The Astonishing Color of After(55)

“I just don’t understand why he thought it would be a good idea to sign me up without even asking how I felt about it.”

“Camp Mar… denn… Two n’s, right?”

“Axel, what are you doing?”

“I told you…” The volume of his voice warped and I envisioned him switching his cell to the opposite ear. “I’m coming to get you.”

I rolled my eyes but also pressed the phone closer. “It’s not like I’m some damsel in distress.”

“No, but you have no way out. How would you leave? You need an accomplice.”

There was the noise of footsteps outside, and I worried for a moment that someone was going to walk in. The sound passed. Tension flowed out of my shoulders. It was dinnertime, which was usually when the bathroom stayed empty the longest.

“Leigh?” he said when I had been silent for a beat too long.

“Sorry,” I said. “What were you saying?”

“I’m taking the bus. I’ll be there tomorrow.”

“What? You can’t be serious.”

“I’m serious if you’re serious. Tell me you really, truly want to stay at that camp, and I won’t come.”

I made myself think about it. I tried to imagine eating one more of those Boca Burgers that tasted like they’d been stored in the freezer for too many years. Sitting through another bonfire while people sang along to bad guitar strumming. Watching the awkward campers and their painful attempts at flirting.

Another four weeks of this without Axel, without Caro. Another four weeks of not speaking to my mother.

I’d tried calling home. It was always my father who picked up. When I asked to speak with Mom, he said, “Now’s not a good time, Leigh.”

What the hell did that mean?

The next night, Axel came, and I snuck out.





The hotel Axel had found for us was very budget. Not that I was about to complain. It was probably why they didn’t even blink when Axel fed them the lie about losing his driver’s license just hours earlier.

“I can try to find some other form of ID—”

“It’s fine,” said the front-desk clerk in a tone of supreme boredom.

There was barely any walking space around the one full-size bed. The towels were crusty and smelled strongly of bleach. One of the lamps wouldn’t turn on. The chair legs were wrapped in duct tape. And the bathroom—well, it must’ve been cleaned a century ago.

It was going to be an interesting experience.

The thought hit me. How much was this whole mission costing him? Bus tickets? A car service? Hotel for the night? It couldn’t be cheap. His very part-time job paid him eight bucks an hour. This had to be eating up several weeks’ worth of work.

“Axel, I’m totally going to pay you back.”

He paused, halfway through unzipping his backpack. “What? No, don’t worry about it.”

“Seriously, I can’t let you pay for all this.”

“Leigh, I wanted to come. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have offered. Okay?” Axel dumped out the contents of his bag. “Provisions!”

We sat cross-legged on the bed and feasted on handfuls of Frosted Flakes and salt-and-vinegar chips.

“Sorry I don’t have real food,” he said.

“Are you kidding me?” I said through a mouthful of chips. “This is the best meal I’ve had in two weeks.”

There were fruit cups for dessert. We didn’t have spoons, so we fished out the chunks with our fingers and slurped at the juice. It was the taste of freedom.

He told me about the rock candy Angie had been making, how he kept sneaking in a drop of green food coloring to mess with her. His cousin Jorge had slathered half a jar of Vicks VapoRub on his belly to try to relieve a stomachache from eating too much mac and cheese. Tina had joined this new women’s group, where she’d picked up new expressions like Oy and Aye-yai-yai—and both of those were the first things she said when Axel told her I’d been shipped off to sleepaway camp.

We laughed and joked and it felt almost normal again. But I had that unpleasant tickle of concern. A voice inside me couldn’t help asking: Why would Tina join a women’s group, unless she and Mom aren’t spending all their free time together anymore?

“You want to change first?” Axel said, tipping his head in the direction of the bathroom.

I thought of the filth and cringed. “I don’t want to be in there for a second longer than I have to. I think I might even skip the shower.” My last glance had revealed the bottom of the tub to be brown and silty. No way was I stepping in that.

“Same,” he said with a matching grimace.

“We could just change out here? Backs turned or whatever.”

“Sure,” said Axel. “That works.”

The moment he agreed to it I was overcome with the fear that he would try to sneak a peek at me. Why would Axel do that? Axel, your best friend, and pretty much the world’s most upstanding person. But I couldn’t shake the paranoia. I didn’t want him to note the extra flab around my midsection, or glimpse the smallness of my breasts. I all but jumped into my pajama bottoms and yanked my tank top over my head. Done in the span of three seconds. I whirled back around.

On the other side of the bed, Axel was taking his time. He had just tugged on a fresh pair of boxers. Half a second earlier and I definitely would have seen his ass. The realization made hot embarrassment bloom in my cheeks. I should have turned away to offer him the same respect and privacy he’d given me, but I was rooted in place. I watched as he pulled a pair of loose athletic shorts up past his knees and over his small hips. The muscles in his back stretched and bent, cupping brown shadows and light.