Another Life

by Robert Haller

  There was no arousal for me, though—at least, not while I watched. But afterward, when I had shut off my computer and lay back in bed, images from the videos would follow me, like ghosts, into my dreams. I would hear the moans and cries of pleasure and roll over onto my stomach and think about Martin.

  Sitting there on the beach, I tried to read the article Martin had sent me about the vanishing bees, but I found it hard to concentrate, especially with the mosquitoes buzzing around my face, which also made it hard to sympathize with any insect, bees included, however dire the consequences.

  I walked back to camp with Martin’s words in my brain and headed to the showers. I didn’t bother washing my hair—just stood under the hot water and sprayed off, using an old bar of soap. Last year, this would have been unthinkable, but now, since I no longer cared what any of these people thought of me, I didn’t see the point in trying to keep myself looking any better than merely presentable while at this horrible camp. I just wanted to get out of these gross showers as fast as I possibly could.

  By the time I stepped out of the bathrooms, the camp was stirring—kids emerging from their cabins and hiving off in different directions, some to the dining hall, others to the rec hall. Most of the girls headed straight to the showers, coming in twos and threes in their flip-flops, bath towels draped over their shoulders and shower caddies in hand. Standing outside the entrance, I could feel the sun beating down on me. Soon, the heat would settle down over everything like a vast steaming blanket. Even so, I pulled my sweatshirt on.

  Half an hour later, everyone was gathered in the dining hall for breakfast. Long tables were set up in rows along either wall, stretching the length of the room. And at the front of the room, before the kitchen, two tables were set up buffet style, crammed with trays of food. Going up to get breakfast, I saw my mom sitting on a stool in a corner before the kitchen entrance, with a mug of coffee and her notebook, looking distracted, just as I had imagined. After giving the buffet the once-over, I put down my paper plate, poured myself a cup of orange juice, and took it back to an empty corner of a table at the far end of the room.

  I watched kids load up their plates with mounds of rubbery yellow eggs, stubby brown sausage links, and giant pancakes doused in fake maple syrup. Ten-year-old Samantha Willard took a seat across from me. Watching her bite into a sausage link, I couldn’t help thinking of a penis, and then of Samantha giving a blow job to the nearest one, which happened to belong to Ethan, sitting beside her. What was wrong with me? I tried to shake the image out of my head. The smell of eggs made me think of the article Martin had sent me a few days ago about factory farm conditions—how chickens got their wings clipped and their beaks cut off and were crammed together in tiny cages, so they couldn’t even move, and were pumped with hormones. I felt sick. I took a drink of my orange juice and grimaced. It tasted sour and bitter, like vomit.

  That’s when Bethany appeared in front of me.

  I had been pretty much ignoring Bethany since Ian told me about her. It started with her texts, which I didn’t answer. And then, when she’d seen me in person at church and asked me why, I shrugged and told her I just hadn’t felt like it and hadn’t really thought she would notice anyway.

  “What is that supposed to mean?” she asked.

  When I shrugged in reply, something had crept across Bethany’s face that made me want to slap her.

  She said, “This is about Nola, isn’t it?”

  “It must be, since with you, everything’s about Nola now.”

  “Laura, don’t be so dramatic. You’re still my best friend, and it’s not my fault if you won’t talk when she’s around, that you avoid us and never want to do anything.”

  “Maybe I don’t feel like being your third wheel. But then, since you never ask my opinion about anything, how would you know? With you, it’s always The Bethany Moyer Show, written by, directed by, and starring Bethany Moyer.”

  I’d been proud of that one, which I made up on the spot, and it had made her angry. “Fine,” she snapped. “Let me know when you’re done being such a baby.”

  “Let me know when you’re done being such a bitch,” I had muttered back, but if she heard me, she didn’t acknowledge it.

  Now here she was, in the dining hall. “Hey,” she said, “wanna come sit with us?” It was more of an accusation than a question, since she already knew I would decline.

  “I’m fine here, thanks,” I said.

  She made her eyes big and looked at me imploringly. “How long are you gonna be like this, Laura? Let’s stop now, okay?”

  Standing there, I couldn’t help noticing how beautiful she looked—even more than usual. The summer sun had tanned her skin a deep brown, and her hair was full and glossy. I could see the shape of her breasts under her black tank top. I examined her as if she were an interesting piece of modern art or a brightly colored bug and didn’t answer.

  Finally, she turned away, and the look she gave me—more hurt than angry—did make me feel guilty for a while.

  I got over my guilt about two hours later, after morning devotion, when we all went down to the lakefront so the campers could swim or use the two Jet Skis the church had rented for the weekend. I stood back from the beach, in the shade of a few tall pines, and watched Bethany and Nola. They were in their bathing suits, walking into the water together, practically holding hands. Then, when they had inched their way in up to their waists, I watched Nola suddenly grab Bethany by the waist and pull her under the water with a splash. They came back up laughing, spitting out water and still clinging to each other.

  I was relieved when Lydia Newman ended the spectacle by asking Bethany to man one of the Jet Skis and give the younger campers rides out on the lake. When Lydia approached me by the trees, I knew she was going to ask me to do the same. I shook my head. “I’d rather not.”

  Lydia frowned. “Well, Laura, you are a team leader, so it would be really great if you helped out here.”

  “It’s against my beliefs,” I said.

  Lydia’s wide face looked confused. “Against your beliefs? How?”

  “Jet Skis are a first-world luxury that uses finite natural resources for no purpose other than pointless recreation. Therefore, they are inherently wasteful and harmful to the environment.”

  Lydia stared at me and I stared back, silently vowing that I would never let myself grow to look like her when I was her age. Then she sighed. “Fine, but will you at least take the younger kids out in one of the canoes? Those aren’t powered by any resource but your arms.” She smirked. She had outsmarted me, but I tried hard not to show it.

  I feigned indifference. “Sure.”

  “Make sure the kids are wearing life jackets,” she said as she walked away.

  I hadn’t wanted to spend the rest of my morning ferrying kids around the lake in an old canoe, but once I was out on the water, I couldn’t deny that it was peaceful away from the screaming kids on the beach, and the Jet Skis roaring across the other end of the lake. My argument against them had been to get out of a job, but as I watched them speed across the water I did feel a sense of almost righteous indignation. Those things really were obnoxious: the noise they made, scaring away all the birds and wildlife, the stinky blue smoke, and all the gas they guzzled just so people could feel a brief sensation of speed. It was stupid. People were greedy and thoughtless.

  After half an hour or so of giving kids lackluster canoe rides, my arms were aching and I was sweating hard. I rowed my last ten-year-old passenger back to shore, and there was Nola, standing on the dock as if she’d been waiting for me.

  The boy took off his life jacket and wobbled out of the canoe and onto the dock, and she was still staring at me.

  “What!” I snapped.

  “Row me out to yon space of empty water, oh, ferrywoman?” she asked me, grinning.

  I’d never seen Nola smile so wide. It almost s
cared me. She was wearing a T-shirt over her bathing suit, with “The Breeders” across the front. Probably another band I was clueless about. Her legs were bare and her dark hair was wet and gleamed in the sun.

  “I’m done,” I said. “You can have the canoe if you want.”

  “Nice try.” She clambered aboard without tipping us over, and before I could do anything about it, she had pushed us off from the dock. “We’re going sailing together.”

  Grudgingly I began to paddle. As we moved out into the water, I stayed silent and listened to the distant sounds of the Jet Ski motors, the kids laughing and screaming on the beach, and the gnats humming around our heads. Brushing them away from her face, Nola looked at me as if I were some puzzle she was trying to solve. A funny one, apparently, because a smile lurked around the corners of her mouth.

  Finally, I couldn’t take the silence and her strange looks any longer. “What?” I asked, pulling in my paddle and letting the canoe drift. By now we were far out in the water, where nobody on shore could hear us.

  “Nothing,” Nola said. “It’s just … you don’t look like a bitch, so that’s puzzling.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Well, what would you call someone who suddenly stops talking to their best friend for no reason?”

  “Don’t even,” I said. “You don’t know anything about us.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe I don’t. But I do know that she’s really upset. Bethany misses you a lot, Laura. You’ve really hurt her.”

  Again I felt that small stab of guilt. But counteracting it was the irritating way Nola talked about Bethany—so protective and possessive—and the image of them laughing in each other’s arms in the water earlier. Bethany hadn’t looked so upset then.

  “And I know why you won’t talk to her,” Nola continued, “even if Bethany won’t admit it. It’s because of me, because you don’t like me.”

  “It’s not because of you,” I said.

  “Of course it is. You don’t like me, Laura, admit it. I rock the boat too much for you, don’t I?”

  “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

  Nola smiled and began to sway from side to side. “I rock the boat too much. That’s it, isn’t it?”

  “Let’s just go back to shore,” I said, dipping the paddle back into the water.

  But now Nola was moving rhythmically to and fro, getting some momentum and making the canoe tip more and more. She was singing now: “Rock the boat, don’t rock the boat, baby, rock the boat, don’t tip the boat over …”

  “Nola, stop it!” I snapped.

  “So I’d like to know where you got the notion …”

  “Nola!” I shouted, as the canoe swayed more violently.

  “Said I’d like to know where you got the notion …”

  I let go of the paddle and grabbed on to the sides of the canoe, trying to counter Nola’s movements but actually making things worse.

  “To rock the boat, don’t rock the boat baby, rock the boat, don’t tip the boat over …”

  And then it happened. She leaned too far to the left, and our canoe capsized. I screamed but stopped short when my open mouth filled with water. Cold hit me. For a second, I was sinking into blackness, my body slow to respond. Then my arms and legs started working together. I swam out from under the canoe and broke through the surface into the sunlight. Nola was hanging on to the overturned craft and laughing, her hair wet and dripping. I grabbed on beside her. “What the hell is wrong with you!” I shouted, spitting out lake water.

  “I’m sorry,” she laughed. “I tried to resist the temptation.”

  I didn’t know what to do. I was so angry. I looked at her in disbelief. But then she put a wet arm around my shoulder. “Come on, Laura,” she said, giving me a squeeze. “Live a little.”

  Her touch made my arm hair stand on end, or maybe it was just the sudden cold of the water. Knowing what I knew about Nola, in that moment I couldn’t help but wonder, did she find me at all attractive? But if Bethany was her type, then I couldn’t possibly be. Still, with her arm around me, which she had not yet removed, I felt disoriented. We stayed like that for a moment, her arm around me, and me almost leaning into her, resting my body against hers, both of us bobbing in the open water. The sun beat against our faces, and I could hear the kids on the beach and a gull complaining as it flew overhead. Then I pushed away from her and swam for shore. I heard her calling after me to stop. I didn’t.

  After a few minutes, I felt my arms begin to tire. My breath came in short gasps, and the shore didn’t look much closer.

  “Laura,” Nola called. “Come help me right this.”

  I kept swimming. I had a pain in my side, and I paddled with one arm, in a modified sidestroke, dipping beneath the surface and coming back up, spitting out water as I began to gasp for breath. This is it, I thought. I’m gonna drown. Land looked unattainable, and the water kept pulling me down.

  At last, one of my scissor kicks hit sand and gravel. Panting and gasping, I waded onto the shore and collapsed onto the sand. A minute later, Nola pulled the canoe up onto the shore and then came and lay down beside me, as if we were friends, as if we’d just gone through something together.

  “Phew,” she said, still breathing heavily. “Where’s Jesus when you need him—when walking on water would actually have been helpful!”

  I sat up, and for a second I almost smiled, almost replied amicably, but then I felt a weight in my pocket—a small rectangular weight. “I can’t believe you,” I muttered.

  “Huh?” She hadn’t a clue.

  I stood up and pulled my soaked phone out of my pocket. “See this?” I shouted, waving it in her face. “See what you’ve done? See what you’ve ruined?”

  Nola’s mouth dropped open. “Laura, I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know you had that with—”

  I cut her off. I was nearly screaming now, not caring that everyone on the beach—all the kids and team leaders—were staring at us now. “Just stay away from me! You stupid, selfish, thoughtless … bitch!” I ran up the beach toward the path and practically collided with Jon Newman.

  After I had changed out of my soaked clothing and dried myself off, after I’d confirmed for certain that my phone was ruined, I went into the dining hall, to a small back room that served as an office. Jon had told me to come there when I was ready, and I had expected to find my mom there, too, sitting in one of the old armchairs, shock and disappointment on her face after hearing of my outburst. But when I came in, it was only Jon. He asked me to sit down.

  I flopped down in the chair across from him and looked at the floor, ignoring his searching gaze.

  “What’s going on, Laura?” he asked at last. It was clear from how he put the question that he hoped I would open up to him, that he hoped he could become my confidant, guiding me through my adolescent angst. I tried not to laugh. “There’s clearly something bothering you,” he continued when I didn’t answer. “Maybe you’ll feel better if you get it off your chest.”

  I kept my eyes on the floor. I was thinking about how I would explain my lack of contact to Martin when I got home on Sunday afternoon. I decided I would tell him more or less the truth: a canoe I was on had capsized, and my phone was ruined. I just hoped that in the meantime he didn’t grow too worried about me.

  “Laura?” Jon leaned forward in his seat, trying to lock eyes with me.

  I sighed and looked up at him. “Just tell me what my punishment is, okay?”

  “I want to help you, Laura. But I can’t if you don’t tell me what’s wrong.”

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  He leaned back in his seat, scratched at his chin, and gave me an assessing look. “How are you and Bethany doing? I couldn’t help but notice you two haven’t really been hanging out together the way you normally do.”

  Of cours
e you noticed, I thought, because you watch Bethany the way a dog watches over his bone.

  “Did you and Bethany have a fight?” he pressed.

  “How is that any of your business?” I asked.

  “I’m just trying to—”

  “And how did this become about Bethany?” I interrupted. “Just because you want to screw her doesn’t mean we’re all equally obsessed with the pastor’s daughter.” The words were out of my mouth before I could swallow them. But seeing the shocked look on Jon’s face, I didn’t regret what I’d said. I felt a surge of heat roll through me and leaned forward. “Jon, I know the things you think about Bethany. It’s right there in your eyes every time you look at her. But don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me.”

  I touched his hand, and he jerked it away as if I were possessed by a demon. I began to giggle uncontrollably and sank back in my seat. For a moment, Jon looked as if he was going to be sick. Then he stood up and walked out of the room.

  “Where are you going?” I called after him, still laughing. “I thought you wanted to talk.”

  BEN

  Nobody wanted to talk about what had happened during the worship rally on Saturday night. The second it was over, everybody rushed out of the dining hall to the back field, for the midnight game of capture the flag.

  The game was a VBS tradition. We divided the giant field behind the rec hall in half—six tribes took one side and six took the other. Everyone played, even the team leaders. The game could go on for hours, way into the night.

  I wasn’t a fan. On my first year of camp, I’d been guarding the flag when a bunch of older kids charged our field and rushed me. They had taken our flag and brought it back to their side, winning the game before I could even yell out for help. Of course, I got blamed for losing the game, and ever since that year, I had a simple strategy: wander into the other team’s territory as soon as possible and get caught. You got to spend the rest of the game sitting in the other team’s “jail,” a marked-off square at the back of the field near the woods, without any responsibilities, watching everybody else run around in the dark, shouting and acting like morons. It was almost relaxing, like how I imagined people on drugs must feel.