The Lost Summer (13 page)

He had pulled off my shirt first and then his own as I wiggled out of my jeans and unbuckled his belt. He tugged at my underwear, and suddenly we were naked against each other.

I'm pretty sure I whispered, “Wait.”

Ransome paused, his body hovering over mine, every muscle in his arms and shoulders tensed, his weight supported on his hands on either side of my head.

“You don't want to?” he asked breathlessly. My mind raced along his words, trying to gauge what lay behind them.

“No, it's just that . . .” I did want to. Every molecule of my body was screaming like it was on fire, and the only thing to put the fire out was to give in.

He pressed down and against me, closer this time to the place where I knew there was no going back.

“Do you want to?” he asked again. There was an urgency, almost a desperation in his voice, but he wasn't pleading, he was asking. If I had said no, he would have stopped.

So I said yes.

“Do we need a . . . ?”

“Yeah.” He reached up to his pants, which he'd thrown over a hay bale behind us. From the pocket he pulled a blue foil square. He fumbled until finally he ripped open the corner with his teeth and produced an innocent-looking circle of off-white latex.

I realized I was holding my breath as he unrolled the condom with one hand. When it was on, he looked into my eyes. “You're sure?”

I nodded. Ransome kissed me. I thought, This is it, and very slowly, he pushed into me.

Instantly a blunt pain ripped through my abdomen. For a second I panicked, thinking maybe he'd done something wrong. My friend Lindsay, from home, had told me the first time was bad, but was it supposed to hurt like this? It didn't look like it in the movies. No one ever curled up in the fetal position out of searing pain in the middle of a sex scene.

Noticing me wince, Ransome looked concerned and quickly backed off. “It's okay,” I whispered, and then, slower this time, he pushed into me again. His eyes were closed like he was concentrating very intently. This time hurt, but not as much. When he pulled out again, I looked down. I was bleeding.

“Are you okay?” he asked, alarmed.

“Yeah,” I assured, though I was slightly alarmed at the sight myself. I was mortified but tried to smile. “It's okay.”

Behind his green-flecked eyes, Ransome wavered, as if he too was just understanding what we were actually doing. Then the hesitation vanished, and he kissed me and continued moving above me. He rocked gently at first and then harder until his skin was damp and he was breathing hard, like the horses in the stalls below us. I tried to close my eyes, like you were supposed to, but I couldn't. I wanted to watch him. His eyes were shut tight, but his mouth hung slightly open so that I could see the tips of his teeth. I wasn't sure why, but I focused on these— his white teeth, one turned slightly inward, as if pushed out of line by the others. Bully teeth.

Ransome's pace quickened until finally his eyes squeezed tighter, his face twisted, and he shuddered and let out a tiny groan. Exhausted, he dropped his weight across my chest, the only thing between us a layer of sweat. His rib cage heaved up and down.

Not knowing what to say or where to look, I stared at the lantern suspended from the ceiling and noticed an abandoned nest that some bird had painstakingly made in its glass hollow.

I ran my hand down Ransome's warm back, my fingertips sticking to his skin.

Finally he lifted himself off me and rolled over. The condom, which had looked equal parts innocent and intimidating before, looked almost comical now.

“I'm sorry, Hel,” he said, still short of breath. “I didn't know it was your first time. I wouldn't have—”

“You wouldn't have?” I asked, not accusing but worried.

“I mean, I just would have . . . made it nicer.”

I rolled over and kissed him lightly on the lips. “It was nice,” I said. I felt like that was the kind of thing I was supposed to say.

The truth was that I felt as if I'd been ripped in two. I couldn't go back to the dance like this. I'd have to go to my cabin and change, maybe stay in my bed and pretend like I'd gotten my period and didn't feel well.

Ransome extended his arm, and I cradled my head in the space where his chest met his shoulder. He kissed the top of my head and inhaled the smell of my hair. “It was nice,” he agreed. “I hope it was for you.”

I nodded against his shoulder. “It was.”

But a hiccup of panic had suddenly risen in my chest. I had done it. I was no longer a virgin. When I'd followed Ransome up the ladder to the hayloft, I'd had no intention of having sex for the first time, no premonition that I was about to make a decision I would carry with me for the rest of my life. I'd had no idea that Ransome would be my first. Or had I? Had I known all along?

I'd wanted to do it, I reminded myself. I'd made the choice and said yes for a reason. Because I cared about Ransome—maybe, probably, loved him—and it wasn't about how or where or when; it was about who. I told myself all these things because I couldn't believe what had just happened. It had taken maybe ten minutes. Ten minutes to lose my virginity. Though that was a weird turn of phrase. I hadn't lost anything; I'd given it up.

Nervous that I wasn't saying anything, Ransome gently stroked my arm and the outside of my hip with his fingertips. “Are you okay?” he asked.

I snuggled against him, inhaling his scent—that mixture of deodorant and sweat that mingled with the musty-sweet smell of the hay, and for the second time that evening, as I watched the sun dip below the tree line through the barn's high window, I said yes. For the second time that night, I was three-quarters of the way sure I meant it.

T
he weathered wood grabs at my bathing suit. The hot sun dried it quickly, except for my butt, which leaves a heart-shaped stamp when I stand. Walking to the edge of the dock, I curl my toes over the rough planks. The sun throws rays of light like arrows into the green water. It laps at the algae-slick posts of the ladder, also at the sailboats and motorboats tethered to the dock farther down the shore.

The diving board scratches like sandpaper on my bare feet, but it's loose and springy, the way I like. It makes me wobbly in the knees. I jump to the sky, float in midair like a bird flying against the wind, then splash down down down into the black, like a rock. The skin of the water is warm, but deeper it's almost freezing, curling around my calves with icy fingers. When I touch bottom, the muck is silky soft between my toes. There is a moment, eyes closed, hair swirling around my neck, time suspended, when I wonder what would happen if I didn't rise again to the surface. But my lungs are starting to burn, so I kick and break through the surface with a gasp.

I
was one of the first out to the flagpole after Reveille blew the next morning. I hadn't slept very soundly, tossing and turning all night from strange dreams that didn't make sense but felt incredibly real. I was snorkeling in an ocean teeming with sharks and octopuses. In real life I'd never even snorkeled before. The closest I'd gotten to that kind of sea life was the Chattanooga aquarium.

When I woke up, and even after I'd wrapped myself in a blanket and tromped outside to stand at the flagpole, I was drowsy and discombobulated. The night before— the dance, the hayloft—still felt oddly hazy. That's why I couldn't make sense at first of what Pookie was saying to me.

“They pulled it off,” she whispered excitedly.

I looked at her, wondering if I was still dreaming. “Pulled what off?”

“Last night they put Buzz's and Ransome's beds on the floating dock while everyone was at the dance. Wasn't it your idea?” she said, as if I should have known.

Some of the fog lifted, and I realized that the other counselors had pulled off my prank. “Who did it?” I asked, already able to guess.

“I think Winn and Lizbeth and Sarah and Caroline. There was a group of them. The rest of us had to stay here so the guys wouldn't get suspicious.” Maybe because of the confused and disappointed look on my face, Pookie added, “They looked for you before they went over, but Winn said they couldn't find you anywhere.”

I nodded, wrapping my blanket tighter and looking over at Winn, who'd joined her campers at the flagpole. She'd pulled my prank without me. Or was it my fault for missing it by sneaking off to have sex with Ransome in the hayloft? For a second I was scared Pookie would ask where I'd been when they couldn't find me. I'd never been a good liar, especially not at eight o'clock in the morning.

Luckily she didn't, and “Oh” was all I said.

Winn caught me staring. For a second we held each other's gaze before she looked away. Lizbeth had come up beside her and said something quietly. I figured it was about the prank because Winn nodded and laughed, and two of the campers next to her giggled with wide-eyed amazement. They looked up at their counselor adoringly. Winn put a finger to her lips to signal them to be quiet as Butter bounded up to the flagpole.

“Good morning!” Marjorie called, and Winn's campers quickly stood at attention.

I was sad and angry for missing the prank I'd planned myself; but angry with whom—myself or Winn—I wasn't quite sure.

I had been left behind, like dead weight. When Winn and the other girls took their night off the third week, they signed up with Caroline, who was twenty-two and could buy them Boone's Farm at the Wal-Mart on the edge of town. Only four counselors could leave the camp grounds at a time. I knew that. We all knew that.

With the way Winn had been acting—alternating between completely ignoring me and skewering me with passive-aggressive comments about small things like forgetting to sweep under my Mess table or being the last counselor to the dock—I was fine with this scenario. I proved it by volunteering to be COD, as if this had been my Monday night plan all along.

Besides, I still hadn't wrapped my head around what had happened—what
was
happening—with Ransome. We'd met again Sunday night at the riflery range, even though most of the other counselors had stayed in. We'd talked and fooled around but kept it strictly PG. But while staying up with Ransome until sunrise was all I wanted to do, it was seriously cutting into my sleep time. When he wasn't around, the adrenaline rush wore off, and I was sluggish and tired. A quiet night in the cabin as COD, followed by a good night's sleep, sounded like a great idea.

After Evening Gathering and the get-ready-for-bed call of Tattoo, I watched my campers shuffle and knock around the cabin in the soft lantern light. They dragged out trunks, put away flashlights and sweatshirts, and searched for pajamas and stuffed animals that had fallen in the cracks between their bunks and the wall.

Evening Gathering had been a bonfire and ghost story. When Fred reached the part where the ghoulish, bloodthirsty mountain man is discovered roaming through the cabins at night, the girls had shuddered and huddled closer together. At the climax, when Fred shined his flashlight into the ghoul's two . . . red . . .
EYES
, there had been a collective bloodcurdling scream. Even I jumped. No matter how many times I heard Fred tell the story, it still scared the bejeezus out of me.

The effect of ghost-story nights was that it took the camp much longer to settle down for bed. There were the inevitable pranksters who liked to jump out from behind the Bath or cabins, sending the girls shrieking and running in every direction. The campers did everything in pairs after a ghost story, and they made sure to make lots of noise as they did it.

As the youngest, my campers seemed especially agitated. I had to push and prod them into their pajamas and finally their beds, where they were supposed to be at the sound of Taps, the magical bugle call that immediately silenced even the loudest, shrieking-est of girls.

The first plaintive note blasted from the direction of the Mansion. I quickly extinguished the lantern, and miraculously, in seconds, all my girls were in their beds and quiet, not a trace of the rowdy bunch they'd been moments before. The entire camp listened reverently as Fred bugled the good-night song—more a salute to the day than a lullaby. When he was done, you could have heard a pin drop on the cabin floor.

“Should I read tonight?” I asked. “Or have y'all had enough stories for one evening?”

“Yes! Yes!” a few girls pleaded from their beds. “Another chapter!”

I got up and and shuffled to my cubby for the dog-eared copy of
Harry Potter
. We would never finish it before the end of camp, but the girls begged me to read it every night. It was our ritual and possibly, apart from my time at the riflery range with Ransome, my favorite part of the day. I think the steady hum of my voice as it drifted over the printed words comforted me as much as it did them.

Settling back on my bed, the book cradled in my lap and my flashlight propped on the ledge above my head, I began. “Chapter Eight.”

“Helena?” A soft voice came out of the darkness before I could get to Harry and Hogwarts.

“Yeah, Ruby?”

“Can I sit in your lap while you read?”

I never wanted to play favorites, but secretly I adored Ruby. At the bonfire she'd cowered in my lap and squeezed my hand tight when Fred shouted at the end of his story. She hadn't cried, but she'd been unusually quiet as she prepared for bed, and I knew she was scared.

“Sure,” I answered. “Just until we're done reading. Then you need to go back to your bed.”

Ruby quickly found her place in my lap. Her head fit perfectly under my chin, and I couldn't help but miss having a lap to crawl into when I was frightened and cold.

Sighing, I continued. “Chapter Eight . . .”

I had read two chapters by the time Ruby's head started to droop and the breathing of the girls drew out into long, exhausted snores.

“Ruby,” I whispered, clicking off the flashlight. “Time to get in your bed.”

Half asleep, she rubbed at her face and swayed back to her bunk, where her eyes closed before she'd even collapsed. I pulled the covers over her and climbed into my own bed. As COD, I was supposed to stay awake for a while, in case someone got sick or scared (likely tonight) and needed to go to the Mansion, but I didn't feel like reading anymore. Instead I lay there in the dark, listening to the girls' steady breathing and the chorus of frogs down at the lake. Behind the frogs was the high-pitched constant screech of the cicadas.

Eventually, inevitably, my thoughts drifted to Ransome. Remembering the night in the hayloft flipped my stomach upside down and tightened my chest. I knew, if I was being honest, that a gnawing fear of regret—not regret itself, but
fear of regret
—had begun to creep into my thoughts of Ransome. I wanted to be happy with my decision, and I was, I repeated over and over. Ransome and I were meant to be together. This wasn't just a silly camp hookup, like Sarah and Buzz. This was real. There was nothing to feel bad about.

Still, I was a jumble of thoughts and emotions. I wanted to tell Katie Bell that I had lost my virginity to Ransome, but I hadn't begun to work up the guts. I wasn't sure when, or if, I would.

It wasn't that Katie Bell and I weren't just getting along—we'd been in fights before, even stopped speaking for days—it was that we weren't even existing on the same
plane
anymore. Katie Bell was still a camper. She couldn't understand how things could change—and so quickly.

I found myself suddenly jealous of the time when things were simple, when days centered on creek walks and tetherball, and your biggest worry was whether you'd have riding or sailing. There were no boys, there were no secrets or rumors, and there were no regrets. Not even fear of regret. There was just a best friend and endless hours to fill with Pixy Stix and laughing so hard you couldn't breathe.

Tears were spilling from the corners of my eyes before I knew they were coming. Afraid that my campers would hear me, I rolled over and buried my face in the pillow. It smelled like camp, which made me cry harder. A dam broke inside of me, like when it rained for a few days and the lake flooded and ran over the old water spill. I cried like that until I drifted off into an exhausted sleep.

When the beam of the flashlight hit my face, my first thought was that a camper was sick, and as COD I needed to get her down to the Mansion. The bright light and harsh whispers shot me up out of my stonelike sleep.

“Helena . . . Helena . . . wake up,” a familiar voice hissed.

I propped myself on an elbow and squinted at the person behind the flashlight. Slowly my brain focused, and with a sinking sensation, I knew who it was standing over my bed. It wasn't the other COD or a sick camper; it was Winn.

“What's wrong?” I asked.

“I need to talk to you.”

“Now?”

“Now.”

“Okay . . . where? Can you turn your flashlight off? I don't want to wake up my campers.”

The flashlight clicked off, and it was black again, except for the light from the Bath filtering through the cabin windows.

“Meet us at the softball diamond.”

Abruptly, Winn and the figure behind her, who I could now identify as Sarah, left the cabin. I sat up, fully awake and suddenly feeling as if
I
needed to be taken to the Mansion for medical treatment.

Why would Winn wake me like the gestapo in the middle of the night? Shivering, I slipped on my tennis shoes and wrapped my blanket around my shoulders.

I checked the beds to make sure none of the girls had woken up, and trudged toward the softball diamond.

Whatever Winn had to talk about, the tone of her voice told me it wasn't good, and I had one educated guess who it might involve. Suddenly I was seized with a cold panic that Winn knew where I had been the other night; she knew what Ransome and I had done in the hayloft. Had he told people? Had someone seen us? Could she read it on my face, like I sometimes imagined people could when you lost your virginity? I wanted to throw up.

When I arrived, Winn and Sarah were already sitting on the bleachers. “Hi,” I said meekly, before taking a seat on the bench below them.

Winn pounced. “Where do you get off, Helena?” I'd heard the expression “spitting mad” before, but I'd never actually seen someone so pissed I was afraid she might really spit on me. Until now.

“What do you mean?” I was astonished by the force of her anger.

“I thought we were friends, but I don't talk behind my friends' backs.”

“I don't either,” I protested.

Sarah inhaled and made a face that suggested otherwise.

“Really?” Winn's narrowed eyes continued to dig into me. “Then why did Ransome accuse me tonight of telling you that we hooked up? We didn't hook up. And I didn't tell you that. So forgive me if I was slightly embarrassed trying to convince him of that after you told him I said it.”

I was speechless and numb. I had never intended for Ransome to say something to Winn.

“I . . . I . . .” I stuttered unconvincingly, “didn't tell Ransome that you said—”

“So Ransome's lying?” Sarah interrupted. Now it was obvious her reason for coming—bitchery in numbers.

“No!” I backtracked quickly. “I mean, I did ask him if y'all had hooked up, but I didn't say that you'd told me that. He misunderstood. . . . I'd heard from Katie Bell that you used to sneak out to meet him when you were a cubby, and . . .”

I couldn't see much in the dark, but I caught Winn stiffen.

“Katie Bell told you that?” Her voice was scarily measured. “How would Katie Bell know what I was and wasn't doing when I was a cubby? She was, like, ten then.” That was an exaggeration, but I didn't argue.

“I don't know,” I stammered. I was suddenly very confused. I just wanted to go back to bed. “I'm sorry, Winn. The only reason I asked Ransome was because you'd been acting mad at me since our night out. I didn't want to step on your toes if you and Ransome had some sort of . . . history. You hadn't said anything, but then Katie Bell heard it, and it made sense that maybe you were mad, but I didn't know—”

“Well, we don't have ‘history,'” snapped Winn. “And I'd appreciate it if you and your little friend would keep your rumors to yourselves. Come on,” she said to Sarah.

Without giving me another glance, Winn and Sarah stomped off the bleachers and back to the cabins.

Even though the refuge of my bed was all I wanted, I couldn't find the energy to rise from the cold metal bench just yet. I stayed at the softball diamond a while longer and, pulling my blanket around me tighter, cried beneath the open sky.