“I know,” I say. “I just have no idea who that would be.”
“Hudson in nail polish?” George asks.
I laugh. “Something like that.”
It starts raining during dinner, so for the evening activity we all go to the meeting hall and Joan puts on The Miseducation of Cameron Post so we can all sob for a while. George and Brad sit on one side of me, and Ashleigh and Paz sit on the other, and sometimes I catch all of them giving these worried “Are we being too cute next to him?” looks to each other and me, but I just watch the movie and think about what was missing in the “Honestly Sincere” number today. I’m actually pretty impressed with how well I’m handling it all. I mean, sure, I’m not happy, but I’m putting on a good show of it—I’m not spending the day in the infirmary bawling my eyes out over a broken heart, or being betrayed or anything.
I’m sad. But I’m happy, too.
After the movie it’s still pouring outside, so we all run to our cabins, T-shirts lifted over our heads in a futile attempt to keep our hair dry (also—why? We’re going in the pool tomorrow, right?), screaming and laughing as we get soaked anyway.
Except Hudson is standing at the door to my cabin. He’s already soaked, his white T-shirt plastered to his body, hair falling over his forehead in rivers, eyes squinting against the fury of the raindrops. He waves, sheepish, when he sees me, and I know I can’t just walk away, not when he’s getting soaked, some romantic puppy dog gesture or preamble to a speech in the rain about how I “done him wrong” maybe? Some kind of monologue in the rain, surely. And I thought I was supposed to be the drama queen.
“What?” I ask him.
“Can we talk?”
“Not now. It’s pouring.”
“So maybe tomorrow?”
“I’m getting wet,” I say, and then immediately flinch at the flirtiness of it. Nice job being cool and aloof, Randy. “I’m going inside.”
“But—”
I don’t let him finish, I just open the door to my cabin and go in. I want to peek out the window, see if he’s waiting, looking up at me, getting wetter and wetter, hoping I’ll come back out, but I shouldn’t, and besides, George is doing it for me.
“He’s leaving,” George says after a minute. “You didn’t want to talk to him?”
“In this weather?”
“It would make quite the scene,” George says.
“I’ve dealt with enough scenes today,” I say. “I’m going to sleep.”
George shrugs and I only glance out the window once as I’m getting ready for bed. Hudson isn’t there. Why would he be?
I fall asleep to the sound of the rain on the roof. It has a rhythm to it, somewhere in between a heartbeat and the overture to a show.
TWENTY-FOUR
It rains all the next day, too, which is fine, because it gives us an excuse to spend all day in the drama cabin, working on scenes, costumes, dancing. We’re having our first run-through of the entire show tomorrow: a full performance with costume changes and lighting cues and a million other things that can go deeply, horribly wrong. Two years ago, during the first run, a sandbag fell and almost literally killed a chorus boy. Not me. But that kid never came back to camp after that. Probably for the best. He was unlucky.
But I don’t want any sandbags this year, and as few mistakes as possible, so I go around asking people what they need, and making a list, which I give to Mark, so we can practice all the bits that feel off. We spend the whole day doing that, breaking only for lunch. It’s busy and exciting and frustrating. And I don’t think about Hudson even once.
Thursday morning, though, I realize I have to.
“This one is cheating a little,” Mark says as he wakes us all up. “The song itself—‘It’s in His Kiss,’ sometimes called ‘The Shoop Shoop Song,’ was released in 1963, first sung by Merry Clayton … but this cover is from 1990. It’s Cher! How can I not use Cher? I won’t apologize! In fact, I will say that Joan not letting me show Mermaids during movie night is a gay travesty!” He nods as if having made his point, and hits PLAY.
The music starts playing as we get out of bed, and it’s impossible not to dance to. Or sing into a comb or hairbrush to. Or do little coordinated backup dances to, as George and I quickly start doing, tossing our heads and lip-synching to the backup singers. Montgomery takes it upon himself to lip-synch to Cher until Mark comes back out of his room and takes over. It doesn’t take long for the entire cabin to have a dance routine worked out, a virtual music video, and it feels so good to be dancing and shooping and being myself, and not caring if Hudson is going to walk in and see me like this. George grabs our fans and when the song goes on to another (another Cher, definitely not from the 1960s, but we’ll give Mark a break) we start voguing and catwalking down the cabin.
Mark hops in the shower, and when he comes out we’re all still dancing.
“Get ready! Come on! Don’t make me turn Cher off!” He laughs as we all scramble to get dressed and brush our teeth. “And don’t forget to pack up what you need for the canoe trip. We leave tomorrow.”
The canoe trip. Right. Oh.
Oh no.
I turn to George, wide-eyed, no longer dancing. George is lost in the song, flapping his fan in one hand, brushing his teeth with another, still dancing to the music.
“Trade tents with me?” I ask him.
He turns to me, his eyes going wide. “Oh …,” he says, toothpaste dripping from his open mouth. “Fuh.”
I nod in agreement. “So you’ll trade?”
He shakes his head and spits the toothpaste out. “Sorry, darling, but Brad is really excited for this. We haven’t really had a chance to …” He wiggles his fingers. “Perform a duet. The kind with a climactic high note.” He tilts his head. “Actually, he’s a bass, so it won’t be that high. But it’ll be loud and long, so help me.”
“Okay, but I can’t share a tent with Hudson,” I say.
“Sorry, darling, I feel for you, I do, but you’ll survive a couple of nights of sleeping next to the boy. You can ignore him up close.”
“Please?” I beg.
He gives me sad eyes. “Do you really need this? Because if I say yes, it’ll break Brad’s heart.”
“I …”
“I’ll talk to Brad about it,” he says, but he looks sad. And now I feel terrible. I should have remembered this earlier. What if this is what Hudson wanted to talk about the other night and I acted like it was some big weird emotional thing and did the cold walk away. I was the drama queen after all.
“Oh!” Mark says. “And I forgot to give these out last night.” I pop my head back into the cabin and see Mark putting little packets of photos on each of our beds. “From pool night. Printed photos. There’s a link where you can download them on the package, too.”
As if today didn’t have enough unpleasant reminders.
Mark throws a pack of photos on my bed and Ashleigh swiftly grabs it and puts it on hers.
When she sees me watching her she shakes her head. “You don’t need those right now.”