“Help me out of this thing, will you?” he asks, and Crystal runs forward to unzip his dress. “I hope you all had fun. But auditions are tomorrow, so you’d better rest up. Well.” He turns a withering Diana look at me. “Auditions are for most of you.”
“I wish I could do both,” I tell him.
He waddles over, holding up his now unzipped dress with one hand, and sits on my bed. “I just hope the summer doesn’t end up being a disappointment for you. You can’t join the cast mid-rehearsals, remember. Maybe I could find a place for you on tech, but there’s choreography and harmonies.”
“I know,” I tell him. “I just … haven’t you ever done anything crazy for love?”
“So many things,” he says, leaning back. The front of his dress falls forward. “There was this one guy, we were doing the chorus of Funny Face on a cruise out of Miami. He was beautiful, had a huge—” Crystal clears her throat and he stops, looks at me and the other campers who are listening. “Personality. Real big. But he also had a boyfriend—but the boyfriend wasn’t on the cruise. So I told him I knew his boyfriend, and that he wouldn’t mind if I understudied the role, so to speak. Insane. Got some very angry phone calls when that cruise disembarked. I deserved them, too. I can’t work Miami anymore. That’s the level of stupid I think this is at.”
“But did you love him? Or was it just lust?”
“What’s the difference when you’re twenty-three?” he asks. “Or sixteen. Look, I don’t want to keep having this conversation with you. Lie, remake yourself, whatever. But just make sure you’re really happy, and it’s not just that you’re super unhappy but you finally got what you wanted so now you have to be happy otherwise what was it all for? That’s a classic musical theater plot, and I just won’t have one of my actors—even if he is … on sabbatical—play that part in real life. This isn’t Follies.”
“Or Merrily,” Crystal says.
“Any Sondheim.” Mark stands, the dress falling almost to his waist now. “Just be happy, Randall,” he says. “You only get four weeks a year. Don’t waste them.”
I almost laugh. “I won’t. I have a plan. And I’m ahead of schedule. I didn’t think Hudson would kiss me until the end of the week.”
“Kiss?” George nearly shouts.
Ashleigh’s head drops over the side of the bed, staring at me. “You didn’t mention a kiss.”
“There may have been some lip-to-lip contact,” I say, looking coy.
“This is not my business,” Mark says, going into his room.
“But it’s ours!” George says, now staring at me from his bed, stomach down, head propped up on his hands, feet in the air. “Who kissed whom?”
“He kissed me,” I say.
“Where?”
“Against the side of the meeting hall.”
“When?”
“Just now, after the talent show,” I say, laughing at his questions. “It’s no big deal.”
“Isn’t it?” Ashleigh asks. Her head is gone, so she’s just a voice above me. “I mean, to you, anyway.”
“It was a real kiss. Tongue and everything.”
“Hands?” George asks.
“No hands in my mouth, no,” I say, confused.
“I mean where were his hands, darling?”
“Oh! Lower back.”
“No ass squeeze,” George says. “A gentleman.”
“Or a playboy who knows the right moves,” Ashleigh says. “He kissed you on the first date. Even you said you’re ahead of schedule. I thought the point was not to be one of his two-week flings.”
“It’s fine,” I say. “It’s going perfectly. I’m holding back enough. He can have my mouth, but not my …”
“Darling, don’t finish that sentence. Everything about it is wildly inappropriate.”
“Yeah,” I say, regretting it.
“Was it a good kiss?” he asks.
“It was,” I say, trying not to sigh and failing.
“Did he pin the pin on?” Paz asks from her bunk, quoting a Bye Bye Birdie lyric. “Or was he too shy?”
“No pins,” I say. “We’re not going steady … yet.”
“At least not for good,” Ashleigh says.
“What’s the story, Morning Glory?” George sings, continuing the song.
“What’s the word?” Montgomery responds from across the cabin. I bury my face in my pillow.
“Hummingbird!” Paz responds. And within ten seconds the entire bunk is singing “The Telephone Hour” from Bye Bye Birdie, all of them on their beds, miming telephones and doing stylized dance-in-place movements. Mark peeks out, now wearing pajamas, and nods approvingly.
“More head tossing,” he says to Jen. “Kick more, Jordan!” He goes around directing as everyone sings. When they finish, he applauds. “Very good start. Now save your voices. Auditions are tomorrow. Lights-out in twenty.”
He goes back into his room, nodding to himself.
“It’s going to be such a good show this year,” George says, standing. “I’m sad you won’t be in it, darling.” He grabs his toothbrush from his kit and goes into the bathroom. Honestly, I’m sad I won’t be in it, too. But this is worth it. It has to be worth it.
Which means it has to work.
“Going steady for good!” one of my bunkmates sings from the bathroom.
TEN
Four Summers Ago
I’m woken by crying. It’s gentle, almost haunting, and at first I’m worried that maybe there was some truth to what that older camper said about the ghost on our first night, but then I shake my head. Ghost stories are part of camp. Ghosts are not. Though if they were to haunt a queer camp, they’d have to be fabulous, so maybe that would be pretty cool, actually. I sit up in the darkness. The lights are out in the counselors’ room, and there’s no moon, so it’s really pitch-black. I listen.
Yeah, definitely crying, slightly muffled. From right under me.
I’m on the top bunk because I’d never had a bunk bed before and grabbed the first top I could see. Bed, that is. And it’s fun literally climbing into bed. Under me is another new camper, a cute boy named Hudson who everyone is already crushing on. I carefully climb out of bed. It’s definitely Hudson crying. I kneel by where I think his head is and I whisper.
“Hudson, are you okay?”
He keeps crying, softly. I reach out and carefully try to touch his arm. I think I graze his cheek instead and pull my hand back quickly. The crying stops for a second.
“Hello?” he asks in a whisper.
“You were crying,” I whisper back. “Are you okay?”
He sniffs, the crying apparently over now that he’s awake. “Sorry. I was dreaming.”
“About what?” I ask, leaning against the leg of the bed.
“It’s not important.”
“I just want you to feel better,” I say. And I do. Because these are the first queer people I’ve ever met and I want us all to feel better. Better than other people make us feel. I want to be his friend. I want to be everyone’s friend. “If you talk about it, you might feel better.”