by Kasie West
“Hey, watch it, Clay!” Maricela said.
“Sorry, ladies!” he called out, and the guys on either side of him laughed.
“Is that what people think is flirting these days?” Maricela asked us. “Because if that’s it, we have no hope.”
“Or maybe we do,” Tia said.
Brooks and the band rounded the cabin at the end of the row. Brooks with his long hair and confident stride. My stomach did an unexpected flip that surprised me.
“How come there’s no music playing?” Kai asked the group.
I hadn’t realized the music had stopped until he pointed it out. And just like that, the guitar was being strummed again. I thought Brooks would take it over, since he was obviously the best guitar player here, but he didn’t. He let his gaze wander until it landed on me. He smirked and sauntered over.
“Hey,” Maricela said. “How was the dinner music sesh?”
“The audience was mesmerized.”
“I thought it was great,” I said. At least the forty-five minutes I had heard.
“Oh good, we have one fan,” Brooks said with a flash of the smile that made my stomach flip again. I scolded it.
“No food tonight?” he asked, peering at the empty picnic table.
Maricela pointed. “I have some Oreos in the bear box outside my cabin if that sounds like a meal to you.”
“What’s a bear box?” I asked.
“Kai!” Brooks called. “Avery wants to know what a bear box is!”
Kai came lumbering over as if he were an actual bear and Brooks walked away, presumably to get the Oreos. “Bear boxes are those metal boxes you see outside each of our cabins. We put our food in them and lock it up so the bears can’t get it.”
“There are bears here?” I asked, and the entire group of people sitting around the fire roared with laughter. My cheeks heated up.
Maricela patted my leg. “Oh, you poor city girl. The name of the camp didn’t give it away?”
“We mostly do beach camping. I didn’t think about it.”
“Don’t be too embarrassed—Kai here cried like a baby when he first heard that a bear could break into his cabin. That’s why he’s the one who likes to tell others.”
He tapped Maricela’s shoe with his. “Hey, I didn’t actually cry, but there was lots of whining.”
“Lots of whining!” Clay called out.
I was stuck on the previous bit of information. “A bear can break into our cabin?”
Tia smiled. “Not yours. You’re in the new and improved, double-pane windows, dead bolts on doors, well-populated area of camp: the guest cabins. The bears don’t like people much. We’re on the outskirts of camp with the paper-thin windows and flimsy doors.”
Maybe I didn’t look convinced because Maricela added, “And we haven’t had a bear sighting in a long time. They mostly just pass through on their way to the Dumpsters that are clear on the other side of the employee parking lots.”
“That’s comforting,” I said, full of sarcasm.
Brooks came back holding the package of Oreos and sat in an open chair by Levi and Ian, nowhere near us. I tried not to be too disappointed.
“Any other dangerous animals I should know about? Mountain lions or something?” I asked.
“If you think bears are shy,” she said.
“Wait,” Kai said. “There are mountain lions up here?”
This had everyone laughing again and I wasn’t sure if he did that so I didn’t feel as stupid or if he really didn’t know, but either way, I appreciated it. He pulled up a chair and we all started talking about the things we were most scared of. Kai—snakes. Tia—ghosts.
Then it got to Maricela. “I think I’m most afraid of disappointing my parents.”
“Wow, that went dark fast,” Kai said. “Don’t go all deep on us.”
She nudged his elbow. “I’m serious. My parents have big plans for me and honestly I just want to mess with hair.”
“Mess with hair?” I asked. “As in, cosmetology?”
She nodded.
“That’s a great career,” I said.
“My parents won’t see it that way.”
Tia chimed in. “I’m sure your parents will be happy if you’re happy. That’s what most parents want, right?”
“Yes, for sure,” I said.
“Okay, you’re right,” Maricela said. “I went too dark. Your turn, Avery. What are you scared of?”
I could tell she was trying to get the attention off herself, but how was I supposed to go after that? “I don’t know…bears?”
They laughed, but then Maricela said, “No, really. I went there. What scares you?”
I tried to think of a time in my life I was most scared. “In the sixth grade, I was in this elite choir for school and after a few months I got picked to do my very first solo. The time came to sing it and I just stood there, staring at the audience, in complete terror. I ran off the stage and never went back to choir.”
“You have stage fright?” Maricela asked.
“I must.” It was probably the same reason I froze up every time Lauren’s camera was on me. Or panicked when I was the center of attention. I looked at Kai. “How do you do it? Sit up there and play in front of everyone?”
He shrugged and smiled. “I’m a natural, I guess.”
“There’s your answer,” Maricela said. “An abundance of confidence.”
“This is truth,” Kai said.
“Ian!” Tia called. “Tips for stage fright?”
“Just don’t think about it,” he called back.
“Helpful,” I said.
Levi got up to join us. “Or imagine nobody is listening,” he said. “Oh wait, that just works when playing at dinner…because nobody is.”
“Because all the attention is on me,” Kai said.
“With a head that big…” He trailed off.
“What’s that, Levi?” Kai asked. “Did you want to finish that sentence?”
A movement behind Levi caught my attention and I watched Ian leave the campfire, heading toward the cabins. Brooks was now sitting alone, the Oreos on the ground. He was slouched so far down in the chair that his head rested on the back, and his legs were out in front of him, crossed at the ankles. He looked deep in thought. While the others moved on from their argument and started talking about tomorrow’s workday, I stood up and stretched.
“I’m getting one of your Oreos,” I said to Maricela. She waved me the go-ahead.
“Toss me one too,” Kai said as I walked away.
I reached Brooks.
“Come to steal my food?” he asked, his head still on the chair’s back, his eyes pointing up at the sky.
“Are there any left?”
“Yes.”
I picked up the package, peeled open the resealable top, and took out a cookie. “Kai! Heads up.”
He turned and I threw one into his waiting hands. I got one out for myself and then put the cookies back down.
“Hey, um…thanks for not telling anyone about…”
“About what?” he asked, that teasing glint in his eyes.
“About me having a meltdown. I don’t normally have those, and especially not in front of strangers.”
“Are we still strangers?”
“No…we’re not.” Did that mean we were friends?
“No problem,” he returned. “You okay?”
“I’m…” Okay, Avery, you’re fine. You were willing to text it to Shay and say it to your dad. Why can’t you say it to Brooks? “I’m…still a mess, but I will eventually be okay, I think.” For the first time in days, a little tension eased from my chest at admitting that out loud. And maybe that gave me the courage to say the next thing I blurted out. “I’m going to discover myself this summer.” He was the first pers
on I had admitted that to.
“Are you missing?” he asked.
“I’m beginning to think I am.” And it was not a good feeling.
He nodded at the chair next to him and I sat down.
“Long story,” I said. “Basically, I’ve become a zombie, I guess. Just doing what I always do because I’ve always done it. So now I need to, I don’t know…”
“Live.”
I smiled. “Yes. I’m going to try a bunch of new things. Make sure I’m awake while deciding my future. If I’m going to spend the rest of my life doing something, I want to make sure it’s what I want to be doing. Like you.” I paused as my brain caught up with my statement. “Oh frick, that came out wrong. I don’t want to be doing you. I meant, you know what you want to do with your life.” My cheeks were bright red.
“You don’t want to be doing me?” he asked, obviously enjoying my embarrassment.
“Stop,” I said with a laugh.
He was laughing too, but then his laughter slowly trailed off. “You think I know what I want to do with my life?”
“At least what you’re passionate about.”
“Music?” he asked.
“Aren’t you?” I knew he was. I’d seen him playing, that fire in his eyes.
He slowly nodded. “Do you believe in signs, Avery?”
I thought about that question. “Probably not.”
One side of his mouth rose into a half-smile.
“Do you?” I asked.
“I do,” he said. “After this summer, I was going to give up music. I need a more secure future. People are counting on me.”
“But…,” I said when he stopped.
“But on the way up here this year, I saw that flyer for the festival at a hole-in-the-wall coffee shop and I made a deal with myself. If I could win that festival, I wouldn’t give it up. That was my sign.”
“Win it? Go big or go home?”
“That’s the kind of megasign I need right now. Not some half-hearted maybe.”
“Then win it,” I said.
He gave a breathy laugh. “If only my band believed in me that much.”
“Make them.”
He stared at the tips of his fingers that were probably calloused from years of pressing down on strings. “Help me with the lyrics for our audition song,” he said in a rush of air.
“Me?”
He nodded. “And I’ll…I’ll help you find yourself. I know this camp inside and out. I know all sorts of new things you could try.”
This felt like the easiest decision I’d made in weeks. “Deal.”
“My sister thinks she might be the next…” Lauren paused, the camera pointing at herself while she thought. Then her camera was on me, then on the painting in front of me. “What’s the name of the guy with the big hair who paints?”
Brooks may have agreed to help me find myself the night before but we hadn’t really formulated a plan, so that morning at the breakfast table I had announced, “I’m going to try a painting class today.”
Dad had looked up from his eggs and bacon and said, “Painting? Really?” Did he have to sound so skeptical?
Mom patted the table in front of my plate. “Avery, remember those hilarious potato people drawings you used to bring home from school?”
“When I was like five?” I asked.
“They were so cute,” she said. “I put you in this little art class, but you were more interested in the lady’s cat.”
“You did?” I asked.
“You don’t remember?”
I didn’t, which in my opinion meant this class still met my criteria of trying something new. So I’d put on a T-shirt I didn’t care about (as instructed per the schedule) and gone to the class. Lauren had tagged along. And now we stood in a meadow behind the tennis courts, ankle deep in grass, where we were taught some basic techniques and were told we could paint anything we saw on a thicker-than-normal, but definitely not canvas, piece of paper, clipped to an easel. I chose a group of wildflowers that at the moment looked nothing like the drippy blobs of paint on my paper.
The thwack of tennis balls against rackets rang out behind us. Not exactly the serene environment I’d pictured for a painting session.
Lauren raised her hand. “Teacher!”
“Lauren, his name is Mr. Lucas.” He’d told us he didn’t work for the camp but traveled around doing classes. “And he looks busy.” He was pointing out something on someone else’s painting. I hoped he didn’t make it over to mine.
“Mr. Lucas!” Lauren said, ignoring me. “What’s the name of that big-haired painting guy from television?”
“Bob Ross,” Mr. Lucas said with a smile.
“Yes! Bob Ross. Thank you!”
Back to her phone, she said, “My sister thinks she’s the next Bob Ross.”
“I don’t think that,” I said. “And remember when I said you couldn’t record this.”
She put her phone down. “I don’t mean it literally. It’s exaggeration, for story effect.”
“Hyperbole,” I said.
“Yes, that.” She looked over my shoulder. “Ooh, I’ll be right back.”
“Lauren,” I hissed as she walked away. “That’s super rude.” The class was supposed to last an hour and we’d only been here twenty minutes. Lauren left her paper clipped to her easel and I glanced over at it. She had painted a tree. It wasn’t great but then again, she hadn’t really tried.
Behind me, I saw what had drawn Lauren’s attention—the band. She had caught up with the guys at the corner of the chain-link fence surrounding the tennis courts. I was too far away to hear what they were saying. I added another purple blob to a green stem. All the colors on the cardboard palette I held were mixing together and there was nothing I could do about it. Mr. Lucas was getting closer, going down the row of painters, made up mostly of people in their sixties.
I set my paints on the ground and stepped over to Mr. Lucas. “Excuse me, I’m sorry. I’ll be right back. I’m going to get my sister.”
“That’s fine,” he said.
“Thank you.” I rushed down the path.
“Avery,” Kai said when I reached them. “How is your transformation into Bob Ross going?”
Lauren gave me her impish smile.
“The only thing left is a perm,” I responded.
Levi snorted.
As casually as possible, I looked at Brooks and said, “Hey.”
“Hi,” he said, then returned his attention to the clipboard he held, writing something down.
“I’ve never painted anything in my life,” Levi said. “You any good?”
“No, not at all.” Back in the meadow, my paint blobs were probably dripping onto the tall grass by now.
“It’s one of those things that takes practice,” Ian said. “You’re not born with the skill.”
He was right, of course, and I appreciated the first bit of encouragement I’d heard all day.
“I was born with some skills,” Kai said.
“Oh, here we go,” Levi sighed.
“Good looks, awesomeness, and these.” He flexed his biceps.
“That was probably terrifying for your mother,” Brooks said.
I laughed.
“That’s not what your mother says,” Kai shot back with a punch to Brooks’s shoulder.
“Gross,” I said.
Brooks caught my eye and then looked down at his clipboard. I followed his gaze and saw a paper with the words pay phone, tomorrow, noon.
I gave him a short nod, hoping that was just where he wanted to meet for the deal we’d made the night before, not that I’d gotten another phone call from Shay.
“How’d my footage from the other night turn out?” Kai asked Lauren. “Need some better angles?” He spun a slow circle
and of course Lauren laughed.
My big sister mode came out. It was one thing to talk about how cute the guys were, like Lauren had done the first night she saw them, but my dad was right—Lauren was only fifteen and Kai was eighteen, and I needed to make sure nothing came out of Lauren’s documentary other than some killer footage.
“Yes, actually,” she said, dragging him closer to the chain link. “Outside shots would be good.”
Ian and Levi followed and I stayed close behind.
“What’s with the clipboard?” I asked Brooks, noticing him move with me. “Do you do something aside from band stuff here?”
“We’re gofers. We go wherever we’re needed.”
“But you have to do it together…as a group?” I asked. “You’re inseparable?”
He smiled. “Yes, we’re very codependent.”
“As every good band should be,” I said.
He lifted the clipboard. “No, we don’t have to stay together but we usually do in the mornings so that we can talk over songs and stuff for that night.”
“Oh, is that the reason?” Levi asked. “Then I have a discussion point.”
Ian had wandered over to the fence and was watching a tennis match.
“What’s that?” Brooks asked.
“Kai has gotten heavy-handed with the drums in the bridge. I think you should talk to him about it.”
“I’ll listen for that tonight.”
“Will you?” Levi asked. “Because Kai seems to do what he wants.”
“Seriously, Levi?” Kai said, leaning around the phone my sister had been holding up. “Just because you make zero contributions to the band doesn’t mean you have to crap all over mine.”
“Bass is a key element.”
“Is it, though?” Kai said with a cheerful smile.
Levi turned to Brooks. “This is what I mean—you let him get away with everything.”
“Last I checked, I wasn’t band mom,” Brooks said.
“Spoken like a true leader,” Levi said in exasperation, and stormed off.
I watched him go and then assessed the remaining band members. Kai was focused back on my sister. Ian had never stopped watching tennis, and Brooks was crossing out items on the list he held.
“Is he going to be okay?” I asked when it was obvious nobody was going to say anything.
