4.

An accidental summer camp fugitive. Of course that would happen to me. I only even went on The Overnight because of Nick. 

“Come on, it’ll be fun,” he said.

I glared at him with my signature brand of cynicism.

“And I’ll be there,” he added coyly, nudging his side into mine and looking at me like that.

I knew it wouldn't matter. In those moments when it was just the two of us, we existed in a liminal space between our opposing worlds, and our spot by the lake didn’t fit in with the rest of camp. But I couldn’t resist the sparkly tug of a chance to be together on a magical night time adventure. To see stars together. To be in the dark together.

I told my very confused Mother that I changed my mind and wanted to go on The Overnight, after all. She wrote the check, pausing before she signed it to remind me to call if I wanted to come home.

“I can hear the kitchen phone from the bed. We’ll come get you.”

“I know, Mom.”

And, so, on The Overnight I went. Pajamas. Pillow. Sleeping bag. The works.

And it wasn’t different. There was no illusive fantasy world that revealed itself when the buses rolled away. Just like always, I was alone at Madison County Day Camp, but this time it was night.

I sat by myself on the bus ride to United Skates of America. And I hugged the wall of the roller rink until it was time to leave. And I sat by myself on the bus ride back to camp. And I got my hot dog and Sprite and wandered off to sit on a log by the lake during the barbecue. And Nick Sanderling was where he belonged. With them.

And then it was time for the Twilight Dance. 

I had only gone to one of my school dances, in sixth grade, and only because I didn’t realize until after that it wasn’t mandatory. The Greyport Middle School Cafeteria had been turned into a pitch dark, throbbing Bacchanal. I watched in stunned horror until I couldn’t take the thrill of it anymore and retreated to idle on a bench outside, waiting for my Dad’s truck to appear in the parking lot. But, I didn’t have that option here. Asking to call my Mom would bring too much attention. Nobody was coming to pick me up. I’d just have to survive until the next afternoon.

The dance was held under the Performing Arts Tent. A Circus-style big top, but with all the sides rolled up, exposing the scenic views of the camp and the sky. This probably made for a beautiful sunset experience, but it meant I was a wallflower without a wall. I stood in empty air space and shuffled my feet and switched spots on occasion to not look so tragically bizarre.

The DJ stood on the stage for the camp plays, apathetically spinning and mixing the preteen juggernauts of the moment. The boys huddled together in clumps, not really dancing, mostly just observing the girls. And the girls didn’t seem to care. Breezily existing in a self-contained, writhing hive. Not quite Sapphic, but, also - sure. Dancing for each other and their collective purpose of pleasure. Perfectly executed MTV TRL choreography. On the beat Bye Bye Byes. Wiggling their Genie in a Bottle prayer hands. Uniformed in their Spice Girl platform sandals, cut-off denim shorts, tiny bikini tops insinuating shapes that didn't exist yet, with beaded, hand-crafted, Arts & Crafts chokers, and the essential baby blue eye shadow.

My chest swelled as I conjured the memory of their evening. Huddled around one mirror in the 11A cabin, french-braiding and lip-glossing. A cloud of cherry and vanilla bean mist poisoning the nostrils. To be them. To be envied and adored and desired and free. To throw my arms in a T shape when Britney shouted, “STOP!” To laugh and whisper and scream. I imagined them tuning in to my vibration. Each glittered face of the Hydra snapping my way in unison on the Bop after the MMM. Their eyes beckoning me to join their swell. Initiating me into their Coven of Teen Vogue supremacy. And if I could be one of them. Truly among them. Then Nick would be able to know me.

The boys only joined the dancing during the slow songs or the occasional Semi-Charmed kind of acceptable mosh. Theirs was a counter-journey. In the hour between dinner and the dance, there were gobs of LA Looks and Dep, healthy spritzes of Polo Blue and Woods, J. Crew button down swap outs, mesh Nike shorts exchanged for mid-calf Old Navy cargos, and a few puka shell adornments. But it all seemed more parentally designed than desired. And the effort they lacked in preparation ballooned in practice. Their multi-celled organism pulsed with the tension of overconfident soldiers juiced up by battle, but unripe for war. Too aware now of the consequences of unfettered joy, they forcefully feigned disinterest in anything sugar-coated and melodic and perched, eagle-eyed to destroy anyone who gave into a bubble-gum head nod.

Nick exhibited skilled precision in the art of macho optics. He swayed with Lauren DiSantis to Angel of Mine. And thrashed with the other boys to Chumbawumba. And pretended not to understand how to Electric Slide or kick his heels to Cotton-Eyed Joe.

And I kept no-wall wallflowering, waiting for it all to end.

And then the DJ played that song.

One time during Free Play when Nick and I had snuck off to our spot, we started asking each other every important question we could think of.

“What’s the best movie?”

“What’s the best tv show?”

“What’s your Mom’s name?”

Mostly we didn’t agree on anything. He liked normal boy stuff and I liked everything else.

But then he asked, “What’s the best slow song?”

“Truly Madly Deeply,” I declared, definitively.

And he threw himself backwards and screamed to the sky, “I love that song!”

And we lost our breaths laughing because this was the first time we got it right. And he didn’t mean to, but when he lifted himself back up he put his hand on my hand. Or, his fingers kind of landed on my fingers. And we looked at them, our hands, and at each other, and then back at our hands again, like we had just made some world changing scientific discovery. And I thought I might want to kiss him. Or that I should want to want to kiss him. But I didn’t know how to want that or what exactly you’re supposed to do with that wanting.

It wouldn't have been my first kiss, believe it or not. I kissed Emily Fletcher on the last day of school. Or, she kissed me. On a dare. But I had never kissed someone I wanted to kiss. And maybe I had never wanted to kiss someone. And maybe the only way someone would want to kiss me was on a dare.

So, I didn’t. Kiss him. And he didn’t. Kiss me.

But I did lift my index finger out from the dirt and hook it on top of his. And that made him smile. And that felt way cooler than kissing Emily Fletcher.

That’s why when Truly Madly Deeply came on at the Twilight Dance, I looked for him. Not because I thought we’d dance together, obviously, but because I knew he'd be looking for me, too. For a nod or a secret smile. Because this was kind of our song.

Boys and girls at camp pairing off for a slow dance is a kind of coded, random, mathematical chaos I couldn’t crack. Maybe it’s decided beforehand. Or friends ask friends ask friends. Or there’s just a knowing as you dart through the scrambling bodies of when you’ve met your match.  My eyes dizzied darting the hormonal blur of the room. And, then, as if the sea parted. As if lit by the moon. There they were.

Nick Sanderling and Jenna Gould-Koechner. 

Moving, but barely. Their feet planted in concrete.  His fingers just barely acknowledging her waist. Her wrists carelessly plopped over his shoulders. It was like they didn't know each other, like they were pushing away rather than heading towards embrace. He was looking down. Not at the ground, but as if at someone else’s shins. She was making eyes at her friends, her so many friends, all silently giggling. All with their respective Bunk 5B pets in hand.

That is to say, they looked perfect. 

Gold Star Nick Sanderling. And the Jewel of Madison County Day.

It was sick. Not good sick. Sick sick. Saccharine sick. But I couldn't look away. And then he caught my stare.  I could almost see the apology in his eyes, but he looked away so quickly, so well trained, that I can't really be sure. I felt myself retreating into the non-wall behind me. I desperately scanned the tent pretending to be looking anywhere else and plastered a goofy, having-a-super-fun-time, grin on my face when I saw Leanne Farnsberg approaching with the tenacity of a Scream villain. I continued in reverse to escape her sightline and the nightmare of young summer romance blossoming in front of me, forgetting the void at my back, and stepped from the slab of cement onto the grassy decline outside of it. A frightful stumble, but also, a freedom. This dungeon had no walls. This cage, no bars.

“Do you wanna dance?” She was yelling it, hands cupped around her mouth, from less than four feet away. It seemed Leanne, too, thought the distance from the inside and the outside of the tent was much greater than the reality.

I liked Leanne. I didn’t want to dance with her, but I also wanted her to know that a dance with her wouldn’t be totally unwelcome and far from a burden.

“Yeah, yeah, sure, um, but, I hafta go to the bathroom, so maybe next one?”

“Okay. Yeah!” Her braced up smile seemed genuinely pleased, even if she was forcing it.

As soon as she turned back, I started a brisk walk along the outskirts of the tent. Once I cleared it, I hustled up the hill into the empty cabin. Even during the day, the tree coverage and the lone window at the front made the bunk feel like the inside of a shadow. Now, as night approached, it was cavernous. I didn’t dare turn on the light for fear someone would see it, so I managed in the dark to rifle through my backpack for my Walkman. I switched out Automatic for the People and popped in my Sad Boy Mixtape. It’s not what I called it then, but it’s what it was. I pulled on my favorite red Abercrombie hoodie with the white lettering, hooked my headphones on the back of my neck, palmed my Walkman, and snuck out the cabin door. I stood for a moment at the top step, almost admiring the last of the sunset glow peeking through the trees. I listened through the ambient noise of nature and the Twilight Dance for my cue to leave when I froze in alarm at a crunch in the brush to the left. A bit of fear, mixed with a bit of hope, maybe. But, then I shook my head. Nobody had followed. Certainly not Nick. He couldn’t leave Jenna’s arms in the middle of a slow dance and risk public scandal like that. Wind and leaves and squirrels just make noise sometimes. I released it with a sigh and continued down the stairs.

Sneaking across camp as twilight turned to dusk was eerie, but special. I could hear the final refrain of “I wanna stand with you on a mountain” falling further behind me. I rounded up along the trees lining the lake, so that if anyone was looking out from the inside, they wouldn't see me running across the field.

I got to our perch, planted myself on the ground, and headbanded my headphones to my skull. I sunk in one last deep, intentional breath as I looked over the lake and pressed play with melancholic meaning. The Killing Moon.  A perfect opener. I was getting pretty good at mixtapes. Echo and the Bunnymen would scribble out the hopeful romance of Savage Garden and replace it with an achingly wistful, unrequited longing. And I could be dancing with him in my moody blue hued imagination.

I silently pleaded across the lake for him to come find me. To notice I left. And know where I would be. And we would be far enough away from them in our little world away from the other worlds and we could play the song for ourselves and sway in each other's arms like we really meant it, not like with him and Jenna Gould-Koechner or Lauren DiSantis, but, like, for real. Pushed into each other's orbits. Never letting go.

“Under blue moon I saw you, so soon you’ll take me up in your arms, too late to beg you or cancel it, though I know it must be the killing time, unwillingly mine …”

I didn't hear the footsteps on the path behind me. I didn't hear the laughter through the trees. I just felt the cold panic of the water. And the flooded confusion of knowing what was happening, but not knowing what was happening. Trying to swim or stand because the water wasn't deep there, but I didn't know if my head was out or under or up or down. There was the yank of the headphones that had fallen around my neck before the cord released from my Walkman, in my right hand, perilously submerged. The jolt of that realization made me reach it up in the air to safety like I just found a deep sea treasure, which, in turn, uprighted me. I tried to stand and trudge through the mushy, swampy lake bed, but mostly tripped and sank and crawled, one arm in the air, until I was close enough to leap into a shrub at the shore. Instinct braced my fall with my right hand and I felt the crunch as I pressed the weight of my whole body down into the rooted ground and into my Walkman. 

With my knees still in the water, I cradled it in my hands as pressure welled up behind my eyes. I looked up at the three figures looming over me, knowing I couldn't show them this soaking cold shame. Sucking it down and holding it in my liver and my lungs.

And then one of them reached a hand out to help me up. I stared at it. Alien. Absurd. It furied the pain in my chest. I guess this is what boy friendship is. You play a prank and then you make sure the prank is forgiven. I had spent too much time tolerating their nonsense. I couldn’t offer them this. I couldn’t participate in this cardinal law of boyhood survival. Rallying around a passively willing victim. It wouldn’t be me. I shoved the hand away, tucked the remains of my Walkman into the pouch of my hoodie, and stood myself up.

“Whoa, whoa, dude, he's just trying to help.”

“What are you even doing out here?”

“What are you listening to?”

All at once or one a time or on a loop. Taunting in gooey, fake concern and teasing curiosity.

And then of them said, “Yo, I think he's crying.”

And I think I was. And the humiliation surged a kind of strength. If not of body, of mind. If I could get back to the cabin and change my clothes and return to the dance, I could pretend this never happened. I could deny. I could ignore. I could rewind.

Red Rover, Red Rover sung in my head before I pummeled my way through their affronted barricade. Panting and delirious and my clothes heavy from the water, I bolted down the path back to camp.

Propelled in a blackout of blind rage, my senses were weak. I lost my breath as the woods continued to extend into more and more woods. Trees and trees and trees and trees and the opening to camp that I swear was ahead of me this whole time suddenly wasn’t there and wasn’t coming. I stopped short to calibrate, spinning around in all directions, captured in a whirring blur of endless wilderness.

I ran the wrong way. And I couldn’t run anymore. I keeled and caught myself against a tree, reeling my breath back to rhythm. As my legs gave up and I knelt into the dirt, I hiccuped grief. And then the heaving sobs came. And from this genuflected prayer position, it was like my tears were watering the roots of the tree. So, I let them flow. And when they settled a bit, I turned over and leaned my upper back and the crown of my head against the sharp, serrated bark.

I pulled the precious contents from my pocket and rested the body of my Walkman, all sad and broken, out in front of me. I lifted the soggy headphones over my head and unwrapped the cord all perfectly and plugged them in again. The complete image of it was arranged delicately on the ground as if it were an ancient artifact in a future museum.

My body shook in shivers. I looked to the sky for answers, hugged my knees, and waited for whatever came next. Soaking wet in these same woods again, but without a gold star to guide me.