Sun Kissed (Camp Boyfriend) (12 page)

As I twisted the cap closed, I noticed that I’d spilled some of the brown liquid on my rich cousin’s hand-me-down ski suit. I rubbed snow on the stain, but it only smeared.

Awesome. It’s not like I could replace it. Ski season had barely begun, and I’d just taken myself out of the game.

When I looked up, Missy was pointing and smiling my way, her followers giggling.

My teeth clenched. I only had a year and a half of school left, but I was determined to stay on top until the end. I couldn’t be poor
and
unpopular. One of those things was bad enough—two meant I’d be an outcast, and I was already playing the pariah role when it came to my family. I would not let that happen at school, the one place where people paid attention to me. Where I mattered.

U drink that
—
not wear it, loser,
Missy texted me.

Ya think?!
I texted back and flipped her off, a gesture that made her laugh. I followed the crowd when the chaperones waved us toward the main lodge, feeling relieved. Rule number one of the social jungle: show no fear around popular beasts like Missy. Even if they are your BFFs.

We’d been in different friend circles until we turned twelve and rumors went around that her mom had gotten pulled over for drunk driving in a school zone. The story was that the cop had to take back the DWI ticket when Missy’s father, a state senator, stepped in. When I found her crying in a bathroom stall, I’d promised to stick up for her when the rest of her friends gossiped about her. True to my word, I’d helped her by being meaner than any of her enemies. I envisioned myself as a sort of bully-warrior, unaware I was just becoming a much better bully myself.

“Pick up your gear and follow Andre!” Ms. Hanrahan shouted over the noise of other arriving buses and cars that dropped off the skiers and snowboarders for the day. “He’ll pass out lift tickets, a list of everyone’s cellphone numbers, and make arrangements for meeting back here at the end of the day.”

Andre is HAWT
—
*so* following him!
My cellphone flashed the new message at the top of my screen. I didn’t need to look at the sender to know who was salivating over the college-age chaperone helping out Ms. Hanrahan today—a cute snowboarder, and our lacrosse coach, known for his reputation. Since he was the principal’s son, we’d made up some outrageous rumors, too, but the stuff that
was
true—ick. Grabbing my ski bag from the pile, I met Bella’s wide gray eyes through the falling snow.

“Andre is a player,” I warned harmless Bella, wishing like crazy I had her designer ski suit and the matching gloves she pulled on. “Be careful.”

“Aww!” squealed Missy as she leaned in between us to grab an impractical pink suede ski bag. “How cute of you to care. Are you going to tell her to use protection, too?”

She fluttered false eyelashes at me. “Because I think our Bella already knows more about having fun than you.”

Giggles erupted from behind her and I pulled up my scarf to hide the hot red splotches exploding on my cheeks.

Two other friends—younger hangers-on—gloated at me over Missy’s shoulder. I’d held my own with Missy all year, knowing that I was teetering on the edge of her approval since turning down invites to go places or do things I couldn’t afford. At Northstar, a girl without a clique was a social freak, and I already had way too much “alone time” at home while my mother jet-setted her way through her flavor-of-the-month rich boyfriends. It seemed like a long time ago that I’d helped Missy through a rough time of her own. She used to call me—even last year—when her mom was drinking and her dad was out of town.

“Is that so?” I slid my goggles into place and cranked my tone to “withering” before saying the words guaranteed to get Missy off my back. “Then I guess she won’t mind having her name added to the list he’s circulating about underage girls he’s been with.”

“What?” Missy went pale under her bronzer while Ms. Hanrahan shouted for us to hurry up.

I gave the clique Queen Bee a tight smile before I lied smoothly, “Mom’s new boyfriend is a Fed. He gets all the dirt on town scandals. I just hope you didn’t have enough
fun
with Andre to make the list. I wonder if a state senator’s daughter would be front page news?”

Bella and the other girls gathered around Missy and led her away, their visible support making me feel bad just for scaring the crap out of my frenemy. I hadn’t known it would upset her that much. But what choice did I have? Fear and respect were the only languages we spoke.

A male voice in my ear made me jump.

“I thought you gave up the mean girl act at camp last summer.”

Turning slowly, I faced the only boy at Northstar Academy who knew I attended camp in a remote corner of the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina every year.

“I thought we had a deal never to speak to each other,” I shot back, nudging my bag higher on my shoulder. I didn’t follow my friends since I didn’t want to be seen talking to Julian Berwick.

“Really?” He grinned, surprising me with a flash of white teeth and humor. “I think a ‘deal’ implies agreement between both parties. You barking at me to keep my mouth shut when we were ten years old doesn’t count.”

He strode away toward the main lodge, his long legs covering ground in a hurry. What was he, like six-foot-four? He’d been tall and gawky forever. Now, he seemed tall and…built.

“Wait,” I called, following him toward the building and hoping none of my friends watched from the windows.

Thankfully, thick holiday wreaths covered most of the windows anyway, the whole place decked out for Christmas.

He stopped. Turned.

I took a breath, ready to launch into a tirade about keeping his distance. But seeing him through the falling snow, his longish dark bangs half covering one eye, it was like looking at a stranger. When had he quit carrying a dopey fake sword with him everywhere? He’d worn a cape for as long as I’d known him, whether he was with a bunch of rich kids from Manhattan at Northstar or he was at camp with his geekster squad of science-lovers and video game freaks.

 “Where’s your cape?” I asked, sounding like an idiot. I cleared my throat, grateful I had pulled down my goggles earlier, since they hid half my face. “I mean, you’re not trying to turn normal or anything, right? Because I think it’s too late for you to fit in.”

Why did I feel awkward around
Julian
of all people? It made no sense. Maybe I was just regretting the showdown with Missy since I’d hoped to have fun on Christmas Eve instead of the endless battle to maintain social status.

“Same old Hannah.” He heaved a sigh and shook his head. For the first time, I noticed some kind of tattoo on his neck, half hidden by a scarf. “Guess the camp rumors about you had it wrong.”

He turned to head inside by the time my ears caught up with what he’d said.

“Excuse me?” I tugged his sleeve to pull him away from the door, away from a red-cheeked family wearing matching wool reindeer sweaters and clutching paper cups of hot cocoa.

Julian glanced at my hand on his sleeve and frowned. For a second, my gaze darted to where my snowflake-decorated fingernails rested on his wrist just above his black leather glove. Flustered, I let go.

“If you have more insults in mind, I’m going to leave.” He spoke clearly, as if he was talking to an eight-year-old. “Otherwise, I’m listening.”

I pulled off my goggles, wanting a better look at this semi-normal-seeming boy who’d taken the place of Julian the Super Nerd. My hair snagged in the hinge though, and I accidentally yanked it. When Julian reached to help free me, I pulled back and tugged out enough strands to hurt.

“You can’t talk smack about camp rumors and then walk away. What gives?” I loved camp. No one there knew about my mom, serial dater of rich men. No one at camp noticed if I wore last year’s clothes. Or if I forgot to be too cool for campfire songs and trilled a chorus of “Kumbaya” with the girls in my cabin.

I really missed them.

“Nothing. I just thought…” He folded his arms across his chest, taking up way too much space for a boy I’d always thought of as gangly. He started to lean against the side of the lodge, until an underclassman approached and handed him his lift ticket. “Thanks, man. Would you mind getting Hannah’s, too? You can take a turn down the mountain with my video camera.”

The younger kid looked at me, nodded at Julian and then ran off as fat snowflakes fell all around us, a waterfall of icy lace.

“Thanks,” I said, figuring my friends weren’t going to miss me too soon anyway. Better to give Missy a little time to cool down. “So what’s the deal with camp? And who’s trash-talking me behind my back?”

I hadn’t been the reigning queen bee of our cabin, Divas’ Den, for the last seven years by letting the rumor mill get the best of me. I worked the system, not the other way around.

“No one.” Julian reached toward me and I tensed. But he just lifted the heavy bag with my skis off my shoulder and propped it up against the lodge. “I just saw you hanging out with the Munchies’ Manor girls at the end of camp last year.

The word around camp was that you’d made peace with your nemesis.”

Leave it to Julian to make it sound like the rival cabin was from the Klingon Empire. Not that I would ever admit to familiarity with Klingon culture. It was one thing to lust after Chris Pine. Another entirely to admit I’d ever attended a
Star Trek
convention in my own brush with nerd-dom.

“Oh.” Last summer at camp had been weird. But then, it wasn’t easy being fabulous all the time, especially not when other girls were letting down their guards and having fun.

Not when that was exactly what I wished I could do, too.

“Maybe. But Northstar Academy is a long way from Camp Juniper Point.”

My eyes went to his neck where I’d seen a hint of a tattoo. Something dark green and black. I was curious.

“Seven hundred seventy miles.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“I am aware of that.” His brown eyes studied me in a way that made me self-conscious. And not because of last year’s clothes. “I’m telling you, it’s not that different here.”

“You wouldn’t understand.” I grabbed my bag again, ready to be done with this conversation. Since when did Julian-Freaking-Berwick get to judge
me
? “It’s different for
me
and you know it.”

“Because you’re a girl?”

I rolled my eyes and remained silent while my phone started to vibrate. My friends must have finally noticed I was missing.

“Do you think I’ve never felt like an outsider?” Julian asked.

Perfectly serious.

I forced a laugh as I pulled my phone from my pocket.  No way was I letting him see how much that question got to me.

“I think you’ve tried hard as hell to be an outsider. Who goes around with a wand and a cape at summer camp except a total freak? Or…” I let the word hang, toying with him and not one bit sorry. “…a boy with enough money he can afford not to care what people think.”

This time, it was my turn to walk away and I did. Julian could take the high road since his rich family made him untouchable. I almost ran right over his lackey friend who held out my ticket.

“Thanks.” I snatched it away and headed behind the main lodge toward the ski lifts. I’d find a minion of my own to put my bag in a locker once I had my boots and skis on.

For now, I just wanted to get away from Julian.

What the hell? He hadn’t talked to me for the better part of a decade and now he was suddenly trying to be my conscience? Or worse, comparing
his
life to mine, when my own mother ditched me for Christmas to be with her latest boytoy?

While Julian was opening a mountain of presents from his family, I would spend the day alone fielding calls from creditors who never took a day off. Ever. I checked my messages to see where my friends were.

Buddy system means we hit mountain in twos. Guess U R odd
girl out.

Missy’s text felt like the bitch-slap she’d meant it to be—especially when I looked up to see my friends already on the chairlifts. Bella’s designer fur boots swung a few feet off the ground, her long honey-blond waves trailing down her back while Missy waved at me through the haze of snowflakes.

I tried not to snarl.

“Did you get a partner, Hannah?”

Andre, the chaperone Bella had been drooling over, was suddenly at my elbow and way too close. He wasn’t
really
under investigation by the Feds. But that didn’t make his hitting on high school girls any less pervy.

Then again, my view of him was skewed by the fact that Mom had flirted with him at the last parent-teacher meeting. Gross to the infinity power.

“I’ll find my own partner, thanks.” I dropped onto a bench and yanked on my ski boots, my throat thick with emotion. If I hadn’t been such a bitch to Missy, I’d be on the mountain now with my friends. Popularity was a dance.

Sometimes the steps changed too fast for me to keep up.

Andre leaned closer when I stood and stepped into my skis. “I’m taking a small group of the better skiers to go off-trail, if you’d like to join us.”

I glanced down at my short blades. “I don’t have the right skis.”

“So? People do it all the time. Be adventurous.” I shivered when he snapped my buckles closed and peered up at me.

“Don’t you want to do it with me?”

Ew. Disgusting. Like, never. Then again…

With no effort on my part, the key to one-upping my clique had been tossed in my lap. My gaze flew to the chairlifts where Missy and Bella peered over their shoulders at me. I could just text Missy and apologize. Shake Andre off like the bad cold that he was.

But stubborn pride had been my best friend on a lot of lonely days. I lifted my hand to my lips and blew a kiss at my girls before giving them a cheeky wave.

Bitch-slap returned.

“Does that mean you’ll go?” Andre smiled at me.

I huffed out a sigh as I laced my boots. “Count me in.”

“Great. And if you don’t find a partner, you can stick with me. Okay?”