I’d never experienced this before, friends talking as if they were a collective.
“What do kids call the hotline about?” I asked, trying to hide how Camden’s job impressed me. Was it wrong that this made him extra attractive?
“All the fun stuff,” said Camden sarcastically. “They’re being abused, or they want to run away. They realize they’re addicted to drugs or alcohol and they don’t know how to get help. They’re depressed or even suicidal, and they want to hurt themselves but also they don’t.”
I paused for a second, missing a half step, before continuing. Back when I couldn’t stop thinking about opening up my skin, it had never occurred to me to call a youth hotline. What if it had? What if I’d called and talked to someone like Camden? I felt oddly happy for the kids who did.
Eliza and Max suddenly stopped walking. The trail had opened up, running parallel to a rocky creek about thirty feet wide.
“Wait. Where are we?” I asked.
“I think it has a name,” said Max. “Something Falls. But we call it . . .”
“Hush!” said Camden with a meaningful look at Max.
“I’ve been coming to the lake my whole life,” I said, watching the water travel busily downhill, oblivious to us. “I had no idea this was here.”
“We only found it by happy accident,” said Max. He stepped into the water and held out a hand for Eliza. Together they made their way through the ankle-deep creek and across some smaller rocks to a large one, flat and wide, lit by the sun. There, they crumpled together and started to kiss. Not kiss, really. More like, try to crawl inside each other’s faces.
“Come this way,” said Camden, touching my elbow as he stepped past me on the trail. “We have to go a little farther down.”
After we fell into step together, curiosity overpowered me and I asked, “Does it bother you? That Eliza and Max are so . . . PDA-oriented?”
Camden frowned. “Why would it bother me?”
“Because you and Eliza used to go out, right?”
He paused for a second, then started walking again. “How did you know that?”
“I saw you together last summer. At the lake.” I said it as casually as I could, as if I were just remembering it now.
“We only went out for a few weeks, and I was the one who broke up with her. I actually encouraged things to happen with Max. I’m happy they’re happy. I’m happy we found a way to still all be together, because I would have hated to lose that.” He suddenly sped ahead. “We’re almost there,” he called over his shoulder.
I followed Camden another few yards and around a bend, until he stopped. The creek ran over a rock face here. It was steep, and I could see the rock was covered in green moss. The movement of the water made the moss appear as if it were moving on its own, a bubbling entity under the surface.
Camden pulled his shirt over his head and hung it on the branch of a nearby bush. Even though I’d seen him shirtless before, I found myself glancing away. He didn’t speak, but simply made his way from the trail and down the bank. It wasn’t until he stepped into the water that he turned, finally, to face me.
“Does this remind you of anything?” he asked, spreading his arms wide and fanning his fingers.
We had so little shared experience. I knew he must be talking about Silver Arrow, and then it suddenly seemed so clear.
“‘Do No Good,’ Season Four.”
Camden threw his head back and practically crowed, Peter Pan–style.
“Do No Good” was an episode set on a planet populated by sentient rocks. (Yes, it was one of the sillier ones. Which probably explained why I loved it so much when I was seven years old.) Azor Ray communicated telepathically with the rocks while Satina and Marr set out to find the largest rock on the planet, known as the Great Mass (the silliness, remember?), for help getting the Arrow One back in action. They had to cross a river filled with guardian rocks to reach this big one.
The creek, the rocks, even the way the trees on the bank bent and bowed toward the water—it all looked eerily like that scene.
“This is freaking me out a little,” I said.
Camden grinned and held out his hand to me. “Come down here.”
“It looks really slippery.”
“It is. But I know the good footholds.”
I took off my boots and slipped my dress over my head, thinking of how carefully I’d chosen my bathing suit that morning, and draped it on the branch next to Camden’s shirt.
I took a step down from the bank and into the water, which gathered so cold and frenetically around my ankles. Then I reached and on the other side of that reach was Camden’s waiting hand. I grabbed it, felt a jolt of warmth. Then I stepped up close to him.
“I knew you’d get it,” he said. “I love that episode.”
“For years, I talked to rocks,” I admitted. “Until my mother made me stop.”
“I was thinking we could do a cosplay photo shoot here someday.”