Camp Payback

by J. K. Rock

  “Oh, I’m so sorry!” She grabbed a dry towel and dabbed at my abdomen, the brush of her fingers making my muscles contract and brain go haywire.

  I stepped back and held my clinging T-shirt away from my stomach. How the hell was I going to get through this week with a girl who could make me forget my own name?

  There was only one solution. I’d pretend she wasn’t there. Ignore her completely, if that was possible.

  “Javier, I said I was sorry.”

  I met her eyes and vowed it’d be the last time this week I did it. Deep green was my favorite color, and their expressiveness made it hard to look away. With any other girl, I wouldn’t think twice about passing the time with some talk. But with Alex—a girl who fascinated me more than any other girl I’d ever met, a celebrity with camera crews ready to leap out bushes—I couldn’t even take that small risk. No. After I said what I had to say, I’d shut up for the next six days.

  “Fine,” I muttered at last.

  It’d have to do.

  ……………….

  “Well, I’m sure you can hardly wait to be done serving your sentence with me.” Alex slammed another cabinet shut. She put away a serving tray as the mess hall kitchen filled with steam from the dishwashers and the sink full of hot water I’d used to clean the counters and oversized pans.

  Just like every other day of her week-long punishment of cleaning up after breakfast, I stuck with my vow and said nothing in response. I’d discovered Alex talked enough for both of us anyhow.

  “After today you’ll have the mess hall all to yourself.” Slam! Another cabinet suffered from her bad mood. “You won’t have to pretend I don’t exist.” Thwack! A cutting board hit the countertop as she reorganized them largest to smallest. “Or ignore every single thing I say.”

  Actually, I more than knew Alex existed. Spending this week with her had only made it harder to stop thinking about her. But getting friendly with Alex was out of the question. If only my eyes didn’t keep following her around the mess hall. It’s like they were magnets pulled in her direction whenever she came into view. I’d almost been caught a couple of times, but I’d acted like I was checking out something else. Smooth. Real smooth.

  Plus, her personality had grown on me this week, too. For starters, she wasn’t a snob the way I’d expected. She’d worked hard, never suggesting the job was gross or beneath her. Also, she cracked jokes that would have made me laugh if I wasn’t still mad at her. Alex was definitely a smart ass. I wondered how a privileged girl like her had learned to be tough and down-to-earth.

  “Last day.” Things got quiet on her side of the kitchen all of the sudden, and I was tempted to look over there to see what she was doing.

  There was energy about her, something that animated her face all the time. It made her pretty in a different way—inside and out.

  I kept my head down, scrubbing the faucet handles and getting everything ready for lunch. To me, kitchens were the only place that felt like home. The smell of fresh baked cornbread, the hiss of eggs poured in a frying pan, the salty taste of crisp bacon whisked off the grill a half-second before it burned…it was familiar. Comfortable. I wasn’t a misfit or a troublemaker in front of a stove. Here I felt I could do more, be more, than the angry kid of an inmate.

  The floor creaked behind me, and I realized Alex was heading my way. Used to her making a lot of noise, I had a bad feeling about her entering stealth mode. Especially when she was flat-out pissed at me for not talking to her. The first day of our punishment, she’d been friendly and apologized. By day three, she’d spoken only when she had to. By day five, she’d used hand gestures, some of them offensive enough to make me bite back a smile.

  Today, day seven, I had the feeling something was going to give in our stand-off. I’d known it the moment she’d stormed into the kitchen with a pile of dishes as high as her head. I thought I had temper issues? This girl could give me lessons.

  “Seven days, Javier.” Her words were muffled, but I was listening hard. “You’ve ignored me for seven days. You can’t take two minutes to explain why, after I apologized, you’ve been treating me like I’ve got a disease? I know you are capable of speech since you sing when you cook if you think I’m not close enough to hear. I screwed up, but I’m not a monster.”

  She joined me at the big double sink, picking up a fresh sponge from the stack behind the faucet. Dragging it briefly through the bubbles on my side, she got close enough that her dark hair brushed my arm. It wasn’t flirting though, not with the way she jerked back and started scrubbing the countertops with a vengeance.

  “Because honestly? I’d really like to know.” Her voice hit a high, unnatural note, and I could hear a new level of emotion from her. Which was saying something, because she was the most expressive person I’d ever been around. More vicious scrubbing.

  I felt sick inside because the tone in her voice suddenly made sense. She wasn’t just mad. She was hurt. More than anything, I wished her mess hall duty was over. That her girlfriends would take her to whatever was next in their non-stop summer of fun, though I knew I’d miss having her around. As much as I liked being alone in the kitchen, I looked forward to seeing her in it. Working beside me.

  “Can you tell me why, Javier?” She stopped scrubbing, but I swear she practically vibrated next to me anyhow. A live wire of emotions ready to spark. “What is it that makes me so unworthy of listening to? Am I that boring? Or stupid?”

  Her voice broke now, and I was afraid to look at her—afraid of what I’d done to her without meaning to. I cleared my throat, willing to try something, anything, to stop the tide of whatever was going to come next.

  “Because I can’t stand another day of talking and no one listening!” she shouted right over the top of whatever I’d been about to say. “I can’t take another year of carrot cake on my birthday when my favorite is red velvet. Or pretending to be happy about a white nightshirt for the third Christmas in a row when—for the hundredth time—my favorite color is purple.”

  I turned toward her, not sure what to say, but hoping maybe she’d quiet down before Helena returned.

  “Purple! Is that so hard? But I get it. No one listens and no one cares. So I give up!”

  She threw the sponge into the water, the heavy plop displacing suds that sprinkled my chest and soaked my shirt as she stormed out the door.

  Crap.

  I took a deep breath and finished up the kitchen on my own. I didn’t think she’d go far since she’d be in more trouble if the camp director or any of the counselors saw her ditch her job. But what would I do? Apologize for trying to stay off her radar when she’d caused all the trouble to start with?

  Yeah. That’s exactly what I was going to do. Because even if I’d had good intentions by not talking to her, my silence hurt her. Weird that she cared what the guy who cooked her breakfast thought. A part of me wished things were different. That I was good enough for a girl like Alex. Someone her Wholesome Home parents would welcome instead of blast on the Internet. But who was I kidding? My mother was an inmate, and I’d come close to being one myself with my last foster home fight. People like that set up charities for people like me, but they sure as hell didn’t want to associate with us.

  But maybe Alex was different.

  She wasn’t in the mess hall when I pushed through the connecting doors and looked for her there. Didn’t answer when I banged on the door to the girls’ room. So I walked the perimeter of the building, surprised to find her in the middle of the garden I’d been expanding in my free time. Long dark hair swung around her shoulders, the sunlight finding red-colored strands I’d never noticed.

  “You’re crushing the carrots.” It might not have been the smoothest start, but it distracted her.

  She clutched a wad of tissues in one hand, her knees drawn up under her chin. Her ultra-short cut-offs and lean legs were…not where I was going to focus my attention. But when I took a look at the red rings around her green eyes, I guessed she’d
rather have me checking out her legs than seeing her cry.

  “Wow. You can speak. And how would you know a carrot from a cucumber?” she griped before blowing her nose. “Not that I care. And what are you doing out here anyway? Are you enjoying seeing me cry? Well, you can forget it. I’m done with feeling bad about everything. I apologized for the stupid kiss, and if you can’t get over it, then it’s on you.”

  Her tough guy act didn’t fool me. I’d done it myself too many times. I ventured closer.

  “Helena taught me the difference between carrots and the cucumber sprouts.” I answered her first question and ignored the rest. I untwined a vine from a pea plant that was trying to strangle a nearby radish. “But if you want to crush the carrots, go ahead. I just scrapped any plans I might have had for a carrot cake.”

  The snort she made might have been a laugh, but I couldn’t be sure.

  She scooped some loose dirt around the plant she’d mangled, carefully righting the stems. I watched her in a way I hadn’t let myself all week. So much for thinking my interest in her would end if I ignored it.

  You couldn’t not notice her, actually. She was loud and colorful, from the pink streaks she sometimes clipped in her brown hair to the glitter she glued to her clothes. I knew, for example, she’d used something called a Bedazzler to try to write “GIRL POWER” on her tank-top. She’d told me in one of her rants about it breaking down when she got to the “E” and the “R,” so her shirt said “GIRL POW.”

  “And you deserve to be mad at me.” I circled the garden, checking on some plants I’d weeded the day before. Not wanting to crowd her. “I shouldn’t have ignored you.”

  She lifted her eyes, and I felt her studying me. “Really?” Dusting off her hands on the back of her cut-offs, she jammed her tissues in a front pocket. “My father claims there’s no place for anger in healthy relationships.” Her eyes glittered, and her cheeks flushed a splotchy red. “Not that we’re having a relationship—healthy or otherwise.” She gestured back and forth between us, referencing the lack of relationship.

  “I know what you mean.” I snapped off some flowers from the oregano plants. They were edible, but any dishes we’d make at camp would only use the leaves. “And I’m going to disagree with your old man on this one. You had a right to be mad.”

  “Well…” She seemed surprised. “Thanks.”

  “A blog doesn’t make him an expert,” I replied, quoting Alex from earlier in the week.

  “I know, right?” She stopped twirling a stem and looked at me. “Wait—were you actually paying attention to me this week?” She picked up a stone and chucked it at my boot. “You jerk. How’s that for healthy?”

  I dropped down to the dirt beside her, careful to avoid the plants, and handed her the oregano flowers, unable to stop the smile she brought out of me. “It’s progress.”

  They were just a few scraggly stems, and she stared at them as if she wasn’t quite sure what to make of them. Finally, she reached out to touch a small bloom, her fingertip grazing the back of my hand as she took them.

  “They’re purple.” The wonder in her voice made me feel better than…well, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt this good.

  I guess that’s the thing about a mouthy kind of girl. You didn’t have to wonder what she was thinking. It was all right there—in her eyes, her voice. I liked that. Respected it.

  “Your favorite color.” It didn’t make up for whatever was going on with her folks. But I liked putting that warm, happy smile on her face, especially when her sniffle reminded me how recently she’d been crying. Some girls cried to get attention. But Alex tried to hide it, and that made me feel worse than anything.

  “Not white.”

  She grinned like I’d just given her something a whole lot better than oregano. “Wow. You are full of surprises, Javier.”

  “Not really.” I wondered why I’d taken a seat so close to her. I stared at her elbow and calculated the number of inches between hers and mine. Less than two. “I just happen to know where to find the oregano in the garden.”

  “Oregano?” She sniffed the flowers. “Who would have thought a pizza herb would be so pretty? And you just totally proved my point about being full of surprises.”

  She tapped my arm. I realized she’d only touched me to—I don’t know—emphasize a point or something, but even that quick touch made my body tighten, skin warm.

  This whole moment with her, side by side in the garden I’d come to think of as partly my own, breathing the herb-scented air, sitting with the sun on our shoulders and finally talking together…I wouldn’t forget this anytime soon.

  “What?” I asked, trying to hold up my end of whatever we were talking about.

  “You!” She laughed again. “You’re different. For instance, how do you know so much about the garden and cooking?”

  “My mother taught me to cook when I was little.” I missed my mom. Normally, talking about her made it worse, but I wanted to share this part of her. “She worked a lot, you know? So I had to fix food for myself.”

  “Umm. Sure. Most kids make peanut butter and jelly.” She tucked her hair behind her ear. “That doesn’t explain how you can cook for a few hundred people.”

  “I didn’t like peanut butter.” I wanted to make her laugh, and I did. It was easy and a hell of a lot more fun than the slow torture of ignoring her all week.

  I hadn’t planned on letting anyone get close to me at camp, but with Alex, it felt easy. How weird that the girl I connected with was the one I’d tried so hard to shut out.

  “I’m serious!” She nudged me again, and the heat of her seeped into me, making me imagine what this summer could be like if only…

  “I wanted to cook food I really liked, so my mom taught me some recipes she learned from my Venezuelan father.” I cleared my throat, debating how much to say about that. Then, because Alex seemed interested, I sketched the basics. “They met the summer before my mom was supposed to go to college. He was here on a student visa, but he stayed after it expired and they deported him before she had me so…I’ve never met him.”

  “Wow. Really?” She closed her eyes and shook her head, thick strands of hair sliding across her cheeks. “Sorry. Of course really. I’m just shocked. That’s sad they didn’t get to be together.”

  “Yeah. My mom didn’t go to college. It’s been tough for her, taking care of me.”

  “But it’s cool she taught you to cook food from your dad’s home country.” Alex nodded and turned toward me, her green eyes locking on mine. The red circles beneath her eyes were almost gone, her gorgeous face taking my breath away. “That’s nice she spent that kind of time with you.”

  The back door from the mess hall burst open, startling us both.

  “Javier Kovalev!” Helena stood there in her white apron, her hairnet slipping, a frown etched so deeply on her face you’d never guess she smiled every now and then. “There you are. It’s time to start lunch.”

  I jumped to my feet and so did Alex. I noticed she kept the flowers.

  “Sorry if I wasn’t supposed to be here,” Alex whispered so Helena wouldn’t hear. Then, in a louder voice, she said, “See you around?”

  With super-human effort, I didn’t allow my eyes to wander all over her. I’d be seeing Alex often enough, even if I tried not to. She was just that kind of girl.

  “Yeah.” I nodded, thinking maybe I’d go to one of those bonfires. I wanted to see her again when she wasn’t mad at me. Even if it had to be from a distance. “See you.”

  As she walked away, her sequined shirt bright in the sunlight, Helena appeared at my side.

  “I’m warning you, Javier. If you start something with her, you won’t be risking just your job. You’ll be letting me down, too. I vouched for you. Told them you deserved another chance.”

  I hung my head, visions of what might have been disappearing with the sun behind a cloud. “I know.”

  “No.” Helena pointed a wooden spoon at me. “I do
n’t think you do because if you did, I wouldn’t have found you two out here alone. Another girl, maybe Mr. Woodrow might not be so rigid about the employee handbook since you aren’t technically older than the campers. But with parents as famous as hers, you can bet he’s not going to risk them bringing negative attention to the camp.”

  I closed my eyes, wishing life gave you do-overs. If it did, maybe I’d ask it not to let me be born. Then my mother would have had a normal life, and my crappy one wouldn’t exist. “Fine.”

  Helena’s chin wobbled when she nodded. “Good. If you’re going to spend time with the campers, I wish you would hang out with your bunkmates. Or make other friends. Be a kid for once and have fun. Just not with Alex.” She grumbled and stomped her way back into the kitchen, leaving me in the garden. Alex had disappeared from sight, but I could still see the imprint of where we’d sat in the empty rows between the carrots and the zucchini. The leaves of the carrot plant she’d resurrected now rippled from a light breeze.

  Yes, she’d mangled it. But she’d fixed it, too.

  So she’d made some trouble that first day. That didn’t mean she would cause problems for me again.

  Just once before I left this camp, I wanted to think about something besides my responsibilities and controlling my temper.

  I didn’t care about swim lessons and obstacle courses. The kitchen was where I’d rather spend summer. But just once, I wished I could sit with Alex again, shoulder to shoulder. I wanted to make her laugh and smile again, like a normal guy. Just once.

  Alex

  “It looks like someone got a visit from their Secret Camp Angel,” trilled Emily when I returned from a quick, post-swim rinse off.

  I toweled my hair and glanced up at the package on my bunk. Who had my name? Javier had occupied my mind so much these past few days I’d forgotten someone had been thinking of me, too. I’d contacted my mom on my last electronics day, asking if she’d consider sending me a cookbook on Venezuelan cuisine as I’d suddenly taken a new interest. After some coercing, she’d agreed to look for eBay deals, and I was crossing my fingers I’d have Javier’s first present soon.