Boyless: A Summer Romance Read online

  But when I looked over my shoulder, I saw he was already walking away. And I wasn't going to call him back. That tirade had definitely screamed last words.

  I slumped onto the bench at the table. At least if he'd been a serial killer, I'd have been put out of my misery. I surveyed the mess I'd made, and another trickle of sweat dripped into my eye.

  I really should have sent Logan away with the ladder before I yelled at him. I set it outside and crammed all the old papers into a garbage sack. When Celeste rang the mess hall bell for lunch, I hauled the ladder and the sack back down the hill, the bottom of the plastic bag dragging in the dirt.

  Celeste met me outside the mess hall and held the utility door open for me. "Did you see him?" she asked.

  "Who?" I said, though unless she'd recently encountered a bull moose in camp, there was only one who it could possibly be. I didn't want to share the full story of my humiliation on the ladder. Not if I could help it.

  "Evergreen's son!" Celeste said. "I hear he's cute."

  I sighed. Celeste was five foot five, and probably weighed ninety pounds. She didn't look like a stick, either; her figure was a perfect hourglass, curving inward where mine sloped outward. She and Logan would be adorable together, if she could convince him to cut his hair.

  "Yeah, I met him," I said.

  She stopped in her tracks. "Wait. You talked to him?"

  I groaned under the ladder. "Celeste," I said. "Walk or get out of my way."

  She scampered ahead. "Sorry!"

  Once I'd stowed the ladder, Celeste grabbed me by the arm. "So, what's his name? What's he like?"

  I rolled my eyes. "We've only been here one day," I said. "You cannot be boy hungry already."

  Celeste pouted. "I'm not," she said. "But I'm bored. Give me the gossip."

  I groaned. Avoiding gossip like this was exactly what I liked about camp—there might be plenty of backbiting about who shirked clean up duty and who got falling-down drunk at the bar in town—which, from what I could tell, didn't card. But there wasn't any gossip about who liked who. Well, except last summer when Rapids and Pippen hooked up, but still. It wasn't like I was involved in that.

  Not that I was involved in this, either. "I don't want to talk about it," I said.

  Celeste looked like a kicked puppy. "Fine," she said. "I'll just have to meet him myself."

  We walked into the mess hall. Once the first group of girls arrived, lunchtime would be a production, with traditions and songs and activities. There would be strict rules about who had to get up and get the food for their table, and how often that person could go back to get their table seconds. But since there were only the thirty of us counselors and staff, Celeste filled one of the tables with loaves of bread and trays of cheese and meat, and let us wander in and help ourselves.

  Celeste and I sat down at the next table over as the other counselors trickled in and out. A few sat down at the tables in our corner of the mess hall; others traipsed off with their sandwiches to finish getting the cabins and offices ready for campers. I began counting the number of times the other counselors asked each other about Logan, but I quickly realized it would have been more efficient to count the number of things they said that weren't about him.

  "Did you know Evergreen had a son?"

  "I knew she had kids. But I didn't know they were hot."

  "He's not hot."

  "Are you blind?"

  "Well, he's okay."

  "He'll look better in a couple of weeks."

  "I heard he's eighteen. Fair game!"

  "Just watch out for Evergreen. I bet she puts him on a leash."

  I slumped over my sandwich. Every girl here thought she was in some summer romance movie where she hooked up with the only boy in camp. And maybe one of them was. Maybe all of them were.

  But I wasn't—there was no doubt in my mind about that. Goofy hair or not, no guy would look at me in the normal world, where the numbers were more or less even. With the whole of the staff to choose from, my odds of attracting attention were absolutely zilch.

  Not that I liked this guy, I reminded myself. I bit into my sandwich, chewing hard. At least in the outside world, all boys ignored me equally, like I was lying on a bed of nails, weight distributed evenly so they only poked instead of pierced.

  Logan's presence was like a nail through the foot.

  "What's the matter?" Celeste asked.

  I realized I was scowling in addition to gnawing furiously.

  "Nothing," I said.

  Celeste traced her nail across a groove in the table where someone had carved the letter F with their fork. "Come on, Bryn. You know you want to talk about it."

  I dropped the rest of my sandwich on my plate. The annoying thing was, she was right. I did want to talk about it. Especially with Celeste, who was always up for blowing off steam.

  I just didn't want to listen to her moon over Logan.

  "He's kind of a jerk," I said.

  Celeste leaned toward me. "Evergreen's son?"

  I nodded. "His name's Logan. He came up and held my ladder for me while I was pulling down the crap Pebbles left in the art shack."

  Celeste looked confused. "Yeah. Sounds like a real ass."

  I rolled my eyes. "Okay, so he was nice at first. But then he said that my art job was lame."

  Celeste's eyes widened. "He said that to you?"

  "Um, yeah," I said. "Who else would he have said it to?"

  She sat back in her chair. "And he lived to tell about it?"

  I smiled. Maybe Logan was the one who should have been worried about being out of screaming range. "I let him off easy."

  Celeste waved a finger in the air. "Well, if you see him again, send him my way. I'll let him criticize my job all he wants."

  "You would," I said.

  Celeste nodded. "You know it."

  I found myself nodding, and the nail hit bone. Now I'd agreed to play Celeste's wingman, a classic role for the fat friend.

  Evergreen interrupted my loathing by calling the room to attention. "Some of you may have noticed that my son is staying in camp with us for the summer," she said. The room tittered with excitement, but Evergreen ignored it, pressing on with what she had to say. "He's here to do some construction," she said. "I'd love for you to welcome him, but he's not here to socialize. I know I can trust you all to keep your distance. I'd hate to have to send any of you home for doing anything . . ." She cleared her throat. " . . . inappropriate."

  The room exploded in murmurs. Evergreen left the mess hall, and while I was sure she'd been trying to douse the fire, all she'd done was fan the flames. A boy in camp was exciting, but a forbidden boy in camp would be better prey than bigfoot.

  There was no escape. This summer would be the opposite of boyless.

  This summer would be hell.

  Two

  I spent the rest of the day sweating in the art shack. If camp was no longer a boy-free zone, I could at least make my own little haven in there, and hope that Logan didn't decide to pop over and "help" again.

  Ever.

  I distracted myself by hauling supplies out of the baking shack and piling them next to the stumps. But the crayons and the dyes and the heinous tongue depressors looked even more like junk than they had that morning when I opened the musty shack.

  This is art.

  I'd have to work like hell if I wanted it to be, that was for sure. A lot of the girls came back to camp every year, so I had expectations to deal with. Each group of girls had three art sessions over the course of their one-week stay. I had to devote one to tie-dye, silly though that was. The dyes we had in camp weren't very good, so the shirts always turned out faded, and would look much worse after the first few washings.

  I could also get in one nature sketching session with each group. That was easy and I had all the supplies on hand, and it would leave me room to do some real instruction. If I didn't get to do some of that this summer, I was going to go insane.

  But the girls wouldn't be as thrilled with it as the tie dye, because a paper sketch wasn't as flashy to take home as a t-shirt, faded or not. I'd have one more session with each group, and while I'd love to spend it on drawing instruction, I didn't want them whining to Evergreen that they didn't get to do any fun art. I knew a lot of the repeat campers would want to do dipped candles or some such nonsense, but I wanted to come up with something more.

  I sighed and pulled the tie-dye tubs out from under the table. They had once been beige, but were now stained a deep black at the bottom, with blue green fading down the sides.

  A big black spider skittered out from under the lip of the top tub and down into the basin. It froze in the middle, like it didn't know which way to turn. I leaned down and squished him under my thumb, then wiped my thumb off on the lip of the tub. Most of the girls in camp were afraid of spiders. They always squirmed when I did that.

  I was stepping back into the shack when I heard the off-roader roaring past the treeline. We had that mostly for emergencies—sometimes girls got hurt while hiking, and needed a ride off the mountain. Through the shrubbery, I saw Logan driving it up the path to the art shack. The wheels were too wide, so the tires ground down the sorrel carpet on either side.

  "Hey!" I yelled. "What do you think you're doing?"

  "Dinner's by the lake tonight," he shouted back. "Want a ride?"

  I pointed to his wheels. "You're tearing up the vegetation."

  He looked down at the bright green clover under his tires. Then he reached over and plucked an unsquashed clover from a few feet away. He waved it at me. "Do you teach wilderness preservation as well?"

  I put a hand on my hip. "Maybe I do. Did you know that plant is edible?"

  He twirled it between his fingers. "Is that so?"

  It
was. "Redwood sorrel. You can chew on the stem. Tastes like green apples."

  He put the tip into his mouth. "Hey," he said. "Not bad. Sort of like a Jolly Rancher. Didn't realize I was squashing dessert."

  I rolled my eyes. "We're all supposed to respect plants. If we don't, the girls will trample everything."

  He rolled the vehicle slowly back toward the road. "Okay, okay," he shouted over the engine. "I'm back on the road. Now do you want a ride?"

  So much for sending him running. And worse, part of me actually wanted to go with him—I wished I could squash that part under my thumb like I had the spider. I closed the door to the art shack.

  "Fine," I said. "Someone has to keep you from rolling right through the woods."

  Logan grinned at me as I walked down the path. I hopped into the passenger seat, and he did a three-point-turn in the road, pointing the vehicle toward the mess hall.

  "The lake is that way," I said, pointing behind us.

  "Yeah, I know," he said. "I promised the kitchen girl I'd drive the food over."

  My stomach dropped. "You mean Celeste?"

  "Probably. Is her camp name some kind of tree?"

  Marvelous. I'd stumbled right into her attempts to flirt. And no doubt she expected me to assist her in her efforts, seeing as how I'd pretty much agreed to it. "Willow," I said. "That's her. Except she's Willow from Buffy."

  Logan raised his eyebrows. "She's into Buffy?"

  "Yeah," I said. "She has a thing for hot undead guys. The sparklier, the better." This was one thing Celeste and I had in common: we'd both watched a ridiculous number of old science fiction TV shows. Of course, our motives were different. I'd seen them because my dad was a total geek—we used to marathon entire seasons of Star Trek over the weekends. Celeste was mostly into the vampire ones, though. She liked them so much that she'd watched all the seasons of that ancient soap opera Dark Shadows, which even my dad agreed was entirely unwatchable.

  "I didn't know you were allowed to name yourself after cool things," Logan said. "I thought it had to be cartoons and stuff."

  I shrugged. "We're supposed to keep them G-rated. But if you're stealthy enough, you can get away with it. Hence, the tree."

  Logan cut a look at me. "So what about you? Is River a nature thing? Or a Firefly reference?"

  Now it was my turn to raise my eyebrows. He'd seen Firefly? That had aired forever ago. There were only like nine episodes. And a movie. But the character River in that show was thin as a reed, and a dancer. I'd never compare myself to her. "I'm River from Doctor Who," I said. "Nobody gets it."

  "Come on," Logan said. "She's the wife of the Doctor."

  I leaned back. Even I couldn't help but be impressed. I'd purposely picked a name that couldn't be made into a fat joke—neither suggesting of something thin and lanky like Willow, or of something slovenly like Pigpen. Those girls were both thin—they could get away with things like that.

  And unlike Summer Glau, who played River on Firefly, the actress who played my River wasn't a twig. Of course, she wasn't overweight, either. Fat girls didn't date the Doctor.

  "Besides," Logan said. "She's kind of hot."

  I stiffened. He might not say anything out loud, but surely he couldn't help but draw the mental comparison.

  But Logan just grinned at me and said, "So, do I know you from the future?"

  "Spoilers," I said.

  He laughed, and I couldn't help but smile back, even though a part of me wanted to get my rude on, quick, before he decided it was okay to stalk the art shack all summer. Something about the easy way Logan smiled at me—even when I said things that should have sent him running—put me at ease.

  My smile faded.

  Crap. I was already the fat friend.

  Two stereotypes, and it hadn't even been a day.

  I gripped the roll bar of the off-roader, wishing I'd hauled my own ass out to the lake.

  We bumped down the driveway and pulled up behind the kitchen, where Celeste had left the utility doors open. She stood in front of them with several boxes waiting at her feet.

  "Hey, Bryn!" she said. She seemed happy enough to see me, so I guessed she wasn't going to get jealous that I'd been talking to Logan alone. I wasn't exactly competition for someone like her, but other girls didn't always see it that way. Of course Celeste would be cool, though. She was my friend. I should give her some credit.

  Plus, she was probably happy to see me working my way into wingman position.

  I cringed, though, as Celeste pretended the crates of apples and trays of pizza were too heavy for her to lift into the off-roader. They hadn't walked here on their own, so unless she had some big burly men stashed in a closet to do her carrying, she'd already brought them farther than they needed to go now.

  I climbed out of the passenger seat and helped Logan load up the back of the vehicle. Celeste stood to the side, watching me with her arms crossed.

  Now she looked annoyed. But it wasn't my fault she'd wanted to pretend she was a wuss.

  When we were done I climbed back in. Logan turned to Celeste. "Do you want a ride? You can take the back."

  My cheeks started to burn. Was I supposed to give her shotgun? Or walk, so she could have Logan to herself?

  I shook myself. This was a food run, not a date. What did it matter where she sat?

  I shouldn't have worried about it. Unlike me, Celeste knew how to turn a situation to her advantage. She flipped her hair at him and then sat down on the back of the bench and put her feet between us, so she could hold on to the roll bar. Logan didn't give her a second glance, but I saw her genius. Logan couldn't put the off-roader in gear without brushing her bare legs with his elbow.

  We bumped along the path toward the lake. Celeste took advantage of every jolt to edge her calves closer to Logan's arms.

  Logan looked up at her. "So, Willow," Logan said. "She was a witch, wasn't she?"

  "And a lesbian," I said.

  Celeste's elbow came down on my shoulder, and I winced. That's when I realized we both should have known better. Crappiest wingman in camp? Right here.

  "Well, I'm neither," she said.

  Good thing she hadn't been around when I told Logan she was into undead and glitter.

  When we got to the lake, most of the other counselors were already there. They'd set up chairs and tables on the waterfront. The sun had dipped low enough in the sky to cast a pink glow across the water. That also meant it was cold enough for the mosquitoes to come out, and I hadn't gone back to the cabin to apply bug spray. Celeste swatted at her neck. I guessed she hadn't, either.

  I left her and Logan to unload the food. Celeste was going to give me a play by play of her flirting later, whether I'd been present or not. I might as well let the ending be a surprise.

  I took a seat at the table next to Tidal, mostly because she was on the far end of the group from the food, and facing the other way. Tidal was new this year, and was assigned to running the waterfront games. She had the body of a lifeguard and a tan to match.

  "Are you ready for the girls?" I asked.

  Tidal pointed to the rows of canoes, all strapped to the floating docks. "Almost," she said. "They're all clean and in the water. I still need to get the tubes hosed down, and then we're good to go."

  Camp was quiet tonight, without any girls running around giggling and crying and screaming across camp at each other. It was a calm of anticipation, as if even the mosquitoes were ready to start buzzing a little faster. Nothing like the quiet of camp's end, where the whole place would seem lonely. That was my least favorite part of being a counselor—when camp dies, and you're around for the funeral.

  Several of the other counselors migrated toward the pizza. Once the girls arrived, we'd make them sing for their food. It would become a contest between tables—whoever sang the best and the loudest got to eat first. Today we'd skip all the ceremony, though, and enjoy our last meal of the week in peace.

  I felt a tap on my shoulder, and raised my hand to swat at it. I realized just in time that it was Logan's hand, resting on the sleeve of my shirt.

  "Cheese or pepperoni?" he asked.

  I looked up at him. "Are you a waiter, now?" My eyes widened when I found him holding two plates—one in his hand, and one balanced on his arm, each with a slice of pizza and a piece of fruit.