The Summer I Wasn't Me (17 page)

“I guess it’s just that every time something happens at New Horizons that makes me feel uncomfortable or makes me second-guess my reasons for being here, I think about Natalie and what she put me through. It helps me stay determined.” She looks at me. “You do that sometimes too, don’t you?”

I blink. “I do?”

“Yeah, like with your mom?”

“Oh. Yeah.” I wonder how she knew that.

We pay the check and step back out to the sidewalk, trying to figure out which way to go. But this whole conversation has my head spinning. Every time Carolyn’s lost in her thoughts, she’s thinking about another girl. Natalie. A girl she loved and shared her bed with and surely did stuff with that I’ve only ever read about. I’m so jealous I can barely even see straight.

The band switches to a bluegrass-y cover of a song that I know I know but can’t place at first. Then the singer comes in, and I’ve got it: “We Will Become Silhouettes” by The Postal Service. It was one of my dad’s favorite songs—some sort of sign, maybe?—and this bluegrass version is so weird and unexpected that I’m suddenly inspired to do something else weird and unexpected. I grab Carolyn’s sleeve and pull her across the street to the center of the circle. Then I jump into the cluster of kids and join them in their goofy, wiggly dancing.

Carolyn stands just outside the crowd, laughing.

“Come on!” I call to her.

She shakes her head.

“Yes!” I jump around to the beat of the music.

She just watches me, chewing on her lip, her arms crossed over her chest, debating.

I watch her right back, still dancing but looking only at her. I want so badly to go up to her and gently uncross her arms and hold her hands in mine. I want to smooth away the place where her teeth are worrying her lip and share my lip balm by brushing my mouth against hers. I want her to forget all about Natalie and everything bad that’s ever happened ever. I want to dance with her.

I skip over to the edge of the circle, clapping my hands to the song along with the rest of the crowd. I stand right in front of Carolyn. Our toes are touching.

I hold my hand out, waiting. “Have fun. Just for today. You can go back to being sulky tomorrow, I promise.”

She hesitates for a moment more, and then a grin begins to tug at her lips. “It
would
be a shame to waste this…” She looks around us, taking it all in. Her eyes flicker with the movements of the people dancing and the cars passing by and the wind blowing through the leaves of the trees. And finally, she gives in.

She grabs my hands, and suddenly she’s the one pulling me into the circle, and we dance around together, making up our own doofy square dance moves. It’s all I can do to try to appreciate every single second—and pray my palms don’t get sweaty.

We probably look ridiculous, but nobody seems to care. No one seems to care that we’re two girls, holding hands, dancing together either.

Four songs later, we’re still not tired. Somehow, this strange, accidental day has become one of the best of my life.

When the band goes on break, we resume our walk.

“Feeling better?” I ask, trying to catch my breath.

She smiles as she pulls her hair back into a ponytail. “Much. Thanks, Lexi.”

“Anytime.”

We wander into a few stores. I run my fingers over the beautiful clothes hanging from the racks. Carolyn tries on a really cute purple rhinestone headband, but she doesn’t have enough money for it, so I give her the rest of my field-trip allowance from Kaylee, which she finally takes after a lot of convincing.

After a while, we stop to rest in a park. The bench we sit on has a little plaque on it that says
For
Julie. There’s no other person I’d rather share a pizza with. Love, Marco.
It’s in the shade and about ten degrees cooler here than it is in the sun.

“So now that you know my whole miserable history,” Carolyn says, “I feel like I can ask. Whatever happened with you and Zoë?”

Hearing Zoë’s name from Carolyn’s lips is just too weird. “What do you mean?”

“After that day in her room. Did anything else ever happen with you two?”

“Nope.” I sigh. “That was it. We didn’t even speak to each other after that.” I think for a second. “Actually, that’s not true. She did tell me how sorry she was when my dad died. But so did everyone else, so I don’t really count that.” I shrug. “At least she kept my secret, as far as I can tell. That’s something, I guess.”

Carolyn turns sideways to face me and rests her temple—the one with the birthmark—on the back of the bench. “You must miss him.”

“My dad? You have no idea.”

“That thing that Mr. Martin made you do during your Father Wound session was pretty messed up,” she says. “I don’t know how you got through it.”

“I just made myself say whatever I needed to say to get out of there.” I fidget with my bracelet. “It didn’t work anyway. My last memory of my dad is still intact.” I look at Carolyn and she’s just watching me, waiting for me to continue. “The real last time I saw my dad was the day before Thanksgiving. He was in a hospice. That’s a place where they, um, send people to die.” Carolyn nods. “My mom picked me up from school in the middle of the day. He knew he didn’t have much time left, and he told her to get me. I don’t know how he knew, but he did. I guess it’s just one of those things that you don’t really understand until it happens to you.

“When I got there, he asked my mom to give us a few minutes alone and then he said, ‘Lexi, you are the best thing I ever did in my life.’ I’ll never forget that. He said it right away, like he was worried if he didn’t say it right then, he would never get the chance. And then he smiled this huge smile that I didn’t understand—he should have been sad. Or scared. He was about to die, but he looked happy. But I think now I get that he wasn’t thinking about what was about to happen; he was thinking about what had already happened in his life. And he was proud.” I take a breath. “And I almost told him right then, Carolyn. The truth. About me. I’d tried to tell him before and always chickened out, but this time I thought I was really going to do it. Use one of the last moments I had with him to be completely honest. I sat there, the room closing in on me as I concentrated on building up the courage to do it. And then he said, ‘Promise me you’ll take care of your mother,’ and the moment was gone.”

“I’m so sorry, Lexi,” Carolyn says.

I shake my head. “It’s okay. It’s actually better. After how my mom reacted when she found out, I’m glad I didn’t tell him. I don’t know what I would have done if he reacted the same way.”

“Do you really think he would have?”

“I don’t know.”

She looks down at her lap. “I guess I have the opposite problem. My parents have been so cool with it that they refuse to even try to understand why I wanted to come here. They’ve been really down on me about this whole camp thing.”

“Yeah.” I want to tell her that she doesn’t know how lucky she is, that almost any of us at New Horizons would trade places with her in a heartbeat if we could, but I don’t. I understand, maybe better than anyone in the whole world, why she’s here. She’s trying to move past the hurt. “Did they give you the money for the camp?” I ask.

She nods. “They never said I
couldn’t
come; they just asked me to reconsider about a hundred times.”

We sit there in silence for a while, watching the people go by, and I try to reason through my thoughts. Eventually I break the silence. “Since we’re being honest…”

“Yeah?”

“I think Zoë was part of the reason I came here. It wasn’t just about my mom. I mean, it was
mostly
about my mom, but…I think I also thought that if New Horizons could help me get Zoë out of my head once and for all, everything would be better.”

Carolyn looks at me with those big blue eyes. “Did it work?”

“Well, I
have
been thinking about her a lot less than I used to…” I drift off.

“That’s good!” she says.

But the rest of my unfinished sentence is that I’ve been thinking about Zoë a lot less than I used to because I’ve been thinking about
Carolyn
instead. And I can’t exactly tell her that.

We walk back to the Capitol to meet the bus and face the music.

And it’s the funniest thing: I know I can’t tell Carolyn the truth, but in this moment, I can’t remember
why
.

It’s like the rule my parents drilled into my brain a long time ago: don’t talk to strangers. Don’t do it, Lexi. It’s the worst possible thing you can do. Bad things will happen if you try. It was a certainty in my life—no matter what, I could never, should never,
would
never talk to strangers. But then I grew up. Things changed—the world changed—and suddenly, somehow, I knew that I was
supposed
to talk to strangers. That’s how you meet people. That’s how you make new friends.

This is the same thing: don’t tell Carolyn how you feel. It was the one thing I knew for sure—until it wasn’t.

Carolyn and I just spent this amazing, magical day together. We clearly have a connection. We’ve shared some moments. And up until Natalie broke her heart, she was fine with being gay. More than fine—she was out and happy. She doesn’t have a moral or religious objection to it, and her parents are totally cool with it. So maybe…maybe she
doesn’t
really want to become straight. Maybe she just needs to be in love again. Maybe she just needs someone who will treat her the way she deserves to be treated.

Matthew was right: I’ll never know for sure until I try.

I decide to test the waters. “Have you been thinking about Natalie less since you’ve been at New Horizons?”

She smiles. “Yeah, actually. I have.”

What does that smile mean? Could she be trying to say that
I’m
the reason she hasn’t been thinking about Natalie as much? What if the only thing that’s standing between us right now is our fear?

Oh God, I want to tell her.

It’s an hour walk back to the Capitol, every step a huge effort through the thick, sticky heat, and I war with myself the whole time. Tell her. Don’t tell her. Tell her. Don’t.

And then the Capitol dome lies ahead, and it’s almost six o’clock, and I’m out of time. If I don’t tell her now, that’s it. We’ll be thrown back into the world of watching eyes and prying ears, and I’ll never get another chance.

Mr. Martin said I have to make a choice. And I’m finally choosing—I’m choosing my
own
gray area. Why can’t I be both a Christian
and
gay? What would be so wrong about that? And instead of working so hard to be something I’m not for Mom, why can’t I put all that energy into talking to her, helping her to understand me? I haven’t even really tried that yet. Maybe, someday, I can have both a girlfriend
and
my family. Carolyn came to New Horizons even though she’s an atheist, even though her parents didn’t want her to, simply because that was what she wanted—proof positive that there are no rules. We make our own destinies.

Screw utopia.

“Hey, Carolyn,” I say. “Hold back a second?”

She stops walking. “What’s up?”

“Um…” We’re right in the middle of the sidewalk at a busy intersection. We can’t have this conversation here, with people brushing past us like this. There’s a bus stop a few yards away with an empty bench. I motion for her to follow me.

“What’s going on?” she asks once we’re sitting. “We’re going to be late.”

“We have a few minutes,” I say, my heart galloping unevenly. “I, um…I wanted to say something.”

She looks at me, curious. “Okay?”

A new sprinkling of freckles has cropped up across the bridge of her nose. She must have forgotten to put on sunscreen this morning.

“I wanted to tell you…um…” I stare at those adorable specks. “I think you’re beautiful.”

Whoa. I’ve actually said it. I make my body take a deep breath, because it seems to have forgotten how to breathe on its own.

She blinks. “What?”

“I think you’re so beautiful,” I say again and laugh at how easy it is to say the words. “And smart and funny and brave and strong and…well, unlike anyone I’ve ever met.”

A vaguely familiar crease forms between her eyes. But I don’t stop to think about what it means. I need to get this all out, and we’re almost out of time already.

“I feel a…a connection to you, Carolyn. And it’s different from what I felt for Zoë. It’s more…whole. Stronger. And I know we’re at New Horizons for another few weeks and that it’s a pretty impossible situation, but I was wondering if maybe you felt it too? Because if you do, I think I would do pretty much anything to be with you.” Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m saying all this. But now that I’ve torn the fence down, I can’t stop what’s rushing through. “I honestly think I would give up on the camp and the de-gayifying and let the pieces fall where they may with my mom. I never thought I’d say that, but it’s true. Because at this point, I don’t feel like I have a choice anymore. Or it’s more like I
do
have a choice, but it’s a
different
choice than it was before.” With each word I say, I feel emptier—but the
good
kind of empty. Like there’s nothing holding me back anymore. “I don’t know how it would work, but maybe after camp is over, we could, I don’t know, see each other or something? I mean, I know Connecticut and South Carolina aren’t exactly close, but we could figure it out—”

Carolyn holds up a hand to cut me off. “Lexi, stop,” she says.

I gasp for breath and wait for her to say something else, but she just hangs her head in her hands, her hair forming a fortress-like wall around her. Her headband twinkles in the sunlight like a tiara.

After a few excruciatingly long moments, I have to ask. “Carolyn? Can you look at me, please?”

She raises her head wearily and turns to me, her expression…troubled.

Oh God.

I finally remember where I’ve seen that crease between her eyes before. It’s the same one that was there after she fought with her parents on Sunday. They wanted her to come home; she wanted to stay. Because the de-gayifying was—is—the most important thing in the world to her.

I’m such an idiot.

I nod, to let her know that I get it. But I have to bite my lip to keep from crying.

Slice, slice, slice
. The cuts and cracks in my heart burst back open.

“Sorry,” I mumble. “I guess I misread things.” I get up and start walking down the sidewalk.

“Lexi!” Carolyn calls out. Her footsteps close in behind me.

“Don’t worry about it, Carolyn. It’s fine.” I can’t turn to face her. “Let’s just get back to the bus.”

I can’t believe this is happening again. I promised myself I wouldn’t let history repeat itself. And yet here I am
again
, pouring my heart out to someone who has never looked at me as more than a friend. I’m so incredibly stupid.

“It’s just…I thought you understood,” she says as we speed walk back to the Capitol.

“I did. I do. Whatever. I really don’t want to talk about it anymore,” I say.
Keep
looking
straight
ahead. Don’t look at her.

“You said you wanted to change too,” she continues anyway. “I thought we were on the same page. Were you lying?”

“Of course not,” I snap. “I just changed my mind. Maybe
you
can control your feelings, Carolyn, but I can’t.”

The bus looms in sight now. Mr. Martin is there on the sidewalk, along with several of the other counselors and campers. Kaylee, Matthew, and Daniel don’t seem to be there yet though.

I’m a few steps ahead of Carolyn, so when I get to the intersection on a yellow light, I make a run for it. I make it across the street just in time, but Carolyn has to wait for a green signal. It feels good to put physical space between us.

“Hello, Lexi,” Mr. Martin says, his face confused. “Where’s the rest of your group?”

“Carolyn’s right there,” I point at her, stranded on the other side of the street.

“And Kaylee, Daniel, and Matthew?”

This is really the last thing I need right now. I knew we were going to be found out, and I knew we were going to get in trouble, but I’d really rather someone else handle the explaining. All I want is to get on the bus and pull my hood over my eyes and sleep for a very long time.

“Um…” I try to figure out what to say. “We lost them. It was an accident.”

Mr. Martin’s expression turns angry. “What do you mean you
lost
them?”

How do I explain this without selling Matthew out? “We were getting on the Metro to go to the zoo and Carolyn and I accidentally got pushed off.”

“Who pushed you?” he asks.

“Uh…”

“It all happened so fast,” Carolyn says, joining us. “It was a really crowded train. We didn’t see who did it.”

Good. She doesn’t want to get Matthew in trouble either. But I still refuse to look at her.

Mr. Martin looks from Carolyn to me. “So you two were alone together in the city all day?”

“Don’t worry,” I say, the open wounds in my heart stinging. “Nothing happened.” And I get on the bus.

Carolyn gets on a few moments later. I fix my stare out the window, but out of the corner of my eye, I see her hover by the empty seat next to me. But then she moves on and sits somewhere behind me.

From my window seat, I watch as Kaylee, Matthew, and Daniel arrive and talk to Mr. Martin. I can’t hear them, but there’s a lot of angry gesturing and what appears to be yelling. At first, Mr. Martin’s rage is directed at Kaylee, but then she tells him something and points to Matthew. Mr. Martin turns on him.

Daniel gets on the bus while it’s all still going on.

“He’s in big trouble, isn’t he?” I ask.

Daniel looks worried. “Yeah.”

Matthew stands there on the sidewalk, looking smaller than I’ve ever seen him, staring down at the ground, nodding as Mr. Martin shouts in his face.

This is all my fault. Matthew pulled that stunt on the Metro as a favor to me. And it was all for nothing.

When Mr. Martin finally exhausts his rant, Matthew gets on the bus and sits in the empty seat beside me.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

“Yeah. Mr. Martin’s just a little upset. He’ll get over it.” He shrugs like it’s no big deal.

“Are you sure?”

“Don’t worry about me.” He flashes me a grin. “How was
your
day?”

I turn back to the window. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Uh-oh. What happened?”

“Nothing happened.” But my tone clearly says otherwise.

Matthew puts a hand on my arm. “Lexi?” His voice is quiet now, concerned.

My eyes well up. “Please, Matthew.” The tears quietly overflow. “Can we just not?”

There’s a moment of silence. I don’t turn away from the window to see what he’s doing. He’s probably looking for Carolyn. But then he says simply, “Okay.”