Lucky Penny (15 page)

Almost forty minutes later, after being persuaded into cocoa and scary stories, it was time for lights out. I arrived at camp thinking it would be strange to share a room with eight hormonal teenage girls, but I’d soon gotten used to the bedtime gossip and chatter. Hot days spent active around Camp Chance meant that most of the campers were ready to sleep when lights out rolled around.

“Night guys,” I called into the darkness, only a sliver of moonlight reflecting through the glass window at the front of the cabin.

A chorus of good nights echoed off the wooden beams, and I stared at the bunk above me. It was empty. Counselors took the fifth set of bunk beds, positioned slightly away from the rest of the bunk beds next to the front window, giving both our campers and ourselves a little more space. It also meant counselors slept closest to the door to catch any late-night escapees. The first time I caught two girls trying to sneak out, I’d smiled to myself. That was me, ten years ago, sneaking out to meet Blake. Of course, they had been trying to meet up with some boys from one of the other cabins. I’d had to reprimand them, but I’d done it with half a smile. I could relate. More than they knew.

Within minutes, silence descended over the cabin. Nothing but the sound of heavy breathing and the occasional shuffle of sleeping bags. Sleep didn’t come easily to me. It never did. Not here, and not back in my apartment above The Oriental Garden. Sleep brought darkness, and the darkness brought nightmares. Although since being here, they happened less often. I didn’t know if it was the exhaustion or something else entirely.

I had been lying there for at least thirty minutes when a gentle tapping against the cabin startled me. My whole body went rigid listening for the sound again.
Tap, tap, tap.
I slowly unzipped my bag and swung my legs over the edge of the bed careful not to make a sound. The last thing I needed was eight tired and overexcited girls letting their imaginations run wild with them. Especially if my suspicions were right.

Tiptoeing around the bed, I hooked a finger around the simple curtain and pulled it back. The moon illuminated cabin row; a single lamp hanging from the porch lit up each cabin, but I couldn’t see anything—or anyone.
Tap, tap, tap
. I jumped back, my heart leaping into my mouth. My hand gripped the handle and turned it carefully. The door clicked open, and I pulled it back enough to slip through and close it behind me.

“Hello,” I called out into the eerie surroundings.

Nothing.

I listened for a few more seconds, convinced I must have been hearing things, until movement caught my eye. Blake was standing in the shadows between my cabin and the next. His hood was pulled up, but I knew it was him.

My heart knew.

Our eyes locked, and I questioned him silently.

Come on, for old time’s sake
, he mouthed.

What was he thinking? We could be discovered at any moment. It was totally crazy, not to mention against the rules, and yet, I found myself tiptoeing down the steps.

Hi,
he mouthed as I reached him.

Hi
, I replied my heart beating so hard I felt a little lightheaded. This was not a good idea.

So why did it feel so right?

Blake’s hand reached out for mine, and he interlaced our fingers. I didn’t stop him; I didn’t even think about yanking my hand away. It felt right to feel his hand encase mine. It felt familiar and warm and safe. Like my body had avoided touch for so long because it was waiting for something. Someone.

It had been waiting for Blake.

The sane, rational part of me knew I was more messed up than any doctor or shrink had ever determined, but at that moment, with Blake’s fingers entwined with my own, I couldn’t find it in me to care. His touch didn’t repulse me or scare me. It soothed me. And as he led me into the woods, my heart wasn’t rapidly beating out of fear—it was racing for things to come.

“B
lake, slow down. Where are we going?” I asked stumbling behind him as he led us deeper into the woods.

“Shh, just a little farther,” he whispered his voice full of mirth.

Nervous energy tingled in my stomach setting my whole body alive. I had spent so many nights sneaking out of the Freeman group home with Blake in the cover of darkness secretly escaping to the one place we could be free. The
only
place we could truly be ourselves. This felt the same and yet, somehow different. Something had changed.

“Here, see.” Blake pulled me through two trees standing so close together they reminded me of the secret passage cut through the trees lining the end of the Freeman’s yard. We stepped into a circular clearing. The moonlight shone down giving everything an ethereal quality. It was breathtaking.

“Look up,” Blake said watching for my reaction. I tilted my face toward the sky and gasped. A ceiling of stars hung right above us, and I felt sure if I reached out, I could touch them. “I knew you’d like it.”

Like it?
It was everything.

Blake tugged me down next to him and with his hand still wrapped firmly around mine leaned back on the grass. I followed his lead until we were lying side my side our hands clasped between us.

“I couldn’t let you leave without seeing this. Do you remember?”

Of course, I remembered.

Over the years, the stars had been my reminder that Blake was real, that he had existed at a time in my life I thought I wouldn’t survive. Blake loved the stars. Bennett had tried to teach him the constellations, but by the time Bennett had aged out, Blake could only pick out Cassiopeia. That didn’t stop us from naming the stars. We would spend hours pointing out funny patterns and giving them crazy names and stories. Blake even named a constellation after me—Lucky Penny. It just looked like a misshapen circle of stars to my eyes, but he said if you looked closely, you could see my smile.

“I remember,” I whispered, too choked up to say anything else.

“Do you see it?” Blake extended his free arm and pointed up at a cluster of stars. All I could see was random patterns, and I strained to see what he saw.

“Lucky Penny. One of the brightest constellations there is.”

“Blake…” The next words lodged in my throat. What was I supposed to say here? I didn’t do this—I didn’t bare myself to people. Let alone to the one person who had known me so well once upon a time.

“Don’t, Penny. Not tonight, just enjoy this. Just this.” His thumb rubbed circles along my hand.

Finding comfort in his words—no matter how cryptic—I allowed myself to let go. At that moment, I wasn’t broken Penny trying to find the right words to say to the guy who had once been my world. I was just a girl lying next to a boy watching the stars.

Blake sighed quietly as if he was about to say something more, but when his body relaxed again, I knew the moment had passed. Maybe some things were just too hard to say—better left unsaid. Life had taught me never to take for granted the good moments because they always ended. And no sooner than we had lay down in the grass, Blake let go of my hand and rose to his feet.

“We should probably get back.”

“Okay,” I said unable to meet his eyes.

The buzz I had felt earlier following Blake into the night ebbed away and was replaced with something much more unsettling. Was this his way of saying goodbye? We still had a little over a week left; there was still time, and we were both returning to Columbus. It was goodbye but not forever. I hoped.

The short walk back to cabin row was awkward, and I fell into old habits, hugging myself tight. Blake seemed just as tense, his hands jammed in his cargo pockets and his hood still pulled up over his head. The path started to widen like the pit gnawing in my stomach. The lost me wanted to flee back to the cabin, close the door, and hide away from the emotional turmoil warring in me, but the stronger me—the me I had become thanks to Camp Chance—didn’t want to leave things like this.

“Blake…” I paused and turned to face him. “I don’t want to-”

Blake closed the distance between us and stood almost toe to toe with me. His eyes locked on mine and he stared down at me; full of unspoken promise, his gaze sent my heart into overdrive. “I shouldn’t have waited so long to do this.” His hand brushed along my jaw and into my hair drawing me close to him. He leaned down and covered my mouth with his own.

And I let him.

My body didn’t just fall against him; it melted. His touch. The feel of his lips moving against mine. How did I ever let myself forget this? Force myself to forget? His smell. The way he tasted as his tongue licked the seams of my lips before parting my mouth.

Since my first kiss, at the age of fourteen, I had kissed only three other guys: Bryan, Michael, and Cal. Bryan made me cry because he didn’t understand my anxieties, Michael was patient and kind as we explored my boundaries, and Cal made me feel nice. But none of them came close to making me feel the rainbow of emotions I was experiencing wrapped in Blake’s arms.

I didn’t ever want it to end.

Blake deepened the kiss, and my arms wound themselves around his back slipping underneath his hoodie. Warmth radiated from him. My hands traced the planes of his back, just needing to feel his skin;
I
needed to feel it, to know this was really happening. Blake obviously didn’t feel the same, and he brought his hand down to mine removing it. “There’s no rush,” he whispered into my mouth with a half-smile.

Rush?

I pulled back suddenly staring at him confused. “Rush?”

Blake frowned and opened his mouth to say something, but it all clicked into place in my head. “Oh God, oh no, you think, oh God.” I stepped back and started pacing back and forth in a short line.

“Whoa, Penny, let’s slow down a little. I’m confused. What are you talking about?”

I stopped pacing and dragged my teeth across my bottom lip feeling very exposed and stupid. Oh, so stupid. “What are
you
talking about?”

He was still smiling, but now Blake looked more concerned. “You first.”

“I, I…” The words were right there, right on the edge of my tongue, but if I said them, they would change everything.

“Is it about him? About what happened in that hell? Because you said you didn’t want to talk about it, that it was in the past.” The fear in Blake’s eyes rendered me speechless.

I’d been lying to myself when I thought I could survive the summer without letting
him
ruin things. But he had been there all along like a dark, angry storm ready to strike at any moment.

“Penny…” Blake’s voice cracked, and he swallowed hard. It was too much; my eyes fluttered shut, and I inhaled deeply.

Just breathe.

He can’t hurt you anymore.

Just breathe.

A sense of peace washed over me. I came to Camp Chance with the hope of healing. Blake being here was a sign—my chance at closure. With a deep breath, I opened my eyes and said calmly, “Almost a year after you left, Derek tried to rape me.”

The color drained from Blake’s face until his pallor looked gray under the moon’s light. “I, fuck, I… Christ, what happened? I thought he’d stopped with, you know.”

I knew.

The first time Derek came into my room and touched himself, I was fourteen. He’d caught Blake and me sneaking back into the house. It was my birthday. Blake knew something was up, had warned me to barricade myself in, but I thought he was overacting. Sure, Derek had an unusual fixation on me, but he was the same with all the girls. Always leering a little too long. Especially Jessica, but she had boobs and long legs and hair that made her look a lot older than her teenage years. I was just a girl. A tomboy, at that.

My eyes flew to the door as it creaked open. Blake, it had to be Blake sneaking in. But then Derek’s huge form came into view, the light from the hallway illuminating him. He looked like the devil. He stood with his eyes fixed on me as I pulled the comforter up around my chest, panic surging through me, my heart slamming against my chest. Why didn’t I listen to Blake? He knew; he knew something was off about Derek earlier. He never came in my room, ever, and I knew something was very wrong. When he stepped fully into the room and closed the door behind him, I started to cry, tears trickling down my cheeks. Derek placed a single finger on his lips reducing me to silence.