The next morning, Grant wasn’t on the porch.
He wasn’t at breakfast.
He wasn’t at lunch.
I crossed in front of cabin two, headed for a duty shift at arts and crafts. I needed to paint like I needed to breathe. It was the only way to channel these emotions into something beautiful. It was my first step in burying my grief.
Inside arts and crafts, campers clustered around each of the rectangular tables. Jess was at one of them, working on a bracelet. She glanced my way as I crossed the room, her attention returning to her bracelet as I approached the counselor on shift.
“Now that you’re here, could I possibly…” The girl jabbed her finger toward the back where the bathrooms was.
“Absolutely,” I said with a nod.
She scurried off and I turned toward the paint products. I was carefully putting paint supplies on the countertop when Jess crossed the room, long pieces of string clutched between her finger and her thumb.
“All right,” she said, dropping onto one of the bar stools. “Will you please explain to me what I’m doing wrong? I’m alternating the strings and everything, but this bracelet looks like crap.”
“It doesn’t look that bad,” I said, surveying the knotted pieces of string that looked more like a chaotic heap than a bracelet.
“Yeah. You’re a terrible liar.”
“Only sometimes.” I finished gathering supplies and stared at her. “That isn’t really my thing anyway. I’m a painter, not a weaver.”
“I’m neither, and Brie will rag me about it if I don’t make her a bracelet after she spent all that time working on mine.”
“Brie made you a bracelet?”
“She made four,” Jess said. “One for her, and one for each of the girls in our cabin.”
Surprised, I grabbed a canvas and laid it flat on the counter. For Brie to do anything selfless must have meant hell froze over. Or pigs flew. No telling which.
“I’ll try,” I said. “Step one would be to get you some fresh string. Pick out the colors you want. I’ll give them to you for free.”
“Thank you,” Jess said, sliding off the stool.
I started sketching while she snipped pieces of yarn from the spools. When she returned, she plopped right onto the same bar stool and knotted the ends.
“What are you working on?” she asked after a second. “You haven’t sketched enough to really make it out.”
“I’m not sure,” I said, tapping the pencil against my jaw. “Whatever the canvas wants to give me, I guess. Usually the picture creates itself. It never does what I want it to do.”
“That’s weird.”
“That’s me,” I said.
I dragged the pencil across the canvas again, the charcoal tip marring its clean surface. If this ended up being any reflection of my state of mind, the final product would be dark and gloomy.
“I wish I could do that,” Jess said after a moment. “I’ve got all this street cred and zero usable abilities. It’s a shame, since talents like yours are the talents people actually appreciate.”
The words stole my attention from the canvas, the disappointment in her tone making me pause. “Not everyone’s talent is artistic,” I said. “You, for example, could probably talk your way out of a paper bag. That’s a talent, Jess.”
“Meh. Anyone with half the experience I have could do the same.”
“Doubt it.”
She quirked an eyebrow and I set down my pencil, realizing I had unknowingly walked into a conversation.
“Okay,” I said, leaning forward. “Remember when I told you about my tiny brush with the law?”
“You crashed a cop car into a lake,” Jess said. “That isn’t tiny.”
“That doesn’t matter. Point is, you could’ve talked your way out of that in five seconds flat. All I could do was sit in the back of a deputy’s squad car, claiming I had nothing to do with it when my cell phone and purse were still inside the vehicle.”
“Still not a talent. All my bullshitting has ever done is land me in a new group home with a new set of issues. Painting seems less dramatic and less of a hassle. I want those skills. I’ll trade you.”
“You live in a group home?” I said.
“Yeah,” she said. “Right now, I’m technically a ward of the state. Unless I get adopted between now and the time I turn eighteen, which is doubtful. No one ever wants someone above the age of ten.”
Guilt worked its way into my thoughts, pulling my attention back to the canvas. Had I known this earlier, I could have been softer from the beginning. Had I been softer, though, we may not have made it this far.
“You don’t have to get all weird,” she said. “You can look at me. I’m not asking for your sympathy or anything.”
“No sympathy,” I said, nodding. “I just didn’t know. That caught me off guard.”
“Well it isn’t like I wore it around my neck on some flashing neon sign,” Jess said. “Most people find out and they look at you some kind of way, like they want to help you but they don’t know how, so they just avoid you instead.”
“I can’t avoid you. You’re stuck with me.”
“Exactly. You’re stuck with me either way.”
She went back to crisscrossing strings on the bracelet, making some sort of pattern as each of the strings worked together. After her fourth round of alternating, she looked at me.
“So, now that I’ve been all open and honest with you, do you feel like telling me what all that crying you were doing in your bed last night was about? I’m not here just to make a bracelet, Alex. If you’re out here to be my counselor, you need to make sure that trust is flowing both ways.”
“The last time I told y’all something, it ended up being passed around camp,” I said.
“The last time you told us something, Brie was around. You should’ve expected it to be passed around camp.”
I gave her the side-eye, focusing on my canvas instead of talking. She might understand, or she might not, but I wasn’t talking about it anymore. Period.
“Okay,” she said after a minute. “Talking isn’t on the table. Got it. How about we break some rules instead? You give me the chance to do something fun, and I give you the chance to get your mind off your issues. At least temporarily.”
“What do you want me to do? Sneak you out of camp?”
“Your suggestion. Not mine.”
“You and I both know if I got you out of camp, Loraine would get me a one-way ticket home. I have a reason for being out here that revolves around a large sum of money and a set of parents who are already positive I can’t make good choices. That’s like confirming it.”
“Your parents are that bad?”
“Well, they offered me an ultimatum to get me out here, then volunteered me for extra therapy sessions I never agreed to. At this point, I’m not even sure I want to go home. The longer I’m gone, the more I think I like being on my own.”
“No one is better on their own.”
“You haven’t met my parents.”
“At least you have parents.”
I ran my tongue across my teeth, my jaw jutting to the side. Jess’s expression was unflinching, her brown eyes squarely centered on mine. Leave it to a camper to attempt to put me in my place. Leave it to a camper to do the best job at it.
“Give me something real to go on here,” she said.
“I’m not giving you anything but the free string you’ve already got.”
“Then stand on your side of the counter and angrily draw something,” she said. “Staying silent never changes anything, but you do you, boo.”
“You’re getting on my nerves.”
“You always get on my nerves, but I never say anything to you,” she said. She started on her bracelet again. “So was that the issue between you and Grant? Your annoying personality?”
“My issue with Grant is that he deserves someone better than me,” I said, resting my hands on either side of the canvas. “And my current issue is that you won’t get off the subject. What is it with the people at this camp? Geez. You’re all nosy.”
“Um, we spend the majority of our time doing stupid team-building exercises and expressing how we feel with people we don’t really care to share it with,” Jess said. “Excuse me for thinking maybe for once you’d feel like sharing something too.”
“I have shared. Cop-car story. Remember?”
“Okay, and I just gave you deets on something personal. Does that mean I don’t have to participate in any other summer activities? No. I’m stuck in yoga sessions, even though I don’t want to be. Let me out of those and I’ll let you out of this.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Why do you think Grant deserves more than you?” Jess said. “Because he’s way better-looking or because he’s obviously more talented?”
“You’re making me feel better by the second.”
“My job isn’t to make you feel better. It’s to make myself a better human being, while trying to survive a summer at the dumbest camp in Texas,” Jess said. “Back to the subject. You and Grant. What gives?”
“I thought I said I wasn’t talking about this.”
“Well, you’ve got another two hours in this shift. Trust me when I say I can sit here and badger you about it until you talk, or you can willingly talk about it now,” she said. “A conversation won’t kill you.”
“Why the sudden interest in my life?”
“You kept me up until four a.m., lying over there sniffling all night,” Jess said. “You weren’t considerate enough to take your moping somewhere else, so I’m not going to be considerate enough to take my questions somewhere else.”
“I wasn’t moping.”
“Okay. Let’s recap, shall we? You walked in a little after midnight, trying and failing to close the screen door before the rusty hinges woke everyone up. Then you went to the bathroom and ran into a bed post on the way—”
“That bed wasn’t there when I left.”
“—then you knocked what sounded like a hair dryer off the bathroom counter. Then you plopped onto that creaky bed of yours. Oh, then you capped off your night by boo-hooing into your pillow while I sat there trying to keep Brie from snoring in my ear.”
“That doesn’t mean I owe you an explanation.”
“You owe me something,” Jess said. “An out-of-context detail. A play-by-play of the incident. I don’t even care at this point. I just need something to make my lack of sleep worth it. What happened last night? Did the pair of you break up?”
“He and Loraine cornered me about something neither of them understands,” I said. “I told them to f-off and now I’m here. The end.”
“Your attention to details is amazing.”
“I don’t have to give you details. I don’t have to give you anything.”
Jess nodded, returning her attention to her bracelet. “So have y’all talked today at all, or have you done the avoiding thing? I didn’t see him lurking outside the cabin this morning, so I’m guessing he’s MIA.”
“Of course he’s MIA. He realized exactly what he was getting himself into and didn’t need anything else to stay away. We’re done. That’s it.”
“I don’t claim to know anything about Grant, but I’ve talked with his guys enough to know he’s a stubborn hard-ass,” Jess said. “There’re legends about him. How he almost burned down the mess hall when he was a camper here. How he almost got himself kicked out for good for skinny-dipping in the lake. He doesn’t strike me as the type to just cop out because something got tough. There’s more to this.”
“That’s it,” I said, shaking my head.
“Explain it to me.”
“No.” I let out a long sigh and stared at the canvas. “I’d rather sit here working on this painting than talk about anything involving Grant. I came out here for a reason. You’re messing it up.”
“Fine. I’ll be quiet,” she said, putting her hands up. “Just one more thing first.”
“What?”
She paused, meeting my gaze solemnly. “I’ve been with a lot of families, Alex. I’ve been passed around. I’ve been in and out of so many homes I’ve lost count, but I’m still here. I don’t know what happened between the two of you, or why you think you’re not good enough, but you are the most badass counselor out here. Don’t let your screwups convince you otherwise. Or anyone else for that matter.”
She tapped her fingers against the counter. “And I’ll be here if and when you need to talk,” she said, taking her bracelet with her. “Just bring some brownies with you.”
She stepped away from the counter, shooting me a peace sign as she sauntered through the arts and crafts room. Out of all the people I thought could ever understand me, Jess wasn’t even on the radar. Yet here she was, proving me wrong.
I returned to my canvas, trying to funnel my thoughts into the picture. Regardless of what happened between Grant and me, this conversation had left me with one thing: These kids weren’t their labels. They deserved a second chance.