Taking a few silent breaths, I allowed my mind to still, like always. I was alone out there in those abandoned woods, like always. Then I headed home and crawled into my bed, like always.
The only difference this time was no matter how hard I tried to stop it from happening, Kennedy kept crossing my mind. In an instant, I wasn’t the man I had become. I was back to the time when I was a scared little boy who wanted a damn friend to make the shitty days go away.
8
Jax
Eleven years old
Year one of summer camp
I talked to myself a lot.
Not loudly or anything, just mumbles every now and again. Dad said he hated when I mumbled, but my mumbles were for me and no one else to hear. Sometimes I wished I had a friend who mumbled too so we could mumble together for only us to hear, but for the time being, the only person I could mumble to was myself.
Currently, my mumbles were about Kennedy Lost.
“What a weird girl,” I murmured.
Kennedy was sitting in a mud pile, building what looked like a castle while everyone else was doing arts and crafts inside during our free time. The rain poured down on her, making her look like a wet mop, and she sang some kind of song as she bounced her head back and forth.
That girl was always singing. She probably sang even more than she talked, and she talked—a lot. Her talking wasn’t mumbling; it was the loudest thing ever, her words never seemed to run out. She was like the longest run-on sentence ever.
She talked nice and loud to anyone and everyone who would give her a minute of their attention. She was the definition of an Energizer Bunny—she went on and on and on, and her batteries never ran out. I would have bet she even talked in her sleep at a million miles per minute.
She was such a strange person. I’d never seen a stranger person when I met Kennedy Lost at summer camp that year. She was always getting into trouble, wandering off and doing her own messy thing even though she’d get yelled at for it.
I was sure the moment Miss Jessie saw Kennedy, she’d be in big trouble.
Kennedy wouldn’t even care, though. Her messy, tangled, honey-colored curly hair matched her golden eyes of mischief. I’d never seen golden eyes before I met Kennedy. They had splashes of brown in them, too. Not that I was looking at her eyes too closely, because whenever I looked at Kennedy for too long, she’d look back and smile at me in a way that made my stomach turn upside down.
She made me sick, but the kind of sick that felt a little good…kind of. I hadn’t known feeling sick to your stomach could feel good until I met Kennedy.
Kennedy stood and held her hands out wide as she looked up at the rain clouds. Didn’t she know lightning could strike and kill her? I’d once seen a documentary with Mom about how many people died in lightning storms, and sure, maybe it wasn’t a lot, but it was enough to keep me from ever wanting to stand outside in the rain with bolts of fire flashing throughout the sky. She was oddly close to a tree, too—a tree she’d no doubt hugged earlier in the day.
Kennedy Lost—the tree-hugging, mud-castle-building oddball at camp.
“Is that Kennedy out there?” Miss Jessie exclaimed as she looked out the window at the girl who was now dancing in the rain beside her messy castle like a wild thing.
Where do the wild things grow, you ask? Wherever Kennedy Lost was found.
Miss Jessie shot outside toward the weirdo, and all of us rushed over to the window to watch as Kennedy got yelled at and dragged off to her cabin to get cleaned up.
“What a freak,” someone muttered.
A lot of people called her mean names, and I knew Kennedy heard them sometimes, but she didn’t seem to care. I wished I were like that. I wished I couldn’t have cared less about what people thought of me, especially my dad, but for some reason, I cared what he thought about me more than anyone else in the world.
As Miss Jessie walked Kennedy back to her cabin, the weird girl danced the whole way there.
For the most part, I hated camp. I hated the sports, and the games, and the group activities. I hated being away from home—well, kind of. I missed Mom because I figured she missed me, too. I didn’t miss Dad because it seemed as if I was never good enough for him even though I tried my hardest. Dad loved my older brother, Derek, a lot more than he loved me. Derek wasn’t even his biological son, but still, he got Dad’s love the most. They liked all the same kind of stuff—football, hunting, action movies. I wasn’t a good son like Derek, and Dad made me feel bad about it all the time, too.
He sent me to camp hoping I’d get better at certain things and man up. Mom sent me to camp in hopes I’d make friends.
I wasn’t good at manning up or making friends, even though that was all I’d ever wanted.
People called me weird—kind of like how I called Kennedy weird, I supposed, but I didn’t dance in the rain and build castles out of mud. I was actually the complete opposite of Kennedy Lost. She was loud, and I was reserved. She dressed in all the colors of the rainbow while my clothes were black, white, or gray. She always yapped on and on about made-up stories while I stayed mute. She even wore her curly hair wild with the tips dyed purple while mine stayed brown, tamed, and in place.
It was odd how two weird people could be complete opposites.
“Let me go!” I shouted as my camp bunkmates dragged me out of the room in the middle of the night. James, Ryan, and the leader of their pack, Lars freaking Parker, wouldn’t let me go. Lars was from my hometown, and he bullied me during the whole school year. I shouldn’t have been surprised when he kept bullying me at camp.
It was pouring rain, and the three guys were pissed at me for making them lose at flag football earlier that day. I hadn’t even wanted to play, and my team hadn’t wanted me to either, but the camp had a stupid ‘nobody left behind’ rule that made me a bully’s prime target.
My dad would’ve liked them all because they were good at that guy stuff.
“Shut up, cry baby!” Lars hollered, wrapping his hands around my wrists as Ryan and James each grabbed one of my ankles.
I hadn’t even wanted to play flag football. I hadn’t even wanted to go to summer camp!
I hated it! I hated it so much I could have cried.
“Let me go, let me go, let me go!” I shouted.
“Oh, we’ll let you go—right after we throw you into the trash bin like the garbage you are,” Lars said. It was clear he was the ringleader of the circus of jerks. Ryan and James pretty much did anything he said. I wondered how people got powerful like that, how they could just get anyone to follow anything they said.
“You’re not throwing anyone anywhere,” a voice said. I looked over my shoulder to see Kennedy standing there in the pouring rain with a bow and arrow in her grip. She held the arrow pointed straight at Lars’s face and ohmygosh weird Kennedy Lost was a freaking psychopath. “Drop Jax and no one gets hurt.”
“Oh look, Jax’s freaky girlfriend came to save the day!” Ryan mocked.
“Oh look, Ryan is so basic he couldn’t think of a better comment to make. Really, Ryan, work on your insults. They lack authenticity, much like your whole persona—or should I call you Lars number two?” Kennedy mocked them right back before I could express that she wasn’t my girlfriend.