Page 53 of Until Next Summer

“What do you want me to say? I’m sorry for forgetting a life jack—”

“It wasn’t your fault,” he says, without turning around.

“So why are you mad at me?”

“I’m not mad at you.”

“Then why are you so goddamn confusing?!” I shout.

He finally stops and turns to face me. His chest is heaving, his wet hair sending little rivulets down his skin.

“Every time I think you’re loosening up,” I say, “you freeze over and shut me down. I’m trying to thank you for saving my life, and for some reason you’refuriouswith me—”

“I’m not—”

“It’s like back when you were a counselor, and you were such a shit to me that second year! You wouldn’t even talk to me!”

He scoffs. “Oh, I get it. You had a crush on me, and I hurt your feelings.”

“I didn’t—that’s not—” I stop, embarrassed. But I have nothing to be embarrassed about. “Okay, sure. I had a crush on you. Practically everyone did. It was silly teenage stuff—you were a counselor; I was a kid.”

“Exactly! I was a counselor having sex dreams about a seventeen-year-old!”

His voice echoes in the morning air.

I stop, shocked speechless. “You—what?”

“Shit,” he mutters. He wheels around and starts walking away.

“No, no, no.” He doesn’t get to leave after dropping that bomb. I catch up to him and grab his wrist. “Explain. Now.”

He yanks his arm away and exhales in frustration. “It was inappropriate, and obviously I knew that, but that summer you looked—different, okay? And I wasn’t going todoanything about it, because you were seventeen and I was twenty and the whole thing disgusted me—”

“What?” I cut in, somehow offended.

“—so I didn’t talk to you anymore. I would never in a millionyearshave gotten involved with a camper or a CIT. But I needed to get you out of my head, so I stayed away fromyou. Okay? Are you satisfied? Is that what you wanted to know?”

He breaks off, breathing hard, and I stand there, my mouth hanging open.

I don’t know what to say—he’s obviously still bothered, and I get it: there was a power differential between us, and I was a minor, still in high school. But we weren’tthatfar apart in age. It’s not like he was having those dreams about an actual child. And he didn’t do anything inappropriate—in fact, he did everything in his power to avoid even the appearance of anything inappropriate between us.

“You can’t control your dreams,” I say finally. “Everyone has weird dreams—”

“I know!” He runs a hand through his wet hair. “Believe me, I know. You were thelastperson on earth I wanted to have that kind of dream about.”

Now I’m definitely offended. “So you wanted some distance, fine. But did you have to get the other male counselors to be jerks to me, too?”

He goes still. “I—you don’t know what they were saying about you?”

“No…?”

He blows out a breath, shaking his head.

“What were they saying?” I demand, taking a step forward.

“Just…comments. Inappropriate comments.”

I roll my eyes. “Like Camp Barbie?”

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