Lighting the Flames (28 page)

They finished eating
but didn
’
t hang around the dining hall despite the warmth and the
very peaceful silence. Nadine and her kids were leaving after lunch
and needed to wash the dishes they
’
d used. Plus, she
still needed to pack.

Walking into the cabin
with Scott made her face grew hot, matching the burn deep in her
chest. Jeremy had moved the mattresses back and placed her pillow
on the bed in her room. Her camp sleeping bag was rolled up into a
perfect coil, and the blankets they
’
d used were folded
and stacked on a shelf. He
’
d cleaned up every
sign that they
’
d spent the night on the floor snuggled together,
kissing until they were interrupted.

The silence of the cabin hurt her ears and pressed
on her skin. Scott was whistling through his teeth as he threw the
last of his own things in a bag, unaffected by the space that Gen
found so disorienting. Her clothes were easy to pack, and Jeremy
had bundled everything else for her. But his room was empty, the
bed and the shelves bare, the door between their rooms propped open
like no one had been there at all. The absence of his stuff
everywhere, sprawled across every surface like Jeremy sprawled on
the couch, was almost as loud as his presence, the quiet hurting
her ears.

So she hurried,
throwing her things haphazardly in her duffel, since it
didn
’
t matter much. Everything had to be washed anyway. She just
wanted to leave. She was about to ask Scott a question when his
walkie-talkie buzzed three times.

“
Someone
’
s at the gate,
”
he said, pulling his hat back
on.

“
I
’
m done packing, so I
’
ll get it. Stay and
finish so we can get home before dark.
”
She pulled on her
gloves.
“
Can I borrow your keys?
”

Scott tossed them to
her.
“
Better than you hot-wiring my truck.
”

“
I
only know how to hot-wire golf carts.
”

She pushed the door
open with her back, her duffel over her shoulder and the sleeping
bag under her arm. She
’
d bring it home to
wash, then return it next summer during staff week.

As she drove slowly up
the hill, she had to turn down the radio that Scott had left
somewhere up near eardrum-blast level. She knew now what song
he
’
d
been whistling, and the whistling was preferable.

A dark red truck
waited at the gate, and the driver waved at Gen as she pulled over
and jumped down to the ground. She
’
d pressed the button
to open the gates, but instead of stepping to the side of the road,
she walked through them as they swung open. The driver rolled down
his window when she approached.

“
I
was hoping I
’
d see you today,
”
she said with a grin, her heart
beating faster.
“
How
’
ve you been?
”

*

Two hours later, she
was home. Every time she made the drive home from camp, she felt
like it should take longer than it did. Once
Scott
’
s truck was off the two-lane blacktop road and on the
highway, though, within minutes the blur of trees and mountains
dropped away, and the blur of buildings, gas stations, and houses
took over. Most of them showed off holiday lights in a multitude of
colors, giving her a reason to keep her face turned away from
Scott. He didn
’
t say very much, anyway, just that he was as tired as
she was, and that her sleeping bag, no longer soaked but not clean
either, was with the rest of the camp laundry. When Nadine picked
it up next week, she
’
d leave it in the office for Gen to get next
summer. One less thing for her to pack, he joked.

Scott dropped her off
at her new apartment, thanking her one last time for staging a coup
and changing the schedule
—
something he
hadn
’
t fully appreciated, but recognized had been a great
success for him, and for Meira.

“
I
’
ll be calling you soon about next summer.
You
’
re still coming back, right?
”

She looked at him in
surprise.
“
I wouldn
’
t miss it.
”

The silence of her
apartment wasn
’
t as painful as the silence at camp, but she was
surprised how everything seemed slightly unfamiliar, despite the
fact that she
’
d lived there for almost three months.

Gen dropped her things
in the doorway and looked at her home. Her computer was there, her
TV, her couch that she
’
d bought on sale, the
pillows she
’
d made for it still perched in each corner. She knew
everything was hers, but it was all so new that, after a week in a
place she knew by heart, being home felt odd.

Kicking her duffel
into the kitchen where the washer and dryer hid in a closet, she
pulled off a few of the layers she
’
d lived in for the
past week and tossed those on top of her bag. One sleeve hit the
front of the fridge and knocked down one of the magnets holding up
a picture. The front of her refrigerator was covered with printouts
of the photos she
’
d shared online from Iceland, with the captions Jeremy
had added.

She picked up the
image that had fallen down to pin it back on the door, a shot
she
’
d taken from Mount Esja last December, when the sun rose
well after eleven in the morning. She
’
d captioned that one
before Jeremy could:
Now
that
is a late wake-up.

When she sat down to
eat dinner, the sky outside her window was shifting from faded
peach to dark blue. She
’
d placed the table
that also served as her desk against the wall under the picture
window so she could see the sun or the stars while she ate or
worked. An image of the night sky over Iceland now leaned against
the napkin holder in front of her, the entire frame filled with the
glowing plume of the Milky Way.

At camp, there was a
limitless sky with a never-ending sweep of stars above their
limited world. Some of those same stars were appearing now, the
brightest ones that could shine past the lights of the city. She
was still under the same sky, the same winter stars, even if they
couldn
’
t all be seen.

When the dryer beeped
at her, she pulled the elastic straps off the sleeping bag
she
’
d used and unrolled it so she could unzip the fabric into a
large square. It looked so strange on her living room carpet, like
something from another planet. She reached across to pull the
zipper and heard a crunching noise inside. Leaves or twigs, or so
she thought, but when she reached inside, she found notebook
paper.

Jeremy
’
s notebook paper, the paper they
’
d used to schedule
color war events, and come up with competitions and plan the last
five days.

But there
wasn
’
t a schedule on this page. In a scrawling diagonal across
the lines, Jeremy had written,

Genevieve
—

I have to leave
early. Doody calls. Or my dad does. Anyway. I
’
ll call
you.

This week has been
one of the best of my life. It was
epic
.

I
’
ll miss
you.

—
J

Then, at the bottom,
in smaller letters, he
’
d added,
I miss you already.

Gen sat with the paper
in her hand, reading it over and over, before placing it on the
table next to her laptop, which she
’
d just turned on for
the first time in a week. Her in-box flooded with new messages, the
computer beeping as each one arrived. They were easy to sort, but
as she scanned the list a second time, she noticed there
wasn
’
t one from Jeremy.

His note leaned
against the napkin holder, next to her photo of the sky, and she
looked at the photo, his caption cut off by the printer, one that
had made her laugh every time she looked at it. Had there been
meaning behind the captions, something more behind the jokes he
made? Probably, but she still had no idea what to say to him now
that she was home. She could talk to him about anything at camp,
even start a conversation in the middle of a sentence, and
he
’
d
understand immediately. Now that she was home, and so was he, she
didn
’
t know how or where to begin.

Genevieve set up her
work for the following morning and sketched out her to-do list on a
scrap of paper while the pictures from Winter Camp copied from the
camera
’
s memory card. Somehow, she
’
d taken nearly four
hundred pictures in five days.

Those were less easy to sort. She was able to delete
blurry images and pictures that caught people in awkward moments or
only half in the frame, but there were more than 250 left when she
was done.

So many of Jeremy,
too. Leading cheers. Rolling a giant snowball to help the white
team build a snowman in his likeness, even though he technically
wasn
’
t supposed to assist them. Challenging campers in sled
races down the hill, throwing snowballs, trying to play baseball in
waist-high snowdrifts using plastic bats, every image featuring red
noses and huge smiles.

The she found a
picture toward the end that she didn
’
t recognize. She
hadn
’
t taken it. She couldn
’
t have.

She was in it.

She was standing with
Ella by the bonfire, helping her make a s
’
more while keeping
the melted marshmallow from getting all over the little
girl
’
s mittens. She was laughing and licking her fingers, but
behind her, Jeremy was watching her.

His hands were in his pockets as he stood. Glenn was
talking to him, gesturing with one hand, but while Jeremy might
have been listening, his attention was focused on Genevieve.

The bonfire lit his face so she could see his
expression clearly. He was half smiling, his eyes gentle and his
expression proud and almost wondrous. And he was looking at
her.

Seeing his emotions so
plain on his face filled her with the same warmth
she
’
d felt in his arms the night before and hiking by his side
for the past few days. Gen thought about all the ways he'd cared
for her over the past week, and all the things he
’
d done that
she
’
d only just learned about. He
’
d been beside her for
some of the best moments of her life, and he
’
d been behind her for
some of the worst, doing everything he could to help her. He'd
seemed so confident that their relationship could continue outside
of camp, that things would be the same the next time they saw each
other. She wasn
’
t sure if that was true, but she knew she missed him
more now than she had at the end of every summer they'd spent
together.

Genevieve stayed up for another hour, sorting
pictures and loading them onto the camp website in a special
gallery for the Winter Camp families. The one of her by the fire
with Ella stayed open on her desktop, and after looking at it
repeatedly, she set it as the wallpaper on her computer. When she
shut down her laptop, all the programs disappeared one by one,
until all that remained was the image, with the edge of the fire
illuminating her laughter as she licked marshmallow from her
fingers, and Jeremy standing behind, watching over her. When the
screen went dark, she added one more thing to her to-do list for
the following day.

She
didn
’
t wash the sleeping bag that night. She put it on her
bed
—
after she checked it for leaves and rocks or, worse,
anything creepy or crawly
—
and used it as a
blanket. It didn
’
t really need to be washed, not right away.

*

Jeremy sat down on his bed, holding his phone. He
had no new voice mail messages, no new e-mail, not a single
indicator that anyone wanted to talk to him. It was confusing.