Proof of Forever

by Lexa Hillyer

  And even though she should probably be worried, too, Joy can’t help but smile. Maybe everything’s going differently, and maybe that will have disastrous consequences on the future . . . or maybe it won’t. Either way, it just feels so familiar—and so right—to be in this mess together.

  The rock-climbing course is set up along one of the lower cliff faces, around thirty feet high. And waking up this morning, Joy knew she had to conquer it today, if only to make up for her fear two nights ago. Even if it meant dragging her friends practically against their will. And despite their protestations and complaints, she feels . . . light. Like when she was a kid and would ride on the handlebars of Zoe’s bike without holding on, paint her face in mud, eat a ladybug on a dare, or stick a fork in the microwave to try and make it explode. Before she got scared, worried about getting hurt or embarrassed. Back when she always believed things would turn out okay, or even better than okay: fantastic.

  Right now, life does seem like a promise, the sky touchable. And she knows—she’s certain—she’s going to make it to the top of the course. So certain, in fact, that she can’t help humming as she climbs, a few words slipping out.

  “Good song,” a male voice startles her.

  She’s thankful for the harness holding her in place.

  The boy, whom she vaguely recognizes, is hot in a rugged but slightly awkward way, with messy red hair and red-blond eyebrows that seem to dance of their own accord. He pulls himself the rest of the way up to her level.

  “Doug Ryder,” she says with surprise.

  Luckily they are both so red-faced from the effort that he probably has no idea she’s blushing.

  He shakes his head. “Nobody ever calls me Doug. I practically forgot it was my name.”

  “Sorry.”

  “No, no, it’s a good thing. It’s refreshing,” he assures her.

  They both continue to climb. She can tell by the fluid way Doug moves that he’s an experienced rock climber—she’s pretty sure she saw him complete the course once already today. Campers have been going up in groups of ten or twelve. Some have rappelled back down to start all over, like Doug. Some are resting at the top, enjoying the view. She assumes he is going to continue to surge ahead, but he lingers beside her, keeping pace.

  “Nice pipes, by the way,” he says.

  She snorts, but grins. “Thanks, but not really.”

  She looks around to see if her friends are noticing their interaction. Tali seems to have disappeared over the top of the rock and Luce, still below Joy, shrugs apologetically before rappelling back down to the ground with Zoe, who gives Joy a totally obvious wink.

  She turns back to Doug. “I used to sing in choir but, like, ages ago. They basically kicked me out for not blending.”

  He raises an eyebrow at her. “They kicked me out of church, too, but for different reasons.”

  She laughs. He is definitely flirting.

  “So what do you prefer?” she blurts.

  “Huh?”

  “I meant, name-wise,” she says, inwardly scolding herself. Don’t blow it. Be cool. She wasn’t ever very focused on guys at Okahatchee, she realizes now. There was always too much going on with her friends. And maybe she never really thought they noticed her. She tended to be more of a magnet for the younger kids. She dimly recalls how two summers ago she didn’t participate in the rock climbing, but she volunteered to help, making sure the younger campers got properly tied into their harnesses and distributing water bottles. Usually, that was her comfort zone—after all, sometimes blending into the background is the best way to really see everything for what it is. In every group, someone’s got to be the observer, the one who takes it all in, who remembers the details, who listens.

  “Most people just call me Ryder,” he answers, cutting into her thoughts. “So I’m not famous in the Bunk Blue Heron sphere of gossip? That’s a shame.”

  Ryder. She does remember him. He was always doing athletic stuff, while Joy was busy doing exactly what he just implied—gossiping with her best friends. But now she’s up here, on a cliff face, temporarily without them. Being flirted with by Ryder. And flirting back, too.

  “This part’s a little tricky,” he says, pointing her to a closer hold.

  “I’m good,” she says, ignoring the offer. The last thing she wants right now is to slip back into the old Joy, the girl who is scared, who needs help, who needs to be drawn out of her shell. As she pumps her thighs, trying her best to keep up with Ryder, she imagines that shell falling off on its own, tumbling into the dust below.

  Ryder starts talking again, to her relief—something about his older brother and the rock climbing they did together in Mexico during winter break.

  She’s momentarily distracted by a rough patch of rock she can’t quite get a grip on, and the next thing she knows, Ryder’s saying, “So are you?”

  “Am I . . .”

  “Entering. The talent show.”

  Joy’s stomach tightens. It’s already day three of the past. Tomorrow night is the talent show. The following night is Friday, reunion carnival.

  “Technically, I’m on the planning committee,” she responds, hedging.

  They’re almost at the top now. Only a couple of more feet to go. She can hardly believe it, and she’s hit by a small wave of panic. She doesn’t want the climb to be over. Everything’s going so fast.

  But then Ryder smiles at her. “Well, I’m in kind of a bind. See, Jade bailed on me. First she begs me to sign up with her, then she changes her mind.” He pants a little, adjusting his belay device. “I guess winning that merit badge went to her head. Apparently she’s been angling for that thing for like the last five summers.”

  Joy remembers Ryder’s performance at the talent show that last summer now. He’d played some cheesy song on his guitar—a tune that had been made ridiculously popular due to a TV show. Jade sang along with it, big and bold like a Broadway star. Joy was the stage manager and had been surprised Ryder was even friends with someone like Jade, someone who gets into everyone’s business. But maybe he was just too nice to say no.

  This time around, history is rewriting itself. Jade won the merit badge instead of Luce, leaving Ryder without a talent-show performance. It’s a minor change, but it tickles the back of Joy’s mind. She recalls what Zoe keeps warning, about how they shouldn’t mess with the past. Is it already too late? Will there be some sort of terrifying cosmic punishment for all this?

  Does she care?

  “I was thinking about skipping the whole thing, but my dad did drive all the way down here from Vermont to drop off my guitar last weekend,” Ryder goes on, stopping again, almost as though he, too, is hesitant to reach the summit, “and I have a new song I’ve been working on. But it would require, well, you.”

  “Me?”

  “I need a singer,” he says. “It’s decided. I’m signing you up.” She’s about to balk but he says, “Uh-uh. No ‘buts.’ I’ve already heard how good you are.”

  Joy laughs. Is this the camp equivalent of being asked out? “Well, I guess if I have no choice, then it’s settled,” she says, climbing the remaining few inches and then throwing herself gratefully onto the ledge. Her arms and legs are shaking.

  She rolls over onto her back on the dusty ground and hears Ryder clamber over and do the same, both with their harnesses still on, the metal carabiners clinking with their movement. The campers waiting at the top are milling about, picnicking on the supplies that some of the counselors have set up. A bunch more are in the process of finishing the climb.

  For now, Joy doesn’t want to move. She doesn’t want to do anything other than stare at the bright sky, where big white clouds are billowing past, gentle and easy, like fat tufts of cotton, while she takes in giant gulps of the fresh, clear air. They lie like that for several minutes, saying nothing.

  “Come on.” He sits up, then squats
over her, offering her a hand.

  She takes it, and lets him help her up to standing. A quick gasp escapes her as she looks out at the landscape, taking an instinctive step back from the ledge. They may not be that high, but the view is breathtaking: the dark green sway of treetops, the ramshackle rows of cabins, the lake shimmering and blinking in the sun. “Who knew Camp OK was this beautiful?”

  “I know, right?” he says, wiping his hands off on his dirt-covered shorts. “A lot of surprises today,” he adds, and she senses he’s talking about her.

  She grins like an idiot while they unbuckle their harnesses, drop off their equipment in the truck stationed nearby, and grab fresh water bottles, chugging them. She glances around and her grin fades. All three of her friends have left. Your fault, she thinks fleetingly. She let them down two years ago. Why should they forgive her? This whole trip into the past, maybe it’s all make- believe. Maybe they’re just playing along, humoring her. She can’t re-create the past—not really.

  There’s a truck waiting to take the last of the climbers back to the main part of camp, about a couple of miles away—a wagon, really, with a big open bed full of hay in the back for kids to sit on. A boy and girl, around nine years old, are struggling to get into the back of the wagon as Joy and Ryder approach. It’s the Ferguson twins. She’s surprised—and happy—as the names slowly return to her. She and Ryder each take the hands of the two kids and boost them into the back of the truck.

  They hop on behind the twins and head down toward the main camp area, letting the breeze dry their sweaty clothes and revive them. As they pass through the densely wooded area between Lake Tabaldak and Lake Okahatchee, Joy breathes in the deep pine smell and lets the rumble of the truck beneath them relax the tension in her muscles.

  On the way over, she felt such a strong sense of certainty. But now, as the sun flickers through the leaves and pine needles overhead in quick blinding flashes of white, she’s filled with the exact opposite—total uncertainty, total openness to whatever may come. She closes her eyes and finds herself leaning slightly into Ryder, who is sitting next to her, their legs touching. She watches the light dance behind her eyelids.

  “Go ahead, just make yourself at home,” he jokes. “Mi casa, su casa. My shoulder, your pillow.”

  “Sorry,” she says instinctively, opening her eyes.

  “No, I meant it.” He puts his hand on her arm and pulls her back toward him, so that now her head really is resting on his shoulder. They stay like that the whole way back, and even though Ryder is barely more than a stranger to her, Joy has the completely irrational sense that as long as their bodies are touching, she’s invincible.

  By the time they reach the campgrounds, the sun has begun to sink. Joy and the other climbers head toward the dining hall, anxious not to miss another night of fish dogs and twisty fries. She’s eager, too—to rejoin her friends. Whether or not they care. Whether or not any of this is real.

  “Joy, wait.”

  She turns around. Ryder runs a hand through his hair.

  “I was thinking we should probably practice. The talent show is tomorrow.” There’s a light mist starting to come in over the mountains now, making the sunset behind him a blur of pinks and oranges reflected back by the lake. It reminds Joy of her mother’s blush compacts, the mirrors always stained a dusty salmon color, through which her reflection would come back distorted ever so slightly.

  “I’m starving,” she says. “Can we practice after we eat?”

  “Actually, I have a better idea,” he says. “This way.”

  He takes her around to the far side of the dining hall, and through a narrower door at the back of the kitchen, crossing through patches of tall overgrown grass and weeds with tiny purple buds. As she follows him, she can’t help smiling to herself. Already this second-chance summer is unfolding in new, mysterious ways. She knows Zoe probably wouldn’t approve. This is breaking her time-travel rules and regulations. But Zoe isn’t here at the moment. And Ryder is.

  He leads her through a small hallway into the back of the kitchen itself, where several weary-looking servers in hairnets are bustling about with giant, heavy chafing trays. She’s hit by a burst of steamy, fishy, broccoli smell, mingled with burning metal.

  Ryder turns back to face her, making a Sh! signal with his finger. They pass by the servers unnoticed and into a new hallway, and then into a small, grungy lounge area where there’s a beaten-up old plaid sofa, wood-paneled cabinets, and a refrigerator. “They have a staff stash,” he explains. “I found out about it once, when I had to run back here for an EpiPen for Eamon Fitz.”

  Joy nods knowingly—Eamon Fitz is a younger camper famous for his asthma and allergy attacks.

  Ryder swings open the refrigerator and removes a bottle of Sprite. Then he moves to the cabinets. “Bingo,” he says, procuring chips, granola bars, and cookies. He tosses a bunch of the stuff to Joy. They crouch down like criminals as they slip out of the empty lounge room and back the way they came.

  They keep running even when they hit the lawn behind the dining hall, tracing the tree line toward the boys’ cabins. Joy slows automatically as they approach Ryder’s cabin. Even though Joy, Luce, Tali, and Zoe have snuck over here numerous times throughout the years, there’s still something sort of sacred about the separation of the boys’ cabins from the girls’—a certain mystique, defined by strange foot and body odors as well as the overall sense of complete chaos that rules within the boys’ walls.

  The stories of gore are seemingly endless. There was the time Jason Moran and Dave Krauss duct-taped Gene Yung’s sheets down while he was sleeping and he woke up completely trapped in his own bunk, screaming. There was the time Sammy Green got in a fight with Elliot Burr and ended up sending Elliot’s head straight through a bunk-bed ladder, splintering it—Elliot received eighteen stitches and Sammy had to leave camp early that summer. There was the time someone apparently jerked off into Soffi Sorento’s sock—no one ever took credit for that one; some speculated it was Soffi himself.

  Even now, as Joy waits just inside the door of the empty cabin for Ryder to retrieve his guitar, she can practically feel the testosterone emanating off the tangled sheets, the strewn towels, the twisted piles of muddy clothes and athletic gear. The air inside is heavy and still and vaguely yellow-hued, like the eye of a storm.

  “Guys are pigs,” she says, shaking her head, vaguely wishing the other girls were here with her as witnesses.

  “And you wouldn’t have it any other way,” Ryder replies with an easy smile. “I know where we can go that’s private,” he adds, leading her back out of the cabin and toward the lake. They head past the volleyball area and she wonders fleetingly if he’s taking her to the Stevens.

  When they get to the footbridge, he stops and gestures to the boulder that juts into the water just past the bridge. “The little waterfall over there kind of drowns out the noise, so it’s a good spot to practice.”

  They clamber up the side of the boulder so they’re mostly concealed and set out all the snacks. Then Ryder reaches into the guitar case and hands Joy a wrinkled, folded sheet of paper. “Here,” he says, “I have to tune up.” He bends his head over the guitar, adjusting and tightening the strings. She notices how gently and easily his hands move across the frets.

  Joy unfolds the paper. In the waning light, she struggles to make out the lyrics to his song, labeled at the top: Disappear.

  “So it’s two verses, chorus, one verse, and a final chorus, okay? I’ll play it to you first so you can get a feel for what it’s supposed to sound like,” he says. “Obviously my voice sucks so just bear with me on that.”

  His red hair appears darker as the last of the sun slides behind the mountains with a final gasp of pale blue light. He doesn’t make eye contact with her as he plays, plucking at the strings percussively and staring out over the water. Joy almost feels bad for being here, as if she’s invad
ing his private space.

  But when he starts singing, all thoughts of regret flee her mind. He’s obviously not much of a singer—his voice is rough and strained—yet somehow that only adds to the honesty of the sound.

  I call and you aren’t there,

  Empty room at the top of the stairs,

  All your things untouched

  The ribbons that you loved so much—

  I pick up the books, the shirts,

  Things you’ll never use again.

  Sometimes even sleeping hurts,

  Driving myself crazy again.

  And it’s clear, oh so clear

  You’ll never be here

  Because every day, a little more

  You disappear, you disappear, you disappear.

  Now I climb another wall,

  Look out from another height,

  Trying to remember it all

  Scared that I just might.

  But it’s clear, oh so clear

  You’ll never be here

  Because every day, a little more

  You disappear, you disappear, you disappear.

  Joy is shocked to feel tears pricking the backs of her eyes, and for a while she can’t say anything, almost afraid to break the moment, like it’s a bubble that a single wrong word could pop. The song is so much more than she expected—so much more beautiful, smart, and raw.

  Eventually, he’s the one to end the silence. “I know that last transition still needs some work . . .”

  “Are you kidding?” She shakes her head. “It’s perfect. It’s so good. I almost don’t feel right, singing your words. . . .”

  “Oh, you have to,” Ryder says, finally locking eyes with her. “That’s the whole point. If it’s any good, you’ll make it great.”

  And so they begin practicing, at first tentatively, then with more precision and confidence. They even figure out a harmony for the chorus. The whole time Joy senses how important the song is to Ryder. She’s aching to ask him what it’s about—who it’s about—but doesn’t dare. After a while, she has the lyrics memorized, and begins to relax into the music, enjoying watching the way Ryder’s hands move across the guitar, sometimes softly, sometimes with quick, rapid confidence.