The Summer I Wasn't Me (16 page)

I take another step closer to him and gently place my hand on his shoulder. I quickly check to make sure Barbara isn’t coming back yet, and then I whisper, “Daniel, do you really have those kinds of feelings for me?”

He chokes out a sob. “I don’t know. I’m so confused.”

“I know,” I say. “I know. Me too.” And at the risk of giving him the wrong idea yet again, I pull him into a hug.

He cries into my shoulder, and I just stand there and hold him and let him get it all out. After a few moments, I see Barbara exiting the store from the corner of my eye. “Barbara’s coming,” I whisper, putting a safe distance between us once again.

Daniel nods, wipes his eyes and nose on his sleeve, and manages to get a pretty good hold of himself by the time she reaches us.

“Did you two have fun tonight?” she asks, giving us a grandma-like wink.

“Yes,” I say, answering for both of us. “It was great. Thank you.”

And then the bus pulls up to take us home.

“How was your date, lovebirds?” Matthew asks at breakfast.

Daniel just stares at his untouched eggs.

“It was good,” I say. “The movie was terrible, but the dinner was pretty good. Right, Daniel?”

He nods.

“How was yours?” I ask Matthew and Carolyn.

They grin at each other. “It was so much fun,” Carolyn says. “We went to this big arcade place. Matthew won me a little stuffed monkey.”

“Well, if there’s one thing I know, it’s how to treat the ladies.” Matthew winks. “And this girl”—he jerks a thumb in Carolyn’s direction—“is the best Skee-Ball player I’ve ever seen in my life.”

“What can I say? It’s a gift.”

For the second time, I feel that irrational surge of jealousy. I want to switch places with Matthew so badly. I want to be the one who played Skee-Ball with Carolyn last night and won her a stuffed monkey and be reminiscing about it with her this morning.

But I laugh along with them anyway.

For the next few days, the girls focus on childcare. We have to carry around these creepy little electronic babies that cry randomly and won’t stop until you hold a key in its mouth for a certain amount of time.

Brianna and Kaylee demonstrate how to change a diaper on a dummy, and we each take turns mastering the process. Mrs. Wykowski shows us how to use a food processor to whip up our own natural baby food. And over the course of several sessions, Barbara teaches us the basics of knitting and sewing, so we can make things like baby blankets and booties and stuff. I actually really enjoy that last part. I get permission from Brianna to go to the rec cabin and get some stuff from the arts and crafts corner to add to my booties—sequins, different colored thread for adding colorful stitching around the ankle. They actually turn out really adorable and I get a lot of compliments from the other campers. It might not be high fashion, but for now, it’s as close as I’m going to get.

Toward the end of the week, Mr. Martin announces that we’ll be leaving the camp again, this time with our group of four.

“We’re going to take a day-trip into the city tomorrow,” he says. “It’s a major step in the reintegration process. You will still be chaperoned, but the plan is a lot less structured than it was for date night. You will be the ones who decide where you want to go and how you want to spend your time.”

“I vote for a gay bar,” Matthew whispers to us.

I giggle. “Shhh!”

“This outing will be all about experiencing the world through new eyes. Where will you go? What will you do? How will you interact with others? Remember your lessons as you make all of these choices, because the temptations out there in the real world are much, much greater than they are here. As it says in Philippians four, verse nine, ‘Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.’”

That night, the four of us hang out in our hidden spot outside the rec cabin. Daniel flips through a Washington, DC guidebook and suggests ideas to the rest of us.

“There are free shows on Saturday mornings at the National Theatre,” he says. “Or we could go see the butterflies at the National Museum of Natural History.”

“I was serious about the gay bar,” Matthew says. “They have ones that are eighteen and over. I bet they wouldn’t even ID us.”

“Oh sure, I’m sure Kaylee would be totally cool with that,” I say.

“There are ways to ditch a chaperone, Lexi. Haven’t you ever been on a school field trip?”

“It’s not gonna happen, Matthew.”

“I’ve always wanted to go to the Smithsonian,” Carolyn says as she practices her purl stitch.

“Which one?” Daniel says, looking it up. “There’re so many.”

“Oh. I don’t know. Isn’t there a pop culture exhibit? I heard that somewhere.” She scoots over to look at the guidebook with Daniel.

Matthew glances at me. “Can I talk to you for a minute?” he asks and nods his head toward an area of the field several yards away.

“About what?”

“It will just take a minute.” He starts walking away and, curious, I follow.

“What’s up?” I ask once we’re out of earshot of Carolyn and Daniel.

He sits on the grass and pats the spot next to him. “Sit.”

I do.

“I just wanted to see how you’re doing. We never get a chance to talk.”

I smile. “I’m doing okay. How are you doing?”

“Oh, you know. I’m fine. Looking forward to getting the hell out of here.”

“Yeah.”

“So what’s going on with you and Carolyn?” There’s an eager glint in his eye.

I sigh. “Nothing’s going on, Matthew. And you really have to stop looking at me like that.”

“Bullshit. You’re completely smitten. And who can blame you? She’s hot.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Mr. Kinsey Six, thinking a girl is hot? Maybe Mr. Martin has gotten to you more than you think.”

Matthew rolls his eyes. “I might be gay, Lexi, but I still have eyes. And that girl is gorgeous. And the two of you together…that would be hotness overload.”

My stomach twinges a little at the thought. “We’re just friends.” I tie a blade of grass into knots.

“Why?”

“Why?” I repeat.

“Yeah.
Why
are you just friends?”

“Why do you think?” I tick off the reasons on my fingers. “Because we’re here to learn to become
straight
. Because there are more important things in life than having a crush on somebody. Because she doesn’t like me like that. Because New Horizons is the
last
place on Earth that we could be together. Because some things just aren’t worth the risk.”

“I disagree,” Matthew says. “If there’s
anything
worth any risk at all, it’s got to be love, right?”

I shake my head. “I might have thought that once but not anymore.”

There’s a pause as Matthew lies back on the grass, leaving me to consider what I just said.

“You do know you’re not going to leave here straight, right?” he says after a minute.

“I know.”

“So why do you keep going along with all of this stuff?”

I tell him my plan to fake being “cured.”

He stares at me, bewildered. Then he says, “Lexi, when you first realized you were gay, like really acknowledged it on a conscious level, how did you feel?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what did you think about the whole thing?”

“I don’t know.” I shrug.

“Think about it,” he pushes.

I pick a dandelion and pluck its little yellow petals off one by one, thinking back to fourth grade, when I finally realized why I had never understood my friends’ excitement about the first boy-girl parties. Might as well tell the truth while I can. “I was terrified.”

“How come?”

“Because all I knew, everything I’d been taught, was that gay people were sinners. I didn’t know what would happen if people found out.” I still don’t know how the town would react, actually, if they all knew. I toss the bald dandelion stem.

Matthew shakes his head. “That’s not what I mean. I don’t mean what did you think other people would think. I mean what did
you
think? Deep down. Apart from all the small-town bullshit.”

Oh. Hmm. I push away the fear of the unknown, the fear I’ve been living with every day for eight long years, and really think about Matthew’s question. The answer kind of surprises me. “I guess I felt kind of relieved in a way.”

Matthew smiles. “Why?”

“Because I finally understood why my feelings never seemed to match up with my friends’. Everything finally made sense.” I lie down now too. Fluffy cotton-ball clouds drift across the sky.

“Were you ashamed?” Matthew asks.

“No,” I admit.

“Were you sad?”

“No.”

“Embarrassed?”

“No.”

“Did you hate yourself?”

“No.”

“You were okay with it?”

“Well…yeah.”

Matthew turns to face me. “So what the hell, Lex? You’re already so much better off than most of the kids here. Why would you want to go backward?”

I hesitate. “My mom…”

“I know. It’s a shitty situation. And I get it, I really do. But Lexi, this is
your
life. It’s not your mom’s. You have to do what makes you happy too.”

I don’t say anything.

“What do you want?” Matthew asks.

He wants me to admit that I don’t want to change. That I don’t want to live a lie. That I’m happier being me, as is, even if it means I have to move away from my hometown and never go back. That I want to be with Carolyn. But I can’t. I’m not ready for that.

“I want my family back,” I say, sticking with the only part of the truth that I’m comfortable speaking aloud. Then a troubling thought occurs to me. “You don’t say this stuff to Carolyn too, do you?”

“Nah.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t think she’d listen to me,” he says. “She’s still hoping for a reparative therapy miracle.”

I let out a groan of frustration. “So then why the hell would you think it would be a good idea for me to tell her how I feel?”

“Because I think she likes you too. And it would be a lot more effective if it came from you.”

I watch as a cloud slowly morphs from an ice cream cone into a pirate ship. A minuscule spark of
what
if
has ignited somewhere deep inside me, and I hate Matthew for putting it there.

“You know what I think?” he says after a long stretch of silence. “I think you’re scared.”

“Of what?”

“Of telling Carolyn how you feel and being rejected. And I think you might be hiding behind the mom excuse so you don’t have to put yourself out there again.”

I feel like I’ve been punched straight through my stomach. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Very possible. But one thing I do know is that Carolyn isn’t Zoë. And you’ll never know for sure until you try.”

I float through the morning drive to DC; Matthew’s words have been branded onto my mind.
You’re scared. This is
your
life. You’ll never know until you try.

But even though the conversation keeps replaying in my head, presenting itself from different angles, I’m still in the same place. Because no matter how good Matthew’s points might have been, what he doesn’t seem to understand is that my feelings don’t matter. It’s the circumstances
surrounding
them that hold the power. The way things are back home, both in my town and in my family, the rigid structure of New Horizons, Carolyn’s dedication to the process, the scars still fresh on my heart. So maybe he’s right: maybe I
am
scared. But if my choices are safety and security versus certain pain, I know which one I’m going with.

The bus drops us off at the Capitol building. “Remember, everyone!” Mr. Martin calls out before we all disperse. “Meet back here at six p.m. sharp! Don’t be late!”

Daniel, Matthew, Carolyn, Kaylee, and I set off on foot. Daniel has a whole itinerary mapped out for us. First stop: the Capitol Reflecting Pool, followed by the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials and the Washington Monument. He reads aloud from the guidebook, telling us all the important dates and facts.

“History is
fun
,” Matthew says sarcastically, as we stare up at the giant obelisk that’s somehow supposed to pay tribute to our first president.

The big event for the day is the National Zoo, which beat out the Smithsonian after Matthew presented a pretty convincing case against spending our one day of freedom stuck in a museum, so after all the history, we walk to the Metro red line.

As we walk, Matthew whispers to me, “I have a plan.”

I give him a sidelong glance. Matthew’s plans are
never
a good idea—it’s a miracle they haven’t gotten us into trouble yet. “Can’t you take a break from all the scheming for one day?”

He grins. “No way. This is my best plan yet!”

“But we’re having such a nice time—”

“Just trust me. You’ll like this one. I promise.”

His eyes are bright and excited, and I know there’s no talking him out of whatever he’s got up his sleeve. “If you say so,” I say.

We buy our Metro tickets, and a few minutes later, the train rolls into the station. We all get on, and Matthew starts up a conversation with Kaylee and Daniel about which animals they’re looking forward to seeing most at the zoo.

Then, just as the doors are about to close, Matthew turns away from his conversation, grabs me and Carolyn, and pushes us off the train. I trip over my own feet and fall onto the platform, skinning the heels of my hands. By the time I gather my bearings, the doors have closed, Matthew is waving at us from inside the train with the biggest, dopiest grin I’ve ever seen, and Kaylee is pounding against the door, futilely trying to get to us. The train pulls away, and I look up at Carolyn, who somehow managed to survive Matthew’s surprise attack in one piece. She stares back down at me, her eyes huge. We’re alone now. In the city. With no group, no chaperone, and no way to get in touch with them.

I’m going to kill Matthew.

Carolyn reaches down to help me up. My scraped-up hand stings as it comes into contact with hers, and I wince.

“Oh my God, your hands!” Carolyn says, noticing my injury. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” I brush my palms together to show that it’s just a surface wound. “I can’t believe Matthew!”

“I know! Why would he do that?”

I try to keep my face neutral. “No idea.”

“Me either.” She shakes her head, baffled. “So what do you think? Should we wait here for Kaylee to come back for us, or should we get on the next train and meet them at the zoo?”

I don’t know where it comes from, but before I know it, I’m saying, “Or we could take advantage of this opportunity away from everyone.”

She stares at me, as though she’s not sure what I’m getting at. “What do you mean?”

“Um…I mean we could go do our own thing. See the city on our own and then later say we tried to find them but we got lost or something. We know where and when to meet everyone, so it’s not like we’ll be stranded forever.”

Suddenly her face brightens. “We could go to the Smithsonian! We could see Kermit the Frog and Dorothy’s ruby slippers!” She does a cute little excited jig.

I look at her smile, and suddenly I don’t want to kill Matthew quite so much anymore.

“Sounds fun,” I say.

Carolyn buys some Band-Aids and first aid ointment at a pharmacy, and her hands move delicately across mine as she fixes up my cuts.

“Okay,” she says once I’m all bandaged up. “So how do we get there?”

“I have no clue. I was relying on Daniel to tell us where to go. Guess that was poor planning.”

“Lexi, neither of us could have predicted that Matthew would pull a stunt like that.”

“I should have,” I mutter under my breath.

Carolyn asks someone on the street where the museum is. It’s actually not that far, and in less than ten minutes, we’re staring up at a giant sign that says
The
National
Treasures
of
Popular
Culture
gallery
is
CLOSED
for
renovations. We apologize for any inconvenience!

Carolyn looks crestfallen. “I’m sorry,” I say.

She shrugs. “It’s okay. At least we tried.”

“So what should we do now?” I ask. Then I begrudgingly add, “We can go to the zoo to try to find the guys if you want.”

Carolyn nods. “Yeah, we should probably do that.”

My heart sinks. We walk back to the Metro, and just as we’re about to go down into the station, a guy hands us a flyer. “Free concert today at Dupont Circle,” he says. “Just two stops away on the red line.”

The flyer lists a bunch of bands I’ve never heard of, but that doesn’t matter. Wherever this Dupont Circle place is, I suddenly desperately want to be there. I look at Carolyn. “I haven’t been to a concert since before my dad died.”

“Do you want to go?” she asks.

“Yeah, kinda,” I admit. “But we don’t have to—”

“Let’s go,” she says decidedly.

I smile. “Really?”

“Why not? We probably won’t be able to find Matthew and Daniel and Kaylee anyway, and this is important to you.”

It turns out Dupont Circle is a really cute area with restaurants and coffee shops and stuff. A bluegrass band is playing on a small stage set up in the middle of the circle.

“This is amazing!” Carolyn says.

She’s right. The band is really good—a girl in a cute floral-print dress and cowboy boots is singing and people are dancing. A group of little kids has joined hands and is skipping around in a big circle. I’d actually forgotten how much joy there really is in the world.

“You hungry?” I ask Carolyn as we pass a sidewalk café within hearing range of the concert.

“Famished,” she says, and we get a table.

While we wait for our burgers, Carolyn raises her water glass. “To new friends.”

“And a whole afternoon without chaperones,” I say.

Carolyn laughs, and we clink classes. “You mean you don’t miss Brianna?” she says, mock shocked.

“Not even a little bit.” I can’t even joke about it. “Do you ever wonder why she’s here? I mean at New Horizons?”

“I don’t know.” Carolyn looks thoughtful. “She didn’t go through the program, right? Just Kaylee, Deb, and John?”

“Right. So we know she doesn’t have SSA. But then why isn’t she off doing her womanly duty and popping out kids?” It was meant to be a joke, but I immediately realize how judge-y that sounded. “Sorry. I didn’t mean…obviously there’s nothing wrong with having kids. Or…you know,
not
having kids.”

Carolyn laughs and says, “No, I knew what you meant. Maybe she’s here out of some sort of religious duty.”

I shrug. “Maybe. But she’s
so
hardcore about the whole thing. Like, she won’t even call me Lexi, you know? There’s got to be more to her story than she’s letting on.”

Carolyn’s smile fades away. “Not everyone has to share their entire life story with the whole world, Lexi.” A biting tone has entered her voice.

Heat rushes to my face, and I instantly feel like a total jerk. Carolyn’s been just as secretive about her past as Brianna has. Of course she would take my comment personally.

I open my mouth to say something, but then the waitress shows up with our food and I close it again.

“Can I get you ladies anything else?” the waitress asks.

We both just shake our heads.

When the waitress finally leaves, I quickly say, “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“No,” she cuts me off. “You didn’t say anything wrong.” She hangs her head and whispers into her food. “I really should be over it by now.”

Over it? Over what? I wait for her to say more, but she doesn’t.

I take a couple of bites of my burger, but eventually the suspense gets to be too much. And she wouldn’t have said that if she didn’t want me to ask, right? “You should be over what by now?” I say.

Carolyn looks up at me, her face weary. “My ex. Natalie.”

I stare at her. Her
ex
? As in ex-
girlfriend
? I try to keep my composure. “Natalie?”

“Yeah.” There’s another long pause, and then she says, “We were together for over a year. Thirteen months and eleven days, to be exact.”

I’m floored. I don’t know why I never considered that Carolyn would have had a girlfriend before. I guess I just assumed she was like me: closeted and utterly inexperienced.

“So what happened?” I ask. Then I add, “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

She sighs. “No, it’s all right. But just keep it between us, okay?”

“Of course.”

She stabs a French fry with her fork. “You remember how when you were a freshman, everything was kinda scary? Like, you were at a new school and there were so many people and so many hallways that looked the same and so many intimidating older kids?”

I don’t exactly remember that. My school is so small it’s almost nonexistent, and most of us have known each other since kindergarten, maybe even before. But I just nod.

“Well, Natalie saved me from all that. She was a junior when we met. We were on the varsity cross-country team together, and she and her friends accepted me into their group, and suddenly I went from being the nobody freshman to the cool freshman who was hanging out with the juniors and seniors. It was great. And Natalie and I started spending more and more time together and…Well, you know. It became more.”

Carolyn glances up at me, but I don’t say anything. “She was a lot more experienced than I was,” she says. “She’d been out since middle school. She helped me come out to my parents and friends.”

“Wait,” I say, confused. “I thought you said no one knew about your SSA.”

She blinks. “When did I say that?”

“On the first day of camp, when we were telling everyone why we were here. I said almost nobody back home knew about me and you said you didn’t tell anyone either.”

“No, I said I didn’t tell them about
New
Horizons
.” She looks at me like she doesn’t see why this is important. I’m not sure why it is—maybe because I thought it was something else we had in common.

“So how did they handle the news?” I ask to get the conversation back on track.

She looks off into space. “They were amazing. My parents didn’t care at all. They said they just wanted me to be happy. And they loved Natalie, so that helped. And my friends were her friends, and they obviously already knew she was gay, so this was barely even news to them.”

Carolyn absentmindedly picks the sesame seeds off the bun of her untouched cheeseburger. “I loved her so much, Lexi,” she says quietly. “She was my whole life. She told me she wanted to marry me someday. I actually started keeping a wedding planning book.” She shakes her head, embarrassed. “I really
do
want to get married, you know. I wasn’t making that up. But Matthew’s right—I never really had a problem imagining
two
white dresses in that scenario.” She laughs, just a little.

Hmm. “So then why…” I want to ask why she said she wanted to marry a man if she really doesn’t. I want to ask—if that whole story was a lie—why she’s
really
here at New Horizons. But I know Carolyn well enough by now to know that sometimes staying quiet is the best way to get her to open up.

“She ate dinner with my family most nights after practice and she even slept over sometimes. My parents joked that they had another daughter now.”

“Slept over?” I say almost before I realize I’m speaking. “Like, in your room?”

She raises an eyebrow. “Like, in my bed.”

“Oh. Right. Sorry, I’m stupid.” Okay, envy just got upgraded to full-on, green-eyed jealousy.

“No, actually I am,” she mumbles.

“Huh?”

She rubs the back of her neck. “I was so in love with her that I couldn’t see what was right in front of my face.”

“I don’t understand.”

“After a few months, she started acting different. She wouldn’t come over as much or she would come over for dinner and then have some reason why she couldn’t sleep over. A few times I asked her if anything was wrong, but she would say, ‘Of course not, baby, why would you even say that?’ and smile and kiss me, and I would forget about everything except the way she made me feel. Even after I started hearing the rumors…” She trails off, but I can’t let her stop talking now. I need to know.

“Rumors?”

“Yeah. The problem with being friends with Natalie’s friends was that they would sometimes say things around me when Natalie wasn’t around, almost as if they forgot I was her girlfriend.”

“What kind of things?”

“Like, things about her going to the city on the weekends to hook up with other girls.” Her voice trembles.

“Oh, Carolyn…”

“But I refused to believe it. She loved me. She cried when I told her about Kenny, and she helped me understand that it wasn’t my fault. She told me she loved my family and couldn’t wait to officially be a part of it. We went to visit colleges together, but only ones that were close enough for me to visit her every weekend. I never doubted for a
second
that she was as committed to me as I was to her.” She’s starting to tear up. I hand her my napkin. “Thanks.” She blots her eyes.

“If this is too hard for you to talk about—”

“No, it’s okay. It actually kinda feels good to get it out.”

I understand that. “So what happened?” I ask.

“I borrowed her phone one day at practice and saw text messages from a girl at another school.” Carolyn’s expression is fragile, like she’s just seconds away from crumbling into sobs. “When I asked her about it, she broke down and admitted everything. She said she’d been hooking up with other people—but only because she loved me so much that it scared her and made her do things she didn’t really want to do.”

I reach a hand across the table. She holds on.

“And the thing was, I stayed with her. Even though I was totally destroyed inside. She promised she wouldn’t do it anymore, and I was so obsessed with her that I actually believed her. She’d admitted to being with other girls but still somehow made me feel like I was the only girl in the world.”

Her bleary gaze drifts across the street to where the bluegrass band is playing their instruments and stomping their feet. The happy music clashes harshly with the tone surrounding our table.

“It happened again a couple of months later. And I forgave her again. It wasn’t until it happened for a third time—the third time that I knew of, at least—that I finally forced myself to admit that I couldn’t stay with her. I loved her so desperately, but I wasn’t in control of my own life anymore. I felt like a puppet.”

I squeeze her hand tightly. I don’t care that it hurts the scrapes.

“Breaking up with Natalie was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. She was sobbing, apologizing, begging me to forgive her. And I wanted to. But I couldn’t.”

Carolyn takes a deep breath and looks straight at me. “Lexi, if I had to go through something like that again, I don’t think I would survive.” She lets go of my hand. “If I’m with a boy, then it will never be this bad again.
I’ll
be the one in charge of how things go.”

There it is. That’s why she’s here. That’s why she wants to change so badly.

“But what makes you think it will be any different with a guy?” I ask. “Have you ever had a boyfriend?”

“No.” She thinks for a minute. “I just know it would though. I see my friends with their boyfriends, and yeah, they have their problems, but it’s different. Guys are different. They don’t get as emotional. There’s only one set of stupidly overactive teenage girl hormones in the relationship, not two. It’s just easier.”

She straightens up and shakes her head quickly as if to shake the sadness away. “Anyway. All that stuff with Natalie is in the past now.”

But I don’t think it is in the past at all. I think it’s very much in her present. “Is that what you think about when you get all distant?” I ask.

She blushes. “I didn’t realize I was being so obvious about it.”

“You’re not,” I say. “I just happen to have a lot of experience in spotting that kind of thing, you know? So I noticed that sometimes you aren’t entirely
here
.”