Page 9 of That Summer Feeling

“Of course I do,” she said. “But if I go by them, they’ll huddle around me so I’m not visible. I have to cultivate my own gaping environment.”

“Are they weird? Like, they hide you so that you can’t date anyone?”

“God, no,” Stevie said. “They just don’t want me to steal women from them.”

I let out an unexpectedly loud laugh. Another camper turned back and glared at me.

Right as I started to form an apology for being disruptive, Stevie nudged my shoulder and pointed to the trees beyondthe campground, where a red bird sat on a low branch. “Look. A northern cardinal.”

I attempted to whisper so the other camper would know I was somewhat trying to respect her desire for quiet. “How can you tell?”

“I spend a lot of time in nature.”

“Are you a birder?”

Stevie swallowed back her laugh. Barely. It still bubbled out in the best way. Delightful as a melting chocolate chip oozing out of a cookie.

“Are you a birder?” she mimicked, painting my voice as something curious and a little shy. Nothing like any other impression of me I’d ever heard. “I’m not in the Audubon Society or anything, but I do like birds.”

“I’d have brought some binoculars for you if I knew.”

“I have some.”

“Really?”

“You think I came up to the mountains without?” she asked. “There are yellow-billed cuckoos up here.”

The glaring camper turned around again. “Can you two please be quiet? I can’t hear.”

There were few things I hated more than getting scolded by a stranger. Feeling like I was the one causing someone else trouble.

Stevie pressed her hand into my wrist. “Yeah, Garland,pleasebe quiet.” She had such a bottle-rocket way about her. Her every action was a concentrated burst of energy that made me want to marvel at her. She kept her hand on my wrist andguided us away from the other camper. “What’s there to hear? It’s the ropes course! You hold on to ropes as you make your way from one wobbly platform to the next. It’s pretty self-explanatory.”

She scanned the crowd with a highly focused intensity, searching for a new place for us to stand. We walked to the right side of the group until Stevie saw something that startled her. She jerked us left so intensely that I gasped.

“Sorry. Bad energy from that corner,” she said. We kept walking, her hand still on my wrist, until we ended up on the far left side of the crowd. She tapped a new stranger on the shoulder. “Will it bother you if we talk?”

The person said no. Therefore, we continued.

The final stop on the tour was an extensive obstacle course complete with a rock climbing wall. I hated heights. When I got up too high, it made me painfully aware of how fleeting life could be. I didn’t need to stand on the ceiling of the world to appreciate what it meant to be alive or anything. I could appreciate it very sufficiently from the ground.

Talking to Stevie provided a perfect distraction. We mused on the birds as we swatted away mosquitoes, chatting about nothing of substance while enjoying each other’s company. It was delightfully simple to spend time with her. I didn’t feel like I had to hoard conversational topics in case of emergency. We had an immediate ease that usually came with history or practice. We could have talked for hours.

No doubt we would have, if it weren’t for the mess hall.

After the tour finished, we walked there together to have our first camp meal. The outside of the building was exactly asexpected—a tall structure with the wordsMESS HALLpainted above the entrance in the same lettering I’d seen everywhere else on the campgrounds.

Stevie tugged the door open, and we went inside.

That’s when I saw the log walls. The long tables that sat dozens of people. The sconces with bulbs I knew glowed yellow, buttering the room when night fell. I knew because I’d been here before. In my mind. For a split second, years ago. This was theexactroom where the vision I’d had at the airport had taken place. Where Mason and I had laughed together, so happy. So in love.

I didn’t have it in me to faint again. If anything, my feet were firmer on the ground than they’d ever been. The weight of impossibility rooted me to the reality of the moment. It had all been real. Masonandthis place. Despite never having seen this camp in my life, I’d rendered it exactly as it was, down to the granular details, like the smell of firewood that lingered in the space, and the way the tall ceilings created a drafty breeze.

After I ran away from Mason that day in the airport, I’d somehow managed to set myself on a winding, corkscrew path back to him. Despite my determination to stop being such a romantic about my own life, I didn’t have the courage to continue ignoring this anymore.

I needed to purge it from my system. Be free of the burden of my prophecy, so that every little detail stopped unnerving me.

I had to tell my sister.