Five Summers (19 page)

THE LOW TIDE EXPLORATION—A PERFECT ACTIVITY for the balmy holiday afternoon—had been going well until the counselor in charge, a busty blonde named Whitney, had taken a phone call from her boyfriend—who, she’d informed the campers, was off in college studying theater and was “kind of a big deal” since he’d gotten cast in a toothpaste commercial as the voice of a cartoon molar. But the call was not going well, and Whitney had stormed off down the beach yelling into her cell, and when she hadn’t come back ten minutes later, a few of the older boys had started a game of spin the bottle with a Coke left over from lunch.

Jo didn’t feel like playing for a number of reasons. One, it was one p.m. and sunny, and weren’t kissing games supposed to happen after dark? Two, kissing games were definitely not allowed at Camp Nedoba, no matter the time of day. And three, she had never been kissed. That was the most important reason. When Jo imagined her first kiss, she pictured a quiet moment with a guy she really liked, maybe after she beat him in a really high-stakes game of air hockey. She pictured nervous butterflies and closed eyes and soft lips. She did not picture the sun beating down on a sweaty glass Coke bottle and a bunch of twelve-year-old boys with weird facial hair and acne. This was nobody’s idea of romance, and flies buzzing around their discarded sandwich crusts were definitely
not
the same as butterflies.

But everybody else seemed pretty into the game. Maddie and Skylar actually seemed
excited
to kiss the guys in the circle. Emma was hanging back around the periphery, but she wasn’t exactly
not
playing—probably because Adam Loring was there.

“Hey, get in, Joey,” yelled a skinny fourteen-year-old named Greg. Greg had a crew cut and an overbite, and had almost been sent home from camp the previous summer for trying to light one of his friend’s farts with a burner starter he’d stolen from the mess hall.

Jo made a face. “It’s
Jo
,” she said. “And no thanks. Somebody has to look out for Whitney. Or
my dad
.” She hoped that would be enough to make him leave her alone.

“Lame,” Greg said.

“You can still sit with us,” Skylar said. “You don’t have to play.” Jo reluctantly wedged herself between Skylar and Maddie.

“I’m not playing,” she said loudly.

“You sit in the circle, you’re playing,” Greg said, leaning in for his spin.

“Don’t worry,” Maddie whispered. “I’ll dropkick him if he tries anything.”

Jo wrapped her arms around Maddie, wishing like always that they could live together all year round, and not just for the four weeks of camp.

“Oh, I get it,” Greg said. “You’re a lesbo.”

“Shut up and spin!” Jo shouted.

Greg twisted the bottle back and forth, taunting her with a leer, before letting it fly. Jo watched the blue-green glass flash in the sun as it spun, slower and slower, getting closer . . . and closer . . . and closer until it finally landed just shy of her, pointing at Skylar’s left knee. Greg’s friends slapped him on the back and Skylar sighed dejectedly. In the five minutes they’d been playing, she had already kissed most of the guys in the circle, crawling out time and time again on all fours with her golden waves hanging down so low they almost brushed the sand. If any of those boys worked as hard in school as they did at making the Coke bottle land on Skylar, Jo realized, they could probably skip a grade.

Skylar pecked Greg on the lips and quickly sat back down.

“Second time is supposed to be tongue!” Greg cried, scowling.

“You wish,” Skylar said. She leaned forward and spun the bottle for her turn, and all the boys sat with rapt attention. After a few seconds, the bottle came to rest, pointing at Adam Loring.

“Yes!” Adam jumped up and pumped his fists like a boxer doing a victory lap around the ring. Jo glanced over at Emma nervously. Emma never said it outright, but Jo was pretty sure she had a crush on Adam. They had been spending a lot of time together lately. Emma caught Jo looking and turned away, pretending to be interested in a sailboat out on the lake.

“Ugh, Adam, you are so weird,” Skylar said.

“You know you love it,” he said, getting back down on his knees and leaning in for his kiss. Skylar tried to peck him, but he smushed his face into hers and grabbed her chin. Skylar shoved him away, but when she sat back down Jo saw that she was smiling and blushing.

“Best kiss of my life,” Adam said.

“
Only
kiss of your life,” Skylar teased.

“I get another one, though,” Adam said, reaching for the bottle. “Who’s it going to be? Which lady is feeling lucky today?” None of them were, as it turned out; the bottle landed on Greg. “Do-over!” Adam cried, but Greg snatched the bottle before he could get it.

“Nope, that means you get skipped,” Greg said, smiling. “My turn again.” He flicked his wrist and the bottle whipped around. Jo looked back over at Emma to make sure she was okay, and so she didn’t even notice that Greg’s low whistle of satisfaction was intended for her. “Yes! Gotcha! I knew I would get you!”

Jo looked down at the mouth of the bottle, a perfect little round O that matched her own mouth as it dropped open. She felt her face turn bright red. The older boys started slapping their hands on their knees and chanting “Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!” A few of the older girls joined in, along with Adam—of course. Adam loved any sort of spectacle, even if he wasn’t a part of it.

“No way,” Jo said, but the crowd drowned her out. She looked at Skylar and Maddie for support but they were busy laughing at Greg, who had gotten to his feet and started doing comical calisthenics, stretching his lips wide and blowing raspberries like an athlete warming up for an event. Jo craned her neck to look for Whitney. How long could a fight with a talking tooth really last, anyway? Why didn’t her dad hire more responsible counselors?

“I’m ready,” Greg said, beckoning to her from across the circle.

“Dream on,” she said, giving him the finger.

“Playing hard to get. I like it.” He leaned forward, and Jo saw beads of sweat clinging to the sparse hairs on his upper lip.
This cannot be my first kiss
, she thought.

“NO!” At first Jo thought she was having an out-of-body experience brought on by stress, but then she realized that it was Maddie who had screamed, not her.

“She
said
she’s not playing, jerkface, so leave her alone.” Maddie stood, moving in front of Jo, and put her hands on her hips. She was so tiny compared to Greg that it was like watching David face off with Goliath. Greg sat back on his heels and rolled his eyes.

“Fine, Freckles. It’s not like I would do anything anyway, since her dad runs camp.” He whispered something to the friends sitting next to him and they laughed.

“Didn’t you recently almost get expelled?” Emma piped up from behind them. “I bet instigating a kissing game with a bunch of young girls wouldn’t help your case.”

“We could have you out of here faster than you can say Clearasil,” Skylar snapped. Jo reached into the sand and grabbed the Coke bottle, flinging it into the nearby trees.

“Game over,” she said. She stalked off through the woods, trying to breathe deeply; the air in Onan always calmed her down, not like the frigid air conditioning at her mom’s house, scented liberally with seasonal Glade PlugIns, or the thin, stuffy air at school, which always made her feel like she had to take a nap. She took a few gulps and felt a little better, but when she stopped to wait for the others, in the clearing by the old toolshed, Jo realized she was shaking. She was usually so good at standing up for herself, but she’d frozen for a minute back there.

“I’m sorry,” Maddie said, ducking into the clearing with Skylar and Emma trailing behind her. “I shouldn’t have tried to fight your battle. I know you are more than capable. Actually, I’m kind of surprised you didn’t hit him.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Jo said. “I needed the backup.”

“
I
should have stopped it before it got that far,” Skylar said. “I forgot that you’d never . . .”

“It’s embarrassing,” Jo mumbled at the ground.

“I’ve never, either!” Emma said. “That could have been me. Except no boys even
want
to kiss me, so at least you have that.”

“Yeah, if I change my mind I know those flaky, sweaty lips are waiting for me,” Jo joked, almost gagging at the thought. She couldn’t really imagine kissing
anyone
yet, but Greg was especially disgusting.

“Well, none of you should be embarrassed,” Skylar said. “My first kiss was during spin the bottle and it was awful. The guy shoved his tongue down my throat like . . . like an octopus tentacle!” The girls shrieked. “It wasn’t the way I wanted it to be at all,” Skylar said, wrinkling her nose at the memory.

“Mine, either,” Maddie said. “It was on the railroad tracks behind a trailer park! So romantic!”

“A
trailer park
?” Skylar asked incredulously. “Did you know someone who lived there?” Maddie shrugged.

“Boys are always ruining things,” Emma said. “We could have been collecting rocks or climbing trees or something, instead of worrying about them putting their tongues in our mouths.”

Jo nodded gravely. “I shouldn’t have let it happen,” she said. “They took advantage of my authority.”

“Jo, no offense, but—you’re
twelve
,” Maddie said, hugging her.

“Well, we have to be able to do something,” Jo said. “Let’s make a deal. We still have three weeks left, and the boys aren’t going to stop being annoying.”

“They can’t,” Maddie sighed. “It’s in their DNA.”

“So let’s make this summer about us doing what
we
want to do. No boys pushing us around, tricking us, or ruining our fun. And no kissing.”

“Hey!” Skylar cried.

“How about . . . unless it’s someone special that we really like?” Emma suggested.

“Fine,” Jo said. She knew that made her safe. None of the boys at Camp Nedoba seemed special to her. She hoped they never would.

RUNNING THROUGH THE WOODS BACK TO THE cabin with tears streaming down her face was becoming a theme in her relationship with Adam, Emma realized. Only last time she was in this state she was dying to turn around and go back to him, and this time she couldn’t get far enough away.

He’d barely said good-bye. He’d offered a hand to lift her out of the boat once they’d reached the mainland, but then he’d just hugged her and kissed her forehead. Her
forehead
. He might as well have given her a noogie.

“Come find me later,” she’d said, meeting his eyes for the first time since they’d left the island.
I dare you to not to be a coward
, she thought.
I dare you to come find me tonight and prove to me that I didn’t just make a huge mistake
.

“Yeah,” he’d said, “definitely.” And right then she’d realized precisely why people tried not to hook up with their friends. Coming from any other guy, she would have believed it. But she knew Adam. She knew that the scar on his shin was from crashing his bike when he was seven. She knew that he picked all the melon out of his fruit salad. And she knew from his tone that he was feeding her a line. Like she was anyone. Or, more accurately, like she was no one.

Emma had forced herself to turn and walk away at a normal pace. It was only once she was sure he couldn’t see her through the trees that she’d started to run.

She burst through the door of Souhegan prepared to sob while her friends held her and then listened to her perform an exhaustive recap of her entire day, followed (hopefully) by the consumption of something full of trans fats. But the scene she found threw her for a loop.

There they were, the three of them, sitting and laughing in sweatpants and tank tops, flipping through magazines just like she hoped they would be. The setting was right, even down to the props: an open bag of Cheetos, teardrop-shaped bottles of candy-colored nail polishes, someone’s iPod cranked up to full volume so that it was audible through the headphones, Katy Perry’s vibrato reduced to a thin warble that sounded like the Dormouse from
Alice in Wonderland
, babbling inside his teapot to a techno beat. Everything was what she expected—except for the people.

Aileen, Jess, and Kerry looked up as she came in, their mouths dropping open.

“What happened to
you
?” Kerry asked, her eyes drifting down to Emma’s muddy shorts and scratched legs.

“Just a bad canoe trip,” Emma said. She braced herself on the edge of a bunk bed and tried to catch her breath. “Where is everybody?”

“At dinner, I think?” Aileen said, opening one of the nail polishes and turning her concentration back to her toes.

“Skylar and Maddie were here when we got back,” Kerry said. “I think mini-Ma . . . Jo went on a date.”

“A date?” Emma said. “Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure,” Kerry said. She leaned in conspiratorially. “Reunion makes everyone desperate.”

“Seriously,” Jess groaned. “Sunny needs to move on.”

Aileen looked up from her nail-painting and frowned at Jess. “Stop saying that,” she scolded. “We need to let her make her own decisions.”

“But Mark is such a d-bag,” Jess cried, pulling her tight curls up into a bun. “I literally cannot listen to one more monologue about how he was the one that got away.”

“I’m just saying, we’re not gonna change her mind,” Aileen said.

“Sorry,” Kerry said, rolling her eyes and smiling up at Emma. “We’re just having a little bit of drama this weekend.”

“Believe me,” Emma said, kicking her muddy flip-flops out into the grass, “I understand.”

She took a long shower in the vast, white-tiled room, grateful for the late-night solitude and for the din of the steamy streams that ricocheted off the seafoam green floor. It was calming white noise, and she needed to be calmed. She didn’t know what to think about Adam. They’d gone from such a high high to such a noncommittal middle that she started to think she might have done something wrong, something to make him change his mind. Maybe if she had agreed to stay overnight with him . . . maybe if she had waited that morning and gone over in a boat with him . . . maybe if she had just been more confident the night before, on the sandbar, or at the bonfire, or at dinner . . . maybe if she had never left camp . . . maybe if she had kissed him the last night of their last year . . . maybe if . . . maybe.

But she knew playing that game never went anywhere. It was simple logic, the kind of stuff she’d learned in elementary school: an exclusive disjunction.
If
she had done things differently,
then
things would be different. But she hadn’t. And neither had Adam. They had done things, and those things had consequences, and now she had to face them. And no amount of self-flagellation under a terrible low-flow showerhead was going to change that.

When she got back to the cabin, her skin scrubbed raw and pink, and her hair wrapped turban-style in a thin towel, Emma found Jo, Maddie, and Skylar in their beds, sleeping, reading, and listening to an iPod, respectively. The other girls had moved their slumber party back over to their side, but Sunny was still nowhere to be found, and Emma found herself hoping that she was off somewhere with Mark Slotkin, locked in a passionate embrace—one that would not end with a big blow off in a tiny boat.

“Hey,” she whispered, poking Skylar’s arm. Skylar rolled over and pulled out her earbuds. Her eyes still looked red and tired.

“Where have you been?” she asked. “You keep leaving.”

“I know,” Emma said. “It’s a long story.”

Skylar propped herself up on her elbows. “I’m really sorry about last night.”

“It’s okay,” Emma sighed. “Let’s talk tomorrow. I’m exhausted.”

“Okay . . .” Skylar was looking at her funny, like she was trying to read her face, but eventually put her earpiece back in and closed her eyes. Emma could hear strains of what sounded like the Pixies.

She sat on her bunk and dried her hair, keeping one eye on the door. Adam might come by—after all, he’d said he would. Maybe she wasn’t giving him enough credit. With this in mind, Emma put on a pink tank top with no bra and a pair of black silky pajama shorts.

“You look nice,” Maddie yawned, leaning over her bunk. “Got a hot date later?”

“I don’t think so,” Emma laughed. “Hey,” she said, lowering her voice. “They said Jo went on a date? Is that true?”

Maddie shook her head and grimaced. “Don’t ask,” she whispered. “She’s been in a bad mood ever since she got back.”

“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here,” Jo grumbled with her face in her pillow.

See?
Maddie mouthed, and turned back to her book.

Emma climbed into bed and stared up at the initials she’d scribbled onto the underside of the bunk.
E + S = BFF
. She wished it still felt true. She had never needed her friends more, but even though they were so close she could touch them, they’d never felt farther away.