Five Summers (12 page)

“HOW YOU HOLDIN’ UP?” NATE SAT DOWN NEXT TO Jo on the log she’d been perched on for over two hours, stoking the fire and compulsively eating fun-size Hershey bars. His T-shirt was soaked with sweat—even though it was a cool night, Nate had been busy chopping wood and hauling heavy coolers of soda back and forth from the mess hall—and clung to his torso like a wetsuit.

“I’m okay,” she said. “No second- or third-degree burns so far!”

“Can I get you a drink or something?”

She shook her head.

“Are you sure? Water? Coke?” He coughed suggestively. “Beer?” Jo laughed.

“How do they keep selling to you? I’m going to fax a poster with all of your photos to the guys at the liquor store.”

“Please don’t.” He pulled a can out of the waistband of his shorts and cracked it open with a smile. “Some of us need it.”

Jo shot him a concerned look.

“Not like
that
,” he said. “I meant some of us need it to, you know . . . work up the courage to talk to girls we like.”

Jo poked at the dying fire and then waved her stick toward a group of drunk twentysomething girls in a nearby clearing. “I don’t think you’ll have a problem getting them to talk to you,” she said.

Her dad had presided over the bonfire like always, singing “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt” and the rest of his Camp Nedoba Greatest Hits (no, really; there was a CD) in his hilariously deep baritone and passing around skewers of marshmallows for roasting. But then a former counselor named Shane had an asthma attack brought on by smoke inhalation and Mack had driven him to the ER, entrusting Jo with wrapping up the festivities. That had been over an hour ago, and in the interim a sizable portion of the older crowd had gotten rowdy and amorous, starting a game of spin the bottle, which had devolved quickly into a game of seven minutes in heaven—except that instead of seven minutes, each player got approximately fifteen seconds, and instead of heaven it was a stump of gnarled wood surrounded by citronella candles and discarded Solo cups. Now, five or six older drunk girls were simply going around to cute guys and saying, “You get to kiss me,” and then dragging them into the bushes.

“My dad would freak out if he saw that,” Jo said, trying to control the panic rising in her chest. “He thinks we’re all so innocent.” She looked at Nate’s beer for a second, snatched it from his hand, and took a gulp. “Why not, right? I’m a total failure as an authority figure anyway.”

“You’re awesome,” Nate said, retrieving the beer with an amused smile. “Those kids are just drunk.”

“That’s my point. If anyone got hurt or sick, my dad would get blamed. They’d probably shut down the camp!” She leaned forward and put her head between her knees. “What have I done?”

“Don’t worry,” Nate said, resting a hand gently on her back. “I’m going to help you.”

Over in the circle, things were getting out of hand. “You get to kiss me” had degenerated even further into a sloppy square dance of making out. The main players were three older girls, Meredith, Allie, and Ruth, and a few older guys whose names Jo didn’t know—she decided to call them Thing 1, Thing 2, and The Cat in the Hat for the goateed guy wearing a fedora and sunglasses even though it was so dark even Jo, who had documented 20/10 vision, had trouble seeing. A junior varsity version of the game was being played by Sunny and Co., the Slotkin twins, Zeke, and Bowen. Skylar and Maddie were leaning against a tree on the periphery of the circle, sharing a beer, and Adam and Emma sat in the grass a few yards away. Jo wasn’t sure what she was more upset about, the drinking game or the fact that it had only been six and a half hours since their emotional reunion and already the JEMS seemed to have dissolved again—and that none of them, not even Maddie, seemed to want to hang out with her.

Jo stomped into the center of the clearing and waved her arms. She thought about using her whistle, but she didn’t want to risk calling attention to the fire pit. Even on the slim odds her dad was already back on camp grounds, she couldn’t let him see what a mess his idyllic welcome tradition had become under her watch.

“Okay, guys,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady and avoid touching any roving limbs. “Time to reclaim your own saliva.”

“Buzzkill!” Thing 2 yelled. The girl he had been kissing—Allie, the blonde—cackled with delight.

“She is!” Allie cried. She pretended to press down on a giant
Jeopardy!
buzzer. “Bzzzzzzzzzzzzz!”

Jo looked over at Emma and shrugged helplessly.

“I’ll take insanely wasted for $200, Alex,” Emma called. Adam laughed as Skylar rolled her eyes and took a healthy swig from her Corona Light.

“Hey, that’s funny!” Cat in the Hat said, breaking away from Meredith, who’d been giving him a hickey. He stumbled over toward Emma. “You’re
funny
.”

“You get to kiss him!” Sunny yelled from a prone position on the grass. Emma looked horrified.

“I don’t think so, man,” Adam said, holding his hand up like a stop sign. But Cat in the Hat just high-fived him and ran off into the bushes to pass out.

“Okay, okay,” Nate said, starting to herd the boys out of the clearing. “I mean it—enough. Time to head back, sleep it off.”

Thank you
, Jo mouthed. Nate just shrugged and grinned. Maybe it was just the moonlight and all the smoke inhalation from the fire, but Jo was finally starting to see why all her campers always swooned when Nate led their activities. He was
cute
.
But she didn’t have time for thoughts like that. She marched over to Sunny and helped her up off the grass.

“Time for bed, ladies,” she said. “We have a big trip tomorrow and wake-up’s at seven a.m.”

“Why are you such a killjoy?” Sunny moaned. “Can’t you, like, join the army or something so you can get up at dawn and do a million push-ups and leave the rest of us alone?”

“Thanks for the advice,” Jo said. She wanted to add,
Can’t you, like, go join a sorority or something where other vapid women might appreciate your deep thoughts on nail art and Brangelina?
But she held her tongue; she was in charge, and she had to behave like a camp director. To that end, she marched over to the clique of older girls and started snatching the half-finished beers out of their hands.

“Hey!” Meredith cried. “I was drinking that.”

“Sorry, camp policy,” Jo said. “Anyway, the bonfire’s over, and it’s time to go back to the bunks.”

“Jeez, who died and made you boss?” she asked. Ruth leaned over and whispered something in her ear, and Meredith laughed and nodded. “I can see the resemblance now,” she said, looking Jo up and down. “Neither one of you has any tits!” They exploded in laughter.

Jo felt the color rise in her cheeks, but she clenched her teeth as the girls stumbled back onto the path. When she turned around, she saw Maddie and Skylar walking over arm in arm.

“Where have you guys been?” she cried. “I thought we were going to stick together.”

“Me too,” Skylar said loudly. “But Emma went off with Adam, and as soon as we got here you and Nate had super secret s’mores business to attend to. So Maddie and I founded the Lonely Hearts Corona Club.”

“Yup,” Maddie said, taking a swig.

“Give me that,” Jo scolded, grabbing the beer. “Where did all of this come from, anyway?” Maddie and Skylar smirked at each other and shrugged. Jo sighed. Why did she always have to be the bad cop?

She looked forlornly at the trash strewn around the campsite. It would take at least an hour to clean up, maybe more. She was tired of being a mini-Mack, or a mini-Gus. Just once, for one night, she wanted to be herself and not to have to care about running camp.

“You know what? Screw it. Let’s take a break,” she said, handing the beer back to Skylar. “This is my reunion, too.”

“Atta girl!” Maddie said. They stepped over the marshmallow carnage and sat together on the log they’d always favored, the one they’d sat on senior year that faced the path down to the lake. The sliver of water that was visible through the trees shimmered in the moonlight.

“Emma!” Jo called, cupping her hands around her mouth. “Get your deserting little butt over here.” She took the beer from Skylar and took a sip. Just a few minutes, she promised herself, and then she’d start cleaning up. She just needed a few minutes of feeling like a normal teenager.

Emma appeared, looking sheepish and wiping dirt off her knees.

“You’ve spent more time with Adam than you have with us,” Jo said. “That was not the plan.” Emma shifted uncomfortably.

“Yeah,” Maddie chirped. “Party foul. We’re gonna have to install a tracking device.”

“Don’t do that,” Emma laughed. But then her smile faded. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I want girl time, I really do. I just . . .”

“Want to hook up with Adam?” Skylar asked. The bluntness of the question seemed to strike Emma like a blow to the kidneys. She sat down next to Jo and rested her chin on her hands.

“I don’t know,” she said softly. “Maybe. At least get some kind of closure.”

Jo had to respect Emma’s honesty, but she still didn’t quite understand it. Yes, guys could be distracting, but camp was supposed to be about lasting friendships, not short-lived hookups. And it’s wasn’t like Emma and Adam were meant to end up together, no matter what Maddie said about her parents meeting at camp. Jo was pretty sure that had been a lie, anyway.

“Remember when we rigged that fortune teller to try to get Adam to kiss you?” Maddie said suddenly. Emma put her face in her hands and groaned.

“Don’t remind me!” she laughed. Jo had completely forgotten about that rainy day that they’d spent painstakingly writing “You will kiss the person who read you this fortune” in tiny print on the inside flaps of the fortune teller Skylar had folded like origami from a sheet of notebook paper. But then Adam hadn’t wanted to play, and when Jo unsubtly tried to coerce him into doing it by promising he’d get something no one else at camp had, Emma panicked and destroyed the damning evidence in a puddle.

“I still say he would have done it,” Skylar said. “And then we all would have been spared another year of moaning and groaning.”

“Hey!” Emma said. “It’s not like
you
didn’t have anyone we got sick of hearing about.”

“If Zeke asked me to, I would go all the way with him!” Maddie trilled in an imitation of fourteen-year-old Skylar.

“Whatever,” Skylar huffed—and then broke into a grin. “I still would.” Jo threw her head back and laughed. She felt strange and warm and uninhibited. Maybe she was actually . . . relaxed. It was a weird feeling.

“What’s so funny?” Adam stepped into the circle, with Nate following close behind him as usual. Jo wondered why Nate seemed so content to be Adam’s sidekick; it seemed like it should be the other way around. In movies, the leading man was always the cuter, quieter one, and his best friend was the zany attention whore with the too-big ears.

“People we want to sleep with,” Skylar said. She glugged her beer and looked pointedly at Adam before adding, “
Not
you.”

Jo could tell her relaxation was going to be short-lived.

“You didn’t miss much,” Emma said quickly. “Just a little trip down memory lane.”

“Well,” Adam said, raising his beer. “Why don’t we take a trip down present-day lane and go sit on the beach?” Jo bristled—her inner camp counselor worried about letting anyone, especially people who’d been drinking, near the water when visibility was so low—but she looked around at the others and they all nodded eagerly. Maddie, who was getting eaten alive by bugs, looked particularly pathetic.

“Relax,” Nate whispered, crouching behind her. “We’re just having a few beers. No one’s drunk, and no one’s going to get hurt.” Jo smiled. It was nice to have someone looking out for her for a change.

“Sure, why not?” she said, and everyone cheered. Cleanup could wait another hour. As acting camp director, she made the official decision to give herself the night off.

“I HAVE AN ANNOUNCEMENT TO MAKE,” EMMA SAID. She stopped cutting her Belgian waffle and put down her fork. “This is the summer I will get kissed.” It was the kind of thing she could only say to her camp friends. If she’d tried a line like that at Prouty Middle School, she would have gotten laughed out of the cafeteria. The few people at her junior high who even knew who Emma Zenewicz was probably remembered her as the Model United Nations delegate from Zimbabwe who threw off the curve on the social studies midterm by performing a traditional African drum solo during her impassioned speech in favor of environmental protection. It had been her dad’s idea, the same dad who couldn’t understand why his daughter stayed home from the seventh grade dance.

“Oooooh!” Maddie clapped. “I approve. Who’s your target?”

“Take a wild guess,” Skylar said.

“Adam Loring,” Emma stage whispered.

Their counselor, Sasha, was sitting at the head of the table, and since it was only the first day of camp Emma wasn’t sure yet if she could be trusted with confidential matters of the heart.

“Ew. Why?” Jo asked, snapping a Pop-Tart in half.

“I bet her five dollars she wouldn’t,” Skylar said. “Time to bite the bullet.”

“That’s not why,” Emma protested. “He just makes me . . . want to kiss him. I don’t know. I just like him. I don’t even want to, I can’t help it.” Even just talking about him made her ears start to tingle.

Jo grimaced. “To have Adam’s tongue all over my face you’d have to pay me like a thousand dollars,” she said.

“She has a point,” Maddie said. “You don’t know where it’s been. You should hold out for more cash.”

“He hasn’t kissed
that
many people!” Emma felt her face getting red.

“Yes, he has,” Skylar laughed.

“Maybe that just means he’s good at it. I mean, obviously he’s practiced,” Emma said. She practiced her Latin verbs every day, and now she could do even the most advanced exercises in her textbook,
Veni! Vidi! Vici!
, which featured the bust of Julius Caesar against a backdrop of lasers.

“Right, because so many thirteen-year-old boys are awesome at kissing,” Maddie said. “Hey, Skylar, didn’t you kiss him once during spin the bottle?”

Emma cringed. She’d almost let herself forget about that. She was relieved to see that Skylar looked uncomfortable, too.

“It was like one second long,” she said, taking a bite of her English muffin. “And I wasn’t . . . you know . . .
trying
.”

“You don’t have to,” Maddie said. “Adam tries hard enough for two!”

“I don’t think he’s that bad,” Emma said. They’d started e-mailing over the winter, and she felt like this year they might really become good friends. The last time she’d talked to Adam in person, at the end-of-camp bonfire the previous summer, he’d tried to give her a piece of already-been-chewed gum, but in his e-mails he was so much nicer and more mature. He wrote most of them to avoid doing his math homework and sent her pages and pages of funny observations about his teacher, whom he called Mr. Pants, and the other kids in the class. Adam was actually a really good writer. Emma knew there was definitely more to him than her friends saw.

“Well, he’s sort of cute,” Skylar said. “But too short.”

“He reminds me of someone’s little brother,” Jo said.

Just at that moment, Adam came out of the bathroom by the kitchen entrance and made a beeline for their table. He had a haircut that made his ears look even bigger than usual, but there was something more grown-up about his face. As he got closer, she could see a faint shadow of mustache above his upper lip. His Adam’s apple seemed bigger, too. Emma felt her face getting red.

“Hey, Em!” he said, grinning. “We have to catch up later. Buy you a bug juice?” He turned to the others. “Good morning, table four. You’re looking lovely today.”

“Move along, Adam,” Sasha said.

“Nice ’stache,” Maddie whispered. She and Jo erupted into giggles.

“Be kind; puberty’s rougher on the boys,” Sasha said with a smirk.

“Can we talk about the Romeo act?” Jo asked. “Was he always like this?”

Only when people are watching
, Emma thought.

“It’s gotten worse,” Maddie said, poking her fork at the jiggly yellow pile on her plate. “He’s as fake as these ‘eggs.’”

Jo made a face. “Blame my dad. Frozen egg substitute is the cheapest.”

“And so is Adam!” Maddie cried. “It’s the circle of life.” She and Jo fist-bumped.

“Why can’t he commit to liking one girl?” Skylar wondered. “I mean, seriously, how hard is it to keep liking one thing for more than ten seconds?”

“I will always love Pop-Tarts,” Jo said.

“See? Jo mates for life. Like an albatross,” Maddie laughed.

Emma looked back at Adam. Sure, he could be annoying. And he was definitely a flirt. But he wasn’t a real player or anything. Even if he acted like it.

“You guys are mean,” Emma said. “I think underneath all that . . . he’s nice.”

“But he’s
nice
to
all
the girls,” Jo said, turning serious. “It’s like he wants to be everyone’s boyfriend.”

“And no one’s,” Skylar said.

“Exactly!” Jo took a bite of her Pop-Tart. “Plus, we’re too young to have boyfriends.” She looked right at Skylar when she said it. Skylar had started dating a boy at her school that winter.

“Speak for yourself,” Skylar said. “Some of us are more mature for our age.”

“I don’t want a
boyfriend
!” Emma whispered. She was blushing so much she was almost the color of the strawberry jelly on Maddie’s bagel. “I just want to kiss him. That’s
all
.”

Skylar looked over at Adam, narrowing her eyes and tilting her head like she was taking aim at an archery target. “You should do it right now,” she said to Emma.

“What?!” Emma felt like she might throw up.

“Do it now. A guy as confident as Adam needs to have his attention grabbed, and laying one on him in public when he’s not expecting it will be way better than trying to make the right moment happen.”

Emma shook her head. She needed time—preferably weeks and weeks of painfully drawn-out time—to plan the perfect move.

“Come on, if you do it now you won’t have to worry about it all summer. It’ll be like ripping off a Band-Aid.”

“I don’t rip off Band-Aids,” Emma said. “I take a bath until they get soft and gooey and I can take them off without it hurting.”

Skylar set down her spoon, looking worried. “That’s the problem, Em. You can’t be afraid to get hurt.”

“You can take Adam in the bath, though,” Maddie drawled.

“
Maddie
,” Sasha said in a warning tone. Jo elbowed her.

“Guys, shut up. I am
not
doing it now, okay? End of story.” Emma pushed her waffle away and pressed her lips together, an added barrier just in case Skylar tried to physically force her to make out with Adam.

“I’m just saying you need to be proactive,” Skylar said. “Don’t be afraid to like him; otherwise it’ll never happen.”

“I’m not afraid to like him. I like him. You all know I like him.” In fact, she was starting to get self-conscious that she talked about liking him too much.

“
He
doesn’t, though.”

“She has a point,” Maddie chimed in.

“What, am I supposed to send him a note?” Emma thought of the little squares of notebook paper that always got passed around in fifth and sixth grades:

Do you like me?
☐
Yes
☐
No
☐
Maybe

She would sooner blind herself with a plastic spork than hand a note like that to Adam.

“There are ways to show someone you like him without
saying
it, Emma,” Skylar sighed. She pushed away from the table and walked over to the cereal station. On her way back, she purposefully brushed up against Adam’s arm. He looked up at her and she shot him a demure smile. Skylar sat back down and raised her eyebrows.

“See?”

“Great, now he thinks
you
like him.”

“Oh, he does not. He thinks everyone likes him anyway. But if
you
don’t show him
you
like him, someone else will. And then they’ll get him and you won’t.”

Emma knew there was some truth to this. But it infuriated her that Skylar was being so pushy.

“If the only way to get him is to be a big ho, then I don’t want him.” She balled up her napkin and flicked it at Skylar.

“You don’t have to be a ho, just don’t be a grandma about it, either,” Skylar replied, launching a forkful of egg at Emma’s chest.

“Hey, that’s ageist,” Maddie laughed. “My grandma has a boyfriend!” She threw a globule of egg white at Skylar’s arm and they all cracked up.

“Girls!” Sasha yelled. “Were you this much trouble last year or am I just lucky?”

“You’re not lucky,” Sunny Sherman muttered from the other end of the table, and her friends giggled. Emma started wiping up the egg.

“Nice manners,” Adam said a few minutes later as he passed them on the way to clear his tray.

“That’s just a preview of what you’re gonna get at capture the flag this year,” Jo said.

“Yeah,” Skylar said. “Watch out for us.”

Emma marveled at her confidence. She’d gotten an A in biology that year, but even though she could quote the steps of mammalian mating rituals from memory, she realized that Skylar had actual field research under her belt. And if she wanted to get Adam’s attention, she would need to take her cues from someone with more experience. She decided to seize the moment before she could talk herself out of it.

“Watch out for me, especially,” she said.

Adam looked at her quizzically, a smile playing on his lips. “Okay, okay,” he said, backing away with his hands up. “Don’t hurt me.”

Emma turned back to her friends and covered her face with her hands. “I’m dying of shame,” she whispered through her fingers.

“No, that was so good!” Skylar said. “He was totally caught off guard.”

“Really?”

“Yes. He is going to be putty in your hands.”

Emma smiled nervously. She felt excited, but she also knew that for the first time in her life she had started a project she wasn’t sure she could follow through with. After all, Skylar wouldn’t be able to coach her before every conversation with Adam. And she wasn’t the only one vying for his attention. Emma would have to show him how she felt . . . before someone else beat her to it.