Page 5

CHAPTER 3

The welcome sign seemed smaller than I remembered it being. But then again, maybe that was because the last time I’d seen it, I’d been a fifteen-year-old little shit myself and everything had felt enormous because my head was so far firmly shoved up Darius’s ass that I couldn’t see anything around me for what it was.

The trees. The cabins. The counselors. All the fucking possibilities that someone might notice the way I stared at the boy beside me whenever he wasn’t paying attention.

The wooden sign sagged between two thick posts, the faded white letters nearly swallowed by erosion over time. CAMP DIX. They’d covered up the painted smiling sun that used to be beneath it. The creepy caricature had one eye scratched out even back then and looked like a weird puppet-zombie. Hated to admit it… but the updated clinical aesthetic was somehow more disturbing.

“Charming,” I mumbled under my breath.

Darius shifted beside the camp bus, squinting through the blazing sun at the cabins and beyond that at the lake. I knew where his mind was headed and it was the perfect opportunity to poke the bear just a little bit.

“Fancy a swim, DeeDee?” I called over to where he was still standing with that blonde bimbo.

“Don’t make me drown you, Alvin,” he called back.

“Ooh, kinky. Guess all the titty committees you’ve been entertaining lately like an aggressor. Rawr.”

He glanced at me and my outstretched kitten paw. His pretty eyes sparkled with my favorite kind of anger, but I tried to keep my attention on the sign. That was easier than looking at him or the lake. As much as it was fun to tease him, that glorified watering hole was painful for me too.

The courthouse had been bad enough. Sitting beside Darius while the judge explained that our sentence would be served here had felt like some elaborate punishment designed by a therapist with a cruel sense of humor.

Community service at Camp Dix. Ten motherfucking weeks.

Cabin leaders? Who the fuck thought a loud-and-proud gay thespian and a closeted-homosexual Italian man would be great leaders? These poor kids.

At the same time, Camp Dix was where Darius had kissed me back and our tiny little blossoming peens had rubbed against each other in those dark depths. He’d spent the next morning pretending it never happened, and that I didn’t exist anymore.

Gravel cracked under the teenage shit-fucks’ shoes while the swarm of angry juveniles got off the bus one at a time.

My stomach tightened when I noticed the bubble-butt blonde starting to push her mega-sized tatas into Dee’s chest. He didn’t even hide the fact she made him hard. But maybe, just maybe, it was the fact he was remembering rubbing up on me. Not her.

Wishful thinking never hurt anyone, right?

Nothing had changed here, yet somehow everything had. The mess hall still sat near the center of camp with its green roof and chipped white siding. The lake glittered beyond the trees and the cabins stretched along the dirt paths, their names painted above the doors.

Aspen. Pine. Maple. Ash. Willow. Oak. Cedar. And the tiniest one, which was the leaders cabin (knock on wood, hardy-har-har) sequoia.

The same stupid names, same dusty windows, and definitely the same porch steps where I’d once sat with a bloody lip while Dee told me to get out of his sight because someone might see.

A laugh rose from somewhere around me, jolting my dumbass and knocking me out of the memory.

A group of teenagers stood beside the basketball court, watching the others slowly make their lazy-ass way to us. Most of them wore matching Camp Dix shirts in different stages of rebellion. Some had the sleeves cut off. Others were more the collars stretched out to an oblivion type to show their blossoming boobies. And one fuck had tied his shirt around his head like he’d survived something more dramatic than a two-hour bus ride with the lot of us.

Where was my fucking survival trophy?

“Fresh meat!” one of them shouted.

“They’re talking about you, Double Dees,” I told Darius.

“They’re definitely talking about you, asshole,” he replied.

“Now, now. Jealousy is ugly on children.”

Darius parked his ass beside the counselor cabin and looked at me expectantly, his bags slung over a shoulder. We knew how this went. But being here in this moment, living it, was weird as fuck.

For a beat, neither of us moved. The silence between us had grown too much during the drive over. And now, seeing that damn lake and those fucking porch steps, I felt weak.

Darius stared at the handle of the cabin and fiddled with the keys. “You okay? We gotta get this over with,” he asked.