twenty-seven
Autumn
“Didyouheartheyarrested the devil? Yeah, they got him on possession.”
Mixed laughter and groans emanated from the crowd during our last campfire as Lamar delivered dad jokes like he was a stand-up comic. He did this every other week to raucous applause and eye-rolling. Most of them were pretty funny.
“A friend of mine didn’t pay his exorcist,” Lamar said to literal crickets. “He got repossessed.”
Most of them.
We’d learned a long time ago that the last night of camp was filled with mixed emotions, most of them sadness. That was why we did a talent show on Wednesday nights. It was a great distraction from the inevitable. And man, did I need that distraction. So, what qualified as talent? We weren’t picky. If you had some sort of skill, weird or not, we extended an invitation to make yourself look outstanding or silly.
We saw plenty of contestants, but typically, the best performances of the night were from the staff, who’d honed their crafts over dozens of talent shows throughout the summer. Hazel and Leo always took part, and as for the counselors, we split off doing the talent show and alternated, with three of us going each week. This week, I was off, thank god, because I had plenty of things to think about, and I didn’t want to be distracted by winning the whole damn thing as I deserved. Okay, maybe not winning. The voting was biased toward the campers. It was a rigged system.
“What kind of drink can be bitter and sweet?” Lamar asked the audience.
“What kind?” someone shouted.
“Reali-tea.” Lamar looked pleased with himself as the crowd burst into laughter. At this point, they were just laughing at him and not his jokes, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. He thrived on both applause and boos.
Our emcee, Sawyer, waved goodbye to our opener and moved through the rest of our participants. We saw multiple singers, a very impressive doo-wop group, and two jugglers who used hacky sacks to juggle with each other. Braxton and Peyton, one of this year’s returning couples, did a surprisingly good hula hoop routine, but my personal favorite had been a group of dads who somehow knew the dance moves to NSYNC’s “Bye Bye Bye” to perfection. Hazel also did a magic show where she made cups disappear and ended her set sawing through a pink-wig-clad Leo in a box. He wore the wig every time, and she never asked him to do it. We still didn’t know where he’d gotten the damn thing, but he brought it out frequently.
Jack was on the docket this session, but he wasn’t in the front with the other contestants, so I assumed he’d discussed skipping this week with Sawyer.
I found him sitting in the back row with his elbows on his knees, watching one of his pod members singing a fairly decent “Music of the Night” as the Phantom.
“Oh, come on, you lovePhantom of the Opera.”
“That was before I died inside.”
I fought back a laugh because he didn’t look like he was joking. There was no light in his eyes, no laugh lines on his face. I realized then that most of the time, even the way he sat was funny, as if he were ready to deliver some joke or was bracing himself to laugh. He loved to laugh.
“Is this because you’re sad about being broken up or because you get angsty when you watch musicals?”
He turned to me with a half-hearted smile. “Can’t it be both?”
“Yes, it can.” I lifted a yo-yo in front of him. “You know, if someone asked me what I’d like to see most tonight, it’d be yo-yo master Jack Hawthorne.”
“Ooh, I like that.” He clearly approved of his new moniker with as close to a Jack grin as it seemed I was going to get.
“You can use it. Tonight, even. I don’t know if you know this, but I have an in with the emcee.”
Jack forced a chuckle.
“I know you’ve been knocked down, but you always get back up again,” I tried. “But if you don’t feel like getting back up again right now, you don’t have to.”
“You think I can get back up again?” The disbelief in his voice cut deep.
“Of course I do. But you can also just be sad.” He nodded without looking at me.
He tossed his yo-yo between his hands. “I don’t want to be sad.”
The theme of the night.
I didn’t want to be sad either. I wanted to use my time wisely. Wasting it got me nowhere. Sitting in my sadness got menowhere too. God knew I was going to be doing it for the next week. No, month. Months. It didn’t matter. I wanted to be with Jamie, not sit apart for appearances or because he wanted time with others, whether or not I was being selfish. I wanted to get the hell out of here.
By the time Crispin was done singing “Call Me Maybe,” Jack was on stage, and he was amazing. Doing tricks we’d never seen before, including one using multiple yo-yos. He looked both amused and focused, great at getting laughs and applause from the rest of us. But no matter what, he was in his element. It made me want to do what I was good at too—sleeping with my ex-boyfriend.
