by Sonia Hartl
“I couldn’t stay with him,” she said.
A week ago, hearing those words would’ve meant everything to me. Now it just made me feel hollow. “I’m not after him, if that’s what you think.”
She jerked her head to the side, taking violent pains not to look at me. “Why did you come here? Because it’s pretty obvious you’re not a Christian. If it wasn’t to get him back, what did you have to gain?”
Here it was. My truth. My testimony. And I’d be sharing it with the only person whose forgiveness I cared about. “It started that way. Wanting him back.”
She sucked in a breath and I hated myself, but I had to put it out there.
“That all changed though, pretty fast, too,” I said. “Ethan isn’t the guy I wanted him to be. And to be completely honest, I don’t think he ever was.”
“Yeah,” Mandy said. “He’s not who I wanted him to be either.”
Her bedside clock ticked off the seconds until they became minutes. The air buzzed thicker than the cloud of mosquitoes that hovered around our front porch at night. I closed my eyes and asked God, the guy who used to date Paul’s mom, and the black matter of space to give me the strength to tell the whole story. I owed her that much.
“Once upon a time, I met someone who made me feel loved and wanted. When he looked at me, I felt important, like I was his world. Until I started saying no to sex. The more I said no, the more that important and wanted girl began to disappear.” I squeezed my hands together until they went numb. “That’s why I said yes.”
Mandy drew her knees up to her chest.
“After I said yes, he broke up with me. He said he needed to get right with Jesus to be born-again, and I came to camp because I thought if I could act like I’d gotten right with Jesus too, I’d be wanted again. I tried so hard to be that girl, I’d forgotten who I was.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? I don’t expect better from Ethan, not anymore, but we’re friends. Friends should always be truthful with each other, even when it hurts.”
“At first I just wanted to win him back. I didn’t care about anything else. Then I started to care, about you, Sarina, and Astrid. I felt like I fit in here, when I’ve never really fit anywhere. Then, when I didn’t want him anymore, I thought the issue would disappear.” I looked down at my knotted fingers. “Do you still consider me a friend?”
“I should hate you.” Mandy went back to picking at the rug. “Ethan said he wanted a future with me, he said we’d give each other everything on our wedding night, but you got there first. And there is nothing that can change that.”
“The only part of him I ever got was the most unremarkable thing. In the stuff that matters, where it all counts, you came first. Every time.”
“You didn’t let me finish.” She wiped her tears away with the back of her hand. “He said what he wanted, but I never got to say what I wanted. That’s one of many reasons why we wouldn’t have worked out. I should hate you, but I don’t. Not even a little bit.”
All the tears she’d swept away somehow found their way to me. And I was the ugliest of criers. “I can’t believe you still consider me a friend. I lied to you.”
“But you won’t do it again, right?”
“Never.” I rubbed my cheeks. “How can you forgive me, just like that? If I were you, I’d put LEGOs in my bed and swap out my brush with someone who had lice.”
“I didn’t know if I would last night, but I stayed up late thinking everything over. I know you’re not a Christian, so you might not understand, but if Jesus can die for our sins, who are we not to forgive mistakes?”
“You’re right. I don’t understand.” I laughed through my snot-filled, puffy-eyed breakdown. “Can I hug you?”
“You better.” She wrapped her arms around me, surrounding me with a light scent of peaches and clean cotton I’d never noticed on her before, and in them I found something that felt a lot like home.
“I’m so sorry I came here and messed up your relationship,” I said.
“Don’t be. I’m so sorry for what he did to you.” She stroked my back. “I could never be with a guy who treated someone I care about like that.”
“How can you even stand to be around me? I’m the interloper here.”
“You’re not.” She pulled back and held my face in her hands. “He’s the one who screwed up. And really, you looked so shocked when we got here, when you saw the two of us. Maybe part of me knew then, but I didn’t want to admit it.”
Mandy was so open to self-examination in ways I envied. It never occurred to me that she could’ve had the same blind spots as me when it came to Ethan, but I supposed even the most honest people could lie to themselves.
“I was so lost when he broke up with me,” I said. “But I should’ve seen past his lies, or at least known better than to come here. I’m too impulsive. Ask Paul. He’ll tell you I’m the worst.”
“I doubt he’d say that.” She smiled then, and even with tears and mascara drying on her cheeks, I’d never met someone more beautiful. “He really does love you.”
“No, he doesn’t. He’s not my boyfriend, but we’ve been friends for a long time.”
I didn’t have a reason to fake it with Paul anymore. We could put an end to the ruse, he could find someone at camp to hook up with, and I could do whatever. Or maybe he’d be cool with keeping it going, just for laughs. The idea of going through another breakup right now, even a fake one, depressed the hell out of me.
“Is everything okay in here?” Astrid poked her head into the cabin.
“We’re bonding over how much boys suck.” Mandy motioned her inside. “I know you don’t want to miss this.”
“Oh good.” Astrid pushed open the door. “Because we love both of you and hate Ethan, and we’d have to bury him in the woods if he broke up our cabin.”
“And then we’d go to Hell,” Sarina whispered solemnly. “For murder.”
“This just got really dark.” I stood and dusted off my shorts. “Our cabin might get broken up anyway. Pastor Dean said if I put one more toe out of line, I’m finished here. I don’t even know what the line is, so chances are, my toes are going to be all over it by the end of camp.”
“It’s not your fault Ethan sucks,” Astrid said. “Pastor Dean let you stay because he saw right through Ethan’s bogus testimony.”
“We know Ethan only did that to shame you.” Sarina glanced at the door as if Pastor Dean could hear her. “If it came down to it, we’d back you up again.”
“No. You can’t.” They didn’t need to get dragged down in my muck. “I’m not even a Christian. If I get sent home, life will go on.”
“We don’t care if you’re not a Christian,” Mandy said, taking a seat next to Astrid.
Astrid nodded. “You’re one of us, and the girls of cabin eight stick together.”
“Even if they call our parents”—Sarina gulped—“we’re on your side.”
“I don’t deserve you all.” I spread open my arms and motioned them to come closer. “I need a cabin eight group hug.”
We stood there, holding each other together, while something inside me began to mend. When I’d first come here, I’d been looking for someone I thought I’d lost. I had no idea I should’ve been looking for myself. And these girls, who knew I didn’t fit in, who believed completely different things than I did, cared enough to stand by me through it all.
Chapter 15
After devotions, we had some free time where none of us were on breakfast duty. Mandy lay on her bed with a cold washcloth over her eyes, while Astrid wrote in her journal. Sarina dug around in her makeup kit, tossing empty tubes of glitter into the wastebasket by her bed. She kept shooting me furtive glances, like she would burst if she didn’t speak up, but she didn’t know how to phrase whatever was on her mind.
“I’m curious about something.” Sarina chewed on her thumb as she looked between me and Mandy. “I’m not sure if I should ask, though, because of everything that happened last night
.”
“Just spit it out,” Astrid said.
“Okay.” Sarina stood and paced back and forth, her hands tucked under her chin. “Okay. I’m just going to ask. You’re not a virgin, CeCe?”
“I think that’s been pretty well established,” I said.
She clutched her flaming cheeks. “Whatwasitlike?”
“Huh?” She might as well have had marbles in her mouth. “I don’t think I caught that.”
“The sex,” she whispered. “What was it like?”
Astrid snapped her journal shut, then opened it again, like she was poised to take notes. Mandy sat straight up, her washcloth falling onto her lap. Nothing like an early morning question about sex to get everyone’s attention.
“Do you really want to know?” I asked.
“Yes,” the three of them said in unison.
“All right, I guess you do.” I laughed.
I didn’t want to lay all the awful, embarrassing details out there, but I wished someone had talked about sex with me. Not the kind of conversation I’d had with my mom about the birds and the bees, where she threw a handful of condoms at me and told me to be safe, but the ugly stuff. The awkward stuff. The stuff no one talked about because they thought they were alone. The kind of conversations Paul’s mom had with him.
“The truth is, it was … really bad,” I said.
“How so?” Mandy asked.
“Should we be discussing this?” Talking about sex with my ex-boyfriend’s even-more-recent ex-girlfriend felt all kinds of squicky. “It’s not very Christian.”
“Oh please.” Astrid rolled her eyes. “It’s a good thing you’re not a Christian then.”
“Fine.” This was normal. I could talk about this. “It hurt. A lot. And the second it started, I just wanted him to hurry up so it could be over.”
“That sounds awful,” Sarina said.
“It was, and sex is supposed to be great, right? Well, it wasn’t like that for me. I didn’t feel connected to him at all. I don’t think he even looked at me. He sort of stared at my shoulder, while his face was all twisted up, like he was the one in pain.”
“Just when I thought I couldn’t hate him more,” Astrid said.
Mandy stared at me with wide-eyed horror, as if she’d switched flights at the last minute and just heard the plane she was supposed to be on had crashed.
My worst insecurities bubbled to the surface. The stuff I couldn’t even talk to Paul about. “The whole time, I analyzed. Was my butt too flat or was my stomach not flat enough? Did he notice the weird mole on the inside of my thigh? Did he think I smelled down there?”
“That is exactly what I’d do,” Sarina said. “Like with Jerome, I was so hyper-focused on having no idea what to do, I freaked out.”
“Exactly. And the worst part? When he finished and rolled off me, he just lay there. Didn’t touch me or hug me or ask if I was okay. And I was left wondering if I’d been terrible at it, if maybe that was the real reason why he broke up with me.”
“That’s why you came here,” Mandy said.
“What?” I shook my head. “No. I thought I loved him.”
“Maybe,” Mandy said quietly. “But maybe you also thought if you showed up here, crossing what he told you was the only bridge between you, then you’d know for sure. You’d walk away blaming yourself, and he’d get to walk away absolved of all responsibility.”
My knees gave out, and I plopped down hard on my mattress. “Damn.”
“I had no idea he could be so cruel.” Mandy’s eyes welled up again. “You didn’t deserve to feel that way. How can he still call himself a Christian?”
“That settles it for me,” Astrid said. “I’m never having sex.”
“Me either,” Sarina said.
“Wait, no.” I held out my hands. “You guys, I didn’t tell you this to scare you away from sex. I’m sure it can be nice, maybe even good. It just wasn’t good for me.”
“I think it sounds pretty accurate,” Mandy said. “I mean … I don’t know if I should say this. It might be too graphic.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You’re really going to hold back after what I just shared?”
“You’re right.” She blew out her breath. “I can’t wear tampons. The one time I tried to put one in, it hurt so bad, I cried. And a … you-know-what has to be way bigger than a tampon.”
“Depends,” I muttered. “I guess you could try to milk one first, to see if you find one small enough.”
Astrid scribbled furiously in her notebook. “How do you know if they’re small enough?”
“That was a joke.” I took the pen out of her hand.
“You’re not pregnant, are you?” Sarina asked.
“God no. I mean, not that God.” I pointed at the sky. “But no. We used protection. Which is a whole different can of worms.”
“Tell us.” Sarina leaned forward on her hands. “We need to know this stuff.”
“He wanted me to help him put on the condom, but I didn’t know how to do it. Looking back, he probably didn’t either, but tried to pass it off like it would be sexy if I did it.”
“That sounds like him,” Mandy said.
“It took three attempts to get one of those suckers to stay on. I tried to expand the first one, because I thought you had to snap it on, but it slingshotted out of my hand and hit him in the eye. I have no idea how he stayed hard after that.”
The girls laughed, but it had been a nightmare at the time. Especially because we were both naked. Being naked made everyday embarrassments ten times more mortifying, and hitting your boyfriend in the eye with a condom did not fall under everyday embarrassments.
“Here’s the most important thing.” I tossed Astrid her pen. “Write this one down. Your partner should be checking in with you during sex. They should be making sure you’re okay, and if you’re not, it’s okay to tell them to stop.”
They nodded as if this were all new information, which made me feel infinitely better about my complete lack of knowledge in that department. This was the stuff they needed to teach in sex education. If I didn’t know consent was a conversation, and these girls didn’t know, I was willing to bet there were a whole lot of girls just like us. Girls who technically, legally consented because they said yes once and thought the emptiness they felt afterward was all their fault.
“You should be leading workshops. Not Priscilla,” Astrid said.
I snorted. “I’m sure that would go over really well. The ‘Truth About Sex 101.’”
“Why not?” Mandy clasped her hands. “You could totally teach this stuff. Imagine how many girls would benefit from being able to talk about this, free of judgment, where they could ask questions and get real answers.”
“I’m one toe over the line away from being thrown out of here, remember? I highly doubt Pastor Dean would want me to regale his flock with the tragic truth about the night I lost my virginity.”
“It’s a shame.” Astrid shut her journal and headed toward the bathroom. “Your story would probably do more for abstinence than all the teachings we’ve had about the subject combined.”
“No. Again, no. I’m serious. That’s not why I’m telling you all this.”
Abstinence had not been my goal. Despite my horrible first experience, I wanted to do it again with someone I trusted. Especially now that I knew a guy should check in, that I could demand it, and I could stop if I didn’t like it. Even after saying yes. Ethan had told me he loved me the night we’d had sex, but those weren’t the three little words I’d needed to hear. “Are you okay?” would’ve gone a lot further. In fact, it would’ve made all the difference.
After our first workshop of the day, which Paul told me had been about Everyday Miracles, and which I might’ve spent the entire hour of staring at the wall and daydreaming about sexy pirates, we grabbed our lunch trays and sat outside under the big oak tree.
Priscilla walked by us and stopped short. Disbelief clouded her eyes, and I gave her a pageant wave. Th
e Jesus camp version of the middle finger.
“She can’t believe we’re still here,” I said to Paul. “Did the guy counselor stand guard outside your door last night too?”
“For a little bit, but he got called away by another emergency. A cabin full of freshmen boys were jumping on their beds and swinging their dicks around.”
“They must’ve been putting out fires all over camp last night.” And starting new ones. I ripped a corner off my wedge of Swiss cheese and dipped it in ranch dressing.
“At least they can’t blame us for the dick swinging. That honor belongs to Jerome.”
“Are you surprised we’re still here?”
“Before our meeting with Pastor Dean, I would’ve said yes.” Paul tapped his plastic fork against the rim of his plate. “Did you get a look at those papers on his desk?”
“No.” Who cared about a bunch of bills and invoices? I got enough of that at home with my parents and their ridiculous spreadsheet.
“My mom’s a benefactor of this place. A pretty generous one at that.”
“That’s probably how we got a spot here.” The leadership program was supposed to be for seniors who’d attended previous years, and I’d assumed the recommendation letter had sealed the deal. “Does that bother you?”
“Not really. My brothers came here all four years. Aaron was a counselor for one year, but that’s probably why Pastor Dean let us stay. This place can’t run on the number of campers alone.”
“Maybe if they’d let us wear two-piece suits and chilled out on all the workshops, this place would attract more campers.” We had plenty of free time, but all the group activities centered on kids who’d grown up in the church, and knew all the teachings already. If they wanted to up attendance, they should do a little less pushing and a lot more accepting. “Pastor Dean should ask Astrid for tips on how to build an effective camp.”
