Page 27 of That Summer Feeling

“Garland,” she finally whispered. “I have to tell you something.”

My whole body leaned forward. Pulled toward her. I felt disoriented, almost like I did when I was up too high. It wasn’t fear so much as hatred. Ihatedfeeling out of control, and there I was, stone-cold sober with the lingering hangover to prove it, and I may as well have been walking a tightrope between mountains while downing shots of tequila. I didn’t know what was going on, and I hated how much it terrified me. Worse, I didn’t understand why the terror seemed to excite me.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to spend this much time together anymore,” she continued. “I think that I—”

“Stevie?” a woman called out.

Stevie’s head whipped around so fast, she actually hurt herself, grabbing her neck to nurse the sudden strain. When she saw the woman who’d called to her, she stumbled back, looking as disoriented as I’d felt only moments before.

“Allison,” she said. “What do you want?”

11

Short of becoming a bird myself, I did everything in my power to get away from Stevie and Allison as fast as possible. I needed more air than the sky could give me, and more space than the earth could offer.

Dara happened to be at the picnic tables near the lake, coloring a picture.

“Arts and crafts time?” I said to her as I walked up. The shake in my voice caught my own attention.

“Can’t get anything past you.” She was shading in a black-and-white version of the same Camp Carl Cove picture that had been on Tim’s shirt. “The official thing is happening in the main hall. But people were like, color matching their crayons with textures in the room. I knew if I invested that much effort in the contest, it would get ugly. So I came outside.”

“Making lots of new friends,” I said.

She set down her yellow colored pencil to look at me.“Actually, I am. Most of them wanted to go on the Jet Skis, and you know that’s not my journey in life.”

“Aren’t we supposed to be making the most of camp?”

“Says the one of us who refused to do the ropes course.”

I nodded. “Harsh but true. Congrats on first place, by the way.”

She tugged proudly on her red shirt. “Thank you. Where’s your friend?”

I didn’t want to say that Stevie was talking to someone she clearly knew. Maybe it was because Stevie had just gotten done saying she didn’t think we should spend any more time together, and it embarrassed me that I’d had a friend for all of twenty-four hours and she was already backing out of the relationship. Dara was the only person in my life who’d never really abandoned me.

“Her name is Stevie, and you know that,” I said to her, cleverly avoiding the real question. “Don’t forget, she’s Mason’s sister.”

I wanted to be sure Dara understood that I was getting closer to Stevie as a way to know Mason better. When drunk, Mason and I were apparently the resident dance hall maniacs, cutting rugs for the community at large. But under the harsh judgment of day, with nothing but nature to soften the blows of truth, getting to know Mason proved to be a difficult task. I needed Stevie as my buffer.

I hadn’t dated anyone since Ethan, and I’d never dated anyonecasually, whatever the hell that meant. I didn’t know how to get around showing Mason all my flaws while learninghis at the same time. Having Stevie around made all of that seem less daunting.

Quite honestly, I didn’t want to learn any more of Mason’s bad traits. I’d have to find it in me to be more assertive and tell him to stop when I thought he was crossing a line. Or maybe it wasn’t up to me to ask him to change. That might have been the problem last time. I thought in my head that Ethan should be different, and I never said it. Maybe I was wrong for even thinking it. Maybe I needed to change the way I reacted. None of us was perfect, and I had to stop expecting that from a partner.

My head hurt. And not in the hangover way.Thiswas exactly why I didn’t need to fall in love again. I’d done it once, and once really was enough for me.

“Mason’s cool,” Dara said simply. “He’s a good fit for you.”

“Everyone seems to think that,” I replied, annoyed at the repeated insistence on my compatibility with him. Even my own heart-promise bracelet supported it.

What exactly made us great? The idea that our story sounded sweet when told aloud? I’d done that already. I’d met my husband in a bookstore petting the same cat, and here I was in the mountains—single and confused—watching my sister fill in a coloring-book page. Clearly that hadn’t worked for me. Nothing worked for me.

My face must’ve shown my conflicting feelings, because Dara said, “You and Mason are like the king and queen of this camp right now. Everyone on Red Team freaked out when I told them you’re my sister. They thought you threw the ropes course so Mason could win.”

No one had ever cared that Dara and I were associated with each other. She ran in completely different crowds from me in school, and neither of us helped or hurt each other’s reputations. The only place it came up was in the classroom, when a teacher would find out she was my older sister and they’d expect me to be as quietly diligent as she was. Instead I was excitable, impatient, forgetful. Crying when my assignments weren’t in my bag. Raising my hand to answer questions I didn’t know, just so that they didn’t have to suffer up front without a volunteering student.

“Ew,” I said. “I’d never do that.”

“Obviously I know that.” Dara rolled her eyes. “But the story is cute.”