by Kasie West
Brooks looked confused for a split second before he said, “Oh, Levi? Yeah, he’ll get over it. Always does.”
“You all seem to fight a lot.”
“I wouldn’t call it fighting but yes, there are many strong opinions here.”
It had seemed like fighting to me. And conflict wasn’t my favorite; I tried to avoid it when I could. Lauren’s laugh rang out and my brows drew together as I watched her and Kai, heads close, watch a video on her phone.
“Lauren, we should probably get back to our class.” I gave Brooks the Help me out here, she’s only fifteen look.
It was a lot to expect him to understand without words but he seemed to at least understand the first part because he said, “And we have a mouse in cabin four to corner, boys.”
They left, and as Lauren and I walked back to the meadow and our paintings, I said, “You know he’s eighteen, right?”
“Who?” she asked.
“You know exactly who I’m talking about,” I said, because she did; she was just trying to play innocent.
“Okay, Dad,” Lauren returned.
“Seriously, Lauren, any boy in college interested in a sophomore in high school is only interested in one thing.”
“Now you can read minds?” She sighed as she picked up her paint palette off the grass. “It’s not my fault that I’m mature for my age.”
“I’m not kidding.”
“Whatever. Nothing is happening. Pretty sure you’re the only one crushing on someone,” she said.
“No, I’m not. We’re just friends!” My racing heart and overly defensive reaction seemed to completely contradict my words. So I calmly added, “Plus, Brooks is only a year older than me. There’s a difference. But, either way, it doesn’t matter. I’m not here to get anyone fired.” And that was true.
She reached over and swiped a streak of green paint across my arm.
I gasped. “Brat!” I added purple to her neck and she squealed, then laughed.
I held up my paint palette like a shield, waiting for her retaliation. But before she did, she pulled out her phone so she could get it on video. My smile slipped off my face.
“Where did you get these? You just have bows and arrows lying around your cabin?” I asked.
Brooks and I stood in a clearing in the woods above the lake. After meeting at the pay phone (which turned out to be just a convenient place, not a waiting phone call), we’d trudged through overgrown brush, away from the crowded trails of camp, away from the docks dotted with colorful kayaks and paddle boats, away from the roped-off swimming area with its lounge chairs and splashing kids, to this spot that seemed far away from everything.
Even though it seemed far away, it had only been a fifteen-minute walk. I picked a few foxtails out of my socks and then stood. Beyond the trees surrounding us, I could see the large lake stretched out below, its jagged borders making it seem like it wanted to escape the confines of its home, the trees its only barriers to freedom.
Brooks picked up a bow leaning against a tree. “I swiped them from the archery range. They won’t miss them for a couple hours.”
I wondered when he had brought them up here. When he’d had time.
“Have you done this before?” he asked.
“Snuck into the woods with a boy and shot arrows? No, no, I haven’t.”
He smiled. “And if you take away the boy and the woods?”
Why would I want to do that? “Still no,” I said.
He nocked an arrow onto the bowstring and sent it flying into a fallen tree across the way.
“Is that what you were aiming for?”
“Yes,” he said.
“I wasn’t sure how impressed I should be.”
“And you’ve decided you’re very impressed?”
“For sure.”
His eyes twinkled as he handed me a bow. “Let’s see what you got.”
I gripped the bow and stared at the tree across the way. “Tips, tricks, secrets?”
“Are you right-handed?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, left arm forward, right elbow straight back, until your hand rests against your cheek, and then aim and release.”
“That easy, huh?”
“I guess we’ll see.” He held up an arrow and pointed to the orange, feathered end. “See this little notch here? That fits over the string.”
I lifted the bow, fitting the arrow in place, and managed to stretch the string and arrow back until my hand touched my cheek. I’d seen enough movies to know at least the basics. There was more tension in the string than I’d imagined there’d be.
Brooks reached out and adjusted my elbow. “Look at your target over the top of the arrowhead.”
“Okay, I got it.”
“And release.”
I released, the arrow flew, and the string snapped hard against my inner arm. “Holy…Ouch!” I dropped the bow and covered my stinging arm.
“Oh yeah,” he said with a cringe. “I should’ve warned you about the snapback. People wear forearm guards for that.”
“But we don’t? We’re not people?”
He laughed. “I didn’t think to grab any.”
“Did you not get your arm snapped when you shot?” Without thinking, I grabbed his arm and flipped it to study the underside. There were no red marks.
“If you bend your extended arm just a bit, it helps.”
I dropped my hand. “Remember when I said tips, tricks, secrets? That would fall under really any of those categories.”
“I’m sorry.” He took my arm this time. “Let me see.” He ran a light finger over the welt that had appeared on my skin. “Does it still hurt?”
A chill ran up my arm and all the way down my spine. Our eyes met. He was waiting for an answer, I realized. “No, it doesn’t.” Lauren’s accusation about me having a crush on him flashed through my mind and I took a step back, breaking our connection. Then, much too loudly, I asked, “Did I hit the target?” I searched the tree in the distance, which only held his arrow.
“Close,” he said.
“Are you lying?”
“Yes.”
I walked the path to the tree and found my arrow on the ground halfway there. I scooped it up and finished the walk, pulling his out of the dark wood. Instead of walking back to him, I sat on our target. A large black ant crawled along the bark by my leg, carrying a tiny rock in its pinchers. I shifted out of its path.
“Where did you learn how to shoot an arrow?” I asked as Brooks walked my way.
“Here, actually. My first summer.”
“I thought you were going to tell me that you belong to a family of hunters or something.”
“No. I’ve only ever shot paper targets. And honestly, not very well.”
“But I was very impressed. Do I need to take it back?”
He nudged at the tree with his foot. “This was a very big target.”
“Obviously not big enough for some of us.” I held out the arrows to him.
“It was your first time. Don’t tell me you’re done.”
“I’m done for a minute.” I rubbed my arm. “I thought you were going to bring your notebook so we could work on lyrics too.” But he hadn’t. The only thing in the clearing were the bows and arrows.
“That would’ve been smart.”
“When is this festival audition anyway?”
He used the arrows as drumsticks and tapped out a beat on a branch. “July eighteenth.”
“That’s in less than four weeks!”
“We have the instruments, the players, and the music. All we need are the lyrics. Easy.”
I laughed. “Except obviously not, because you guys have had, what, three weeks together and have written two lines?”
“But now we have you.”
“We have almost four weeks.”
“No pressure or anything.”
He sank both arrows into a rotting section of wood on the fallen tree and left them there. “If it works, it works. If it doesn’t…”
“It’s a sign?”
“Right.”
Great, Brooks’s entire future was dependent on whether I could help him write the perfect song? “Remind me of the lines Ian kept singing the other night.”
“ ‘What’s tomorrow look like from over there? Because from here it looks a lot like yesterday, and I’m tired of trying to rewrite history.’ ”
My eyes were on the ant traveling the log again while I listened to Brooks. “Did you write that?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s it about?”
He seemed surprised by the question, as if nobody had asked him that before. Wasn’t that the kind of thing a band discussed when writing lyrics? “It’s about feeling stuck, I guess, like when your future looks exactly like your past and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
I moved one foot onto the log with me and hugged my knee to my chest. “Is it fiction? Or is that inspired by your life?”
His gaze went out to the lake or at least in that direction. “Inspired is such a funny word. Like my life could be inspiration for anything.”
“Many stories are inspired by tragedy.”
“I guess that’s true.”
“So what’s yours?” I asked.
“What’s mine?”
“Your tragedy. Why all the musical angst? Broken heart? Bitter divorce?”
“I haven’t been married yet,” he said.
I gave a breathy laugh. “You’re running out of time.”
“I know, I’m practically an old maid, a spinster, a cat lady….Wow, all the late to marriage sayings only apply to women, don’t they?”
“Yes, should we write a song about all the misogyny in the world?”
“Because an all-male band performing a song about misogyny is a good look?”
“You’re right, let’s focus on your tragic, tragic backstory and then go from there. So spill.”
“Yes, where do I start? My pathetic life is full of lyrical inspiration.”
I could tell he had started that as a joke, but by the end of the second sentence, his voice had gone so low I almost couldn’t hear it. So I put my chin on my knee and waited to see if he wanted to share.
He was back to staring at the lake. “My dad is sick. He had a stroke several years ago and can hardly function on his own. My mom decided to put him in a home that we really can’t afford. So now she works all the time and all my money goes to the family fund as well and basically I feel like I’m forty when I want to be eighteen for a minute but she needs me and so does my little brother. But most of all, my dad.” He said that all in a breathy rush, like he’d said it a million times and yet hadn’t shared it with anyone.
When I didn’t respond right away, searching for words that didn’t exist, he slowly let his head turn my way. “How’s that for tragedy? Is there some good inspiration in there?”
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “About your dad.”
“It’s…” He shrugged. “It’s whatever.”
“I understand why you feel like you need a practical career instead of…”
“Selfishness?”
“What? No. Most teenagers I know wouldn’t contribute any of their paychecks to the family expenses. Brooks, you’re not selfish for also wanting to dream.”
“I guess the universe will let me know.”
Just in case there wasn’t some greater power ready to dole out signs, I wanted to help as much as possible. “Lyrics,” I said.
“You have an idea?”
“ ‘What’s tomorrow look like from over there? Because from here it looks a lot like yesterday, and I can’t rewrite history,’ ” I said, tweaking the last line of the lyric slightly.
Brooks nodded as if he agreed with the change and added, “ ‘Even though I’ve tried before.’ ”
I hated that he thought he was selfish for wanting to pursue music. He could be there for his family and still dream. I repeated his lyric aloud a couple times, trying to think what could come next in the song. Finally I spit out, “ ‘It’s time for change, for letting go, for wanting more.’ ”
His magic smile was back. “Look at you trying to add hope to my songs.”
“If you don’t like that line, it could be something like—”
“No, I like it. It fits. And the guys are always telling me that every song needs at least a little hope in it. I guess we just needed someone in the writing sessions who has some.”
I was about to respond when his watch started beeping.
“Time’s up,” he said, collecting the arrows from the bark, then looking over his shoulder as he headed to the others across the way. “Did you want to try one last shot?”
I stared at the arrows. That was the whole point of this, right? To shake myself awake. I smiled as I realized this experiment of mine was way more fun to do with someone else. And it didn’t hurt at all that the someone else was the attractive, confident, guitar-playing Brooks, who I absolutely did not have a crush on at all. “Yes.”
I walked down the trail, toward my cabin, my eyes on my dusty ankles. We’d been here over a week and I was never going to get used to how dirty my feet always were.
“Avery!”
The beach area and docks had just closed for the day and several people were tugging canvas totes and tired kids along the path, blocking my view. I weaved through a group until I saw Maricela on the beach by the swimming area, dragging a lounge chair back into its spot. She waved at me when I finally saw her.
“Hi!” I said, stepping over a knee-high rope border and around the snack hut, where an employee was retracting the awning, to join Mari on the sand.
“Where are you coming from?” she asked.
“The lodge. Lauren and I made some really lopsided vases.” Again, Brooks and I hadn’t made a plan, so instead of some cool outing, I was left with whatever the camp schedule offered.
“Ah, pottery? Fun.”
I patted my bicep. “It was a workout.”
“See you later, Maricela,” the girl from the snack hut called.
“Bye, Lucy! Thanks for letting me raid the candy stash today.”
Lucy held a peace sign in the air.
Back to me, Maricela said, “Speaking of workouts, in a couple days, I have to lead a hike up to the natural slides. The list fills up fast, so I added you and your sister.”
“That sounds fun.”
“Try to tell your face that.” She threw a striped beach towel into a pile she’d started by a standing umbrella.
I followed suit and collected more used towels that had been left on chairs. “No, it does.”
“Good because D signed up to co-lead with me and I need to make sure some people I like are going to be there.”
“I thought she was front desk duty.”
“She is, just like I’m lifeguard, but Janelle is all about employee satisfaction and she lets us pick a few extra things each summer to mix it up. So we don’t get bored.”
“And you picked a hike?”
“Not just any hike! It’s the natural slides. You’ll see why I picked it soon.”
“Can’t wait.”
A loud buzzing noise sounded by the docks, making me jump. Clay stood on the end, holding up a megaphone. “Lake activities are closed for the day. Please return.”
A lone red kayak was at least fifty yards out, turning in circles.
“You must paddle on both sides,” Clay said. “No, both!”
Maricela laughed as s
he lowered the back of a lounger.
Past the kayak, on the opposite shore, something caught my eye. Some bright, multicolored…balloons? They were bobbing and bouncing, attached to or tangled around a tree trunk. “What is that?” I asked.
“It’s a person who doesn’t know how to work a kayak,” Maricela said.
“No, past him.”
She was squinting now, too, and sighed. “I swear. People are so rude. Always leaving their trash everywhere. Come on.”
She beelined it to the docks, where Clay was now helping the kayaker onto solid ground. The man seemed wobbly as he dropped his life jacket in a pile of others and moved past us.
“You’re welcome,” Clay mumbled, now tying up the kayak.
“Clay,” Maricela said.
“What? You heard nothing,” he said, then stood and began gathering the life jackets and tossing them into an open shed by the lifeguard stand.
“How about untying one of the canoes for us?” Maricela asked sweetly.
“What? Why? I need to clean up.”
She pointed and when Clay saw what we had, he walked down the wooden planks and freed a canoe at the far end. It was a two-seater but he climbed in after us, sitting on the hump in the middle. They each grabbed a paddle, but since there were only two, I was left empty-handed. As we glided across the lake, it seemed twice as far as it had from the docks.
When we reached the shore, Maricela, who was in the front, hopped out and held on to a handle while Clay and I climbed out. Then Clay dragged the canoe farther onto the sand.
“Is this still part of the camp over here?” I asked.
“No,” Maricela said. “This is the state park.”
The balloons were tied around the trunk of the tree just past the shoreline and were banging into each other, creating an unnatural rhythm in the forest.
“Anyone bring a knife?” Clay asked as we approached.
“You don’t carry one?” Maricela asked.
I smiled. “Is that a man requirement?”
“Yes,” she said.
“I guess I’ve failed as a man,” Clay said.
I took hold of a section of the ribbon and tried to rip it in two by sheer force. It didn’t work. While Clay and Maricela took turns trying as well, I searched the ground for some sort of tool that might help us. I came back with a rock.
