Shifting Tides

by Caitlin Ricci

  “No.” Adam frowned at him. “I haven’t been. I’m not that stupid.”

  Blaine got them all moving on the trail again. “Let’s not drag this out. I don’t want to miss out on hot pancakes.”

  There were enough people waiting for showers, that Blaine watching the door while Adam took his wasn’t a huge deal. Blaine and Seth just let Adam go first. Blaine made Seth go last, so he still had a hot breakfast when he got back to camp.

  “Don’t take too long,” Seth’s mom urged. “I heard the Saltwater Cowboys ride past the campground while you boys were in the shower. If we’re going to walk along the beach with the ponies, we’ve got to get moving.”

  “Can I just stay in camp?” Seth asked as he grabbed the last couple of pancakes and final piece of bacon.

  “No, you can’t,” his father said. “We’re not going to be leaving you out of anything this family does as a unit for a while, so deal with it. Eat quick, we’re ready to go.”

  Seth’s mom beamed at his dad. Blaine figured after some of the hushed discussions they’d had the past couple of days, she was happy he was showing unity with her without having to be prodded to do it.

  The sun was about halfway out of the Atlantic Ocean when they headed north down the beach. Just past the campground there was already a crowd of people heading that way.

  Blaine kept an easy pace with Adam at his side.

  “Other than the pony swim, this is my favorite part of the camp out,” Adam whispered.

  “It is really cool,” Blaine agreed, although all the people that crowded down the beach made him nervous. Crowds were never his thing, but he worried for Adam. He knew that no one would be able to tell for sure if Adam was male or female, but he didn’t want anything to happen to upset things.

  A soft frown darkened Adam’s face for a moment. “I just wish Mom and Dad were here.”

  “We wish they were here too,” Seth’s mom added. “But they aren’t, and we’re not going to dwell on that. If they are determined to miss out on the good things in life, there’s nothing we can do about, and no reason to make ourselves sad because they’re being stupid.” She rubbed Adam’s hair with a heavy sigh. “We’re going to get you a proper haircut tomorrow. It’s not something we can put off.”

  Adam brightened. “A real boy’s hair cut?”

  “Whatever you like,” she replied. “Do you have any ideas?”

  “A few. I don’t like the Beiber look, but I do want something short and spiky. More like Blaine’s than Seth’s.”

  Seth turned and walked backward, and some of the people around him stared for a moment. “What’s wrong with my hair?”

  “It’s on your head.” Adam flashed him a playful grin and laughed.

  Blaine and Seth’s folks joined in the laugh.

  “He’s got you there, kiddo,” Seth’s dad said as the laughing died down.

  They topped the rise and a rolling thunder of hooves on soft sand reached them. Around them the other onlookers paused. Seth’s folks stopped, but Blaine, Adam and Seth pushed their way through the crowd to see what was going on.

  Just down the sand dune, a large group of men on horseback drove the herd of ponies along the beach. They ran on the wet sand, just shy of the water. Every now and then one of the ponies would splash into the waves like it was trying to get away, but would turn back after a few feet. There were ponies of every color imaginable. Black, white, brown and multicolored equines raced along the shore. They moved with perfect grace, even the young ones, some of which moved in and out of the herd and other smaller ones stayed close to their mothers’ side as they trotted up the sand.

  The Saltwater Cowboys waved their hats and whooped now and then to keep the ponies moving. A cheer went up from the crowd. It shook Blaine to his core, and before he realized it, he was cheering too.

  Adam grabbed his hand. “Come on, let’s stay with them as they get to the south corral.”

  “Okay.” Blaine glanced at Seth. “You coming?” The crowd was already moving closer to the ponies, joining the folks who’d jogged down the beach with the herd from the north corral.

  “Sure, why not.”

  “You boys come back to camp for lunch!” Seth’s mother called as they headed down the sand dune toward the ponies.

  Blaine didn’t notice if Seth replied, he focused on keeping from being jostled and making sure that Adam was safe. Halfway down the hill, a thought hit him.

  If Adam’s a boy, then I shouldn’t be treating him like a girl. He’s going to have to be stronger. But it might be okay if we’re going to be together. Couples protect each other.

  From then on, the day passed in a haze of excitement. They stayed with the north herd until it joined with the south herd in a corral close enough to Chincoteague that the hotels on the shore were clearly visible. A lot of people were gathered on the shore there and cheered as the herd entered the corral.

  A large man stood up the corner of the corral and announced that the ponies would swim across at low tide, right before sunset. Another cheer went up from both sides of the channel.

  “I’m heading back to camp,” Seth announced, then yawned. “I might even go back to bed. It was a really early morning.”

  “Good luck with that,” Blaine said. “Your mom’s not going to let you.”

  “Wanna bet?” Seth said and started toward the beach.

  “What do you want to do?” Blaine asked as Adam stared at the ponies in the corral. There were already several vets in white coats moving among the equine and he remembered reading somewhere that vets checked over all the ponies before the swim across, just to make sure they were in good health. “We could go over to the festival.”

  Adam shook his head. “I don’t think so. We should just head back to camp.” His tone was sad again as he started in Seth’s wake.

  “Your mom loved doing the festival, didn’t she?” Blaine fell into step beside him.

  “Yeah. It doesn’t seem right doing it without her.”

  “Okay. But when we get back to camp, let’s take a swim.”

  A warm smile pushed away Adam’s frown. “I like that idea.”

  “Good.”

  * * * *

  “Okay, let’s get to the shore for the pony swim,” Seth’s mom roused them all for the second time that day.

  “Right. Come on, boys!” his dad chimed in.

  “What side of the channel do we want to be on?” Blaine asked as they started down the trail.

  “You mean, do we want to see heads or asses?” Seth asked.

  His mother frowned at him. “That’s not how I would’ve put it.”

  Seth stopped in the trail and made a dramatic gesture. “No, but it’s the same point, right?”

  “Right,” his mother agreed.

  “Let’s got to the Chincoteague side,” Adam said. “It’ll be more crowded, but it’s cool watching them come out of the surf.”

  “Then we’d better hurry for the bridge.” Seth’s father shooed them all along. “With all this traffic, it’ll be faster to walk.”

  Sure enough, his prediction was accurate and they walked across the bridge to the mainland faster than any of the multitude of vehicles managed to make it. The only ones that made any time at all were the boats already lining up along the channel where the ponies would swim.

  They reached the beachhead and joined the crowds coming from the pony festival.

  “If we get separated, you boys make sure to head back to camp as soon as all the ponies are on shore,” Seth’s dad said as the crowd closed in around them.

  “Will do,” Seth and Blaine replied in unison.

  Adam laughed at them. “I keep forgetting that you two do that a lot.”

  “Don’t worry,” Blaine said. “Give it a few weeks and you’ll be able to do it too.”

  “Not sure if my folks are ready for us in surround sound,” Seth said with a chuckle.

  The noise from the crowd made it hard to hear, then people started cheering again
.

  “I guess the ponies are on their way,” Adam said, jumping a bit to try to see over the heads of the people in front of them.

  “Probably.” Blaine glanced around to try to find a spot where they could get up higher. There were a few light posts nearby, but there were already kids on them, leaning, trying to get a few. An idea hit him. “Seth, help Adam get on my shoulders.”

  Adam turned and blinked at him. “You can’t be serious.”

  Blaine shrugged. “Why not? I’ve been working out this year. Put on more than a little bit of muscle. You’re not that big. I can take it, for a little while.”

  Seth laughed. “Okay, let’s do this. I want to see the two of you go down in this crowd.” He stepped around behind Blaine’s back.

  “You sure?” Adam asked.

  “I wouldn’t offer if I wasn’t.” Blaine braced himself.

  After an awkward scramble, Adam’s weight settled on his shoulders with Adam’s legs wrapped under Blaine’s arms.

  “How’s this?” Adam asked.

  “Fine by me.” Blaine bore the weight better than he’d expected. “Are you comfortable?”

  “Not terribly, but I can see the ponies. They’re about halfway across.” A note of excitement came into Adam’s voice. It gave Blaine a thrill that he was able to provide Adam with a new experience.

  Adam set up a running commentary as the ponies made their trek. The fact that he could see and Blaine couldn’t made Blaine wish he was just a little taller and could see over the heads of all the adults between him and the shore. Before long he noticed that some of the other teens were doing a similar thing, but most of them were boys on the bottom and girls on top. He felt good being a little different than everyone else. The fact that he was able to be different with Adam made him feel even better.

  Chapter Eleven

  The next morning Adam woke up with no Blaine next to him and came out of his tent to his aunt Amy and his uncle John packing up their big SUV. For a panicked moment, he thought they were going to leave him there on the beach too.

  But then Seth waved him over and said, “Hurry up and get packed. My parents are taking us all out for breakfast. Then we’re going home!” He looked excited as he ran off down the beach toward where he and Blaine had made their own camp. Adam wondered if Seth had even noticed Blaine sneaking out again to be with him.

  Adam turned to Uncle John. “Am I coming too?”

  Uncle John frowned at him and stopped tying things to the roof of the SUV. “Of course you are. Why wouldn’t you be? We talked about this. Now go get ready before my wife changes her mind about wanting pancakes someone else made.”

  Adam nodded and, as quickly as he could, threw his things together. It was the worst job he had ever done of packing up his tent, but it would have to do because he was in a hurry. Even though his uncle John had said he wouldn’t be left behind, Adam was afraid of them doing just that. His parents had turned on him so quickly. He expected his aunt and uncle to do the same thing to him if he messed up at all.

  In their SUV, Adam pressed himself against the door. Blaine sat in the middle of the back seat with Seth on the far side. To avoid being a bother to anyone, Adam tried to stay small and stared at his nails as he picked the last of his old clear nail polish off them. He had been so brave a few days ago. He had thought for sure nothing at all would go wrong. And somehow he had been terribly out of his element. He wondered how he could have been so very wrong about his parents and how much they had loved him…or didn’t, he guessed, since that was pretty obvious now.

  He shook his head and tried to listen to the conversations going on around him. But it was just noise, and he couldn’t make sense of any of it. He was stunned and unable to say anything. He wondered if his parents had ever really loved him. Wasn’t this not what parents were supposed to do to their kids? He was still himself, just more himself than he had ever been before. And that had apparently been too much for them to handle.

  Blaine elbowed him in his side, though not that hard, and Adam turned his head to look up at him. “Huh?”

  “Your aunt was asking you something,” he explained, and Adam moved his attention over to her.

  His aunt Amy was turned around in her seat and looking back at him. “Are you okay? You’ve been really quiet these last few days.”

  He had lost his parents. What did she expect from him? Adam shrugged and went back to looking at his nails.

  “I talked to your mom today. She asked about you.”

  That got him to look back up at her. She didn’t look like it was good news, though. “What’d she want to know?”

  Aunt Amy frowned and shook her head. Nope, definitely not good news. “She thinks this is a phase. She wondered if you were ready to be yourself again. I wasn’t sure what to tell them.”

  As good as Adam was trying to be right then, he couldn’t not react to her words. “You can start by telling her she’s not my mother. And this isn’t a phase I’m going through or anything else.” He went right back to picking at his nails, though much more angrily this time.

  “Then what I told her works. I like being right.”

  “Huh?” Adam had no idea what she was talking about, but when he looked back up at her, she was suddenly smiling at him.

  “I told your mom to screw off, and that she didn’t deserve you. Adam, what you did, telling us all something so big about yourself, that was huge. I’m very proud of you. John and I both are. You have real guts. Now smile a bit more. Everything is going to change, but it’s going to be so much better too. And after breakfast you and I are going to get your hair fixed and you three are all going shopping for back to school clothes. No arguments this time. It’ll be so much fun to not have to worry about girl clothes and what’s in or not this year when I shop for you, Adam. Boys are so much easier to shop for.”

  Tears warmed his face as Adam’s throat tightened up and when Blaine pulled him in against his side, Adam didn’t even try to stop crying. He just dug his fingers into Blaine’s shirt and held on to him as tightly as he could. They were both right, everything was going to change. And it was all going to be huge.

  * * * *

  After breakfast, Aunt Amy kept her word, and they all got haircuts. Adam’s heart beat so fast he thought he was going to pass out as a woman showed him to one of those shiny black swivel chairs. As he sat down, she said, “I see someone had a fight with a pair of scissors.” That made him smile a bit. She had no idea. “Don’t worry, sweetie, your hair will grow back in no time. I bet you’re the prettiest girl in your class.”

  Somehow Adam had become able to cry at nothing and suddenly he was wiping away tears again. But Seth, on his left, came to his rescue. “Hey, Adam, are you going to shave your head or what? Can’t wait around all day for you to make a decision on what to do with that mess you call your hair.”

  The woman behind him was quick to apologize. “Oh, I am so sorry. I just assumed… I…” Adam watched her shake her head in the mirror and he took a deep breath to try to slow his tears. It worked, a little.

  “It’s okay. It’s…new?” Sort of. That was the best thing he could come up with to say. But it fit. Because this was new to him. This being a boy on the outside was all sorts of crazy new. “Can you cut it really short? But not shaved off?” He wanted to try going that short, someday, but he didn’t want to be shocked by it right away. Not when he’d never had a boy haircut to begin with.

  “Of course.” She looked less worried now as she pulled out a clipper, something Adam had never once had used on his hair before. No more coconut-smelling sprays and styling creams. No more curling irons. It was all such a relief. He got buzzed on the sides, and his hair was cut short on top. She left it a little longer in the front, and showed him how to spike it with some gel she gave him a sample pack of.

  Then, for the first time in his life, Adam got to see himself with a real boy’s haircut. And he started crying all over again as he stared at himself in the mirror.


  Seth got up beside him and shook his head. “Jesus, stop that doing that. You know we don’t cry all the time, right? You’re a boy now. Start doing it right. You’re going to make us all look bad.”

  Adam punched him in the shoulder, and he actually stepped back a little. Seth laughing made Adam laugh and he shook his head. And when he did that his hair didn’t fall over his neck and start irritating him. It wasn’t in his face. And he looked really good.

  But not as good as he did half an hour later as he tried on guy clothes in the dressing room at a department store down the street. His jeans were baggy. They didn’t hug a single of those curves he hated. And Aunt Amy had managed to find him a really heavy duty sports bra, even though he didn’t have much to support. He wasn’t even sure why she’d handed it to him until he had put it on. And then he’d gotten an almost perfectly flat chest.

  “Blaine! Seth!” Adam didn’t even think about it as he darted out of the dressing room with just the jeans around his hips and the sports bra on. Thankfully they were the only ones there trying on clothes or else that might have been embarrassing as they both opened up the doors to their own dressing rooms and looked at Adam like the place might have been burning down.

  “I don’t have boobs anymore!” he nearly shouted at them after a few seconds in which it was clear that they weren’t understanding what he was trying to silently get through to them.

  “Yay.” Seth rolled his eyes, but he was smiling as he closed the door and went back to trying on his own clothes.

  “Congrats.” Blaine looked like he was going to go back into trying on his own clothes then too, but he stepped back out of the dressing room and rushed at Adam with a giant hug that took him off his feet. Adam held on to him tightly and shut his eyes. There were no lumpy, awful things between them. Just his flat chest against Adam’s muscular one.

  Uncle John came into the dressing room area, looking worried. “I thought I heard screaming.”

  “Adam was just excited. No more boobs,” Blaine explained to him.