Five Summers (9 page)

Maddie had read the e-mail so many times, she knew it by heart and recited it to the girls from memory. It wasn’t planned, Christina had written. Charlie had been desperate; he thought Maddie was going to break up with him. He’d needed advice. They’d driven around talking and parked by the creek. He’d had a six pack in the trunk. They’d gotten a little tipsy. One thing had led to another . . .

“I did the math,” she explained. “It happened ten days
before
the prom. Which means that when Charlie threatened to leave me, it wasn’t because he couldn’t wait for me. It was because he
hadn’t
waited.”

“Oh, Maddie,” Emma said, her eyes wide and sad.

“No faces!” Maddie insisted. “It’s my after-school special and I’ll cry if I want to, but the truth is I don’t regret all of it.” She looked down at her hands. “Not
this
finger anyway. The other one, maybe.”

“I’m so sorry,” Jo frowned. “I wish you’d told me. I would have been there.”

“We all would have,” Skylar added quickly.

Maddie nodded. “I thought about it,” she said. “But honestly, I didn’t want to talk to anyone then. It was kind of a dark time. I just stayed home cuddling with my cat, Mr. Snitches, and composing scathing monologues about trust and betrayal.” Skylar looked pained.

“Did you ever get to deliver one?” Emma asked.

Maddie shook her head. “Maybe one day,” she said. At the end of her speech, in an ideal world, the whole junior class would slow clap, and then the police would come and arrest both Charlie and Christina for aggravated betrayal and emotional battery. Also, maybe, Charlie’s penis would fall off.

“Sky?” Emma said worriedly. “What’s wrong?” Maddie snapped out of her revenge fantasy reverie to see that Skylar was wiping away tears.

“It’s just sad,” Skylar said. “Sex? Check. Bikini wax? Check. Love? Sorry. Wrong girl!” Snot started to run from her perfect nostrils. “Loveless sex is all I have.”

Maddie shook her head firmly. “Don’t say that,” she said. “Don’t
ever
say that. You’re so much more than that.”

“This game is stupid,” Emma said. “I shouldn’t have started it.” She moved to hug Skylar, but her cell phone started ringing loudly, to Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone.” It was the perfect tension release, and they all laughed—even Skylar, who started blowing her nose into a spare Camp Nedoba T-shirt from one of the storage boxes, much to Jo’s chagrin.

“Sorry,” Emma groaned, reaching for the back pocket of her shorts. She glanced at the screen and frowned. “It’s work.”

“Don’t pick up,” Jo said, waving as if she could shoo away the cell phone like a bee. “Reception sucks out here, anyway. Blame it on being out in the boonies.” Maddie breathed a sigh of relief. Camp had always felt like an escape, but with modern technology anyone could reach you anywhere, anytime. It was nice to think that Nedoba really was in its own little bubble that nothing from the outside world could penetrate. It felt safe.

Emma nodded, but her face got more and more tense as she watched the phone ring, even on silent.

“Do you want me to confiscate that?” Jo asked. “I have the authority now.”

“No, no,” Emma said. “But . . . I should call them back. Just to remind them I’m unreachable.”

“How ironic,” Maddie said. Like how she still felt she couldn’t be herself with the friends who supposedly knew her best.

She watched Jo lower the rope ladder for Emma, looking down at the steep drop they’d cheated so many times. She’d thought that telling the girls about Charlie would feel like a weight had been lifted, but instead she just felt heavier. Charlie had lied to her, and she would never be able to forgive him.

How could she expect her friends to forgive her?

THE KEY TO APPLYING MASCARA IS TO START AT THE roots and wiggle the brush through to the tips.
Jo looked at her eye, comically magnified by the vanity mirror—a big brown orb filled with concentric circles of gold like tree rings radiating out from the inky pool of her iris—and then back down at the instructions. “Wiggle” the bristles full of black gunk within a millimeter of her cornea? That didn’t seem right. But she had no one to ask.

The cosmetic care package from her mother had come with a note, typically brief (if Jo came home after soccer practice to find Wendy not there, she would find a Post-It on the hall mirror with the words “Out. Call 4 emgcy” in her mother’s loopy scrawl):
Try it pls. XO, Mom.
On top of the “XO,” her mother had left a lipstick kiss, as if to drive home the point. The other girls had been thrilled as she opened the tightly-wrapped shoebox to find neat rows of shimmering lip gloss tubes, silky powders, and watercolor palettes of eye shadow packed in lightly scented pink tissue paper, like in a department store.

“Let me make you over!” Maddie had cried. “Please? You don’t have to leave the cabin.”

“I just want to see what it would
look
like,” Skylar had said, with a smirk that made Jo feel like one of those poor orangutans she sometimes saw on YouTube, wearing bow ties and ice skating to the theme from
Rocky
for a million hits. Not that Jo herself didn’t wonder what it would look like, but it seemed too late, and too mortifyingly obvious, to try to do it in public. She was afraid she would end up like her friend Anika, who had a unibrow all through junior high until one day it mysteriously disappeared, and she came to school with two eyebrows instead of one. Jo still cringed when she thought of how much flak Anika caught for just five minutes of tweezing, and decided that she most definitely could not step out into Nedoba daylight looking like she belonged at the tail end of a rags-to-riches movie montage. Which is why she was giving herself a makeup lesson in the barn loft.

She was just starting to get the hang of the wiggling when she heard voices approaching at the southern entrance. Jo dropped the mirror and the mascara wand—which rolled along the planks, leaving a damning jet-black trail, before settling at her feet—and crouched behind a stack of boxes. She heard the floor creak as people stepped into the barn. It was the middle of the afternoon elective hour, which meant that whoever it was was playing hooky. Then again, Jo couldn’t really judge; so was she. She had told the girls she was going to the infirmary to check out a freckle that looked weird.

“It smells like hay in here,” said a nasal female voice. It was Sunny Sherman.
Of course
, Jo thought. Only the person she would least like to catch her with one eye looking like a raccoon, clutching a compact of something called “cheek butter.”

“Duh, it’s a barn, of course it smells like hay.” This voice was also female, but deeper and less annoying. Probably Jess Ericsson.

“Well, I don’t think we should smoke near dry hay,” Sunny said. Jo’s eyes widened.

“I don’t think we should smoke at all,” said a third voice. “We’re supposed to be throwing bowls in the pottery studio. Someone’s gonna notice.”

“Kerry,” Sunny said, “if you’re not going to be chill, you can leave. But trust me, no one is going to know about this. Everyone is busy doing their stupid arts and crafts. No one is in this gross, hay-smelling barn but us. And it’s
one
cigarette, so relax.”

Jo heard the click of a lighter, and then a lot of coughing.

“Why do you even smoke?” Kerry asked.

“Because . . . it’s . . .
cool
.” Sunny wheezed. Jo bit her lip to keep from laughing.

“Well, it smells gross.”

“Kerry, seriously, shut up.”

“She has a point,” Jess said, coughing. “Someone could smell it. What if Mack finds out?”

“He’ll send us to bed without marshmallows. I don’t know—nothing bad,” Sunny snapped, pausing to inhale again. “Mack Putnam is a total pushover.”

Jo balled her fists, wondering if a citizen’s arrest made by yelling from a low height differential would hold up in court.

“He’s nice, though,” Jess said.

“Of course he’s nice, he’s a cartoon character,” Sunny sighed. She lowered her voice and adopted a doofy affect in an impersonation of Mack. “Come on, kids, let’s sing a song about friendship! Who wants to make a picture frame out of popsicle sticks? Who wants to be friends with my annoying daughter? Bidding starts at one great big hug!” Jess and Kerry laughed.

“I’d be more scared if Jo found us,” Kerry said.

“Ugh, I know, that girl has issues,” Sunny said. “I heard her mom doesn’t even want custody. Her own
mom
.”

Jo felt her skin prickling as blood rushed to her muscles, readying her for a fight her body didn’t yet realize she couldn’t have. And even if she could climb down and surprise them, what would she do? Hit them? Call them names? Tell them their moms probably didn’t love them all the time, either? Her mom just didn’t want
full
custody; it wasn’t that she didn’t want
any
custody. And the only reason she hadn’t fought for full custody was that Jo begged to still be able to spend the summers with her dad, who wasn’t a childlike doofus but a lonely, hardworking man trying to make a living supporting his family while providing kids across the country with a place they could call home—maybe even more than their real homes—for a few weeks each year. Jo was willing to bet Sunny’s father couldn’t say the same.

“That’s sad,” Kerry said.

“What’s sad are her outfits,” Jess muttered.

“Snap!” Sunny cried, obviously delighted. “The claws come out.”

“I don’t think she’s a bad person,” Jess qualified. “I just think it’s weird how she wears the camp T-shirt every day, like she’s one of the counselors.”

“Well, she
thinks
she’s a counselor,” Sunny said. “And he lets her think it. It’s definitely a conflict of interest if you ask me.”

“
Good thing no one asked you, then
,” said a fourth voice sharply, and for a second Jo worried she’d blown her cover and spoken her thoughts out loud. But her inner monologue didn’t have a Southern accent. It was Maddie.

“We were just leaving,” Jess sputtered.

“Good,” Maddie said. “And take your nasty cancer sticks with you.”

“Calm down, Little Red Whining Hood,” Sunny scoffed. “We were going anyway.” Jo heard creaking as the girls crossed over to the back door. She could tell just by listening that Sunny was acting like she wasn’t in any hurry. After a minute, though, the barn seemed quiet. She wondered if Maddie had left, too. She wanted to look, but if anybody
was
still down there, moving even an inch would give her away. She was agonizing over how long to wait when Maddie made the decision for her.

“Jo?” she whispered from below.

Jo crawled out and peeked over the edge of the loft. “How did you know I was here?” she asked.

“Please, I’ve known you four years and you’ve never gone to the infirmary,” Maddie said. She studied Jo’s face and frowned. “Maybe you should, though. Is that a black eye?”

Jo froze. She
might
have teared up a little bit when Sunny had made fun of her—but she’d forgotten about the mascara.

“No,” she said, “It’s just dirt.”

“What are you doing up there?”

Jo considered telling Maddie the truth, but she’d already started the lie. It seemed easier just to keep it going. “Nothing,” she mumbled.

“Fine, don’t tell me,” Maddie said. “Stay there and lemme get the ladder.” With considerable effort, Maddie lugged Gus’s stepladder over from the corner. Jo had to scoot her legs over the side of the loft and hang down to reach the top with her toes, but Maddie stood underneath her and guided her legs with one hand while holding the ladder steady with the other. “P.S.,” Maddie said as Jo jumped to the ground, “I thought we agreed never to climb up there alone. You could have gotten hurt!”

“I didn’t, though.”
Not physically, anyway
, she thought.

“That’s not the point,” Maddie sighed. Together, they carried the ladder back to its spot, making sure to lean it against the wall at the same angle. Jo waved her hands around in the air, trying to clear the lingering, sour smell of Sunny’s cigarette smoke.

“Do you think I’m weird?” she asked Maddie.

“Yes,” Maddie said. “But in a good way.”

“Do you think my
dad’s
weird?”

“No,” Maddie said firmly. “Your dad is awesome. And besides, family is complicated. Nobody knows what’s going on in a family except for the people in it. And anybody who thinks they can judge anybody else is a dumbass.”

Jo smiled. Maddie’s indignation always made her feel better. “Okay, just one more question,” she said, raising an eyebrow. “Do you know . . . how to short-sheet a bed?”

Maddie’s face lit up. “Darlin’,” she said, “I thought you’d never ask.”

EMMA STOOD OUTSIDE THE BARN PACING BACK AND forth, searching for a decent signal. Jo was right, cell service was spotty, and every time she was finally able to reach the receptionist at
Miss Demeanor
, there was so much interference it sounded like she was hang gliding in the Serengeti. She dialed her own voicemail in the hopes that maybe her boss had left a message. “You have . . . one . . . new message and . . . three . . . saved messages,” the patient robot voice said. “First new message . . .”

“Hey Emma, it’s Jeff. I just read a submission from the slush pile that included the most beautiful simile, and I knew you would appreciate it. Ready? ‘Her thoughts tumbled around inside her brain like underpants in a dryer.’ Okay, that’s all. See you Monday.”

Emma grinned stupidly at the side of the barn. She knew she should hang up, but since her signal was still clear, she stalled. “First saved message . . .”

“Hey, Emma, it’s Adam. You’ll never guess where I am . . . I’m standing outside of Fenway Park! Impromptu road trip with my dad to see the Sox play the Yankees. I was kind of hoping you’d pick up and you’d be here too and we could do a slo-mo hug, but . . . I guess that’s not happening. So I just wanted to say I’m in your city. Love what you’ve done with the place, by the way. Okay, so . . . later, I guess. Bye.”

She paused.
I really should delete the message
, Emma thought. It was almost a year old, and it felt like the right time and place to let it go. But out of habit she hit nine to resave and remembered the first time she’d heard it, after spending a Saturday writing an intensely boring term paper on the history of the Quabbin Reservoir, the largest inland body of water in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. She’d been so intent on finishing it (even though it wasn’t due for three more days) that she hadn’t even plugged in her phone. The ballpark was less than twenty minutes from her house.

“Hey!” Adam’s voice in real life startled her out of her voicemail-induced reverie. He was down on the path near the pottery studio but jogged up the hill to meet her.

“Hi!” She turned her phone off and slipped it into her pocket.

“Going to dinner?” he asked, cocking an eyebrow. “Or just getting nostalgic for our square-dancing days?” He started circling her in a comic do-si-do. Emma laughed.

“Dinner,” she said, “But . . .” She glanced up at the barn. “I was waiting for the girls.”

“Yeah, Nate’s supposed to meet me there, too” he said. “But he’s shaving. Between you and me, I think he’s trying to impress someone.”

“Aw,” Emma sighed. “Poor Nate.”

“You don’t think he has a shot?” Adam asked. “I’ve kind of been egging him on.”

“No, he might.” Emma smiled. “It’s not an easy shot, though.”

“That’s cool. Easy shots aren’t worth it, anyway.” He looked at her and cleared his throat. “So, you’re waiting for your friends, I’m waiting for mine. But the last time I checked, we were friends . . . and you’re here, and I’m here, so . . . shall we?”

Emma hesitated. It would be rude to leave the girls under normal circumstances, but she couldn’t tell Adam where they were without blowing their cover, and besides, they were all headed to the same place. Plus, she had been hoping to get some one-on-one time with him, just to see where things stood. She wanted to stick to her promise not to incite unnecessary drama, but she still felt a pull toward Adam that she couldn’t ignore.

“How could I argue with that logic?” she said.

Inside the cafeteria, clusters of friends sat scooping up three-bean chili with corn chips from Styrofoam plates and refilling their plastic cups from communal pitchers of bug juice and water. Emma and Adam grabbed scratched plastic trays and stood in the food line. To their left, Sunny, Aileen, Jess, and Kerry were ensconced at a corner table with the Slotkin twins and Bowen Connors, a husky athlete who’d once kicked Jo in the shin so hard during a pickup game of football that she’d walked with a limp for a week.

“I’m so glad I ran into you. I thought I was going to have to sit with Beak and the meatheads,” Adam whispered. “Which, by the way, note to self:
great
band name.” He grinned, reaching for a square of cornbread and brushing up against her arm. It sent a warm wave of déjà vu washing down her spine.

A few minutes later they sat down. “To reunions,” he said, knocking his bug juice back like a shot.

Emma looked across at Adam. He’d grown into his looks, too. She couldn’t pinpoint exactly what had changed, but he was definitely more handsome. She wished she could tell what was running through his mind. Her own inner monologue went something along the lines of,
So, about that night three years ago, when I turned away instead of kissing you? That was a mistake. I was dying to hook up with you, but I was nervous about what that meant for our friendship. I lost my nerve and I ran away and I’ve regretted it ever since, so with that said, how do you feel about trying again, and maybe, I don’t know, deflowering me by moonlight someplace?

Out loud, she said, “So you’re a counselor now. What’s that like?” He laughed through a mouthful of bread.

“Um, it’s basically exactly like being a camper, only I get to be lazier. And I get paid.”

“Sounds like a good deal.”

“It is,” he said. “Only . . . I have the sneaking suspicion that I’m really bad at it.”

“What?” She was genuinely surprised. “I bet you’re great with little kids.”

“I’m good with the kids, I’m just not good with responsibility.”

“Example, please.”

“Okay . . . for one thing, I have to keep dozens of tiny humans alive in the wilderness for weeks at a time.” She laughed. “But seriously, I can’t wake up on time, like, ever. A bunch of ten-year-olds have to do that stupid
omki
thing to
me
.”

“You and Skylar both,” she said.

“Yeah, she and I are not the poster children for respected authority figures.”

“Well, waking up late doesn’t sound
so
bad . . .”

“What about leaving my wallet in the woods next to an empty six pack?”

“You did
not.
”

“Which some of the thirteens found during a hike.”

“NO!”

“Yes. But in my defense, it was very dark and I was intoxicated.”

“Adam!” She flicked a bean at him. Emma wasn’t really surprised, but their sporadic late-night G-chats had made her think he’d grown up at least a little bit in the three years since she’d left. He sighed.

“It’s just not my thing, you know that.”

“What, accountability?”

“Well . . . yeah.”

“That sounds like an excuse to do whatever you want and never have to feel guilty about it.”

He looked at her seriously for a second and then broke into a grin.

“Damn, I missed you,” he said, like he was only just realizing it, at that moment. She knew it was a cliché, but suddenly Emma felt like the only person in the room. Everything else blurred to a watercolor.

“I missed you, too.”

“You don’t let me get away with anything.”

“Yes, I’m an excellent hall monitor,” she quipped. “It’s one of my gifts.”

“That’s not what I meant,” he said. He paused, looking down at his plate like he was trying to phrase whatever came next. “Why didn’t you ever come visit camp?”

It was a rare vulnerable moment; he seemed genuinely sad. Emma decided to take advantage of whatever brief window she had before he started shielding himself with jokes again and tell him the truth.

“Honestly, I wanted to,” she said slowly, taking a deep breath. “But I felt . . . awkward. I got rejected . . .”

“What?” His eyes widened. “I didn’t reject you. In case you don’t remember, I actually tried to—”

“Not you!” she said, cutting him off. So much for being brave, Emma thought. But she wasn’t ready to talk about the last night of camp. Not yet. “I meant Mack. I applied to be a counselor, and I got rejected.” Adam looked confused.

“Wait, I thought you said you got some internship at an asbestos company.”

Emma laughed. “An asbestos
litigation firm
,” she said. “And I did, but only because I didn’t get in here.”

“You could have told me.”

“I was embarrassed. It sucked.”

“I’ve told you embarrassing things,” he said, crossing his arms.

“Getting pantsed in second grade and having everyone see your Superman undies isn’t the same as experiencing professional rejection.”

“They were Batman,” he corrected. “Anyway, I’m just saying, you could have told me.” He pushed his plate away and shook his head. He looked angry. “If I had known you’d wanted to come back . . .”

“It wouldn’t change anything,” she said softly.

“Maybe it would.” He looked at her helplessly.

Emma was formulating a reply when she saw Skylar making a beeline for the table, with Maddie and Jo following close behind.

“What happened to you?” Skylar asked, looking back and forth from Emma to Adam. “I thought you were waiting for us.”

“It’s my fault,” Adam said. “I abducted her outside the barn.”

“I tried texting,” Emma lied. Adam raised his eyebrows.

“No biggie,” Jo said. “Save us seats while we get food?”

“Sure,” Adam said. Or, that’s what he
was
saying when a cube of Jell-O hit him in the jaw with a wet smack. Maddie exploded in nervous laughter, and Skylar jumped back, wiping the neon green shrapnel off her shirt. They all looked over to see Nate standing at the dessert table and doubled over.

“Dude!” Adam stood up and wiped the green goo off his lips. He picked up his cornbread and lobbed it across the room, narrowly missing Nate’s groin. “You are so . . .” He looked at the girls apologetically. “Sorry, I have to go hurt someone,” he said, and sprinted after Nate, who was now pelting Adam with grapes.

“You’re cleaning all of that up!” Jo shouted, following him back to the buffet.

“I really am sorry,” Emma said to Skylar. “He just showed up, and I didn’t know how to explain where you guys were.”

Sklyar sat down, grabbing a corn chip off Emma’s plate. “It’s fine,” she said. “I just thought you said you’d outgrown the whole Adam obsession.”

“I am not obsessed.” Emma felt her cheeks get red. “He’s my friend.”

“I get it,” Maddie said. “Charlie was my Adam. You never really get over your first love.”

“Except they were never together,” Skylar pointed out.

“And I don’t
love
him,” Emma whispered.

“Well, I’d be careful if I were you,” Skylar warned, popping another chip into her mouth. “He still has a
very
short attention span.”

Emma concentrated on drinking her bug juice, not sure what to say to that. Was Skylar just punishing Emma for ditching her for Adam, or was she actually trying to be protective? What had gone on during the past three summers? The uncomfortable thought dawned on Emma that maybe there were no second chances. Maybe too much had changed.