Chapter Eight

THE NEXT DAY was somber in the cabin. Half of the kids resented Gavin and me for our role in Ryan’s exile, though it wasn’t our fault. Though they’d been involved in the fight, their parents hadn’t been called. They’d still received punishment, though, and now had to clean the whole cabin themselves, with Wade glaring at them the entire time. Gavin looked as though someone had just taken away his favorite puppy. His parents had come and gone early in the morning, and I was torn over whether I was relieved or annoyed that he was still there.

Alex was the only one who was speaking to me.

“What’s up with everyone?” he asked as we left the cabin. We were now exempt from chores, so we decided to hang out at one of the lodges until it was time to go down for breakfast.

“You didn’t hear the drama last night, did you?” I asked.

“Not really. I know that Wade left, and that he ordered us to stay inside. But I was so tired I fell asleep soon after.”

I told him about discovering Ryan about to beat up Gavin. “Everyone else is mad at us for turning Ryan in.”

Alex made a sound of disgust. “That’s stupid. But…Gavin was telling the truth?” He gave me a sly look.

“Are you shipping us together?” I asked, a little annoyed.

Alex giggled, a sound I hadn’t heard from him before.

“What is up with you and Ella? Have you two been talking behind my back?” I asked.

The smile fell from Alex’s face, but he didn’t look away like he’d have done before. “In all honesty? I had a crush on you, Casey.”

My jaw dropped. “W-what?”

Alex waved a hand. “Don’t worry about it. I got over it.”

“Uh…okay?”

“I really, really liked you when we first got here. I mean, I could barely talk to you, remember?”

“Heh, I thought you hated me because you wouldn’t talk to me.”

He shrugged self-consciously. “I’m shy. But, once I got to know you, the crush kind of…settled into friendship. Does that make sense? I guess I really just wanted to be your friend.”

“Okay. Um…thanks, I think?”

“Oh, no, no, it’s not because you’re not attractive. You are. It’s just that I think we wouldn’t go well together except as friends.”

“Uh, thanks.” I was at a loss for words, but after a moment, I added, “I guess I was so clueless about it. I…I was too focused on Gavin to notice anyone else.”

“It’s okay. I wasn’t sure about you anyway. I wasn’t sure if you were gay or not.”

“Bi, actually, but yeah.”

We moved on to talking about how great it was that we weren’t cleaning anymore, and a little bit of smugness over Ryan’s friends having to make our beds for us.

“I hope they don’t leave anything in it,” Alex said, and we laughed. I wouldn’t put it past them to do something like that.

He turned serious then. “Hey, I’m sorry for the part I played in this.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I heard Ryan talking about you, making fun of you. Gavin was there, but I didn’t hear him say anything. I told you that to break you guys up.”

While that was a shitty thing to do, I kind of understood. “No, it’s okay.” A tiny bit of anger flared in my chest, but I smothered it. Alex may have had an ulterior motive for telling me about Gavin and Ryan, but it’d been a good thing. It’d shown Gavin what a jerk Ryan was. While that hadn’t been great for Gavin, it was probably for the best in the end. One part of me was happy Alex had confessed because it meant Gavin wasn’t the jerk I thought he was.

I firmly told that part of myself to shut up.

Everyone had started to line up for breakfast, so we joined the crowd. They were all chattering a little louder than usual, and a few times, I caught my name or Ryan’s. Word was getting around as to what had happened last night.

Gavin was standing by himself, hunched over with his arms folded over his chest. I didn’t know what to say to him, so I didn’t say anything—just walked down the mountain with Alex. While I needed to talk to Gavin, I didn’t know how to do it. I didn’t know how to start.

Ella, Nick, and Lily joined us at breakfast, and, of course, we got interrogated over what had happened. Ella kept silent, not wanting to talk about what her part had been. She played ignorant to the whole thing.

I could see other campers craning their necks, looking at us and around the room for the missing campers. But Ryan wasn’t there. It didn’t seem like he was going to come back.

I also managed to notice Gavin wasn’t there, either. I wondered what had happened to him. Why would he miss breakfast?

But halfway through, the nurse brought him in, whispering to Wade. Gavin found a seat far away from everyone and half-heartedly started pulling food toward his plate. His eyes were red.

When I turned back to my own food, I noticed Ella’s eyes on me. They were intense, shining and hard, and her mouth was pressed into a line.

“What?” I asked.

She leaned forward and whispered at me, her words cutting like glass, “After all that, you’re going to ignore him? Didn’t all this prove you’re wrong about him?”

“It hasn’t proven anything,” I said, but I didn’t really believe it myself.

I noticed Alex scowling at me, too, and felt betrayed.

“How could you say that? His friend was going to beat him up. He had to be telling the truth. He sang that song for you,” Ella said.

“That doesn’t mean he wasn’t a jerk.”

“But it proves he was telling the truth to you.”

“No it doesn’t,” I insisted.

Ella made a noise of disgust and turned away. Alex didn’t look happy, either, and he didn’t say much to me the rest of the meal.

I knew she was right. I just didn’t want to admit I was wrong. Despite what Alex had told me, I still had doubts about Gavin. And I still didn’t want a romance. We only had two days left of camp. I didn’t want to start something that was going to go nowhere.

I told her all of those reasons, but I could tell she wasn’t listening. She had her mind set on getting us together, and there was nothing I could do to persuade her otherwise. Normally, I found her need to get her friends together charming and cute, but now it was just annoying.

We finished breakfast and returned up the mountain to sign up for morning activities. But before I could ask what they were interested in, both Ella and Alex had disappeared. So I signed up for Frisbee and didn’t worry about it. I lingered at the tables for a bit, but when they never showed up, I went back down to the field for my activity.

Neither one showed up for it, though, and I felt a little bad. Had I really angered Ella and Alex that much?

I lost interest in the game after that thought, so I bowed out and went to lie in the grass instead. The sky was bright blue, speckled with fluffy white clouds. It was another beautiful day.

Only two more days of camp.

Part of me couldn’t wait to go home. The other part never wanted it to end. I wanted Ella to go back to normal, not trying to fix me up with Gavin so desperately. She sometimes did this at home, but this felt different. She wanted it too much.

And me? She wanted it so bad, so I resisted it. The more she pushed, the more I would resist. It had happened before, but she’d usually relented. Did she like Gavin that much? She barely knew him—neither of us knew him that well.

But if we had more time…

No. I stopped that thought. I didn’t want to get involved. Not now. Not with Gavin. I wasn’t going to be his “girlfriend,” though I had no evidence he thought that was what I would be. He’d never said anything to make me think that, but there it was. It was something that put a distance between me and any boy I might date.

The game had petered out around me, and I heard the others making their way back up the mountain. I decided to follow and see if I couldn’t find Ella or Alex. I wanted to talk to them about this.

But I couldn’t find them. No one seemed to know where they’d gone to, either. Should I worry about them? Should I tell Wade?

I went back to my bunk and tried to read for a while, but I couldn’t concentrate. Where was everyone? The other boys in the cabin were avoiding me, and no one else could be found.

Strange.

I ended up staring at nothing until lunchtime, fuming and worrying alternating. And I wouldn’t have even noticed it was time except I could see the crowd forming from the window next to my bunk. I jumped off my bed and rushed to line up.

Wade was there, and so were Alex and Gavin.

I went up to Alex. “Hey, what’s up?”

He shrugged. “Nothing. Ready for lunch?”

“Where were you guys? I went and played Frisbee, but you weren’t there.”

“Nah, wanted to do something else.”

“What did you do?”

But he avoided the question by walking away, following the crowd down toward the dining hall.

Annoyed, I followed. We all got seats together again, as usual, but Ella and Alex kept deftly sidestepping my questions, breezily answering only each other.

“Okay, fine,” I said, finally angry. “I’ll go sit somewhere else.”

I grabbed my plate and, despite their sudden protests, moved across the hall and sat at one of the emptier tables. Being all alone made lunch miserable, but I wasn’t going to sit with them while they ignored my questions. Something was up, and I was pretty sure I knew what it was. Ella was acting too smug, and I noticed Gavin didn’t look quite so upset anymore.

That made me angrier, and I stopped eating. I sat there through the rest of the meal, feeling betrayed and furious. Why couldn’t she respect my wishes and leave me out of her matchmaking? Why couldn’t she set Alex up instead?

They announced the Clean Cabin Award—Cabin Two, so not us again—and then asked for volunteers for a special event that night for Canteen. After thinking about it, I wondered if they’d just let me sit everything else out for the rest of the day. I didn’t want to be around anyone, not even the counselors. Wade also mentioned that Alex and I, since we’d won the talent show, could have a pizza party and invite a friend each. That was great, but I really didn’t care. Maybe I’d send Ella and Gavin together instead of me, so they could keep scheming.

I was one of the first out of the door when they dismissed us, not waiting for Ella or Alex, and stormed up the mountain and went straight for the cabin without talking to anyone.

Since I was the first there, I stripped and got into bed, eagerly using the excuse of Quiet Time to not speak to anyone.

Too angry to sleep, I used the time to calm down a little bit. The other boys came into the cabin and settled down while I stared out the windows, my back to them all, including Gavin. I had heard his voice but didn’t want to see him. The bed shook as he climbed into his bed underneath me, though.

I couldn’t believe Ella was being like this. What was up with her?

After Quiet Time, I asked Wade if I could stay in the cabin for afternoon activities.

“No,” he said. “You need to go and do something. There’s only two more days left!”

“Please? I just want to read.” I almost lied and told him I wasn’t feeling well, but I didn’t want a trip down to the nurse.

“No. Now go sign up for something.”

Heaving a sigh, I went to Lincoln Lodge and looked over what they had for activities. The signup sheets were mostly full, but there were a couple open ones with no limit. One of them was called I’ll Make You Laugh. Intrigued, I signed up for that one. It was meeting at the field, but in the smaller area beside the pavilion instead of the main field, where Capture the Flag would be.

I stomped back down the mountain and across the field next to the pavilion.

No surprise, Lars was the counselor for this activity. That day, he was dressed in a golden-yellow frock with tiny pink flowers, but he was wearing denim bell-bottoms underneath. He’d pulled his hair up into a little bun and ringed it with real flowers picked from the forest behind us.

“Okay, everyone,” he said once it looked like we had all the campers present. “Who has played this before?”

A handful of people raised their hands. “Okay, great.” He pointed to one of them. “You’re going to be ‘it’ to start us off.”

He got us to form a circle, and then we sat down. The person who was “it” had to find someone and try to make them laugh. They couldn’t touch the person, but anything else was game. After the attempt, the person had to say, with a straight face, “Darling, I love you, but I just won’t laugh.” If you did laugh, you became “it,” too.

It was a ridiculous game, and I almost got up to leave right then and there. I didn’t want someone trying to make me laugh, and I kicked myself for signing up for this in the first place. What had I been thinking?

But I stayed anyway. What else could I do? I didn’t want to join Capture the Flag or the Greek dodgeball game, either. Everything else was full and would have started already. I was stuck.

We started, and mostly, it was just watching others play the game. No one had tried me, and I wondered if my scowl was keeping them away. Good.

One girl did try to make funny faces at me, but they weren’t all that great. Soon, there were many campers wandering the circle, trying to get us holdouts to laugh.

Eventually, there were two of us, with a crowd around each of us. It actually became more annoying, because everyone was talking at once, or trying things that had been done before. It was easy to just keep repeating, “Darling I love you, but I just won’t laugh,” at every attempt.

Lars called the game, declaring two of us—me and a girl I didn’t know at all—the winners.

It didn’t feel like winning.

By dinner, I was feeling so down I went ahead and invited Ella to the pizza party anyway. Alex had invited someone else, but I didn’t pay attention much to who it was. It was sad and awkward and not at all enjoyable. I ate the pizza but didn’t have any fun. Ella and Alex were polite to me, but I could tell Ella was upset with me, too. That was okay. It was better than what they were doing before, ignoring my questions and acting as though they were keeping me out of some joke.

After dinner was the mysterious activity the counselors had been cooking up. They took us all to the Lincoln Lodge, which had all the benches pushed back against the walls. We sat, some of us on the benches, some on the floor, and waited for whatever it was they were going to do.

Ella and Alex chatted at my feet while I sat on the bench, trying not to be angry. Ella kept turning to include me in the conversation, but I could see her heart wasn’t into being friendly. I could relate and wondered why she didn’t give it up.

Just as the counselors were about to do whatever it was, Wade cut through the crowd and tapped me on the shoulder.

“What?” I asked.

“Come with me.”

Had I done something wrong? Glancing around to see everyone staring at me, I hunched over, got up, and trailed behind Wade as he led me out of Lincoln Lodge. “What’s wrong?” I asked, trotting to keep up.

“Nothing, just follow me.”

“Okay.” Everyone was acting weird, and it was getting on my nerves.

We were heading toward the cabins, walking slowly, though, and a few times I had to stop to wait for Wade, since I didn’t know where we were going. And then we passed our own cabin without stopping. Wade walked right by it and toward another…

“Um,” I said.

But my counselor never stopped until, sure enough, we arrived at the deserted and off-limits cabin one. I stared at the door, not understanding.

“Why are we here?”

Wade just smiled, knocked, and said, “See for yourself.”

“Ooookay.”

I pulled the door open and was greeted by a huge shout of, “Surprise!”

As I stood stunned in the doorway, I realized a bunch of people had crowded into the cabin, and it had been decorated.

Instead of the bare, dusty room where Alex and I had practiced our duet, it was now clean and shining. Tiny, twinkling white lights had been strung around the cabin, and the regular light bulb had been covered with a red cloth so the glow inside was warm but dim.

In the center of the cabin was Gavin, grinning, his hands clasped before him like he was praying or hoping for something.

Somehow, Alex and Ella had beaten us to the cabin, and they were there, jumping up and down with barely contained excitement.

“What is this?” I asked, still not having stepped fully into the cabin.

“Go in and find out,” Wade said, gently nudging me from behind.

I looked at him. He was smiling, too, plainly pleased with himself and everyone else.

I didn’t want this. I suspected what this was, and it was embarrassing.

He tilted his head at me, questioning. I wanted to tell Wade to take me back to the lodge right now, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Against my better judgment, I stepped into the cabin.

Gavin’s eyes were locked on me, and they shone with hope.

As I neared, he stepped forward and took my hands. I let him, though I really wanted to pull away.

He tried to speak a couple of times, and I just stared at him, wishing this would be over. I wasn’t going to make it easy for him, and I felt bad that he’d made this so public. I could feel everyone’s eyes on us, waiting and expecting.

“I know things haven’t been so great between us,” Gavin finally said, “and I know that’s just from a misunderstanding. But…I was hoping that you would give me a second chance and go with me to the dance tomorrow night. Please say yes? Please be my date?” He said the last in a rush as if the quicker he said it, the more likely I was to agree.

I deflated. This is what I’d been afraid of when I opened the door. I knew what my answer had to be, and I knew it wasn’t what he wanted. I glanced around and met Ella’s gaze. She mouthed Say yes to me. I looked away.

“I…Gavin. I…”

I couldn’t go on. I didn’t want to hurt him, but I couldn’t say yes. There was so much we had to work out before then. I had to be sure he hadn’t been involved in Ryan’s plot. And I couldn’t be with someone who would just abuse me later. I needed to protect myself, to make sure he wasn’t dating me so he could pretend I was a girl while he was straight to his parents. I wasn’t going to do that.

Gavin said, “Please leave us alone.” His voice was only just above a whisper.

“Gavin, no…”

But everyone left. Before she went, Ella pinched me and pulled me to the side. “Don’t break his heart,”

“What about me?”

“You know what I think.”

I didn’t have anything to say to that, so I closed my mouth with a snap.

They left Gavin and me alone in the darkness, lit only by the twinkling lights and the dim red light from above.

“I’m sorry, Gavin,” I said. “I didn’t want that to be so public.”

“No, it’s okay. I…I should have known how this would go.”

“Then why did you do it?”

“Because I wanted you to give me a chance. This was the only way I thought I could get you alone.”

“By having my friends lie to me, by deceiving me?”

He blanched. “It wasn’t a lie. It was a surprise.”

I snorted. “Not much difference.”

“Casey, you’re not making this easy.”

“Good, I shouldn’t be.”

He turned away, holding himself, and paced the small space in the cabin. “I just want to know why you said no.”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“Don’t play that with me. Have the courage to say it.”

It was my turn to blanch. “Okay. Because I still think you and Ryan were planning something. That you were going to allow him to beat me up so you could stay closeted to your parents. He had that over you, did he?”

“He still does. My parents don’t know.”

“And that’s another problem. I’m not going to date you, and then have you make me play girl for your parents.”

“What?” The shock in his voice was so genuine it took me aback.

But I went on. “I’m not going to hide, either. Look, Gavin, I know what it’s like to be closeted.” I stopped short, my mouth hanging open, realizing with a start what a hypocrite I’d been. I sighed, and the welling anger inside me deflated like a pierced balloon. “You know, my parents don’t know I’m bi. I mean, they know about the trans stuff, but I think they’ve only ever thought I’d bring home girls. I haven’t told them I was bi because I thought it would be too much at once.”

“My parents would probably kill me,” Gavin muttered. “They’re not okay with gay people.”

“That’s terrible.”

“It’s why I’ve hidden it. But…I can’t do it anymore. Not now.” He put his head in his hands. I wanted to reach out and touch him, console him, but I couldn’t. He’d take it the wrong way.

“What will you do?”

“I don’t know. But…I never once thought of you as a girl. I honestly didn’t know until I saw you that time at the pool. I would never, ever do that to you. I want you to know that.”

“Thank you,” I said and meant it. He’d never done anything to warrant me thinking he would…but the fear was always there. It might be unfair to think it of him, but I still had to protect myself.

“I do want to tell my parents.” He sank onto the cabin floor and ran a finger over the rough wood. “I just don’t know how.”

I sat next to him, but not close enough to touch. I didn’t want that temptation. “Do you think they’ll do something bad?”

“Yeah. Maybe. I don’t know. Really? I don’t know. I think maybe it’ll depend on how I do it. That’s kind of why I thought I’d be able to hide it, you know, until I went away for school or something.”

“That’s a long time.” I thought about how long I was going to have to wait to start testosterone and get top surgery. It felt like an eternity.

“I know. And I don’t think I can do it anymore. I don’t want to date girls, even to stay in the closet. I just don’t think I can fake it. There’s so much pressure to date, though.”

“I know what you mean.” It had become impossible to keep my being trans to myself any longer than I had. I might have exploded had I stayed a girl in everyone else’s eyes.

“I’m sure you do. So…what did you do when you told your parents you’re trans?”

I smiled at the memory. “I just told them. Just…one night at dinner I blurted it out. Surprised them both, but it was good to get it off my chest. I told them I needed to dress like a boy, act like a boy, be treated like a boy, be a boy, or I didn’t know how long I could be alive.”

“Wow, that’s…scary.”

“Well, it was true. I was so miserable I couldn’t stand it. I hated dressing like a girl, being treated like a girl. It just wasn’t me. I needed them to understand that.”

He stared at the floor for a minute, and we fell into an uncomfortable silence. Then, “I’m sorry I embarrassed you.”

“No, it’s okay.” I don’t know why I did it, but I reached out and grabbed his arm, giving it a squeeze. He looked at me in surprise and then smiled shyly at me. His eyes shone in the dim light. “I’m glad we got to talk. It’s made me feel a lot better. Has it helped you?”

He licked his lips. “Yeah, it has.”

“Good.”

“I still wish you’d go to the dance with me.”

I took my hand away. “I know. I’m not ready for dating much yet, okay?”

“I think I understand. You’re not ready to tell your parents you’re bi, either, right?”

He had me there. “Yeah, I think so. Look, I know I haven’t been nice about it. It’s just, really, there’s only a little more than a day left…”

There was a strong knock on the door, and then it slammed violently open. It rattled in the hinges, bounced off the wall, and shuddered to a halt, still open. We both jumped, spinning to see who had barged in. It was Wade, eyeing us.

“Just checking nothing funny was going on in here,” he said, his voice booming in the room.

Gavin and I shared a look and then laughed.

“No,” I said, “nothing funny at all.”

“That’s good.” Wade looked around again, as though searching for evidence we’d been doing something we shouldn’t have. “You two have been alone long enough. Come on, come out and join everyone else.”

Gavin and I got up and left the cabin. I wanted to talk to him more, tell him my reasoning behind why I didn’t want to get involved. To ask him about Ryan and why they’d stayed friends for so long. But it all seemed so stupid now. Flimsy excuses. I’d been hiding behind hypocrisy, not realizing the reason I hadn’t wanted to date him was because I was afraid of what my parents would think, too. I hadn’t even acknowledged it to myself, hiding behind Gavin’s own closeted status and using that as an excuse.

Wade led us all back to Lincoln. Screams and laughter boiled out of the lodge, and I wondered what was going on. We went in and found Lars and a bunch of the other counselors dressed in the most ridiculous costumes, rolling all over the floor. Behind them, a banner hung from the rafters, which read: “Gross, Grosser, and GROSSEST!”

They were finishing up whatever it was. I asked a kid sitting nearby what was going on, and she said, “A game show!” in between peals of laughter.

Lars had put some sort of makeup on so he looked like he’d half peeled his skin off, and he was rolling around in what I could only imagine was watered-down oats and peanut butter. It looked worse than that. He also wore a pink tutu, a red bonnet, and a sleeveless T-shirt stained with…something.

He stood up, his arms up over his head, and everyone cheered. Stuck in his armpit hair was more of the oat and peanut butter mixture. It definitely was disgusting. I joined in the cheering, but I barely knew what was going on.

The other counselors lined up, and Angela, who looked a little green even under her dark skin, said, “Okay, everyone, time to vote! Who was the most disgusting?”

Lars clearly won that one. He was still spitting up oats and peanut butter, and some of it even came out of his nose right as everyone was clapping to vote for him. There were groans, and the cheering increased.

I hadn’t noticed them before, but two campers who had been standing behind Lars ran up and hugged him as Angela pronounced him the winner. They were dressed in identical tutus and bonnets. Angela said, “And his two helpers, Mia and Ibrahim, have also won! Congratulations, everyone. You two are exempt from cabin cleaning duties for the last day!”

It wasn’t much of a prize, but it was something.

I hadn’t noticed it, but Gavin’s arm was resting on my leg. It seemed casual, like I just happened to be there when he leaned over and needed support for his arm. But he was holding himself stiffly, as though he couldn’t believe I was letting him touch me.

He detected me finally noticing it, but he didn’t move, only stayed carefully still. I was shocked I hadn’t noticed it before then. In my defense, I’d been entranced by Lars rolling around in fake vomit.

And now that I knew his arm was there, I realized I kind of liked it.

But I couldn’t do this. I stood up, and he yanked his arm back. He didn’t look at me, playing it off as though he was just politely letting me up.

I hurried to the showers, trying not to think. At least Ryan wasn’t there to bug me, and it made me happier that the last couple of days would be bully-free for both Gavin and me.

The whole time I was under the showerhead, I could still feel the pressure of Gavin’s arm on my leg.

So much had happened that day I thought I’d have a hard time falling asleep. But I was so tired I drifted off easily. I dreamed of Gavin in ways that were embarrassing to remember.