“Yeah?” He tilts his head at me, genuinely touched. “Thanks. It’s just hard to tell if trumpet is meant to be a hobby I really love—or a profession. All I know is that I better decide before college applications really come at me.”
“Yeah. I know what you mean.” I never wanted to be a professional pianist. Turning it into work would spoil it. Sometimes I think I’d be a great nurse, like my mom. But I’m not sure if that’s me finding a path or simply admiring hers.
I’m about to confess all this when Jones’s watch beeps. “That’s time, all.”
He opens the jug of water and pulls a few plastic cups from his backpack. Simmons reaches her hand back compliantly for a refill, but Anna doesn’t move. She’s lying on her side, head curled into Tambe’s shoulder and blond hair messy across the blanket. Asleep.
Jones hands off another cup of water, and Tambe says, “Let’s give her a few more minutes.”
We pack up the graham crackers and skewers. When Jones douses the last flames with the remaining water, the branches sizzle and smoke, and Anna stirs.
“Time to go home, Boo,” Simmons says, nudging her.
She smiles sleepily, a warm kitten waking up to discover she’s still right at home, safe. “Okay.”
I offer her a hand, which she takes. Our eyes connect somewhere on the way up, and her smile drops off.
“Hey, Lucy?” Her voice is soft.
“Yeah?”
“Sorry I called the Christian camp around the lake ‘crazy’ that first day you were here.”
Ah, there it is. Sometimes, after people find out I’m a PK, they think back on things they’ve said in front of me. “Oh. That’s okay.”
She yawns. “No, I actually do know better—I mean, I’m Jewish! And I shouldn’t call other people crazy.”
“We’re all mad here,” Tambe chimes in, with his best Cheshire cat voice.
He folds up the blanket and slings one arm around Anna, and Simmons jumps on Jones’s back as they head down through the trees to the trail.
And I want to be one of them. I want to be one of them so, so badly—to fit into this balance, their history, the wolf pack way of them. I see it now, why my mom wants that for me. I see how you can’t help but want it, if you get close enough to witness a group of friends knitted together like this.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Saturday is a special day of color-team activities, so I get to spend the morning on the edge of the pier, coaching some older campers on diving. They’re unflagging, willing to try again and again. And, I admit, I enjoy their wide-eyed admiration after they ask me to demonstrate.
It’s a morning full of lake antics—flashes of orange life jackets in the air, yells that the noodles are not weapons, and only one instance of crying after an unintentional belly flop. The sun shows no sign of mercy, and D’Souza returns with an economy bottle of sunblock. While doling it out, I notice that Thuy’s hair is still dry.
“You sure you don’t want to get in?”
She nibbles at her lip, shaking her head.
“What if we went to the other side?”
“I can’t.”
“You can’t swim? Well, that’s okay. You have a life jacket on.”
She shakes her head more adamantly, and I glance up at D’Souza, who shrugs.
“Okay,” I tell her. “Let me know if you change your mind.”
By the end of our time, I’m exhausted in the way that only water can make you feel. Wrung out, like my muscles have turned gelatinous. Something about it makes a cool, dry bed sound like heaven. We towel off at the end of the pier, passing the life jackets to the Green Team.
“Was that the best ever?” Anna calls. A few of the older kids still have energy to whoop, while the little ones pout that our turn is over.
Anna’s wearing nylon running shorts and the most appropriate T-shirt after last night: a s’more diagram, labeled “GRAHAM, ’MALLOW, CHOCOLATE, GRAHAM.” I’m entirely sure it’s a gift from Tambe, connoisseur of the graphic tee.
As we trudge back up, I gather the heavy strands of my wet hair into a pile on top of my head. I’m not intentionally listening to the Blue Team boys chatting behind me, but a name jumps out when one says, “Someone told me Anna, like, used to be a boy or something.”
“What?” the other says. “Anna’s not a boy. She’s a girls’ counselor.”
“Well, she swims in a T-shirt and shorts.”
“So? Lots of people do. My mom hates swimsuits.”
“But Anna doesn’t sleep in the cabins.”
That much is true—she has her own little room in Rhea’s house on the edge of camp. But only because when her parents wanted her to attend Daybreak, Anna’s one condition was a private room—no waking up to panic attacks in a cabin full of strangers.
A surge of protectiveness rises in me. Anna, who took me in without hesitation. I spin on my heel.
“Hey.” I stare down at both of them, stopping dead. “Anna’s a girl, not a boy—understand? We don’t speculate like that.”
Their little mouths snap shut.
“Sorry, Hansson,” one whispers.
“Yeah, sorry,” the other says. “We just didn’t know.”
“It’s okay. But no more talk like that, okay? People are what they say they are.”
They nod, running off in front of me, and someone touches the back of my arm. It’s D’Souza, complete with an approving look.
“Not bad, Hansson. A lot of first-time counselors shy away from conversations about trans issues.”
“Trans?” I repeat.
“Yeah, because—” she says, taking in my confused expression. “Because nothing. Forget it.”
I rearrange the pieces of my brief conversation with the campers, but there’s really only one thing Souz could have meant. “Because . . . Anna is trans,” I guess.
“Right. Whew, you knew. Oh my gosh, I thought I might have just outed her. I mean, I know you guys are friends, and she’s out at camp, but I still shouldn’t have said that.”
Trans. Huh. The questions flood in: Should I have known? I mean, I completely unloaded my life story to her that very first night. I thought I knew her really well. Is she not sure she can trust me? But mostly I feel so, so guilty that I know something she didn’t want me to.
D’Souza is watching my eyes as if she can see all the questions swimming behind them. Crestfallen, she mutters, “You didn’t know.”
“Well . . . no. But, it’s cool.”
She covers her face with one hand. “It’s not, though. Do me a favor and don’t mention that I told you?”
I shift my weight, surprised that she’d ask me to lie to Anna. “I’m not really comfortable with—”
“I mean, let me tell her, so I can apologize.”
“Oh. Yeah, no problem.”