Calmly, Carefully, Completely(10)

Phil gets up and sits down across from Tic Tac and goes through the same drill. I see him do it with everyone. There are about ten young men on the bus, all under the age of eighteen, if I had to guess. There’s one younger boy who doesn’t look older than sixteen.

I heave a sigh and close my eyes. I cross my arms over my chest and try to sleep. If I’m correct, we have a few hours to go until we get to Cast-A-Way Farms.





Reagan



The pool is wonderful. It’s too bad it’s surrounded by *s. I squeal and cover my head when another one jumps into the water right beside me, drenching me with his splashing despite the fact that I specifically said I didn’t want to get wet. I have somewhere to be when I leave here.

Chase pops his head up out of the water and rests on his elbows right beside my head, his nose almost touching mine. “Didn’t get you wet, did I?” he asks. He looks at me just long enough to make me uncomfortable. Or make me want to punch him in the nose. I shrug to myself. Whichever comes first. He has been dropping these sexy hints ever since I went out to dinner with him two weeks ago. If I could do it with anyone, it wouldn’t be Chase Gerald. Besides, he doesn’t know what happened to me my first semester at college. Nobody knows about it except for my family, Peter Reed, Rachel, and the man who turned me off sex forever.

I want to tell Chase to f*ck off, to tell him that he can just stop trying because I’m never going to be the easy girl who will fall into bed with him. But I can’t tell him I was raped because then he’ll look at me with pity. That’s the last thing I want.

I pretend like I didn’t hear his comment about getting wet. The type of wet he’s talking about isn’t even in my vocabulary. Chase grunts and pulls himself from the water. I don’t know why I invited him over. He brought his buddies, and I don’t know which one of them gives me the creeps more. Even worse, they brought their girlfriends. These are the same girls who look at my little brother like he’s some kind of carnival sideshow.

Chase stands over me and shakes the water from his hair. His kneecap is directly beside my head. With a leg swipe, I could take him out…

His eyes narrow, and I hear the rumble of a bus coming up the driveway. I stand up and grab my towel, dry off really quickly, and then I pull my clothes on over my bathing suit. “Sorry, Chase. I have to go.”

“Are those the camp kids?” he asks.

I twist my hair up into a messy ponytail.

“Yep.” This is my favorite part of the summer. My dad has been holding his camps here since my brother was three, when we realized there wasn’t a safe place to send him to camp where he could be who he is— a normal little boy with autism.

The first year we did it, we invited only kids with autism. Through the years, it’s grown. Now we have kids with challenges like Down syndrome, autism, processing disorders, and this year there’s even a group of young boys coming who are deaf. I’m excited. These boys need me. And they don’t threaten me. I don’t have nightmares about them hurting me… Not like the others.

“Is that a prison van?” Chase asks.

“Yep,” I say.

Every year, my dad invites young men from the local youth detention center to come and volunteer at the camp. They’re not violent young men and are screened carefully, and they’ll come with their own director. But they all do have a criminal history. They get community service hours at the camp.

“Are you sure that’s safe?” Chase asks.

“Yep,” I say. I’d be more worried about Chase than I would them. “You guys can see yourselves out, right?” I ask over my shoulder, not really caring about their responses.