It sucked knowing this would be the last time I saw Nora for a while, but I had five hours and the excitement of finally seeing her face when she tasted my mom’s banana pudding in my future before I had to deal with any of the hard stuff.
“Camden, where you running off to grinning like that?” Grandma called as I ran past her and my aunt, who were sipping coffee on the front porch.
“Wor—” That was all I got out before I went sailing through the air.
Now, I was well aware that I was not the most coordinated person in the world, but there was always a reason when I fell. A tree stump, a sidewalk, a dip in the grass. Something. As I landed face-first, the banana pudding smashed against my chest, pain exploding at my knees and hands, I had not one single clue how I’d gotten there.
Until I heard their laughter. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Any time our families got together, the mocking laughter of my cousins was something of the soundtrack of my life.
“Come on, Johnny!” my aunt yelled from the porch. “He has enough trouble running without you tripping him. Help him up.”
My cousin continued to laugh, but he extended a hand down to me, muttering, “Pussy.”
Stunned, I sat up, spitting out grass, and looked at my hands. A mixture of crushed vanilla wafers and blood covered my palms, and acorns fell to the ground as they dislodged from my bloody knees.
And the banana pudding I’d promised to bring Nora lay in an inedible pile of mush on the grass.
It was all I could take. No, it was more than I could take.
It started as a burning ball of flame ricocheting in my chest, each strike searing me at the core, until I felt like I was on fire. My body began to vibrate like an angry hornet’s nest, years of torment and frustration warring for a way out.
I was tired.
Tired of all the snide comments.
Tired of the never-ending judgment.
Exhausted of being the punchline to every joke my entire family had ever thought to tell.
And now this? This…asshole had tripped me and ruined not only my dessert, but Mom’s famous banana pudding I’d promised Nora—my Nora. The girl I had to leave for a whole damn year, not knowing if she was eating or if her dad was putting his hands on her again. All because life wasn’t fair and my parents thought it was better for me to go to a school that made me miserable instead of staying with her and having even one single drop of happiness.
“Jesus, Camden. Get the hell up and quit embarrassing me,” Dad rumbled from somewhere nearby.
And that was it. A match thrown into a can of gasoline.
I exploded off the ground. “Fuck you!” I roared at Johnny, charging toward him. His eyes flashed wide just before my fist landed on his chin.
He fell like a tree in the forest. The thud of his body hitting the ground was the most satisfying sound I’d ever heard. I followed him down, swinging, cussing, and screaming incoherently.
Dad was on me in the next second, hooking me around the hips and lifting me off my cousin with ease, but it only made my blinding anger turn on him. I kicked and fought against his hold on me until he set me on my feet. My lungs burned and tears leaked from my eyes, but dear Lord, I’d never felt more alive. The adrenaline high made me invincible.
“Fuck you too! I don’t give a shit if I embarrass you. Don’t you get it? I fucking hate you. I hate all of you! I—”
The rest of my rant died on my tongue as my dad grabbed me by the back of the neck, squeezing painfully as he walked me like a rag doll to our family SUV.
“Let me go!” I cried as he yanked the door open and tossed me inside.
He leaned in after me, his red face only inches away from mine, and seethed through clenched teeth, “Shut your fucking mouth before I’m forced to shut it for you. We’re going home, and after that stunt, I haven’t decided if you’ll still be breathing by the time we get there. Do not press your luck, son. Got it?”
I clamped my mouth shut, and all at once, every drop of the summer's warmth drained from my body. Reality—vicious, cursed reality—washed over me like a thunderstorm of knives. “No, no, no, please, Dad. We can’t go home yet. She’s waiting for me at the creek.”
His pupils were so big that it made his green eyes look black. “I don’t care if our Lord and Savior is waiting for you at the creek. You are going home to your room for possibly the rest of your life.” He slammed the door with a deafening crack.
“Dad!” I cried, scrambling after him. I didn’t dare touch the door, but I pounded on the window. “Please, I didn’t get to say goodbye. Just let me say goodbye!”
He said nothing else as he stormed away.
Not ten minutes later, Dad was behind the wheel, Mom beside him, and I sat in the back seat covered in banana pudding and dying from the agonizing hole in my chest.
I waited beside the creek all night.
For the first few hours, I assumed he was running late, so I practiced what I was going to say. Thea was right. I just needed to talk to him, tell him I was going to miss him, maybe see if he wanted to keep in contact through the school year. And—if I could gather the courage—ask him if he was ever coming back.
Around eight, it started to drizzle. Wrapped in my towel and huddled under the tree, I convinced myself that maybe he was waiting out the rain. He could be a real complainer about getting his clothes wet sometimes, and if they were having a big family thing, he was probably wearing those stupid loafers again.
When the rain cleared, I stared up at the twinkling stars, a dark dread forming inside me.
I’d spent so much of the last few weeks subconsciously stressing over whether he’d come back next summer that I’d completely forgotten to be worried about whether he’d abandon me during this one.
But still, I held on to hope.
It was Camden. He would show up. He’d never let me down before.
When I was sure I’d counted every star in that sky twice, I got up and started pacing. He wouldn’t do this to me. Stuff had come up with his grandparents or chores or church in the past, but he always got there eventually.
I could wait.
For Camden, I could always wait.
I pulled out the letter he’d left me that afternoon and traced my fingers over the words on the last line. I’d rather be there with you.
But if that were true, where was he?
I clicked my flashlight on and off for a while, but when I worried I’d run the batteries out, I closed my eyes and willed my ears to hear his footsteps running through the field. The crickets were louder than usual that night. Or maybe it just seemed that way without his laughter filling the air.
As though they were a part of my anatomy, I felt the agony of each and every one of my hopes dying when my watch hit midnight. Loud sobs tore from my throat, and I balled my towel up and covered my mouth to muffle my cries for fear I’d wake Mr. and Mrs. Leonard.
But no amount of tears, screams, or sobs offered me any relief.
He was gone.
And he hadn’t chosen me.
I was no stranger to heartbreak.
Growing up, I’d fallen asleep every night to the lullaby of my father yelling at my mother or the song of her sobs as she cleaned the blood he’d left on her face.
I’d been beaten and told I was worthless.
I’d been cussed at, spit on, and all-around neglected.
It was safe to say my life was as far from rainbows and unicorns as one could get. But the grief I felt that night from knowing that Camden was never coming back was some of the worst I’d experienced in my short eleven years.
Around one in the morning, a flashlight in the distance caught my attention. A tsunami of renewed hope crashed into me and I scrambled to turn my flashlight back on and frantically waved my arms in the air so he’d know I was still there.
My excitement morphed into devastation as soon as I heard his voice.
“There you are,” Ramsey said, stomping my way with Thea holding his hand. “What
the heck are you still doing here? When I got home and you weren’t there, I was scared to death you’d been kidnapped or something.”
I’d have rather been kidnapped or something.
I cleared my throat and got busy gathering my things so he couldn’t see my tear-stained cheeks. “Yeah. I was just getting ready to come back now. I must have fallen asleep.”
Thea walked over and pretended to help me shove my towel in the bag, whispering, “How’d it go?”
Awful. Terrible. Soul-crushing.
I had to swallow twice before I could answer. “Good. Everything’s good now.”
She smiled huge. “See? I told you it’d be okay.” She slung an arm around my shoulders and pulled me in for a brief hug.
I was too numb for it to warm me.
“Holy hell, this place is amazing,” Ramsey said, shining his flashlight around the creek. “I don’t think I’ve ever been back this far on the Leonards’ property before. Is it deep enough to swim down at the other end?”
Oh, no. No freaking way. I wasn’t good enough for Camden Cole. Fine. That I should have expected. But as much as I wanted to light that place on fire and never look back, I was nowhere near ready to let Ramsey and Thea take over our spot.
“No,” I lied. Memories of Camden cannonballing into the water flashed on the back of my lids, causing another nail to pierce through my heart. “It’s terrible here. There’s snakes and bugs. I’m pretty sure I saw some leeches in the water the other day.”
“Gross,” Thea said.
“Yeah. Stick with your tree.” Slinging my bag over my shoulder, I marched away from them—and every single memory of Camden I’d never be able to forget.
When school started on Monday, I did my best to pack all things Camden into a neat, little drawer in my head and locked it. He’d hurt me. So what? I should have been used to it by then.
It was time to put on a happy face and get back to my most important job of all: hiding from the world.
I woke up every morning.
Went to school all day.
I smiled more that first week than I had in years.
All of them fake.
All of them painful.
And all of them to mask how I was secretly withering away.
Regardless, I smiled on cue. Laughed when I heard a joke. I even skipped home when I got off the bus to put the final stroke on my masterpiece of deception. I was so good at playing the part that not even Ramsey and Thea realized I was only one breath away from suffocating.
A few times I'd slip up and ask someone around town if they knew where the Coles’ house was. No one did. Besides, what would I say if I went there? They probably didn’t even know I was alive.
And for what it was worth, I wasn’t.
It took two weeks and a chance run-in with Mr. Leonard before I returned to the creek. He’d cornered me at the grocery store and asked why I hadn’t been delivering him any worms. Fishing season was coming to a close, but there were still a few days warm enough for him and his boys to hit the lake.
There was nothing between those rocky banks that didn’t remind me of Camden, including the five dollars a day that was no longer in my pocket. I didn’t even have our ten-dollar bill because I’d hidden it under the insert in his shoe the last day I’d seen him. I couldn’t be sure if I was bitter enough to actually spend it or not, but I resented not having the choice.
Thea agreed to buy me the worms from Lewis Tractor Repair, Bait, and Booze each day so I didn’t get caught, and by that weekend, I was gainfully employed again.
My first day back at the creek was rough. I kept waiting for him to pop up. Any time I’d hear a rustle of the leaves or a breeze blew through the grass, an unwelcome pang of hope would spike my pulse.
I did everything I could to erase Camden from the creek. I swept away the piles of stripped leaf stems he’d left scattered around, and I switched to a different bank on the other side, where the memories of him weren’t as strong. I buried a new worm-holding area in the dirt using a metal box I’d found in the garage and threw away the bug spray he’d left hidden between two rocks. I would have rather had a beetle build a colony inside my ear than ever use anything of Camden Cole’s again.
I wasn’t always strong. A girl could only pretend that her heart wasn’t breaking for so long. One afternoon, in a moment of weakness, I wrote him a note and included my address and Thea’s phone number. I stuffed it into a Ziploc bag, tucking it into our old plastic worm-holding area where I knew he’d find it if he ever came back.
He never did though, but then again, hope had never been my friend.
By the end of October, Mr. Leonard had hung up his fishing rod for the year, but Ramsey and I had saved up enough money to get through the holidays.
Winter came with cold temperatures and even a few flurries of snow. I’d almost gotten to the point where I hardly thought about Camden at all. His drawer in my head was still there, and every now and then, it would slide open, bombarding me with an avalanche of conflicting emotions. Like a teacher calling roll call, all the familiar feelings were accounted for. Anger. Present. Resentment. Present. Betrayal. Present.
And I hated him that much more because he’d made it so easy to let my guard down that I’d ultimately failed myself.
As green leaves filled the trees and the azaleas began to bloom again, I turned twelve and my body started changing. With boobs came attention from boys. Camden didn’t want me, but plenty of other boys did. Desperate for the high their attention gave me, I started sneaking out and going to the freshman and sophomore bonfires. Being Ramsey’s little sister came in handy; nobody questioned why I was there, even when he wasn’t.
Cue Josh Caskey—ninth-grade high school quarterback with all his straight, blonde hair and blue eyes. They weren’t as nice as Camden’s, but unlike somebody else, Josh had actually chosen me. That was all I really needed back then: to feel special and important.
As the mayor’s son and one of the few rich kids in town, Josh could have had any girl he wanted.
But he wanted me and that filled my lonely soul in ways nothing else could.
We started hanging out after school, and because I was still in middle school, he made me swear not to tell Ramsey. My brother was so wrapped up in making out with Thea any chance he got, keeping a secret wasn’t all that hard.
Besides, he knew Josh. They’d been in school together for years. It wasn’t a big deal.
At first, my time with Josh was innocent enough. We’d meet up in the empty dugouts after his baseball practice and talk and get to know each other until it got dark.
He loved taking pictures of us together on his cell phone. I thought it was so cool that he had a cell phone—and that he wanted to fill it with pictures of me.
One Friday about two weeks before the end of school, he got brave and stole a kiss. Like most girls my age, I’d dreamed about my first kiss for years. Wondered what it would be like or how it would feel. My heart stopped when he roughly shoved me against the wall, a board from the dugout digging into my back, and jabbed his tongue into my mouth.
It should have been a red flag.
I should have told my brother.
I should have kicked him in the balls and run as far away from Josh Caskey as I could get.
Yet I went back the next day.
And the next.
And the next.
A few days before school let out, Mr. Leonard tracked me down and asked if I wanted my summer job back. His feud with Old Man Lewis was still running strong and he’d somehow managed to drag half the town into it. True to his threats, he’d set up a bait stand in his driveway complete with at least a dozen “Screw Dale Lewis” signs lining the main road and a scarecrow dressed in a clown costume wearing a Lewis Tractor Repair, Bait, and Booze T-shirt. It was a small-town elderly TKO at its finest.
It had been a while since I’d really sat down and thought about Camden Cole. In some ways, it seemed like it had been a million years sin
ce we’d played in that creek together, laughing for hours on end. But as the summer started and I once again found myself sitting at the edge of the water every day, it also felt like it had been just yesterday when he had been there, sipping a Coke and grinning over at me with those vibrant baby blues.
I was still hurt, but while time had not healed the jagged gash Camden had carved in my heart, it had at least allowed it to scab over so the ache was no longer devouring me.
Nevertheless, I was a ball of nerves when I arrived at the creek for the first time that summer. Just a year before, Camden had appeared with a wicked grin and a bucket of worms. He obviously didn’t care about me, but money was money and selling worms to Mr. Leonard was as easy as it came. I didn’t know what I’d say to him if he showed up again. Fuck off seemed appropriate, but I had a whole lot of pent-up What the hell happened to you? that I wouldn’t have minded having answered, either.
It was all moot. He didn’t show up that day, and the most confusing mixture of earth-shaking relief and heart-wrenching disappointment rocked me to my core.
I didn’t care about Camden.
Fuck him. Fuck his stupid life in Alberton. Fuck every single thing about the boy who didn’t even care enough about me to say goodbye.
I hated Freaking Camden Cole.
Or so I’d thought.
The very next day, while I sat with my toes in the water halfway through Seventeen Magazine’s “Does he really love you?” quiz, the deep rumble of three words changed my life forever.
“Catch anything good?”
I had been in town for approximately two minutes and eighteen seconds—or however long it had taken me to jump out of the car before it was in park and sprint directly to the creek. I was sweating and panting and had nearly died stumbling over a pile of fire ants, but when I saw her long, brown ponytail hanging down her back, none of that mattered anymore.
Swallowing hard, I wedged a hand into my pocket only to nervously switch to the other hand for maximum coolness. She hadn’t heard me walk up, so I had the element of surprise. I’d briefly considered scaring the crap out of her, but I’d spent nine long, excruciating months waiting to see her again. I wasn’t chancing that she’d punch me in the first thirty seconds.
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