Five Summers (21 page)

“You’re
insane
.”

“What is she talking about?” Skylar asked Maddie.

“Don’t talk to me, either,” Maddie said. “This whole weekend you’ve been acting like everything was normal! This,” she gestured to the entire room, “is
your
fault.”

“You can’t just blame her,” Jo said. “What about Adam?”

“Adam wasn’t part of the pact,” Maddie snapped.

They all got quiet. Emma looked down at the watermelon backpack, which had been kicked halfway under the bed in the fray.

“Best friends don’t keep secrets,” she said. “Best friends treat each other with respect.” She looked up at Skylar. “Best friends never talk behind each other’s backs.” She got up and reached for the framed photo, which was sitting on the windowsill between their bunks. “So much for friendship.”

“I said I was sorry,” Skylar said.

“Actually, you didn’t,” Emma snapped.

“I’m sorry, Emma,” Skylar said, wiping tears away with the corner of her sheet. “You have to believe me. I’m so, so sorry.”

“That’s not good enough!” Emma yelled. “Tell me why. Did you just want to hurt me?” Her voice was getting hoarse. “Did you just not care? Are you really so insecure that if one guy breaks up with you, you have to steal someone else’s?”

“You didn’t want him!” Skylar cried. “All you did was talk about him for years and then you didn’t even want him.”

“You don’t know what I wanted!”

“It doesn’t matter now,” Skylar said. “No matter what I say happened, you’re not going to forgive me.”

“Why should I?” Emma said, her eyes flashing. “You lied to me! You lied to me for
three
years!”

“Try eight,” Jo said, glancing at Maddie.

“Do you have something to say to me,
Johannah
?” Maddie asked.

“Never mind,” Jo mumbled.

“No, please, I’m all ears.”

“I know, okay?” Jo sighed. “I know you lie about your family.”

Maddie’s face went white. “Did he tell you?” she asked quietly.

“No,” Jo said. “I found the letter. And some other stuff, in your file.” She shifted uncomfortably.

“And you decided not to say anything?”

“What was I supposed to say?” Jo said. “Sorry you’re poor? Sorry your mom’s in jail?”

“It’s not jail!” Maddie cried through tears that were pooling on her bottom lashes, threatening to spill down her cheeks. “It’s court-ordered rehab! And you have no right to talk about her! You don’t know her!”

“Maybe I would if you gave me a chance!”

“Wait, I thought your mom was a consultant,” Emma said, confused.

“Her dad’s not a doctor, either,” Jo said.

“What is going on?” Skylar asked helplessly.

“You are so entitled,” Maddie spat at Jo. “You have no idea what it’s like not to have everything handed to you.”

“You don’t even pay to come here!” Jo cried. “My dad basically has you on welfare.”

Skylar turned to Jo. “Are you listening to yourself? That’s your friend!”

“You have some convenient double standards,” Emma spat.

“I would have been there for you,” Jo yelled at Maddie, “if you’d let me.”

“Oh, really?” Maddie said. “’Cause it sounds like you just pity me. Which is pretty ironic coming from someone who still acts like she’s twelve.”

“I do not.”

“Oh, please,” Maddie groaned. “Yes, you do. You know, everyone makes fun of you.
Everyone
.”

“Yeah, I do know,” Jo said. “I also know that if I wasn’t my dad’s daughter, you guys wouldn’t be able to do half the things you do. I pull so many strings for you, you have no idea.” She turned to Skylar. “Why do you think you never got busted for drinking? Why do you think no one called the police when Emma and Adam didn’t come back from the island? I do so much and nobody ever thanks me.”

Emma had been so busy trying to follow the verbal volley, she’d almost forgotten what had happened with Adam before she found out about him and Skylar. Fresh pain flooded her chest and forced its way up her throat and out her mouth, like a water main bursting.

“Thank you,” she shouted bitterly. “In fact, thank you all for being such good friends.” She turned to Skylar. “And thank you especially, Sky, for taking Adam for the team. I’m so glad you had my best interests at heart.”

“Look,” Skylar said, “I know you like to feel like the victim, but it’s not like you were always such a great friend to me. Ever since we were twelve it’s been all about Adam. I was just your consolation prize whenever he didn’t have time for you.”

Emma gasped. “That is not true! Just because I talked about him sometimes . . .” She held up the photo and shook it at Skylar. “You were my best friend.”

“It wasn’t just sometimes,” Jo said quietly. “It was all the time.”

“Stay out of it,” Maddie snapped. “You don’t understand anything about what it means to like someone that much.”

“I was a good friend!” Skylar said. “You wouldn’t even have tried to go for Adam if I hadn’t helped you.”

“So you’re saying I owed you?” Emma screamed. “I owed you
him
?”

“Oh my God, get over yourself! I didn’t do it to punish you!” Skylar yelled. “Some things aren’t about you!”

Emma froze. If it wasn’t about her—if it wasn’t some effort on either of their parts to feel closer to her—then it was just about Adam and Skylar falling for each other. And that was even worse. “Well, it wasn’t just a coincidence,” she said stonily. “You
chose
him. On purpose.”

“Maybe he chose me!” Skylar said indignantly. Emma couldn’t control herself any longer. In a burst of anger she hurled the photo at the far wall of the cabin, where it smashed and shattered, raining glass onto the floor.

“Whoa,” Jo said, holding up her hands. “Calm down. I think we all need a time-out.”

“It’s too late for time-out,” Maddie said.

“I have to get out of here,” Skylar said, grabbing a dress off the floor and pulling it over her head. She ran for the door in her bare feet.

“Are you going to find Adam?” Emma called after her. “Tell him I say ‘screw you.’ But not you literally. Because he’s already done that.” Skylar paused in the doorway and looked back, her eyes filled with hurt. Emma felt a mixture of satisfaction and self-loathing. What had happened to her? What had happened to all of them?

She sat back down on her bed and surveyed the damage, noticing for the first time since the raid started that the floor was littered with paper airplanes, like the wreckage from some horrible accident. Jo crouched down and started to clean up wordlessly, but Emma couldn’t do anything but lie down and close her eyes. She was too exhausted to pick up the pieces.

When she finally fell asleep again, just as the sun rose over the pines, she dreamed again about the storm on the lake, with the lightning touching down all around her in the black water. But this time, she was in the boat alone.

CAPTURE THE FLAG DAY HAD ALWAYS BEEN, historically, Jo’s favorite day at camp, and for reunion she had been excited to really do it up. If the reunion was the Super Bowl, capture the flag was its halftime show. She’d bought a tin of eye black, like football players used to cut down on glare, and had been planning to put it on before sunup, “kidnap” the girls, and lead them in an authentic army training boot camp workout that doubled as an inspirational pep talk, like the one near the end of her dad’s favorite movie,
Hoosiers
. But when she’d opened her eyes and looked blearily at her watch, it had already been almost nine. And then the early morning’s terrible fight had come flooding back. And for the first time in her life, Jo had found herself wishing that capture the flag didn’t even exist.

Emma, Skylar, and Maddie were all still sleeping, their peaceful faces belying the heartache of just a few hours ago, when Jo, dressed in a black T-shirt and jean shorts, had crept out of the cabin, slipping into her Converse sneakers on the grass outside to avoid waking anybody up. She wasn’t ready to face any of them yet—least of all Maddie.

Jo jogged down the path back to the center of camp, not sure exactly where she was going. Overnight, it felt like Nedoba—her home, her playground, her sanctuary—had transformed into a minefield. She knew that her friends (or maybe former friends, she thought with a stab of remorse) were back in their beds, but Nate could be anywhere, and the thought of running into him after their awkward kiss and his misunderstanding and her hot-headed tirade made her want to hide in the barn loft until reunion was over.

It wasn’t the first time she’d been asked point-blank if she was gay. Jo was used to it. The people who asked were usually either antagonistic kids at school, actual lesbians, or her own mother, who put feelers out about once every six months (“Are there any boys . . . or other people . . . you’re interested in these days?”). But no guy Jo liked had ever asked. Certainly no guy who liked her back. It was just awkward all around. To be able to face him, she decided, she would need a very large coffee.

She was walking across the Green to the cafeteria when she tripped over someone lying in the grass.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, stepping back.

“Huh?” The person rolled over. It was Adam. He was still in his clothes from the day before and bleary-eyed. He squinted at her for a second and then yawned. “Oh, hey,” he said casually.

“Oh,
hey
,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. But it failed to penetrate the bubble of oblivion Adam tended to float in. He rubbed his eyes and smiled sleepily. “Where were you last night?” Jo asked.

“Just hanging out,” he said.

“Didn’t feel like joining the party?”

“What party?”

“The one in our bunk. At four in the morning. When your idiot friends raided our cabin.” She gestured to the pool, where an overalls-clad Gus was grumpily fishing underpants and lip gloss tubes out of the water with a net.

“They went through with that? Sorry,” Adam said, sitting up and stretching. “I thought it was a joke.”

“You think everything is a joke, don’t you?” Jo said, resisting the urge to stomp on his hand or deliver a swift kick to the kidneys that would sideline him for days.

“What’s going on over here?” A blond girl Jo recognized from the year ahead of theirs walked over holding a paper cup of coffee in each hand. She had a sunburn across her nose and thin, straw-colored eyelashes. She sat next to Adam and handed him one of the coffees. “Tired of me already?”

Jo was dumbfounded—after Skylar on Thursday night and Emma on Friday, Adam had then moved on to yet
another
girl. He either had sexual ADD or some kind of moral malfunction.

“We’re just old friends,” Jo said through her teeth. She stepped over Adam’s legs and walked a few feet before turning around. “By the way,
Emma
was looking for you last night,” she said. “And she knows everything. You’ll never get another chance. Enjoy your day!”

Adam’s eyes widened, and Jo flashed him a smug smile. She wouldn’t even need sugar in her coffee, that coup de grâce had been so sweet.

Jo found her father in his office opening boxes of bright green bandanas and checking them off on an inventory sheet. At Camp Nedoba, to avoid injury, everyone played capture the flag with a bandana hanging out of his or her back pocket or waistband, so instead of tackling, players just yanked the bandanas out. It was like a pacifist, sportier
Lord of the Flies
.

“Hi, honey!” Mack said, tossing a bandana to Jo. “How’s my favorite girl on her favorite day?”

“Okay, I guess,” she said, sipping her coffee. The momentary high she’d gotten from seeing Adam process the fact that his long con on Emma had been busted was wearing off quickly. Adam wasn’t her real problem.

“Just okay? This is the day you’ve been waiting for since, what, birth?”

Jo tried to smile, but suddenly it all felt like too much. It was the day she’d been waiting for with bated breath for months, but she’d ruined it before it had even started.

“I really messed up, Dad,” she said.

“I doubt that,” Mack said. He put down his checklist and sat down in his ergonomic desk chair.

“I let you down,” she said. “I let people drink beer the other night, by the lake.”

“I see,” he said, frowning. “Did you buy it?”

“No,” she said.

“Did you drink it?”

“Some.” She couldn’t even look at him.

“A lot?” he asked. Jo remembered the orientation video she’d watched her first year on staff, which had not so subtly reminded them that drinking on camp grounds could prove fatal in a number of terrible scenarios.

“No!”

“Okay, good. Did anyone get hurt?”

“Not physically,” she sighed.

His mustache twitched. “What do you mean?”

“We had a fight,” Jo said. “A
bad
fight.” She felt her throat closing up and tried to breathe. She sank down to the floor, and Mack crouched next to her.

“You and the girls?”

Jo nodded miserably. He studied her face for a moment and then drew her into a hug. She pressed her face into his shirt so hard that when she pulled away she left tear stains—two perfect almonds, like the eye holes he used to cut out of black pillow cases so that they could play ninja when she was home sick from school.

“Sweetie,” he said, “everyone fights. I’m sure it will blow over. These things always do.”

Jo shook her head. “Not this time,” she said. “Emma and Skylar were screaming at each other. And I really hurt Maddie. I said awful things. I called her a liar.”

“What did she lie about?” Mack asked, getting up and turning back to the stack of bandanas. Jo wasn’t sure if he was playing dumb or just not listening.

“Dad,” she said with a heavy sigh, “I
know
. About your . . . arrangement.”

“Oh.” Mack looked concerned, but not surprised. He sat back in his desk chair and got the stern look he always got when he was thinking about how to phrase something.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Jo asked.

“It wasn’t my secret to tell.” Mack sighed. “You shouldn’t be so hard on her—or yourself,” he said finally. “Sometimes we do things we’re not proud of, especially when we’re scared. Do you remember when I bought the camp?”

Jo nodded. “When mom left.” But then his words sunk in. “Wait, you’re not proud of that?!” Jo had already had too many shocks for one weekend. If her dad renounced the camp she loved, she would spontaneously combust.

“No, I
am
proud of what I’ve done building this camp,” he said. “But I’m not proud of how unwilling I was to face the reality of my life at the time. This was such a special place to me—it was where your mom and I came on our honeymoon, and where we brought you every summer after you were born. When I moved here it was because I wanted to live in those memories. I didn’t want to move forward, I just wanted to go back.”

“I wanted to go back, too.” Jo remembered the first days she spent in Onan without her mom, when everyone from the general store clerk to the gas station attendant had asked where she was. “She had to work this summer,” Jo would tell them brightly, when her dad was out of sight in the cereal aisle or busy filling up the tank. She’d been, Jo realized with alarm, no better than Maddie.

“I know you did, honey,” Mack said. “And that’s why I wanted you here every summer. But now I wonder if I did you a disservice.”

Jo felt her face crumple. “Do you think there’s something wrong with me?” Maybe Maddie was right—maybe she was repressed. Not a late bloomer but an unwilling one.

“No,” he said. “You’re my daughter, and I’ll always think you’re perfect.”

“Other people think I’m weird.”

“Why?!” He was honestly dumbfounded, and Jo was reminded of how many times he’d told her she was beautiful during her adolescence, when all she felt was awkward and plain.

“Because I live here,” she sputtered. “Because I dress like you and not like mom. Because I’m not . . . normal.”

“Who wants to be normal?” he asked. “I don’t care if you’re normal. I don’t think your mother cares if you’re normal. I don’t think your friends care if you’re normal. I think they love you because you’re you.”

Jo looked out the window, which perfectly framed the top of the barn rising out of the hill past the cafeteria. Her dad was right. That was exactly how she felt about her friends, too. She could have said that to Maddie, instead of letting her stubborn anger get the best of her. Jo closed her eyes and tried to breathe through the swell of shame she felt.

“I think,” Mack said, helping her up from the floor and kissing her on the cheek, “that what you need is to go and make things right with your friends.” He looked at the clock above his desk. “Because you’ve only got two hours before the game starts.”

Jo shook her head furiously. “I can’t play, Dad,” she said. “I can’t focus. We’ll never win; we’re not even
speaking
.” Tears filled her eyes again, and she wiped them away with her arm.

“Hey, hey, no tears!” Mack said, grabbing her shoulders and looking at her with a warm, crinkly smile. “Nobody said you had to win. But you can’t quit. My daughter, my delightfully abnormal daughter, doesn’t quit. I know capture the flag is fun, but it’s more than a game. It’s about building teamwork and bringing people together. Which sounds like what you girls might need right now.”

Jo nodded. He was right. They needed something that would force them to work toward a common goal. They needed to be there for each other, the way they’d promised they always would be. They had to play. She just wasn’t sure how she would convince them.