“Oh?” I ask. “Finally giving him a shot?”
“It’s funny, it’s like he knew exactly what to say.” I focus on carefully spreading the polish of George’s nails, but I can feel his stare.
“I didn’t coach him. He just asked why you seemed shy about taking it to the next level, and I told him. Should I not have?” I look up. “I’m sorry.”
“Darling, no, it’s fine. I had to make a decision about that sooner or later, and when he told me he liked me—the whole package, not just the body hair—that helped a lot. He seemed to mean it.”
“He did,” I say, going back to his nails. “He says you make him laugh.”
“Darling, I make everybody laugh.”
“Eh,” Ashleigh says from above my bunk. “You’re okay.”
“Thanks,” George says. “I think so.”
“So you’re like a love guru now,” Paz says from above us. “Randy with the romance plan.”
“I mean … maybe a little. My plan is working, right? So I must know something.”
“Darling, you know one thing. Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
“Yeah, Paz, don’t say stuff like that, it’ll go right to his head.”
“Randy, the romance king,” I say, handing the nail polish back to George. “Has a nice ring to it.”
“If my nails weren’t wet, I’d hit you with a pillow.”
“Mine aren’t,” Ashleigh says, hopping off her bunk, grabbing my pillow, and knocking me on the head with it in one swoop.
“I’m kidding, I’m kidding,” I say, blocking her with my arm. “I’m no romance king.”
“Good,” she says, throwing my pillow back and looking at George’s nails. “That’s a cool color.”
“You want some?” George asks.
“Nah. It’ll get chipped while I’m playing with the light rigs. Don’t waste it unless your folks are sending you more.”
“Maybe not this color, but they’d better be sending more nail polish,” George says. “I only brought two bottles.”
Paz dips her head down over the top of the bed and looks. “Oh, it is pretty.”
“You want?” George asks.
“If you’re offering …” Paz hops down from the bed and stands next to Ashleigh—much closer than she needs to. Ashleigh glances at her, nervously, then gets back into her own bunk.
“Sit,” George says, patting the space next to him. Paz sits next to him and stares up at where Ashleigh is, like she’s trying to look through the bed. “Spread your hands,” George says. “We might only have time for one coat before lights-out, though.”
“That’s okay,” Paz says.
George starts to paint her nails and I stand up, stretching as an excuse to stare at Ashleigh, who is frowning, and flipping through a comic without really reading it. I raise my eyebrow at her, not wanting to ask what’s going on with Paz while Paz is sitting right below us. She looks at me and shrugs. Well, that doesn’t clear anything up.
“Lights-out in five,” Mark says, coming out of his room in pajamas. “So you’d better have brushed your teeth. Remember, plaque can lead to throat infections, and I won’t have any of you taking time off to rest your voices just because you couldn’t be bothered to have good dental hygiene. Plus we want those teeth to sparkle under the lights.”
“Are you really giving us a lecture on brushing our teeth?” Montgomery asks. “We’re not seven.”
“You all look seven to me,” Mark says. “Everyone under thirty looks seven to me. My therapist says it’s because of my anxiety over aging, but I think it’s just my brain protecting itself from getting emotionally invested in children.”
“Oh, sweetie, you mean you’re not invested in us?” I ask.
“If I were emotionally invested in you, Randall Kapplehoff, I would cry myself to sleep every night until your hair grew back and you started dressing well again.”
“You have been crying a lot,” Crystal calls from inside the room.
“Be quiet, Crystal.”
The entire cabin giggles.
“Laugh all you want,” Mark says. “Lights-out in five.”
I lie down in my bed as George finishes the first coat of Paz’s nails.
“You want another layer on yours?” I ask him.
“Nah,” he says. “It can wait until tomorrow. He closes the bottle up and puts it in his cubby. “Besides, I want to save some for when you can wear it again. It’ll be your un-masc-ing nail polish.”
“Oh my god, why have we not been calling it that all the time?” Ashleigh asks. “The Grand Un-Masc-ing. And right now, you’re masc-ed.” She pauses. “And you want to go to a masc-ed ball. Or two.”
“Gross, no, be quiet,” I say, but everyone is already laughing and I start laughing, too. A minute later, Mark shuts out the lights, but we all continue to giggle quietly in the dark.
SIXTEEN
“I want to show you the best view in camp,” Hudson says, taking me by the hand and leading me into the woods.
“Okay,” I say. “How much of a hike is this?”
“It’s not too bad, promise. You have bug spray on, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Good.”
He leads the way, and honestly, I have no idea where we’re going. I’ve always stayed out of the woods in past years, except during color wars, when we have the nighttime Spy Wars—the two teams split the whole camp up and each try to get as many people as possible to “safety” in the other team’s territory (usually the boathouse and meeting hall) without getting spotted by anyone on the other team. We have flashlights, so sneaking across the camp in the open is out of the question and usually people try to make it through the woods. George and I always joke it’s a disaster waiting to happen, but no one’s gone missing yet.
But just hiking around the woods in the day hasn’t been anything I’d done before a few days ago, and then Connie had taken us on a pretty easy trail. Hudson is already leading me up something much steeper than that. And with much thicker woods. And bushes.
“Is this really a trail?” I ask.
“Kind of.”
“Do you know where we’re going?” I squeeze his hand.
“Yes.”
“And how to get there?”
“Pretty sure.”
I laugh. “How do you know it, then?”
“Connie took us there at the end of last summer, as a treat, and I just thought it was really special.” He squeezes my hand back. “And you’re really special. So I wanted to show it to you.”
My heart melts a little when he says that, and any anxiety I have about walking deep into the woods with no trail and no idea where we’re going fades.
“Then I guess we should find it,” I say.
We have to break hands as the trail gets steeper and we pull ourselves over rocks. We both have backpacks, with water and some snacks—he’d told me to bring them—and we stop a few times just to drink. Sweat is pouring down our faces, and there’s a perpetual hum of insects. I’m pretty sure something is crawling up my leg at one point, but I just swat it away and keep walking. We chat a little about favorite old movies (his is The Fugitive, ’cause his mom loves it, mine is Bringing Up Baby, because of Katharine Hepburn, but I tell him ’cause it’s funny), but we’re panting and it’s hard to talk too much.