4
“CLARE-BEAR!” SAM’Sface was tiny and cloaked in darkness on my phone screen. “I’m just trying one more time to peer-pressure you into coming up to Pine Lake this weekend. I want to wake you up by throwing socks on your face.”
The memory of fifteen-year-old Sam chucking her clothes at me as specks of morning sun snuck in through the cabin windows flashed in my mind. It was a good one that shone brightly in an otherwise hard summer. Things had been raw and unsettled at home before I’d left for camp that year, but nothing could have prepared me for the letter I’d gotten one afternoon from my mom, informing me that she’d told my dad she wanted a separation.
Sam had wandered into the bunk shortly after I’d opened it and found me listening to Fiona Apple on my iPod and sobbing into my sweatshirt sleeves. She’d promptly marched me to the camp store, still in tears, and bought me three packs of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, which we ate side by side, our feet dangling off the edge of the dock that stretched out into the lake.
“You are not going to believe this,” I said, panning the phone to show Lydia behind me, who greeted Sam with a wiggle of her fingers. “But my assistant Lydia is going to hold things down here so I can come.”
Before I could tell Sam the uncomfortable reason why, she shouted, “Shut up!”, her voice crackling through the phone speaker as relief settled across my body. Eventually I’d tell Sam the real reason my plans had changed. But Amaya’s public pronouncement was too raw, too fresh to even discuss.
“I will not shut up,” I said, forcing what I hoped passed for a cheery smile onto my face. “I think I can make it after all.”
“Oh my god, this is the best news. I’ll put you on the group chat. Nick and Trey are flying in on a red-eye from Oakland tonight, so I bet you could ride up with them in the morning. And Mack’s going to be excited.”
Mack’s name was almost enough to distract me from the fact that there was a text chain out there for our group of camp friends, and I wasn’t on it. My constant absence had pushed me outside of our inner circle, and I felt the taste of shame in the back of my throat.
“Mack will be excited to tease me about old camp stuff and accuse me of being a corporate sellout,” I said with a groan. Even though I hadn’t seen him in years, I knew exactly what to expect from Mack, who was both obnoxiously “chill” and always up for anything, including ribbing me. He would have a field day with the news of my boss forcing me to take a vacation.
“Oh, please, you’ve always been on his case, too, with your Color Week captain bullshit. Just because your teams tied and you both couldn’t handle not winning. And you still can’t. The two of you are cut from the same cloth,” Sam teased. “He just refinished the boathouse, by the way.”
“That’s because he lives in the boathouse,” I snapped back, before turning to give Lydia the short version. “He still works at our old camp. He never really left.”
“Oooh, is he, like, a sailor or something?” Lydia said, looking over my shoulder.
“Lydia, ask her about their kiss,” Sam said before changing the subject. “Hey, you never told me if you got the thing I sent you in the mail.”
“I don’t think so,” I said, squinting in thought, trying to remember exactly what was in the pile of mail that had been accumulating on my kitchen table. “What is it?”
But before Sam could elaborate, Amaya draped herself around the doorway to my office, announcing herself with a dramatic wave of her arm.
“Sam, I gotta go,” I said quickly. “I’ll text you later once my plans are final.”
“Time to vacate, baby!” Amaya punched the air like a cheerleader. Well, a drunk cheerleader. Her flaxen hair, normally taut in a bun at her neck, was now loosely draped over her shoulders, and she was still shoeless.
“I thought my micro-thing started tomorrow?” I said.
“Sabbatical,” she corrected. “It’s a time for you to get away and”—she inhaled a long breath and then let it go loudly, a smile spreading across her face—“breathe.”
“I breathe just fine in Boston,” I grumbled. “I like the rotting fish smell of the harbor.”
Lydia made a gagging sound from the couch.
“Clara, I’m on your team here,” Amaya purred as she stepped closer and rested both hands on my shoulders. “You can’t possibly lead a pitch in front of a client when you’re this fried.”
“Totally.” I nodded, because agreeing with her seemed like the easiest way out of this conversation.
“I’ll see you in a week,” she said with a decisive nod.
As soon as she was out the door, I turned toward Lydia.
“I feel like an idiot,” I said, my stomach sinking again. Amaya using me to make a point in front of the rest of our team was one thing. Somehow, her reiterating it tenderly one-on-one made it that much worse. “Have I just been oblivious to the fact that I am currently in my burnout era?”
“Tell me more about this romantic camp kiss,” Lydia said, looking down at her phone. “I need to see a photo.”
“Wait. Do you think I’m burnt out? Fried? Seriously, you can tell me.” I swiveled myself back around to face her, leaning closer as she squinted her eyes, apologetic.
“A little?”
“Crap.” I collapsed back in my chair, which wobbled in all its ergonomic, supportive glory. I spun around in panicked thought, letting out a giant yawn.
“See?” she said pointedly. “I don’t think it’s crazy that you could be, you know, burnt out. You’ve had a really hard year.”
“Don’t you think I would know if I was struggling?” I huffed, turning back to examine my checklist. I hated feeling defensive, but digging into this felt way too exposed. I forced a breath through my lips, trying to slow down my pounding heart.
“Let’s just try to get through this and call it a night,” I continued more gently.
“Oh, shit, he’s cute.”
My feet tip-tapped as I turned back around to face Lydia again, only to find her holding her phone within an inch of her face. She flipped it around to show me her screen, and there was Mack, grinning, a wet suit unzipped down his chest, the ocean a blur in the background. He still had that disheveled, sun-kissed, light brown hair, and the same bump in his nose from when he broke it playing in the boys’ soccer tournament the summer we were twelve.
I’d long ago just accepted that the sight of him, in person or on a tiny screen, would flick on some sort of switch inside of me. It didn’t matter that I’d changed so much since we first met as kids. This one thing had stayed exactly the same.
She looked up and made a perplexed face. “He can’t be that bad.”
“He’s not bad,” I replied finally. Mack was a lot of things: cocky, pointedly funny, often obnoxious, and, fine, occasionally kindhearted—with tousled hair that was one beat away from being a tangled mess and soft lips that curled into a mischievous grin at even the slightest hint of a joke. Once, he’d even been a boy I thought I loved, before I understood what love was and wasn’t. And now?
“He’s just… Mack.”
“You’re supposed to tell me about the kiss.” She wiggled her eyebrows at me.
“Oh my god, it was just stupid teenage drama.” I tried to keep my voice light, brushing the conversation aside. She gave me a look that very clearly signaled that she didn’t buy it, but she didn’t push it either.
“Come on,” I said finally, stretching my arms over my head. “Let’s give Amaya what she wants and go… sabbatical. That’s a verb, right?”
She laughed and tapped at her phone. “Listen to this. The internet is telling me that the word ‘sabbatical’ comes from the Greek word ‘sabatikos’ and the Hebrew word ‘Sabat,’ or Sabbath, which is a day of rest.”
“Great, thank you, internet,” I said, shoving work files into my tote bag. “I’ll rest then.”
The only problem was, I wasn’t quite sure I knew how.