Summer Camp was my favorite Bridgewood tradition. I lived for it. The sun, Vitamin D, two weeks without parental supervision. Beautiful.
"Stop smiling like that you're creeping me out," Matt said as we claimed a spot on the bus.
"Your face is creeping me out," I shot back, too excited to really care what he was saying. He laughed and fell into the seat next to me, slapping high-fives and giving out complicated hand-shakes with people who passed by.
Before long we had a group around us of people who were just as excited as me about summer activities and I found myself falling right into the pattern of Scott White: Popular Jock, All American Guy, Savior of the Bored.
The trip passed in a blur of fart jokes, stealing each others snacks, and games that got us sushed more than once by the coach driving. I took the fall for a shouted curse word only because it had been Matt that had said it and my white-privilaged smile could get us out of anything.
Four hours passed in a jittery need to stretch my legs and a dwindling collection of topics. When the bus finally stopped I jumped over Matt and grinned back at him when he yelled at me for nearly taking his head off.
I was free.
The sun was down but the night air was still warm and it welcomed me like an old friend, bringing with it the scents of trees and water and firewood that the city just didn't have. People flooded out around me talking about bags and meet-ups and drifting off into friend groups. I didn't bother moving.
Someone brought me my bag and Matt's arm landed around my shoulder eventually, two keys dangling from his hand. "We're rooming with Jackson and Samuel."
"Sweet," I said, taking one of the keys from him. "I'm surprised Jackson isn't rooming with the counselors."
"Yeah, I dunno, something about less space this year," Matt said as he released me so he could lead the way to our cabin. Jackson caught up with us halfway there, and we yelled greetings at each other before we got the door open. Samuel was already inside, sitting in front of a pile of Capri Sun pouches with a syringe clasped between his teeth and a bottle of cheap vodka between his legs.
The three of us stood there in shock until Samuel spit the syringe out and said, "What the fuck guys, close the door!"
Jackson and I rushed inside and Matt pulled the door closed sharply behind him. "What are you doing?" I demanded.
Samuel grinned. "I'm a fucking genious guys. Check this out. Needle -" he wiggled the syringe then inserted it into the vodka, pulled the alcohol up inside of it, then carefully stuck the needle into the Capri Sun and emptied it. Then he jammed the straw in and sucked the whole thing down in one go.
"Yo!" Matt said, at the same time I said, "Freaking awesome!"
"Aren't those supposed to be for your insulin?" Jackson asked.
Samuel threw a Capri Sun at him. "Bro, shut up and help me so we can get wasted at the cookout tonight!"
***
"This is gonna be it, man," Matt said, gripping onto the football with one hand and pointing it towards the sky. "This is gonna be my summer."
I felt my eyebrows raise as I held up my hands. "Oh yeah?"
Matt grinned and aimed the ball in my direction. "Yeah. This is it!"
"What the hell are you going on about?" I asked, jogging back a bit to make the catch.
"I'm gonna be Superman," Matt said, and posed a few times with his biceps out. I rolled my eyes and threw the football at his stomach. He laughed and doubled over as he grabbed onto it.
"What the hell?" I asked.
"Listen," Matt said, straightening up and suddenly serious as he threw the ball my way again. "it will attract da lay-deeees."
I snorted. "You're ridiculous."
"No," Matt argued, "I've got goals."
"You've got a head injury is what you've got," I said, tossing the ball back his way.
"A head injury is what this bicep is going to give you," Matt shot back, and threw the ball. Too hard. Way too hard.
I snapped my head around and winced as I saw it was headed for the only person I could pick out in a crowd: Lakyn James, somehow managing to look like a gothic hospital tragedy even in the middle of summer. He was sitting on top of a picnic table in perfect range. "Yo! Lakyn! Watch out!"
He looked up and I just knew the football was gonna hit that sorry bastard right in the face. But somehow, it didn't...
"Oh shit!" Matt said, suddenly next to me, his voice laced with guilt. "Did he seriously catch that?"
I glanced at him and shrugged, as shocked as he was but unable to come up with anything to say, then held my hands up for Lakyn to toss the ball back to me.
He didn't. He sat the ball down next to him and fixed a cold, irritated glare on me. I laughed. I couldn't help it.
"Asshole," Matt said.
He was right. "Hang on, I'll get it back."
I jogged Lakyn's way while he leaned back on his palms. It stretched his body out, the rash guard he was wearing flattening against his stomach. His head tilted, his tongue moved between his teeth, and his gaze drew down my body like he knew something I didn't. Like he knew exactly what I was about. Like he could devore me.
My stomach jolted. "Hey. Didn't think you'd be here this year."
"Yeah, me either," Lakyn said. There was something in his tone, something not entirely friendly, that I wasn't sure what to do with. I looked at his rash guard instead. They provided good sun protection, but it was kind of interesting that Lakyn was wearing one when the other guys were trying to show off. I wondered what he was hiding. Or if it was just a confidence thing. He'd always been sort of thin.
Lakyn's head tilted again and I glanced up to see his attention on the football. "If I give this back do you promise not to aim at my fucking face again?"
My grin was involuntary. "Don't blame me, that was Matt's throw."
"Then I suggest catching."
It was rude but also caught my traterious mind up in thoughts that had more to do with my dick than with a game of football. I grabbed the ball off the table. "Glad to see you're still a little shit."
"Some things never change," Lakyn said.
He wasn't nice, he never had been, but there was something about him that made me want to stay. Something about the banter that I found intriguing. I looked over my shoulder before saying, "Do you play? Matt and I were thinking about getting a team together."
"No," Lakyn answered. It shouldn't have been surprising. Nothing about his probably malnourished frame screamed 'I like sports', but I still felt a strong stab of disappointment. I hadn't talked to Lakyn James in years, I didn't know why it mattered so much that I did now.
Lakyn sighed and picked up the Gameboy he'd been playing before Matt's attempt on his life. He hit a few buttons and said, ""I'll toss it around for a while, though."
"Awesome," I said, with another grin that I couldn't fight off.
Lakyn didn't say anything else, but he jumped down from the table and popped the ball out of my hands before tossing it Matt's way. Matt shot me a look, but ever a team player, didn't make a comment.
***
Lakyn James was a weird obsession I'd had for most of my life. A smart mouth in the back of a classroom and a dark look in the hallway. He was quiet, but he was interesting. A mystery. In the same way that everyone knew me, no one knew him.
Well, they knew of him, but only because he was gay. Another kid had outed him the year before, during a party when they'd been caught in a hallway. It hadn't been pretty. I'd drunk myself to sleep that night thinking about how it could have been me.
Lakyn had owned it though. Shown up to school the next day saying 'so the fuck what, I'm gay, get over it'. The whole school had gone into an uproar. We hadn't even been in the same building and I'd known about it.
He was withdrawn and everything irritated him but somehow he was still fun to be around. And he chose to let me be around him, even Matt enjoyed hanging out with him. He became some kind of unofficial third to our duo as the days went on. But for some reason, I couldn't ever seem to get enough time with him.
"Are you flirting with me?"
I froze. There was a football in my hand and words dying on my tongue so quickly that I forgot what they even were. I'd been talking about something, but suddenly it wasn't important. My heart slammed against my chest and the breath left my lunges.
I didn't know what to say.
"That depends entirely on if it's working or not."
Well shit.
Lakyn looked annoyed. He held his hands up for the ball. "It's not. So cut it the fuck out."
It wasn't like I had expected him to flirt back, or to run into my arms, but the harshness of his tone almost made me step back. I tilted my head and opened my mouth again, and again, I had no choice over what I was going to say. "Why not? I know..."
I stopped, feeling bile rise in my throat. Lakyn was waiting, patiently, tucking his fingers into the pockets of his cut off dark shorts. Jorts. He was wearing jorts. I licked my lips and pressed on, fueled by some kind of ridiculous bravery that a boy wearing jorts wasn't going to stop me. "I know I'm your type."
The corners of his mouth lifted, but it wasn't a smile. It wasn't humorous at all. ""Because I know exactly what you want and I don't sleep with guys I actually care about. So. Ball?"
My eyebrows rose and Lakyn sighed like a pre-teen who'd realized they weren't going to be able to talk themselves out of trouble. I wasn't entirely sure what he was saying. I wasn't entirely sure what he knew.
"Don't let that go to your head, dork," Lakyn said. "I meant we used to be friends."
"We're not friends now?" I asked. I hated how hurt my tone sounded. Like the idea that Lakyn might not like me at all was the worst thing that could happen to me. I tried to pretend like it wasn't.
"I don't do boyfriends, and I don't fuck my friends, so regardless. Stop. Flirting. With. Me." He was even more annoyed now.
I thought about my mother when she'd given me the sex talk. Awkward and uncomfortable and completely unaware that I'd already wrapped my hand around not only my dick, but two others, and put another one in my mouth. 'It's important to love the girl first, Scott'.
I hadn't ever been in love, but I hadn't heard anyone say it quite like that. "You don't have sex with guys you care about?"
"No," Lakyn said. Just like that. Point blank.
"That's completely backwards logic, you know that, right?"
Lakyn shrugged. "I never claimed to be normal."
I sighed and threw the football his way. Arguing with Lakyn was pointless.
"So, you're actually gay then?"
I nearly choked on my tongue.
"There are other sexualities besides straight and gay," I tried. It was weak. I was probably blushing.
"True," Lakyn said, "But I've heard you have a habit of fooling around at parties. With boys. Only boys."
I wasn't stupid. People talked. It was impossible to keep people from talking. The fact that I'd managed to keep any kind of secret between a few drunken hookups was crazy enough. The fact that it hadn't completely destroyed me was a miracle.
The fact that Lakyn knew shouldn't have been surprising, but it still made me want to throw up. I opened my mouth, ready to defend myself, ready to spew out my 'absolutely not' argument that I had practiced in front of my mirror for years, but I couldn't do it.
Lakyn's face was blank and yet it somehow still said 'liar'.
Or, well, it was Lakyn. It said: 'fucking liar'.
"True," I said. I'd never said it before. I'd never gotten even that close to admitting ... anything.
Lakyn tossed the ball towards me. I caught it.
****
I stuck another Capri Sun in my mouth and squeezed, by-passing the straw in favor of the fastest rush of fruit punch flavored vodka I could get. The burn of alcohol was helping ease the way my stomach was twisted and tied. If I had enough of them, I'd be able to forget
I dropped my drink to the ground and reached for another.
"Bro," Samuel said, offended. "If you're looking to mess yourself up just drink from the bottle. Those are for outings and you're wasting them!"
"You're right," I said. I hadn't even realized I was still in the main room. Jackson was eyeing me warily and he shared a look with Matt that I chose to ignore as I pushed myself out of my seat and grabbed the bottle on my way to my room. "Sorry."
Matt followed me. I wasn't surprised. It was his room too so I couldn't even kick him out. He shut the door behind him and said, "Hey, man, you alright?"
"Did you know he tried to kill himself?" I asked. It fell out of my mouth. Word vomit. Like I had to spill Lakyn's secrets instead of my own.
Matt looked understandably confused. "Who?"
"Lakyn," I elaborated.
His eyes went wide and he sank onto his bed. "No way. I had no idea."
I nodded. "I heard from Josh's little sister that he disappeared last year. I asked him why and .. he told me."
"How ... what ... " Matt didn't know what to ask, or how. I got that. Finally, he settled on, "Is he okay?"
I thought about the things I'd said to him. The absolute certainty in my voice that he wouldn't try it again. I didn't know where that had come from. I didn't know his life, I barely knew him, and people changed with age.
Suicide was a foregin concept. Something that happened to other people. "It would have been weird, ya know?" I said. "If we would have seen it in the paper. Just because, like, we go to school with him."
"Yeah," Matt agreed. He was staring at me in a way I wasn't sure I liked. As if he was looking for answers. "Are you okay?"
"I don't know," I said. I looked at the bottle of vodka in my hand and took another drink. "I'm probably just drunk."
"Probably," Matt agreed. "How about you get some rest, yeah? I think you might have had a rougher day than you realize."
"Yeah." I didn't hand Matt the bottle, but I climbed into my bunk. My back hit the mattress hard and I tried my best to push aside the conversation I'd had with Lakyn. To forget the things that he'd said to me, and the things that I'd said to him.
And if I couldn't do it alone, then the alcohol would surely help.
***
Lakyn had this air about him that clearly said he was annoyed with the entire world, but he was also quick witted and fun to talk to in a way that other people weren't. With Lakyn, nothing felt like work. Conversation came easily, and so did silence.
He didn't expect every second of being around me to be spent doing something. He was just as content to sit there, unbothered, as he was to listen to me ramble. He spoke with concise, chosen words, and with a kind of balant honesty that a lot of people probably wouldn't be able to handle.
The first time he laughed was surprising. I wasn't sure he'd ever laughed in front of me, even when I'd known him back when. It caught me off guard, a quick chuckle that he tried to cut off but ended up getting the best of him.
His eyes squinted when he laughed, and his nose drew up, and his smile covered almost all of his face. He put his hand over his mouth and tried to turn his head away but there was no saving himself.
"Dude," Matt said. "That joke wasn't even funny!"
"It wasn't the joke," Lakyn explained. "It was his fucking offended face when you didn't laugh."
"Because it wasn't funny!" Matt said. He hit me upside the head when he realized I was grinning and said, "Don't look so proud of yourself! It wasn't funny!"
But it wasn't the joke I was proud of.
***
"I'm sad," I said.
Matt rolled his eyes.
"I'm sad," I repeated with emphasis as we found a seat on the bus to claim as our own. Matt sat across from me instead of beside me, and we watched people pass with the usual greetings.
In the gaps, Matt said, "You're fine. The school year isn't going to be that bad."
"But it isn't summer," I complained, letting my head lull on the back of the seat. It drew my gaze towards the front of the bus, and there was no ignoring the way my heart jumped in my chest the second I recognized Lakyn getting on. God, he was a mess. Cut-off shorts and sleeves that fell down over his hands. Already putting his headphones on. Looking like the entire world was made of bugs below his feet.
Why him? Why was it him?
My smile was impossible to stop, even as Lakyn looked at me. I nodded at the empty space between me and the window, and his eyes narrowed like he couldn't decide what I was up to.
I could hear the chatter going on around me but it seemed to fade off the closer Lakyn got to me. He wasn't going to take his headphones out, he made that clear by shoving his hands deep in his pockets, but he did nod.
I grinned and popped out of my seat once he got close enough.
"Sup, man?" Matt asked. Lakyn shrugged, but still bumped fists with him before sliding into the seat. I fell in next to him and didn't pressure him to talk. Lakyn had his attention out the window, so I kept up with Matt instead. It was enough, just to feel his heat next to me.
The conversations around me took interesting turns, from the upcoming school year to the football season to who was dating who and new rumors. I kept up with them for as long as I could, but eventually, Lakyn's presence was too much to ignore.
Instinct pushed me to reach for him. Just to touch him, but the feeling of cotton under my hand was a disappointment. I slid my touch down, searching for his wrist. His damn sleeves were always too long. I used my fingers to push under them, looking for skin. I was expecting it to be smooth, unbothered, but it was rough. Raised. Kind of...
Scarred.
"I tried to kill myself."
I swallowed down my questions. The noise level in the bus was dying down. The planners weren't stupid - we'd all had a full day of activities before they piled us all up to go home. People were tired.
Once my presence was no longer necessary, I twisted around in my seat so I was sitting next to Lakyn instead of with my back to him. His head was resting against the window and he was watching me with a hooded gaze. I didn't say anything, but I pushed his sleeve out of the way.
The scars were awful. There were lots of them, giving away a long time issue, but the one I could feel was raised and long. Like he'd ripped his skin apart. Like he'd never intended for it to be put back together again.
I looked up at him, not sure what I was looking for, just knowing I needed to see him. There. Alive.
Lakyn smiled, but it looked sad. It wasn't really a smile.
"Suicidal," he whispered. It was barely audible.
"Self-destructive," I whispered back. A secret for a secret. I let my hand slide into his and twined our fingers together. They were pressed between our thighs. No one would see.
Time passed sluggishly. I was barely aware of anything more than how warm Lakyn's palm was against mine, the way his thumb slid over my head on occasion in an absent minded way.
I remembered stopping for food, sitting with Matt and Lakyn, but hardly making conversation. We were tired, and still had halfway to go. When we got back on the bus, Lakyn took the lead, sliding into the same spot we'd left, sinking low into his seat.
I sat next to him and stole one of his headphones. The music was loud and fast and kind of hurt, but it blocked out the road noise and the pounding of my heart when I put my hand back in Lakyn's.
He didn't stop me.
When we got back home, I felt a burst of energy, and sat with my back to Lakyn as I clasped hands with people and promised to see them soon and took party invitations like it was the first time I'd been invited anywhere.
It was only when the bus was empty and I felt Lakyn's glare on me that I realized I wasn't sad about camp ending.
I was sad about not seeing him every day.
"Let me have your number."
Lakyn sighed heavily, slouching into his seat. "Why?"
My eyes narrowed. He was infuriating. "I'll let you in on a little secret. When two people have a phone, they can type messages and send them to each other through space and time. It's a magical thing, really. Communication."
Ah. There was a real smile. Well, more of a smirk, but still. Lakyn held his hand out. "Sarcasm looks good on you."
I grinned and dug my phone out of my pocket, handing it over. Lakyn rolled his eyes even as he started entering his number. "If you text me about stupid shit I'll block you."
Oh, I was going to text him about the stupidest shit. Lakyn glared at me like he knew, but gave me my phone back. "Mmhmm. So, I'll see you soon?"
My heart did that stupid thing again even as Lakyn sighed and nodded.
I winked at him. Which was stupid enough that it finally sent me out of my seat. I didn't say goodbye, but instead rushed to catch Matt. He was just getting off the bus and erupted in curse words as I tried to jump on his back.
We both laughed as we started going down. Matt tried to save us, but we ended up hitting the asphalt and rolling. "The hell got into you?" Matt asked, giving up and just laying there.
I laughed and stared at the sky. Wondering what exactly this feeling was. Some kind of joy. Or something. I wasn't sure.
"Life is good," I finally said.
"I tried to kill myself."
"Yeah," Matt agreed with a laugh like he didn't know what had gotten into me, but he liked it. "Life is good."