“Connie,” I shout. She’s in a canoe with some twelve-year-olds, practically handling the canoe alone, but within shouting distance. She’s bringing up the back, while Rebecca, Tina, and Lisa try to race each other to the island up front.
“What’s up, Del?” Connie shouts back, smiling at me. I realize I kind of missed her this past week. She was fun to hike with, encouraging with the obstacle course.
“It’s Randy again,” I say, realizing we haven’t really spoken since I left her elective. “Are you worried about those clouds, too?” I ask, gesturing up with my chin.
She looks up and purses her lips. “It should be okay,” she says. “Might be a little wet tonight, but we’ll be good by morning.” She nods while looking at the clouds, like making sure they’ve understood their orders. Weirdly, that makes me feel better.
“Well, there you have it,” I say.
“I hope those silver medals made her psychic,” Ashleigh says.
“Sweetie, if I were to trust anyone at this camp about the weather, it would be her. Or maybe Karl,” I say, looking around and finding his canoe a little ahead of us. He’s also looking at the sky. I look back at Connie, who is still staring at the clouds.
“Darling, I think they’re worried, too.”
TWENTY-FIVE
The storm breaks almost the exact moment we pull our canoe onto shore. Thankfully, it’s not heavy at first, just a drizzle, but it quickly turns to real rain as the other campers pull their canoes up.
“A snake!” one of the young boys from Connie’s canoe shrieks, hopping out of the water.
“Okay,” Connie shouts to the group. “Get with your tent buddy, take one of the tents, and set it up. Karl, help me get a tarp up so we have somewhere to try to make a fire.”
“Use Tina and Lisa,” Karl says. “I’m going to collect firewood before it all gets soaked.”
Connie nods and motions for Tina and Lisa to help her. They lift the tarp out of one of the canoes as the campers line up in front of Mark and Crystal, who are handing out tents.
“Del.” I hear the voice call to me, and I don’t want to turn, but I know I have to. Ashleigh and George give me pitying looks, then turn away. “Del, I have our tent.”
Hudson runs up next to me, holding a tent. I turn and look at him. He’s smiling. I want to smile, too, but then I remember everything and I can’t.
“Okay,” I say.
“Maybe over there?” he says, pointing a little out of the way.
“Sure,” I say, without much enthusiasm. I follow him to the spot where he unfurls the tent and he starts putting pegs in the ground while I assemble the rods that hold it up.
“So, I’m glad you didn’t switch,” Hudson says. “I mean, I know you wanted to. But I’m glad you didn’t. I was hoping we could talk.”
I don’t say anything. I work on getting the rods straight and then threading them through the tent itself. It’s tricky, but Hudson pulls them through on the other end and we latch them into place.
“So you don’t want to talk?” Hudson asks, sounding angry. “All that work you did, all those lies, and now you just want to drop it?”
“You lied, too, Hal,” I say.
He nods, then sets the tent into the ground. “So, I thought about that. A lot, actually. But you knew I was lying. That must have been funny to you.”
I don’t say anything. The rain gets heavier. Hudson stamps the pegs farther into the ground on one side, I hit them with a rock on the other.
“No?” he asks.
“No,” I say. “I didn’t think it was funny.”
“Your friends were laughing.”
Hudson unzips the tent and throws his backpack inside. I throw mine in, too, and then we both try to get in at the same time, bumping shoulders. I step back and motion for him to go first. He does.
It’s not a bad tent, as tents go. Big enough for way more than just the two of us. Mesh panels for airflow, which Hudson starts zipping halfway up to keep the rain out. I roll out my sleeping bag, checking it’s still dry. It is. Good thing I brought a fancy camping one this year, not my soft pink one.
I sigh and lie down on the sleeping bag. The rain is loud enough now I can’t hear anything else.
“So, was it funny to you?” Hudson asks, rolling out his own sleeping bag on the other side of the tent.
“No.” I shake my head. “It was sweet.” I sigh and turn onto my side, away from him. “This is why I didn’t want to share a tent. I don’t want to fight. I get it, I was wrong, I lied or whatever, I tricked you. I’m terrible. I’m crazy. I get it. You’re angry. Fine. Let’s just not talk.”
“We could do plenty without talking,” he says, in a tone I hadn’t expected to hear from him again and which immediately makes all the nerve endings in my body stand at attention.
I turn around to face him, and sit up. He’s smiling, naughty. “Oh,” I say. “Is that what this is? Going to reward me for my successful masquerade with a nice tumble in the sleeping bags? Or is it an apology?”
He looks confused. “No, look, Del—sorry, Randy. That came out wrong.”
“Let’s just not talk,” I say again, lying back down, away from him.
“Okay, everybody,” I hear Connie shouting through the rain. “We need some help building the fire, if you want to come over here, under the tarp.”
I wait to see if he’ll go. If he does, I’ll stay, but if he stays, I’ll go. He doesn’t move, but then we get up to leave at the same time.
“You want to help build the fire?” he asks, surprised. I narrow my eyes. We went on the same hikes, did the same activities with Connie, but now that he knows I’m a theater kid, it’s like all I am to him is some nature-averse princess, and I would be an amazing princess, don’t get me wrong—I rock a tiara—but I can do anything he can do and be a princess while doing it.
“What, you don’t think I can?” I ask.
“No,” he says quickly. “Come on, let’s go help.”
I follow him out into the rain, which is getting heavier by the minute. Soon it’ll make the world invisible.
We trudge through the thankfully only slightly muddy ground to where we see a bright yellow tarp slung between the trees. It’s big, but probably not big enough to cover everyone sitting around a fire. The ground is sandy here, dotted with stones, but it looks like the tarp went up quickly enough that it’s not soaked. Karl is in the center of the dry ground, putting stones around a shallow pit. A pile of dry and dry-ish wood is next to him. Other campers stand around, watching him, but it looks like most have stayed in their tents.
“We need more stones,” he shouts. I run out into the rain, away from Hudson, looking for stones. My clothes are wet against me pretty quickly, my shoes start getting uncomfortably cold and squishy. The ground is mud, and I admit, I’m not being as careful as I should. The rain makes it hard to see, and I can feel the ground trying to suck my shoes up, so I lift them high and hard, marching … but then I put them down just as hard. Which might also just be because putting your foot down hard feels good when you’re angry. And I’m angry. Angry at Hudson for what he said, angry at myself for my whole stupid plan, angry at the weather for raining, at the world for making us share a tent, and angry again at Hudson for his weird little flirting. What was that about?