mussed brown hair attracted lots of attention as he wound his way over. He’d liked our cabin ever since he and his dad argued on Parent’s Weekend a couple years ago. Some of the Munchies had helped him back to camp after his father ditched him on the banks of the Nantahala River. The jerk. Age did not guarantee that adults acted like grown-ups.

  “Hey.” He waved to a few other campers sitting nearby. “Looking good, Lauren. I like the new hair.” He fingered the highlighted ends, making me blush.

  Which was weird, since this was Garrett. A bud since forever. But it was nice to be noticed, and Garrett was one of those guys who paid attention to what we wore and how we looked. I hoped his father had stopped being such a jerk to him.

  “My mother gave me a make-over when we moved to Texas.” I smiled, glad he wasn’t acting distant toward me like the rest of Seth’s group.

  “Well, she did a good job,” he laughed. “So what else have you been up to besides…cutting Seth loose?” His gaze turned assessing and I wondered how much he knew.

  I flinched. “Seth and I broke up last summer.” My fingers crossed under the table. Officially it wasn’t a lie, since it had always been his idea to break up at the end of the summer each year. But it wasn’t the whole truth either.