What Happens Now(3)

“I’ve got to get some intel on Sunscreen Guy,” said Kendall after a few moments.

“I’ve just been calling him The Boy.”

“See? We can’t go on like this. I’ll talk to Mabel.”

Mabel had been running the lake’s snack shack since the 1980s. Mabel absorbed details about people like osmosis.

As Kendall headed off on her mission, I went waist-deep into the water to meet Danielle. She wrapped her arms and legs around me, buoyant and effortlessly huggable. Her cold wet against my warm dry. That moment of shock, until we became the same temperature.

“Will you throw me out like garbage?” she whispered in my ear.

I lifted Danielle away from my body. “You’re no good anymore!” It was part of the game. “I’m chucking you out with the trash!”

Then I tossed her as far as I could into the water. She shrieked with joy.

“Again!” she said when she came back up for air. “This time, let’s pretend you’re putting me in the recycling bin. It’s blue and it’s prettier. Now, go!” So I went. Again, and again, and again. Dani was the best distraction ever.

Ten minutes later, Kendall swam out to meet us, and even with her mirrored sunglasses I could tell she had a mischievous glint in her eye.

“Camden,” Kendall said simply, paddling a circle around me.

“What?”

“It’s weird, but that’s his name. Camden.”

“All you got was a name?”

“He goes to Dashwood.”

“Oh.”

Dashwood was a private alternative school on the edge of town, halfway up a mountain, surrounded by forest. Nobody I knew had even seen the place. Most people called it “Crunchwood” because there were few teachers and no classes. Students did what they wanted, when they wanted to do it. The rumor was they didn’t even need to wear shoes if they weren’t in the mood.

Kendall lowered her sunglasses so she could give me a look. “We think he’s cute, right?”

I grimaced. “Cute’s not the right word.” I hated that word and anyway, it didn’t belong on the same plane of existence as this boy. Camden.

“International Sex God?” Kendall offered with arched eyebrows, pulling out an old phrase from our private best-friend language.

“Perhaps,” I said, giving in to the smile.

“I won’t tell Lukas,” added Kendall.

“Lukas is just a friend.”

“Who you made out with.”

“That was before.” I didn’t need to elaborate. Before meant, before January. Before my night at home alone with a Lady Bic razor and a bag of frozen peas.

Kendall looked pained, then covered it up and said, “So? He still likes you. He’s not scared away.”

“He will be, eventually.”

She kicked me under the water. I splashed her back.

“Why are you always so hard on yourself?” asked Kendall, but I knew she didn’t really want an answer. “I thought we agreed, that’s something that would make you happy. To have someone. You’re close. I wish I were that close.”

“I don’t need ‘someone.’ I have my whole family. And lucky for them, they have me.”

My mom was working hard to finish nursing school. My stepdad, Richard, was gone most days, running his art supply store. There were meals to prepare and a self-regenerating to-do list stuck to the fridge with alphabet magnets. Also, the small matter of a real live child who needed to be, you know, fed and clothed and supervised. I filled the gaps. Sometimes it felt like there were more gaps than whatever it was that went between the gaps.

Let’s keep her busy, I’d heard my mother tell Richard once. She didn’t want me to have time to retreat into myself, apparently a place full of dark corners and hazardous material.

Kendall was my friend and wanted to help, too. What was happy anyway? A dumb-sounding word, if you really broke it down. Happy was something you didn’t think too much about because if you did, you knew you weren’t.

I turned to look out at the raft where Camden sat by himself, staring off into the sky. I was always confronting the sky with questions, but that didn’t seem to be the case with him. It was more like he and the sky were collaborators. Like maybe he had the whole edgeless thing on his side.

How would that even feel? I couldn’t imagine. But, oh, to find out.

Soon, summer began in earnest, so hot and green and wet, it was hard to remember what any other season felt like. I saw Camden at the lake a couple of times a week, but it was always from afar and we never spoke. He usually came alone, which totally fascinated me—who had the nerve to come to the lake alone?—but sometimes he did come with friends: a rickety-tall boy and a petite girl with long, straight, jet-black hair. They’d disappear down a trail into the woods for a while before coming back out to strip down to their bathing suits and do yelping cannonballs off the dock.

I knew the lifeguards liked to drink or smoke stuff in those woods after the beach closed at night. Were Camden and his friends bold enough to do it during the day? And if I myself didn’t smoke anything and had even washed cars as a fund-raiser for Students Against Drunk Driving, why did the thought of Camden doing these things make my kneecaps feel unattached from my legs?

“We’re hardwired for the naughty ones,” sighed Kendall once, as we spotted Camden and his compadres come out of the woods. “It really sucks.”