Page 19 of That Summer Feeling
“You’re right. Sorry. I was here communing with the wind, free from the prison of technology. Just me and the birds.”
“Find any yellow-billed cuckoos, like you hoped?” I asked.
“Only some Acadian flycatchers.”
“I thought I heard Acadian flycatchers this morning.”
She grinned at me, and my heart suddenly ached. Like an actual, tangible hurt that made me press my hand against my chest in surprise.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Oh.” I looked down at my hand on my shirt as if noticing the gesture myself. “Yeah. Still feeling the weight of last night’s decisions. Mind if I sit?”
“You’re always welcome wherever I am.”
My heart ached harder. As if little construction workers lived in there and they’d started building something newwithout a permit. “I wanted to thank you for everything you did yesterday,” I said as I settled beside her. “And for the food and medicine this morning.”
“Please. I’m the one who should be thanking you. You got my brother to line dance.”
“Is that what you’d call what we were doing? I don’t remember it super well, but I think I’d call it ‘middle schoolers who’ve had too many Pixy Stix deciding they know how to jig.’ ” As we laughed, I picked up her binoculars and looked at the trees. “There it is. Just like I thought. The Acadian flycatcher.”
“Did you enjoy your slow dance with him?” Stevie asked.
I was glad to have my attention on the trees, where in truth I saw nothing but blurred greenery. The details of my slow dance with Mason were about as racy as the seventh-grade swaying I’d done with Lyle Holter. Probably even less, since I’d touched three different naked bodies since then and therefore a fully clothed drunken twirl around the room was the equivalent of a handshake at my ripe age. But it still embarrassed me to talk about it with her. I didn’t know what to say other than “I think it was nice.”
Nice was easy. Nice was casual.
“Good,” Stevie said.
Nice and good. The best of friends.
“Totally,” I said. “By the way, do you think birds are real?”
Stevie fell apart, laughing so hard she genuinely startled some wildlife. We heard the frantic, scattering rustle in the forest beyond the edge of the campgrounds. “That’s a conspiracy theory some random guy started to mock other conspiracy theories,” she said.
“Oh, I know. But what if it’s so completely off base it circles back around to being right?” I pretended to adjust the focus of the binoculars. It only made the scenery even more blurred. “Fucking CIA drones,” I muttered. “Or FBI. One of those guys.”
“Watching our every movement.”
“Tracking our thoughts.”
“Memorizing our behaviors.”
“See?” I said. “You get it.”
Stevie didn’t laugh so much as let out a long hiss of breath, the kind that stretched out into a contented sigh. “You’re doing the color games, right?”
When Dara signed us up for the camp, there was a choice to opt in to the competitive element of the week: the color games. Four teams—Red, Yellow, Green, and Blue—would compete daily in various morning contests, earning points depending on where they placed. The winning color team at the end of camp would walk away with a trophy and half off camp tuition for the following year.
Dara immediately wanted to do it, not allowing me a moment to protest. I’d put it out of my mind, hoping it would be at best something she forgot about or at worst something I didn’t have to invest in very seriously. Now Stevie—intense, committed, fullhearted Stevie—was asking me if I planned to participate.
“I am,” I said, leaving it up to her to interpret my tone as she pleased.
“Thank god.” She opted for relief. The worst of the interpretations.
“I’m not sure you’ll be thanking Him at the end of the week.”
Stevie scooted until she was sitting behind me in a straddle. “You know, you’d probably see a lot more if you turned the binoculars around.” Her legs framed either side of my body, and her arms hovered just above mine, wrapped around me like an open bear hug. Then she secured her hands atop my own and flipped the binoculars around.
