Sunkissed

by Kasie West

  The next day brought perfect weather. Brooks had led me all the way to the edge of the guest cabins the day before. We’d stayed on the back side of buildings, cut through trees, well off the trail, and away from people. He kept hold of my hand the entire time as we tripped over roots and stepped in hidden puddles, laughing and shushing each other as we went.

  The rain, which had continued sporadically throughout the day, canceling all outdoor activities, had finally cleared. And now the camp smelled like damp dirt and tangy pine. When Lauren and I entered the lodge to meet up with the hiking group, D was standing on the bench that surrounded the tree, holding a clipboard.

  “Fredrick Sampson,” she called out.

  A man in his midthirties raised his hand. “Here.”

  “She’s taking roll?” Lauren whispered.

  “Guess so.”

  Maricela stood by a folding table full of snacks.

  “Laney Swan,” D continued.

  A woman with a big sun hat waved. “Yeah.”

  D put a mark on the clipboard; then her eyes were on me. “This excursion is already full, sorry.”

  “We’re on the list,” I said. “Avery and Lauren Young.”

  D shook her head as she ran her pen along the page. “I don’t—”

  “They’re on there,” Maricela said.

  “Oh yes, here you are, at the very bottom.”

  Maricela rolled her eyes and nodded me over.

  “I don’t think she likes me very much,” I whispered.

  Maricela waved her hand through the air like it was nothing. “Nah. That’s just her.”

  “If you say so,” I said. “By the way, this is my sister, Lauren. Lauren, this is Maricela.”

  “Hi,” Lauren said. “Are these snacks for the hikers?”

  “Yes, help yourself.”

  Lauren eyed the snacks warily. “Free snacks must mean it’s a long hike. Is it long?”

  “It’s not hard,” Maricela assured her.

  “That’s not what I asked. Is it over a mile?”

  “A mile?” Maricela said. “A mile would hardly get us out of camp!”

  “So two miles, then,” Lauren said with a smile. “I can do two miles.”

  “Are you negotiating?” Maricela asked.

  “I am,” Lauren said. “What would it take to get a ride to the halfway point in one of those air-conditioned shuttles I saw in the parking lot?”

  “It would take a road. There is no road to the rock slides.”

  Lauren looked at me like this would change my mind. Like no road meant no civilization. “The camp has its own water slide and we only have to go about a hundred yards for it,” Lauren said, as if she needed to remind me.

  “I promise it will be worth it,” Maricela said. “They are amazing.”

  “I’m holding you to that.” Lauren grabbed several granola bars and a couple packs of trail mix off the table and put them in the backpack I was carrying.

  “Okay!” D said. “Everyone gather ’round. I just need to go over a few rules.”

  * * *

  Maricela was right. Regardless of the fact that my feet hurt and sweat was beading along my upper lip and gathering at my temples, it was worth it. Between spindly pine trees and tall grass and wildflowers was a wide stream of flowing water. And in that stream was a natural phenomenon that I had never seen before—large sheets of rock smooth enough to slide on. And that’s exactly what people were doing—sliding over the slick surface of the flat rocks to a pool ten feet below. Beyond the pool was another slide and another drop.

  “This is amazing,” Lauren whispered, her camera scanning the scene in front of us.

  “Remember what we talked about!” D called out to the group that was already moving toward the slides. “Look for people below before you slide, and no diving!”

  I squinted my eyes upstream toward the first slide. “Wait, is that…?”

  “Kai!” Lauren called.

  He turned at his name and a big smile took over his face. “Hey!”

  D shaded her eyes with one hand, her other hand flying to her hip. “What is he doing here?”

  “It’s my day off!” he called, as if he’d really heard D’s question. Maybe he could read lips from fifty feet away.

  “Wait for me!” Lauren called, throwing off her tank and sliding out of her cutoffs. She wore an adorable high-waisted two-piece.

  D sputtered a bit, as if she was going to object, but Lauren was gone before she uttered a word.

  I picked up her phone, which she had tossed onto her pile of clothes, and tucked it in the front pocket of my backpack.

  Maricela, who had been walking at the back of the group with some slower hikers, stopped at my side, out of breath.

  D whirled on Maricela. “Did you know they were going to be here?”

  They? My eyes followed the flowing stream down the smooth rocks, and I saw a couple other employees I knew and several I didn’t.

  “Who?” Maricela asked.

  “Kai, Clay, Ian, Lucy, Mario.” She pointed at each as she said their names.

  “No, but if it’s their day off, they can go wherever they want.”

  D shook her head. “Janelle said—”

  “D, there are a ton of people here. You know Janelle just means that we can’t hang out with guests alone.”

  D’s eyes slid to mine and my heart seemed to stop in my chest. She had seen me the day before behind that pegboard. Brooks thought she hadn’t but it was obvious now she had. Was she going to call me out?

  “You’re right,” she said. “That is the official rule.”

  “So see, we’re all good,” Maricela said. “Go have fun.”

  “I’ll go make sure the guests are enjoying themselves,” D said, and left us standing by the pile of backpacks and clothes that the hikers had abandoned near us.

  “That’s not what I suggested,” Maricela said under her breath, “but almost the same thing.”

  I tried not to laugh too loud.

  “I thought it was Brooks’s day off too,” Maricela said, proving that even though she’d played innocent with D, she may have known some of the other employees would be up here. She moved to her tiptoes and scanned the heads in the water. “I wonder why he didn’t come.”

  “Pretty sure he hates most of the guests,” I said.

  “Who hates the guests?”

  I tried to contain the smile that wanted to take over my face as I looked to the right and saw Brooks walking up from where he must’ve just completed the series of slides. His hair was wet and he wore a swimsuit and water shoes. And he looked really good. Really, really good.

  “We were just talking about you,” Maricela said unhelpfully. Then she had the audacity to be distracted by a group of campers standing on an outcropping of rocks by the water. “That’s super slippery, guys, be careful!” She walked away.

  Brooks stopped in front of me, water dripping off the bottom of his shorts. “You think I hate everyone?”

  “I mean everyone but me, obviously.”

  He gave a sharp laugh. “Obviously.”

  “You didn’t tell me you were coming to this today,” I said.

  “You didn’t tell me you were coming.”

  “I guess that’s true.” Because I hadn’t known today was his day off.

  He jerked his head toward the slides. “You going to try it?”

  I realized I was just standing there, sweat on my face, gripping the straps of my backpack, my shoes and shorts and T-shirt still very much on. “Yes, of course.” I let my backpack slide down my arms and onto the ground by the pile of other backpacks. I was very aware that Brooks was still there as I took off my shoes and shorts.

  “Do you do this a lot?” I asked.

  “The slides?” he resp
onded.

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve done it a few times.”

  “It’s fun?” I didn’t know why I was so nervous.

  “For a girl with the Granny app on her phone, you can’t be scared of this.”

  I laughed. Granny was a game where a scary cartoon grandma hunted down the player and killed them if they didn’t hide well enough. I hadn’t played it in forever. “I was wondering when you were going to start calling me out for my apps.”

  “Not nearly soon enough,” he said.

  “You owe me reciprocation.” I narrowed my eyes. “You do actually have a phone, right?”

  He chuckled. “Yes. I do.”

  “Don’t laugh. This place messes with my head.”

  “It is super weird not seeing people on their phones all the time.” He held up a finger. “Except your sister.”

  “True, she keeps us all in this decade.”

  “Is she serious about making a band documentary?”

  “As serious as Granny is when she discovers your hiding place.”

  His lips twitched a little and he said, “So your sister is going to kill us?”

  I shoved his shoulder. “And I thought my joke was bad.”

  “Your joke was bad. It was terrible. It deserved that comeback.”

  As we headed up an incline toward the first slide, D turned away from the group she’d been talking to and jolted to a stop when she saw us. I inched to the left, putting more space between me and Brooks.

  “Hey, Desiree,” Brooks said.

  The hard look she’d given me slipped off her face and she showed all her teeth to Brooks. “Hi, be safe.”

  He nodded and we continued up.

  When I was sure we were well past her, I said, “She saw me yesterday.”

  “What?” he asked.

  “At the ropes course. With you.”

  The muscle in his jaw jumped, then relaxed. “Are you sure?”

  “I mean, no, but I think.” I watched as his brain seemed to work through things. I cringed. “That’s bad, right?”

  “She didn’t see us. She would’ve reported me.”

  “Yeah?”

  “For sure.”

  “And if she had reported you?”

  “I wouldn’t be here,” he said.

  “Then we need to be more careful.” I almost suggested that we shouldn’t spend any more alone time together. That we always needed to be with other people if we were going to hang out. But I couldn’t force myself to say it out loud and I knew that made me selfish.

  He nodded. “Agreed.”

  I slid down the rock after Brooks. It wasn’t quite as smooth as it looked but it was fun. Especially the drop at the end. I landed in the large pool below with a splash, my breath sucked out by the cold.

  When I surfaced, Brooks was talking to Kai and Lauren, who were treading water off to the side. I swam over to join them, out of the way of the steady stream of people sliding after me. Most of the sliders didn’t linger in this drop zone but continued through it and on to the next.

  “How deep do you think this is?” Kai asked. “As deep as the school pool?”

  Brooks looked down as if he could see the bottom but the water was dark. “At least.”

  All I could see were our legs, pumping to keep us afloat. “Did you two go to high school together?”

  “Yep, Bulldogs for life.” Kai barked and held out a fist, but instead of bumping it with his own, Brooks pushed down on Kai’s shoulder, sending him underwater. Kai must’ve pulled on Brooks’s leg from beneath the surface because Brooks went down fast with a laugh.

  My brain was just thinking about the fact that one of our rival schools back home were the Bulldogs when Lauren said, “They live in Pasadena.”

  “You do?” I asked Brooks, who had resurfaced.

  He wiped off his dripping face with one hand. “I do what?”

  “Live in Pasadena?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “We live in Arcadia,” I said. How had we never talked about this before? When he said he’d traveled four hundred miles to get away from home, for some reason I thought he lived north of here. Oregon or something.

  “You do?” he asked. Our cities were basically neighbors.

  I nodded. Brooks was hard to read but there was a brief flicker of something in his eyes—surprise?

  “Come on, Brooks,” Kai said. “Let’s show them the echo chamber.”

  Lauren, who was floating on her back now, said, “What’s the echo chamber?”

  “Follow me.” He swam toward the curtain of water falling from the edge of the slide above, and then he swam through it, disappearing from sight.

  Lauren followed him.

  I put my hand on Brooks’s arm. “Hold up.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Should I be worried about that?”

  “About what?” he asked.

  “Lauren is fifteen. Kai knows that, right?” Now that I knew Kai lived in the next town over from us, I was worried even more that Lauren had gotten some ideas in her head that this could actually be something real.

  “She’s fifteen?” he asked, as though this was news to him.

  “Yes. Too young for Kai.”

  “Too young for…” His eyes got wide. “No, Kai would never. You guys are guests here. He’s just really friendly.”

  I paused, wanting to correct him for lumping me and my sister into the same category. Wanting to remind him that I was two years older. But he was right, of course. He wasn’t hanging out with me because he was interested. We hung out because we were helping each other. We might have been breaking the basic rule, but he was telling me now, in not so many words, that anything more than that was too big of a risk. And, of course, I agreed. We’d just gotten through saying we needed to be more careful. “Okay, good.”

  I moved toward the curtain of water.

  “Wait,” Brooks said, stopping me this time. “She’s not into him, is she?”

  “I don’t know. She’s very intense about a lot of things. I’m hoping this time her enthusiasm is about the documentary.”

  Brooks held my gaze, trying to read into what I wasn’t saying, but I was telling the truth. “I’ll talk to him,” he said.

  “Thank you.” I forced myself to look away from his stare to where Lauren had disappeared. “Let’s go.”

  Behind the falling water was a shallow cave. Before I had time to move onto the rock with Kai and Lauren, Brooks broke through the curtain behind me. His momentum pushed me forward, my knees scraping rock.

  He swore. “Sorry. Are you okay?”

  “Yes, no big deal.” I climbed the rest of the way into the cave and he followed.

  “Cool, right?” Kai said.

  “A bit coffin-like,” I said. Not because it was small or anything. It easily fit all four of us and would easily fit several more. But the ceiling was low, and being surrounded by stone and water felt constricting. Plus it was at least twenty degrees cooler in here.

  “I think it’s awesome!” Lauren said, and her voice echoed off the walls along with the water.

  “Check it out,” Kai said, and he sang. “La la la la la!” His voice bounced around the space.

  He held a fake microphone to Lauren.

  “Twinkle, twinkle little star,” she belted out.

  Then his fake microphone was in front of me. I stared at his fisted hand for a moment, the familiar tension I always felt when being put on the spot tightening my chest.

  Maricela’s head appeared through the curtain of water, saving me. She let out a loud growl. Lauren screamed and I covered my ears.

  Mari climbed in, pulling Ian along with her. “Are you giving voice lessons in here?”

  Ian settled in next to Mari and pushed his soppi
ng wet hair off his forehead. “Kai is giving voice lessons?” he asked.

  “What are you trying to say?” Kai asked. “You know, if you weren’t the lead singer, I would be next in line for sure.”

  Both Brooks and Ian scoffed.

  “Pretty sure you’re tone-deaf,” Maricela said.

  “All the years of pounding on drums has made me lose a bit of hearing.” Kai stuck his pinky in his ear and wiggled it.

  “Is that the excuse you’re going with?” Brooks asked.

  Kai took Ian into a headlock and rubbed his head with his fist a few times. “Are you saying I don’t have the voice of this songbird right here? Sing for us, our pretty little songbird.”

  Ian pinched Kai’s side and he yelped and released him.

  “Yes, sing for us!” Lauren said.

  “Any requests?” he asked.

  “Something from Dirty Dancing,” I said, rubbing at the goose bumps on my arms. “I’ve been getting Dirty Dancing vibes since we got to camp.”

  “Is that the name of a band?” Ian asked. “I don’t know them.”

  Everyone in the cave made some sort of shocked noise.

  “It’s a movie!” Lauren said.

  “Never seen it,” Ian said.

  “Come on,” I said. “You had to have at least heard of it.” I held up the fake microphone this time and sang, “ ‘I…had the time of my life.’ ”

  I was staring at Ian, who was still very lost, and it took a second to realize everyone had gone quiet. I looked from Kai to Maricela and finally to Brooks, whose expression was once again unreadable.

  “What?” I said.

  “You can sing,” he responded in a low voice.

  I rolled my eyes, feeling my cheeks heat up. “This cave is like a shower. Everyone sounds better in the shower.”

  “Not everyone.” He shoved Kai’s arm, and Kai responded with something about Brooks’s mother in the shower.

  Brooks punched his arm this time and Kai let out a hooting laugh, then yelled, “Last one down all three slides is on bathroom duty tomorrow!” He burst out of the curtain of water, followed closely by Maricela, Ian, and Lauren. That left me and Brooks, who didn’t move, alone behind the waterfall.