As I Am (9 page)

“You know what I mean. If you’re not spending time with her just to get into her pants – which, by the way, she’s told me are already on the floor for you – then
maybe she’ll decide that she wants to move on. Addy has never been rejected by a guy and I think it’s sent her into some psychotic trance and she doesn’t know what to do. She’s pulling out all the stops and you and I won’t get a moment’s rest until she either gets what she wants or decides to move on, which she never does, so you’ve got your work cut out for you. Please?” I beg.

“Fine. If you think it’ll help.”

“I do. Better to try and nip it in the bud now than go through half the summer with her hounding me and falling all over you,” I tell him.

“That sounds fair. It’s a deal
, friend,” he says, extending his hand to shake mine.

“Deal
, ..friend.” I shake Miller’s hand and that same excited feeling I got before comes rushing back. I’m trying to explain away that electric feeling. It’s difficult, though. This whole idea of a guy really wanting to be my friend is all new, that’s all. I just need to stay focused on doing my job well, building whatever it is I’m building with Cal, and developing a great friendship with a fellow artist. It’s all good.

I don’t remember
time flying by quite so fast last year. All I seem to remember are the days of fishing kids out of the lake, applying bug spray and calamine lotion, and drying tears of homesickness that streamed down the faces of eleven-year-olds. The bug spray and calamine lotion are a constant, but after that first week or so, the kids all learned how not to tip their canoes over, and the tears of missing Mom and Dad had all dried up.

T
his year I suppose the time has flown by because of my new responsibilities. I’m a free bird, allowed to move from activity to activity as I please, taking pictures and living out my passion. I’m not stuck waiting for kids to fall out of their canoes or trudging through the woods with a whiney crew. My mind has been in full-on photographer mode, which has been wonderful for me … not so much for my sister. My duties have her on my case double time. Only in Addy’s world could she rationalize being miffed at me for not spending enough time with Cal
or
Miller.

I’ve done what I can with Miller. He’s spent a little more time with
Addison, but I haven’t had a chance to really chat with him about it. I’ve seen him, but we’ve all been together at the bonfires, so not exactly ideal to get the lowdown. He seems to be interacting with her with a less judgmental attitude. There are a lot fewer eye rolls, so at least there’s that.

I’m about to remedy her issue with my lack of attention to Cal. As soon as I finish uploading the picture
s from today I’m meeting up with him. I haven’t been alone with him in a few days so when he asked me if I wanted to go for a walk with him tonight I was eager to say yes.

Eagerness aside, t
here’s something about Cal that I just can’t put my finger on. He’s a super-nice guy, and he seems to like hanging out with me, but something just always feels off, like we’re not really connecting. It’s probably because we haven’t spent a lot of real time together; most of the time we’re together with everyone at meals or at the bonfire. Only a couple of times have we taken a walk together after the bonfire, and that always seems awkward to me.

Addy doesn’t understand it when I tell her how I’m feeling. For her, all she needs to feel
“connected” is a physical attraction to a guy. I’d have to be deaf and blind not to be physically attracted to Cal, but that’s not my issue. We talk about various things, mainly school stuff that we’re kind of rehashing from our emails over the last year. Other than that, he’s either helping me set up shots or there is a lot of silence. It defies all of Addy’s reasoning for me to not feel connected to Cal and I don’t know that she’ll ever understand.

I may have a lack o
f romantic connection with Cal, but I do really like him. We spent months emailing back and forth so I feel like I know him. Now that he’s making whatever move this is, there’s all this pressure to make a deeper connection with him. I’m doing my best to be open to him like I promised Addy I would be, but I’m just not feeling it.

I close everything out
on my laptop and slide my flip-flops on. I check myself in the mirror to make sure my outfit is alright.
I think these are the pieces Addy said go together.

Grabbing my hoodie and a flashlight I go downstairs and out the front door. I check my watch and am relieved to see that I have
twenty minutes before I’m supposed to meet him at the canoe landing. I was afraid for a minute that I’d have to rush, which would make me a little breathless by the time I got there. A red-faced, breathless Kinley is not a pretty picture.

I cut over to the dining hall because I want to grab a bottle of water before I meet Cal. I would have gotten one from the fridge at The Lodge, but I wanted to avoid the constant sarcasm from my friends about Cal.

I don’t bother turning on the lights in the main dining area because I’m only going to be in here for a minute, but I do flip the light switch in the kitchen so I can see where I’m going. It takes me forever to open the case of bottles. I swear those things are hermetically sealed! At least they’re kept in the walk in cooler so it’s nice and ice cold. I’m about to walk of the kitchen when I realize I should get one for Cal. That’d be so rude of me to show up with a cold bottle of water for me but not for him.

When I exit the kitchen
there’s an obvious glow coming from the back corner of the room that I didn’t notice before. I tread lightly so I don’t scare whoever is there. It could be some newbie counselors looking for a quiet place to make out, but I’m hoping it’s not some eighth graders doing the same. Miller said he caught some kids trying to make out in a canoe the other day.

“Wait, wait, wait! Go back to that other one,” I hear a young boy say. “Yeah
, that one. Did you see what he wrote? That girl sounds hot!”

I peek over the table and see three boys huddle around a something.
I can’t see what it is, but by their excitement I can only imagine that it’s a Playboy or something like that. One of the boys passes the mystery object to another and it’s clearly not a magazine. It’s a large, leather-bound book. What the heck are prepubescent boys getting all hot over from an old book?

“Hello, boys,” I say, making all three of them jump. One of them even makes a squeaking sound as they look up at me with embarrassed shock. “What ‘cha got there?”

“Nothing. It’s nothing. It’s just an old book of my brother’s. See.” The boy holds the book out in front of me so I can see that it is, in fact, an old leather-bound book.

“You sure there isn’t some raunchy girly magazine tucked away in there?” I challenge with raised eyebrows.

“No! See!” He opens the cover of the book and then flips through the pages, showing me that there’s nothing hidden. I don’t see any pictures, although he’s flipping kind of fast. “It’s just a book of old stories!” Sounds like those stories are a little steamy, but … since there aren’t any naked pictures of women I’m going to let it pass.

“Alright. Back to your cabin. Lights Out is in thirty minutes, and you’re not supposed to be out of your cabin right now anyway. If I see you boys out like this again the book is mine and I’m telling your cabin leader. Do you understand?

“Yes. Thank you! Won’t happen again.” The boys echo each other’s thanks for me to ratting them out. They scurry out of the dining hall and around the building to their cabin.

Shaking my head I leave the dining hall and head toward the lake.

“Hey! Where ya going, thirsty girl?” Miller asks, seeing me walking with two bottles of water in hand.

“I’m meeting Cal by the canoes. What are you doing? Addy retract her claws long enough for you to escape?” I laugh.

“Something like that. I pointed to something shiny and distracted her,” he says. We both laugh and I enjoy the safe camaraderie I have with Miller. The nods and knowing looks we give each other when Addy and Mia go off on one of their superficial tangents have actually become really special to me. I’ve always had my own internal eye rolling and sarcastic commentary going, but now I’m not alone.

“You still haven’t told me where you’re going,” I prompt.

“I’m headed to the canoe launch, too. I left the life jackets out when we had to bring a kid in to get bandaged up. He thought he was Michael Phelps.”

“Let me guess
, he’s no Michael Phelps?”

“I’m still not a hundred percent convinced he even knows how to swim,” Miller laughs. “But
before his tumble into the water off the dock, he and his buddies were working the scene for the ladies, that’s for sure. There’s this little group of them, I think from the same prep school, who think they’re God’s gift to womankind. They’re a bunch of fools, but I’ve got my eye on them.”

“You mean
there are teen-age boys acting like idiots?” I ask with a laugh.

“Let me let you in on a little secret about guys: we’re all idiots at this age
… some of us longer.”

“Sorry to burst your bubble, but that’s no secret,” I tell him with a playful shove.

“What?” he says with mock surprise before laughing. “Seriously, these guys are frat boys with no boundaries in the making.
There are three of them, eighth graders, who stick together and target the younger kids.”

“Really? That’s terrible! What are they doing?” I ask.

“Nothing overt. So far it just looks like they act like they’re befriending the quiet, dorky types during activities and then totally dissing them, acting like they don’t know them come lunch or dinner. It’s mean, but it’s not like I can do anything about it. There aren’t any line item rules against being a tool.” Miller looks pissed, which is great. It’s a good sign when someone is angry about injustice.

“Oh man, that sucks,” I agree. “You’ll have to point them out to me. I’ll get some good shots of them in case we need to pass them out as a public service warning!”

Miller and I talk as we walk to the canoe launch. We stop for a minute and he has me hold his flashlight while he shows me his mad shadow puppet skills. He takes my flashlight and makes me do shadow puppets, too, only mine look like shadows of the monsters under your bed. It’s laughably pathetic.

I like hanging out with Miller. I like it
more than hanging out with Cal. I feel awkward and silly around Cal. I mumble and stumble over my words, and I never seem to know how to respond to some of the things he says. He’s brilliant and oblivious to the world around him all at once. He can segue from talking about decreasing energy dependency on other countries to attempting to crush a beer can against his forehead like it was the exclamation point to his sentence. He’s a walking dichotomy.

Miller
, on the other hand ... he’s honest, too honest at times, but honest nonetheless. What you see is what you get, and his tattoos provide quite the view. He’s quieter around everyone else, taking in and observing more than he interjects. And he gets me. I don’t feel like I have to try around him, and I really,
really
like that.

I’m not sure if I should feel
this way or not. Of course I shouldn’t feel that way. Cal is my … well, I don’t know what Cal is, but Miller is my friend. I should like spending time with Cal more than Miller, but … I don’t know.

“I put the pencil down and picked up a pen. I’ve been doing some more writing
. Poetry,” he says with a smile. “It’s not finished yet, but I want to show it to you when it’s done, if you’d like to read it.”

“Really? I would love to!” I tell him with a beaming smile.

“What would you love to?” Cal asks as he emerges from the shadowy path. He shines his flashlight in our faces for a second and we both reflectively squint our eyes.

“Oh, um, Miller was just telling me about
poem he’s working on,” I tell him.

“Poetry is for nerds,” Cal says flatly. “But I guess the ladies like it, so
… A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, right, Miller?” Cal’s antagonizing him. There haven’t been any more pissing matches between them since the first night at the bonfire, but I guess it was too much to hope that they’d put all that behind them.

“Or I could just like expressing my thoughts and feelings in a more
honest and less barbaric way,” Miller retorts. Cal cocks his head to the side and looks at Miller with arrogant irritation. Miller stiffens his body in preparation for what neither of us is sure Cal’s response will be.

“Or maybe you’re just
a
‒
‒
”

“Cal
,” I say, stepping in before things get out of hand. Cal’s body relaxes and he puts his arm around my shoulder. It’s the first time he’s done this. Miller gets that same look of disgust on his face and turns toward the life jackets that are huddled on the ground next to the bin.

“Have fun. Try not to get lost.” He doesn’t look back or say anything else. I suppose it’s better that he subscribes to the “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” adage.

Cal takes his arm off my shoulder after a few minutes and we’re down the path a bit. He doesn’t take my hand or anything like that. We just walk for a while, in silence … again.

“So how’s the rock climbing wall this year?” I ask the most mundane question I can think of just to break the
stillness.

“It’s good. Not too many fat kids this year, so that’s good,” he chuckles.

“Yeah,” I reply. My voice is quiet and I feel like I just betrayed those kids with this one syllable response.

“Oh, hey
… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean …” he stutters. I feel mortified that he’s acknowledging my obvious inadequacy out loud. I want to crawl into a hollow tree, cover my ears, and hide. “Listen, Kinley, I just want you to know that even though you don’t, you know, look like other girls I’ve been interested in, I like you. You’re smart and nice, and pretty cute.” Cal smiles, waiting for me to accept this insulting declaration of his “like” for me.

I have this feeling in my gut like I should slap him across
the face or at least walk away, but I’m not brave enough to do that. Addison would, but I just stand here, staring at him, wondering if this is it. Is this what I’m destined to have? Someone who
settles
for me? Someone who is basically saying, “I still like you even though you’re kinda fat?”