The Lost Summer (14 page)

R
uby nestled in her usual place on my lap as Skit Night unfolded on the Bowl's stage. At the moment, Table Twelve was staging a Southpoint version of
Saturday Night Live
's “Weekend Update.” The “anchors” were two campers pretending to be Fred and Marjorie, reporting on such sensational stories as the toilets in the Bath clogging from campers using too much toilet paper, and a report from the “foreign” correspondent at Brownstone on the budding romance between Sarah and a certain male counselor whose name rhymed with “fuzz.” The counselors and older campers who got the joke turned to Sarah, who blushed and buried her face in a laughing Winn's shoulder. Considering the previous night's blowout with Winn, I was relieved the kids hadn't caught wind of Ransome and me—yet, at least.

Ruby had leaned back to ask loudly what everyone was laughing about, when Katie Bell crept up and hunched down next to me.

“I need to talk to you.” Her voice was urgent, with hard edges. It was like dejá-vù. It seemed the only reason anyone needed to talk to me now was to pick a fight.

“About what?” I whispered uneasily.

Katie Bell glanced at Ruby, who was looking between my bewildered face and Katie Bell's glowering one. “Do you really want me to say it here?”

“Ruby,” I said quietly, sliding her off my lap, “I'll be right back.”

“Nooo,” Ruby started to protest, but I hushed her and pointed at the stage.

“I'll be right back.”

Silently I followed Katie Bell up the path from the Bowl to the Mansion in the lowering dusk. She held her body taut and clenched. Not once did she turn to look at me. When we reached the Yard, I thought she would go to sit in one of the white Adirondack chairs, but instead, Katie Bell spun around to fix me with a fierce stare.

“Why did you tell Winn I told you about her and Ransome?” she demanded.

My face felt weirdly numb as I realized, with a sinking heart, that I wasn't the only one Winn had paid a visit to the night before.

“Katie Bell, I'm sorry . . . I didn't mean to tell her. It just came out.” The corners of Katie Bell's mouth turned down in a scowl. “I wasn't going to say anything to Ransome—I was just going to let it go—but then it slipped out the other night when . . . He must have said something to Winn. Did she come to your cabin last night? I think maybe she'd been—”

“No.” Katie Bell cut me off. “She cornered me today at afternoon activities and bitched me out in front of Molly and Amanda. . . . How could you tell on me to Winn like that? You're supposed to be my best friend!”

“I didn't! I am!” I protested. “Winn cornered me too. She came to my cabin last night and woke me up, dragged me out to the softball diamond.”

Katie Bell's eyes were suddenly brimming. A single tear slid down the side of her nose, glistening over her freckles. She quickly pawed it away, her hands returning to her sides in two white-knuckled fists.

“You don't even talk to me anymore!” she exploded. “You're too busy trying to be, like”—she struggled for the words—“cool Counselor Helena, working on the swim dock and hanging out with Winn and sticking your tongue down Ransome's stupid throat, to think about the ‘little people.'” She made air quotes to exaggerate the ridiculousness of the term.

“That is not true, Katie Bell.” Tears were stinging my eyes now too. “Stop blaming me for something that's not my fault. I can't help it that you're three months younger than I am. I can't help it that Fred wouldn't let you be a counselor. And I can't help it that I've grown up and you haven't!” I hadn't meant to, but I realized I was shouting.

Katie Bell's eyes narrowed to two dark slits. “Oh, you think you're grown-up?” she said in a quiet, controlled voice that was bursting at the seams with rage. “Well, if ditching your best friend is grown-up, then I don't mind being a kid.”

Back at the Bowl I could hear clapping and the singing of camp songs. The darkness had wrapped itself around us now, obscuring Katie Bell and me from one another. A mass of silence stood between us.

“Fine,” I said, not sure what I was confirming or rejecting with this word, but that it was the only way I knew to end an argument I didn't want to be having.

“Fine,” said Katie Bell, and stalked off in the direction of the Bath.

I couldn't follow her there, and I didn't want to go back to the Bowl yet, so I instead made a beeline for the Mansion. The screen door slammed behind me.

“Helena?” Marjorie's voice said.

Startled, I turned to find her standing in the front hall. I quickly wiped the tears from my cheeks and tried to act casual.

“Hi, Marjorie. Sorry, I needed to use the bathroom.”

Technically we weren't supposed to use the bathrooms in the Mansion. The plumbing was old and couldn't handle a hundred girls who didn't feel like walking all the way to the Bath. But it was the best I could come up with while trying not to cry.

“Okay,” Marjorie said hesitantly. “Honey, are you okay?” She put the papers she was holding on a table and came toward me. “Is everything all right?”

It wasn't, and I wanted to tell her that. Instead I squeaked, “Yeah.”

Marjorie wasn't buying it, I could tell, but she nodded. Without asking more, she put her arms around me in a hug. I closed my eyes against her shoulder—I hadn't realized until now that I had grown taller than her.

“This is a hard time, isn't it?” she said. I nodded, my breath catching in my throat as I tried to stop crying.

Marjorie was quiet for a second, then pulled away, still holding my shoulders. “You remember how a few years ago we had those seventeen-year cicadas?” she said. “They left their shells everywhere after molting.”

I wasn't sure where Marjorie was going with this, but I'd seen the dried husks of the alien-looking insects covering the tree trunks and littering the grass. I nodded.

“Sometimes we have to do that too—grow out of our old skins.”

I still didn't know what to say and, for some reason, couldn't bring myself to look Marjorie in the eye. She didn't need me to say anything. She tucked a piece of hair that had escaped my ponytail behind my ear, smiled softly, and walked out through the screen door, letting it close silently behind her.

I stood in the hall of the Mansion for a few minutes, alone. Finally I walked back out to the Bowl, taking my seat beside Pookie and Ruby.

“You okay?” Pookie asked, probably wondering why I'd been gone so long.

Ruby climbed back into my lap, and I nodded. The drone of the cicadas that normally blended seamlessly into the camp's background noise now buzzed in my ears. The special kind of cicada that Marjorie had mentioned, a cousin to the ones chirping now, burrowed in the ground and only emerged every seventeen years. When they did, it was a big deal, reported in all the local papers and on television. I was seventeen. How much longer, I wondered, until I could shed this skin that suddenly felt so small.

I had to see Ransome that night. Since he'd been COD Sunday, and I'd been on duty last night, I'd only caught glimpses of him out on the lake, when he'd wave as his boat passed the swim dock, and my heart would stand still. If I could just talk with him, I told myself, everything would be okay. He'd make it okay.

After Taps, I rushed through a painfully long chapter of
Harry Potter
, grabbed my fleece, and hurried to the riflery range. When I got there, I kept walking. I continued on the path the boys took from the range to Brownstone. I hoped, if I had timed it right, that I might meet Ransome on the way and casually suggest we skip the riflery range and hang out somewhere else, just the two of us. I couldn't deal with Winn that night, especially not after my fight with Katie Bell. Her words had been gnawing at the pit of my stomach since we parted in the Yard: “If ditching your best friend is grown-up, then I don't mind being a kid.”

I was smart or lucky, because as I walked slowly along the pitch-black path, wondering whether this was such a good idea after all, I heard voices getting closer and footsteps. It was Brownies.

The one in front stopped suddenly and swung his flashlight in my direction. “Helena!” a voice exclaimed. “You scared the crap out of me.”

I squinted against the bright light in my eyes. “Sorry, Buzz.”

I smiled awkwardly as the guys filed past me. All but Ransome, who stopped. His hands, like they often were, were shoved deep in the pockets of his Carhartts.

“You sneaking into Brownstone for a panty raid or something?” Just from his voice, I could tell his eyes were crinkling at the corners, the way they did when he smiled.

I wanted to wrap my arms around his waist, but the other guys weren't out of sight yet.

“No.” I laughed. “I just thought I'd cut you off at the pass.” I hesitated and then thought of the misery of sharing the riflery range with Ransome and Winn, and continued, “How do you feel about going somewhere else tonight—just us? I've had kind of a bad day. . . .”

I was underplaying it, with Katie Bell's words still burning in my chest.

Ransome grinned and did what I had wanted him to do, setting his hands on my hips and pulling me in toward him.

“You want to go to the archery range?” he asked. “I can run back and get a blanket.”

“No, that's okay,” I answered, maybe too quickly. “We can sit on the ground. I can put my fleece down.”

I didn't want Ransome to think I wanted to have sex again. I just needed to talk, to be near him.

“Are you sure?” he asked, pulling my hips in closer.

I pushed him away playfully. “Yes.” I grinned. “I'm sure.”

“Okay,” he said easily, catching my drift.

I held his hand as he led me down the trail. It forked to the left and ended at a clearing that was Brownstone's archery range. Under the moon I could make out four large, round hay bales, each affixed with a giant multicolored target.

“So I guess Beverly's no longer the star of target practice,” I observed.

“I wish I could say my better judgment won out, but Dad found them when he came to mow the grass. Made me take them down. Is this okay?” he asked, looking around and at me.

I nodded and sat Indian-style on the ground. Sharp grass poked at my butt. I started to remove my fleece to sit on, but Ransome stopped me.

“You'll be cold,” he said, and pulled his own jacket over his head, laying it down instead.

“Now
you'll
be cold.”

“That's all right. You can keep me warm,” he joked in an intentionally cheesy voice, as he leaned toward me.

We kissed for a while before I pulled away. I licked my lips, which tasted like him, and looked down at my hands in my lap.

“I had a bad day,” I repeated quietly. I had hoped after my first mention of it on the path that Ransome would ask what happened.

“What's up?”

Ransome propped his weight on his hands behind him. His outstretched legs were long, at least six inches longer than mine, and for once my size-nine-and-a-half hiking boots looked almost small in comparison.

I nervously dug a tooth into my lower lip, then proceeded to tell him about Winn and Katie Bell, how they'd both confronted me and were now pissed. Really pissed.

“I'm sorry, Hel,” he said when I had finished. “That sucks.”

I waited for him to say more, but that was all he offered.

That's it? I thought, mildly ticked off. I'd just spilled my guts, telling him how, in the last twenty-four hours, two of my closest friends had both bitched me out, accused me of being a bad friend and person, and possibly disowned me, and “that sucks” was all he had to say about it?

“I know it sucks,” I said, annoyed. I'd been waiting all day and all night to be here with him, but suddenly it didn't hold the comfort I thought it would. “Is that all you're gonna say?”

“What do you want me to say?” His voice was tinged with irritation now too. “They had no right to get mad at you. That sucks. Forget about them.”

“I can't forget about them, Ransome. They're my friends . . . or they
were
my friends.” I mumbled the last part mostly to myself.

“They don't sound like friends I'd want.”

I looked at him in disbelief, then turned away. “Well, it's complicated,” I said angrily.

“Sounds like it. . . .”

Neither of us spoke for what was probably only a few strained moments but felt like forever. This was not at all how I'd pictured this going. I'd imagined lying in Ransome's arms, confessing my soul and unburdening my troubles. Not bickering.

“I'm sorry,” I said, finally buckling. “I didn't mean to get mad at you. I'm just upset, that's all.”

“I know.” He hugged his arm around my shoulders tightly. “Come here.”

He pulled me to him, kissing me and eventually leaning back so that I was on top of him. After a while, his hand drifted to my zipper. I fought with whether to stop him or not. It felt good, but something else had been bothering me as well.

“Ransome,” I said as he fumbled with the button at the top of my jeans. “I need to ask you something.”

He stopped. “Okay,” he said tentatively.

I leaned against his chest. “The other night . . . you had a condom with you. . . .” It was hard for me to say the words. They felt foreign and embarrassing, like the words you were forced to say in health class. They
were
words you were forced to say in health class. “Were you planning . . . expecting to sleep with me that night?”

Ransome sat up suddenly. “What? No! What kind of guy do you think I am?” He sounded genuinely hurt.

“No,” I protested, scared that I had upset him, “it's not that. I just wondered because you seemed . . . prepared.”

“Well, yeah.” He shrugged like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Guys carry condoms to be prepared.”