Page 23 of That Summer Feeling

“Trini was a formative part of every Asian’s life back then. Especially a gay Vietnamese one’s. May she rest in peace.”

They bantered with an ease I longed to experience for myself. It made me want to have memories to contribute one day.Stories we could revisit over next year’s campfire. History between us that we’d be able to laugh about in the future.

All my joy and hope washed away when I saw the first challenge. We’d visited the ropes course on yesterday’s tour, and I’d immediately dismissed it. I knew I’d never voluntarily do it, not remembering that my participation in the color gameswasvoluntary.

Mason, who’d been voted captain of Red Team, craned his neck over the crowd to find Stevie. “Do you see what I see?” he yelled.

“Oh god,” she muttered to me. “If he wins this one, he will never shut up about it.”

“Why?” I managed to ask through the panic that was rising like high tide inside me.

“Because we used to do this course every summer. Like four times a day. I’m not even joking. Mason and I raced each other so many times, the counselors told us our competitiveness was making the ropes less inspiring for our other campers, and they banned us from going on it anymore.”

“What team?” Captain Aja yelled to us.

“BLUE TEAM!” the rest responded, innately understanding the call-and-response nature of her question.

I only mouthed along. The actual sound got lost in the taste of resurfacing bile in my throat.

My eyes were on Dara, who’d already put her attention on me, reading my mind in the way only she could. She knew that this wasn’t something I wanted to do, but she couldn’t help me here. She wasn’t on my team.

If I hadn’t gotten so close to Stevie, I’d forfeit right away.Despite how she said it, I knew she cared about winning, not just beating Mason. Winning required my participation.

The referees explained the rules. We’d go through the course one team at a time. The team with the fastest time would win. Only six members per team needed to complete the course, meaning we could have two members per team sit out.

A gift! A sign! A reward from the universe! I wouldn’t have to conquer my fear of heights after all!

The oldest member of our team, a white woman named Marge in her early sixties with hair dyed the color of a glass of merlot and eyebrows tattooed on in thick unbroken lines, yelled out, “Welp! One of them is just gonna have to be me!” and sat down exactly where she stood. “My knees don’t work for shit. Sorry, Blue! If we do puzzles tomorrow, I’m your gal.”

The referees explained to us that they had factored in the possibility of each team not having certain competitors participate due to various accessibility issues, so the challenges were balanced between physical and mental, to hopefully cater to different strengths and sensibilities.

Every challenge was worth forty points for the winner, thirty for second place, twenty for third place, and ten for fourth. The team who’d earned the most cumulative points by the end of the last challenge would be the overall winner, getting that grand prize of half off tuition.

Just as I cleared my throat to announce myself as the second person from Blue Team who would sit out, Julianne nominated herself.

“I’m afraid of heights,” she told us, sitting beside Marge.

No,I’mafraid of heights, I thought but did not say.

My opportunity window had closed as quickly as it had opened up.

I was trapped.

The six remaining team members looked at one another, silently agreeing that we could all make it through this first course. It was that exact kind of overly serious intensity I hated most about competing against other adults. It wasn’t silly, or fun, or any of the things I thought it should have been. Aja pulled us into a team huddle, and everyone began strategizing like this was a battle of honor, of dignity, of life and death. It was a ropes course at an adult sleepaway camp!

I was smart enough to know that no one wanted that perspective check, so I listened and nodded, doing my best to draw very little attention to my growing panic. Maybe if I pretended it didn’t exist, it would go away. That had never worked before, but all of us were capable of change!

The referees picked our competition order from a hat. Blue Team got pulled first, because again, of course we did. Why wouldn’t we be?

“This is gonna be so fun,” Stevie said to me, vibrating with excitement. It was an actual thing I could see on her—a soft drum of anticipation that made her hands shake.

We reached the base of a wide ladder, where the referees instructed us to put on helmets.

“I need water,” I announced. I had a matter of minutes, if not seconds, before I fell apart. I started shoving into people, pushing against the sea of blue shirts.

Stevie caught me quickly and pulled me over to a spotbeside Red Team. My sister shot me a familiar glare.Are you going to be okay?

Stevie turned me until we were face-to-face. “What’s going on?”