Trusting You and Other Lies

by Nicole Williams

  Ben smiled at his messy desk again. “Have you expressed your dissatisfaction to Callum?”

  Most of the camp knew Callum and I were an item. Not because we were all open and PDA about it, but because Ethan couldn’t keep his mouth shut and duct tape only worked for so long. Ben knew about us because Callum had told him. He said he didn’t want it to feel like we were going behind his back.

  “Yeah, only about every single day,” I answered. Callum had taken the brunt of my whining and complaining.

  That was when Ben’s smile faded and his forehead creased.

  “What?” I moved closer. “What is it?”

  “I appreciate you bringing this up to me because I want to know when one of my employees is unhappy, but I’m afraid you’re talking to the wrong person if you’re hoping to get your schedule changed.” Ben looked up at me, reading the question on my face. “I don’t make the counselors’ schedules.” My breath stopped before he said it, because I already knew. “Callum does.”

  That feeling of getting the wind knocked out of you? I’d only had it happen once, but there was no way to forget how it’d felt. It was the exact way I was feeling now, but I hadn’t fallen from the tree I’d been trying to climb this time. This time, I’d just fallen from the fairy-tale branch.

  “Callum makes the schedules?” I said to myself, dazed.

  “I thought you knew.” Ben sat up in his chair. “I thought that the reason you’d spent the last few weeks in the dining hall was because you’d requested it. I didn’t know he was the one who was…”

  What Ben left unsaid, I filled in the blank. “Lying to me?”

  Ben shook his head. “Not what I was going to say.” He shook his head again. “I know how Callum feels about you, and believe me when I say—”

  “Where is he?”

  Ben turned around and stared out his office window. “He had the afternoon off. Was going to spend a few hours rock climbing.”

  “Which spot?” I didn’t know how I could sound so calm when it felt like a fireworks display was going off inside me.

  “Patterson Ridge.”

  “Thank you.” I started moving for the door. “Can you check in on Lincoln Log Mania, maybe? Gretchen’s doing a great job leading it, but just in case the campers decide they’ve had enough…”

  “I’ve got it covered.” Ben spun around as I was closing the door behind me. “Phoenix? He cares about you. No matter what he did or why he did it, he did it first because he cares about you. Keep that in mind.”

  I paused in the doorway. “I think you’re confusing care for control.”

  Ben shook his head. “Maybe you are.”

  I wasn’t in the mood to get into an argument with Ben when I had one with Callum’s name written all over it. Closing the door behind me, I jogged through the kitchen, through the dining hall, and had found my stride by the time I’d hit the central lawn. I wasn’t wearing my sneakers, but I could run pretty fast in my Tevas.

  —

  Patterson Ridge was about a mile from camp and was one of the more technical faces to climb. Which meant it was Callum’s favorite. He never took the campers here when it was rock-climbing day, but he spent plenty of his afternoons off here. I’d joined him last week and been amazed by how easy he made climbing a vertical, seemingly smooth rock wall look. He climbed “free,” which meant he didn’t use a harness and carabiners or anything. To me, it seemed suicidal, but he brought an inflatable mattress with him and positioned it below where he’d be climbing. You know, so if he did slip, hopefully it would break his fall. Before he broke his neck.

  Or, in today’s case, I broke his neck instead.

  It didn’t take me long to get there, but instead of giving me a chance to cool down, it did the opposite. So when I rounded the last bend of trail that put me in front of the forty-foot rock wall, I was feeling nuclear.

  Callum was about halfway up the wall, managing to keep his movements in line with the air mattress he had stationed below him. He was in an old pair of cargo pants and his climbing shoes, and had ditched his shirt on a tree branch. His hands were white with chalk, and even from back here, I could see how much he was sweating. It was the dead of the afternoon on a ninety-degree day, and he was climbing a hot rock wall—he was lucky he hadn’t turned into a puddle.

  I was about to shout up at him but swallowed his name when I saw him bracing for a tough move. There was a spot on the wall where a lip stuck out a couple of inches, but it was a few feet up and over. The only way to get to it was to jump.

  He checked the mattress below him, stuck his free hand in his chalk bag, and sucked in a breath I knew he’d hold until he’d made the jump. Every muscle spanning his back broke through his skin right before he leaped. His foot pressed off the foothold and his arm reached up.

  My heart stopped, just like it had when I’d watched him do this last week. His fingers weren’t connecting—they weren’t going to make it. He hadn’t given himself enough of a lift.

  Just when I was about to rush forward to make sure the mattress was in the right spot to catch him, his fingers caught the lip. The veins in the arm holding his entire weight bulged through his skin, and then his foot found a tiny crevice to wedge into.

  I didn’t know I’d been holding my breath until it all came out in a big rush.

  He didn’t pause a beat to celebrate the victory. He just kept climbing, making his way up on handholds and footholds that were impossible to see from the ground.

  Now that the worst part of the climb was over, I remembered why I was here—and it wasn’t to gawk at him gliding up the side of a rock.

  The first step I took, my foot cracked a twig in the middle of the trail. Like he didn’t have anything else to concentrate on besides the sound of a twig snapping, Callum stopped climbing.

  He was already smiling when he looked down. “And my day just keeps getting better.”

  I felt that familiar pull. The one that made me feel like when I was with him, everything was okay. I was going to miss that. “You might want to climb down for this.”

  His shoulder lifted. “All right.” He worked his fist from the crack he’d wedged it in, and let go. I rushed forward a step, but he’d crashed into the air mattress before I could take another.

  He didn’t grunt or take a moment to shake it off. He just rolled off the mattress and leaped up. His smile hadn’t moved.

  “And look.” His arms thrust down at the air mattress. “I brought a mattress.”

  I didn’t look at it. If I did, I might remember what we’d done on that mattress last week, and then I’d crumble. I couldn’t crumble. I had to stay strong.

  “You lied to me.”

  Callum’s smile held. “So I shouldn’t have brought a mattress?” He thought I was messing with him.

  My arms crossed. “I’m being serious, Callum.”

  He motioned between the mattress and me. “I am, too.”

  “You lied about Ben being the one who’d been making my schedule.” That was when his smile started to fade. “Because it’s you who makes the schedule, and you who are responsible for my stint in crafts hell.”

  He exhaled and hung his hands on his hips. “I didn’t lie to you, Phoenix. I might have omitted a few things, but I never lied to you.”

  I could actually feel my blood warm—that was how quickly the anger inside formed. “You had me believe it was Ben who made the schedules.”

  “No, you made yourself believe that. I just didn’t do anything to make you think differently.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because I was afraid of this.” When he lifted his hand to wave between us, his hand had left a chalky handprint hovering just above his hip. “I was worried you wouldn’t get it and would be pissed first and understanding second. And forgiving last,” he added, cracking his neck like I’d seen him do a hundred times before.

  “Yeah, well, you were right,” I fired back.

  He was still sweating and breath
ing hard. Probably because he was dehydrated from sweating a gallon of water climbing that thing. I shouldn’t have, but I moved toward his metal water canteen and tossed it over at him.

  Callum studied the bottle in his hand, the skin between his brows creased. “I’m confused.” His gaze went from the bottle to me, where I was almost shaking from being so upset.

  “Yeah, just imagine how I feel finding out the guy who said—no, the one who promised he trusted me—is the same one who doesn’t trust me enough to lead a few people on a two-mile hike that has a whole elevation gain of twenty feet.” When he stayed quiet and still, refusing to take a drink of water, I stomped. “You said you trusted me!”

  “I know what I said.” His voice was quiet.

  “But clearly you don’t.”

  His eyes flashed. “Don’t tell me what I do and don’t think.” Then he threw the water bottle onto the mattress like he was staging some kind of thirst strike.

  Fine. Like I cared.

  “Fine. I’ll ask again since I’m a little sketchy on the topic.” I had to work my jaw loose to get the next part out. “Do you trust me?” His mouth opened to answer instantly. “And don’t even think about lying to me again.”

  His mouth snapped closed, and the muscles of his neck went rigid. “I’ve never lied to you once, and that’s not going to change.”

  I waited. Good luck talking his way out of this.

  His eyes closed for a second. “As your boyfriend, I trust you,” he started, each word coming slow. “As the lead counselor responsible for every camper here, I needed you to earn back some of the trust you’d lost.”

  My shoulders fell. “So you don’t trust me.”

  His eyes flew open. “I’d trust you with my life.”

  “Just not the lives of the other people here at camp.” I waved my hand dismissively, which set him off.

  “There’s a hell of a lot more room between trusting someone and not trusting someone. Or haven’t you learned that yet?”

  “I don’t know. I think I learned a whole lot about trust this afternoon.”

  “It’s black-and-white to you. So this or that. There’s no room for error and no room for mistakes. How’s a person supposed to live up to that kind of a standard?”

  “Listen, it is really cut and dried, Callum. I either trust you or I don’t. You either trust me or you don’t. You can’t kinda, sorta, maybe trust me. Sorry, it just doesn’t work like that.”

  He was glaring into the trees, the same way I was glaring at him. “You know, this is as good a time as any, I guess.” Moving toward his pack he’d propped up against a tree, he lowered down and unzipped it.

  I stood there watching him, confused. I felt so close to crying or exploding or melting I couldn’t even guess what he was doing.

  “Look who can’t trust who.” Callum stuck his arm up from where he was crouched on the ground. In his hand was a wad of papers.

  “Am I supposed to know what you’re talking about?” I took a step closer, but that was when it clicked. He didn’t need to bolt up and move closer like he was, sticking his finger at the papers like he was trying to light them on fire. “Callum, let me explain…,” I said, scrambling. I’d come here ready to battle him because of what he’d done, not defend myself for what I’d done.

  “Oh, I think you explained yourself pretty good when you inflated the scores of every single practice test I’ve taken the past month.” His fingers opened, and the whole stack of papers flew to the ground.

  I moved toward the scattered papers, wanting to pick them up and explain. “How did you find out?”

  “When I took a practice test on my own this morning and instead of the twelve hundreds I’d been killing it with lately, I barely managed an eight hundred.” When he moved, he walked across the tests, grinding them into the dirt. “I wondered if I was having an off day or something, so I pulled all of these old ones out and realized pretty quick that I’ve been having a whole month of off days. Kind of like the rest of my life.”

  “It was only to boost your confidence, you know? To make you think you were really making a lot of progress so you wouldn’t give up.” That was when I felt the tears. “You’ve gotten better and better with every test. You have made improvement this summer.”

  “Just not exactly the kind of improvement you were hoping for, right? Not the kind that says college-bound.” Callum moved to the rock wall and leaned into it. He wouldn’t look at me.

  “I was only trying to help. If I’d known you’d find out, I never would have done it.” I couldn’t stop staring at the scattered tests. I’d had the best of intentions when I’d overlooked a few wrong answers on each one, not that any of that mattered now.

  “The funny thing is I wasn’t even going to bring it up.” Callum shrugged, looking all cold and removed. “My plan was to spend the afternoon clearing my head and climbing some rocks, and then burn every last one of these later tonight. I figured you hadn’t meant much by them and probably were just trying to stroke my confidence a little.” He tilted his head against the rock so he was looking up into the trees. “But then you reminded me just how trust works in your world, and either you do trust me or you don’t.” He paused and sniffed, sounding as removed as I’d ever heard him. “And, by the same token, that I either can or can’t trust you.”

  I wanted to run to him right then. To put my arms around him and say I was sorry and do my best to explain and make him understand where I’d been coming from and why I was such a damn wreck on the trust subject.

  I was too late.

  Callum pushed off the rock and was throwing his pack on a moment later. “Well, consider this me making my mark in the can’t-trust-you box.” He wouldn’t look at me as he walked by. “I already know where you made yours.”

  “Callum,” I whispered.

  He didn’t stop.

  “Don’t,” I said louder, turning and watching him leave.

  “Don’t what?” He spun around. “I’ve had enough people in my life think I couldn’t make it anywhere on my own without a handout. I sure as hell don’t need my girlfriend to think the same. Just leave me alone, Phoenix.”

  I could hear my breath echoing in my ears.

  “Callum, please…”

  He kept moving down the trail. I’d screwed up. Seriously. “We always knew the summer would come to an end, Phoenix. It just came two weeks earlier than we’d planned.”

  I ran alone now. I studied alone, too. It felt like I did everything alone.

  I supposed that came with the territory when the only person who trusted me was my kid brother.

  Twelve days had gone by since Patterson Ridge, and I’d felt every second of them. Everyone said time eased pain, but from my experience, I could confidently say that was a load of bull. Time didn’t ease any of my pain—it intensified it. Made it sharper. More noticeable. More overwhelming. More everything of a painful nature.

  I couldn’t just “get over” Callum like I had with Keats. Because Callum wasn’t just any other guy. He was that guy.

  So yeah, I’d gone from a mess to a wreck in under two weeks. I wondered where I’d be in another two weeks. Outlook wasn’t exactly sunshine and roses.

  That morning like the past eleven, I beat my alarm clock out of bed. Mostly because I couldn’t sleep—another delightful side effect of feeling as if my heart had been ripped from my chest and diced into ribbons.

  I tiptoed out of the room, careful not to wake Harry because he’d been on high alert with me lately. Most of the time when I caught him looking at me, it was as if he was on prisoner suicide watch, or whatever the big-sister version of that was. His wrist was still bandaged up, but getting better. By the start of school, the brace would be gone. Even Mom was fretting over me lately—she wasn’t exactly sure what I needed, but it didn’t keep her from trying.

  Instead of stopping for my usual banana or breakfast bar, I continued through the kitchen and opened the squeaky cabin door as quietly as it was capable of
.

  The air was chilly this early, cooler than yesterday morning, and that one cooler than the one before. Summer was coming to a close, and as much as I wanted to pretend it never would, I knew I had two mornings left here before it was back to…wherever. Somewhere, California.

  I wasn’t ready to admit this was the end, though. No white flag waving yet. I still had a couple of days. Two days to figure out my whole entire life.

  Yeah, ’cause that wasn’t daunting or anything.

  My shoulders slumped as I dropped down onto one of the stairs to pull on my running shoes. I wasn’t actually expecting him to be waiting for me, leaning up against that beaten-up, old pine tree in front of the cabin steps, but I still checked for him every morning. I think part of me was hoping he’d show up one morning, running shoes and smile in place, like nothing had happened between us. I knew I’d be able to forget the past if he could. It didn’t even seem that important anymore—what each of us had done that hurt the other. Best intentions gone way off the rails, right?

  I knew that now—why couldn’t I have realized that twelve days ago when it could have made a difference?

  It took two tries to get my laces tied, and I was just thinking about forcing myself off that stair when the door wailed open behind me. The sound was so shrill it made me wince.

  I figured it would be Harry, coming to give me the “look-over,” but when I glanced back, I almost fell off the step I was perched on.

  “Perfect morning for my first run in two years, don’t you think?”

  I whipped my head around and felt every muscle in my body tighten. “When did you get here?” The chilly air had clearly gotten to my voice, too.

  “Late last night. Or early this morning, depending on how you look at it. I didn’t want to wake you and Harry.”

  I glared into the trees. “We’re leaving in two days. You missed the whole summer. Why come back now?”

  “And miss a morning run like this? That was worth the six-hour red-eye drive.”

  I could barely talk to Dad. I was so angry at him and the circumstances and…I was just so, so angry.