You Have a Match(21)
Things get marginally better once we get to the camp. The bus starts winding down, down, down to the shore from the main elevation of the island, where we are suddenly surrounded by trees so large that it’ll be a miracle if Leo doesn’t call them Ents by the end of the summer. The air is thick with pine through the bus’s open windows, and rare sunlight is streaming in through the branches, and when I peer out the stretch of trees goes so deep into the ground below the main road that it feels endless in all directions—a bottomless and sideways infinity of green and light.
Eventually we reach the main ground, and it is straight out of a cliché camp dream: wooden cabins all named after constellations, a rocky shore with worn kayaks in bright colors lined up along the edge, a giant signpost with pointers in all directions for the mess hall and firepit and tennis courts. I’ve been so worked up about getting to camp that I didn’t actually let it sink in that I’m going to camp. That for the first time in my life, I’m sort-of-but-not-really, enough-that-it-is-still-embarrassingly-thrilling free.
Mickey’s the first one to spot me when I get off the bus—or at least I think she is, until Rufus barrels his way through the campers with his tongue lapping out of his mouth. He jumps up on me with so much unabashed puppy love that between the force of him and the weight of my backpack on my shoulders, I immediately start to tip over.
Someone deftly grabs my elbow right before I end up introducing my butt to the mud.
“Rufus, manners?” says a voice I don’t know.
I turn around and could almost blow a kiss at the sky with gratitude—a camper who actually seems to be my age, with messy curls and a smirk that he aims at me without an ounce of self-consciousness. He must be a veteran of Camp Whatever It’s Actually Called, too.
Not just a veteran, but the other boy in Leo’s picture.
“Thanks,” I say. “Uh…?”
Instead of giving me his name, he salutes me, leans down to pet Rufus, and then disappears into the throng. By the time I look up to find Mickey, Leo’s beaten me to her.
“Your hair!” she exclaims, reaching up to mess with it.
“Your sleeve,” he says, grabbing her other arm by the wrist and examining it. “I thought you decided you were a Hufflepuff.”
“Yeah, but a Gryffindor rising,” says Mickey, justifying the latest iteration of her temporary tattoo sleeve. “Anyway, my mom made too many of them and let me snag a few before I left for camp, so—Abby! Hey! You should meet Leo.”
Leo turns to me, his eyes bright with mischief. “Pleased to make your acquaintance,” he says, offering his hand.
I take it, squeezing it hard. “Likewise—Liam, was it?”
“Leo,” says Mickey helpfully.
“Oh, Leon,” I correct myself, without breaking eye contact with Leo. He’s trying to play along, but laughter is starting to creep into his smile.
“Actually, my legal full name is Keep This Up And You Won’t Get A Single Lasagna Ball Out Of Me This Entire Summer—”
“You guys know each other?” Mickey cuts in, delighted.
“Yeah. Leo’s been talking up this camp for years,” I say, turning to her with meaningful eye contact. Well, eye contact I hope is meaningful enough to say, Please for the love of God give Savvy the heads-up about this before she shows up.
Leo wraps an arm around my shoulders and squeezes, displaying me like a kid sister. “Must have said something right, if it finally got her to come.”
Mickey’s eyes widen for a split second, enough for me to know she got the message to not blow my cover loud and clear. “Well—wow—that’s great!” she says. “Well—Leo, you should probably go check in.”
“On it,” he says, saluting us both as he goes and tossing me a wink, one that Mickey definitely doesn’t miss.
She raises her eyebrows at me, looking gleeful. “Okay, I have zero time to yell about how much I ship this, because apparently the whole camp computer system crashed and it’s all hands on deck.”
I dismiss the comment, waffling between her and Leo, feeling like it’s the first day of kindergarten all over again and I’m about to lose both my chaperones. “Should I just … go to orientation then?”
“Yeah,” says Mickey, pointing in the general direction of where the other campers are moving. “Savvy’s down in the pit running the show while we try to un-fuck-up all the class rosters. Never a dull moment!”
I hesitate, looking at the curved, elevated rows of benches around the pit full of unfamiliar faces. Even the boy from before seems to have disappeared into the ether, but thankfully a blond girl in neon colorblock leggings beckons me over to sit with her and a few others on the left side.
“Psst—hey! We’ve got a spare seat!”
The girls on either side of her scoot to make room for me, nodding to acknowledge me as one of them moans, “I can’t believe my parents signed me up for the SAT prep portion. I’m not even going to college. I already have a whole plan!”
“Ugh, same. I have a 1560 and they still enrolled me in those stupid sessions. Like, I’m already set on premed, haven’t I already filled the quota for parental bragging rights?” the other girl groans. “They’re lucky I’m too lazy to incite any kind of legit teenage rebellion, or they’d be screwed.”