Chapter 3 Don’t Make Impulsive Decisions （…This Might Be a Bit Too Late） #3
“Sleep!” Noah guesses immediately, which is fair, but I shake my head. I settle back into my position, and this time, I let out a wistful sigh, almost like I’m longing for something. “Dreaming!” he exclaims now, and I open my eyes back up.
Surely the verb counts, too.
My brother offers me his hand again, this time to shake it. “Hi, stranger,” he says, dimples forming in his cheeks as I hold his gaze. “We make quite a good team. My name is Noah, by the way.”
“Eleanore,” I tell him. The smile on my face must be identical to his, except for the fact that I have only one dimple, in my left cheek. “But you can call me Ellie.”
Next, I try to guess a fellow brown-haired girl’s word while also attempting to find a way to act out the word trash.
I fail, and thus she disappears without telling me her name.
Afterward, I bump into a person with a blue buzz cut.
They guessed the word ladder correctly, which I’ll take as a win, thank you very much, but I’ll never know what they were trying to show me. So, still no name.
The next word I get is French fries, and honestly, that’s when I start to doubt that being autistic is the only reason I’m having such a hard time with this.
Like, how can literally anyone act out the words French fries?
The boy in front of me miraculously guesses the fries part, but when I try to make him add French in front of it by signifying a baguette, I lose him.
At the end of the game, I don’t know a single person’s name.
“All right, everyone,” the camp’s owner says. “You can return to the circle. Before we tell you who your teammate is and what cabin you’re in, though, we’ve got to go over some rules.”
While everyone settles back down, I let my gaze wander.
Whether they’re fourteen, fifteen, or nearing seventeen like me, everywhere I look, there are people whose names I don’t know and whose stories I haven’t heard.
A place full of strangers. All new faces with no memories attached to them.
Hope fills my chest as I think about the endless possibilities lying ahead of me.
This is going to be my summer, I tell myself.
But as soon as the thought enters my mind, I spot the one and only Daniel Solomon. And he sees me, too.
For the first time since I’ve known him, the entire world around us seems to fade away. There’s no constant chatter in the background, no nosy teenagers who can see our every move, no heart beating out of my chest. It’s just me and Daniel…and my nausea.
Is this really the feeling people search for all their lives? Because if so, I would gladly hand it over.
Seconds pass as we hold each other’s gaze, but after a bit, he does look away, immediately returning his attention to his group of camp friends. Like he doesn’t know who I am at all.
I have no choice but to try to do the same. Going up to him so soon will make me seem desperate, which is the last thing I need Daniel to think.
No, I need to regain his interest first. Guys like him love the chase, so it’s best if I let him come to me.
I scan the people around me who are already sitting down.
My eyes fall onto the semifamiliar face of Lily, a member of Willowmoor High’s volleyball team.
A few feet away from her sits a girl who is laughing at something her friend said, and even though we’ve never properly interacted before, I recognize her as Vera, who is in the year below me at Willowmoor High.
I try to see if I know anyone else, but most faces don’t spark any memories. That is, until I spot a girl I share some of my classes with, though I don’t think we’ve ever exchanged more than two words, both being hello.
“That’s Sierra, right?” I ask Noah, my eyes still on her. She’s standing all by herself, blond hair up in the same ponytail she always wears to school, and her eyes don’t seem to be searching for anyone, either. “I’ve seen her around at school. Is this her first year here?”
Maya overhears and shakes their head. “She’s been coming here for longer than any of us, but she doesn’t really have any friends at camp.”
I take Sierra in once again. “Then why does she keep coming back?” I ask.
“Oh, she doesn’t want to make any friends, honey.
Feels like she’s too good for any of us, I guess, since her dad is Adrian Levine,” Liam explains.
He waits for realization to dawn on my face, but when I don’t react, he continues.
“You know, the beach volleyball legend of Florida? Adrian Levine? Dude, have you really never heard of…?”
I can’t help myself. I laugh at the ridiculousness of my being here. Seriously, why did I ever agree to come along with Daniel?
Because that’s what good girlfriends are supposed to do, I remind myself.
I clear my throat. “It’s a long story, but I actually know close to nothing about beach volleyball,” I admit to Liam.
He opens his mouth, then closes it again. “Okay, that’s fine, I guess, but you’re literally standing four steps away from him.” They point at the camp’s owner and inform me, “That is Adrian Levine.”
And it is at this very moment that I realize I am truly unprepared for this summer.
An ashamed blush colors my cheeks, but before Liam gets to say anything about that, the camp’s owner—Adrian, aka Sierra’s dad—whistles. Loudly.
My hands fly to my ears, as if I can protect them from the noise that’s already gone.
“Okay, everyone!” Adrian says when most people have paused their conversations. He’s loud enough that the eighty people at camp can hear him. Unlike with Gigi, there’s no real enthusiasm in his voice. “It’s time to go over some rules!”
Just like that, he starts telling us what we should do and, most importantly, what we absolutely should not do.
No food or sodas in the cabins where we will be sleeping.
Water is fine, of course. If we damage any property, we’ll have to pay for repairs.
A single drop of alcohol will get us sent home immediately.
Also, he doesn’t really care when we go to sleep but asks us to please not keep others up by being loud.
The list goes on and on and on, but everything on it seems reasonable and fine.
After going over it all, Adrian takes a deep breath. “Basically, it all comes down to this one rule: Behave yourselves, please. Are there any questions I wasn’t able to answer with that?” he asks, and immediately, a hand goes up in the air. “Yes,” he says, “you, in the purple shirt?”
“How many people will we be sharing our cabins with? And, oh my god, are there going to be bunk beds?” asks a girl excitedly. I’d guess her to be just fourteen years old.
“Most of you will be in a cabin with four people total, two bunk beds per room.” A new hand goes up in the air, at which point Adrian closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose, like he’s just given up on his very last bit of faith in humanity.
“No, Ashley,” he says before even hearing her out, “we can’t let you share a room with campers of the opposite sex. Please don’t make me explain why.”
Her hand goes back down. There’s a grin on her face as she whispers something to her friends.
“Heteronormative much,” another person tells Adrian, earning some laughs from the group. I turn to where the sound came from, finding Sierra on the opposite side of the campfire. Her face is all serious, seeming to glitch a little thanks to the flames that separate us.
Adrian’s eyes flick to his daughter. “Levine,” he starts, with a tone that makes it sound like that isn’t his last name, too. “Don’t make me put you in a solo room.”
She simply shrugs. “Go ahead. We both know I wouldn’t mind limiting my social interactions.”
“You’re right, my bad.” He thinks it over for a few seconds, slowly nodding to himself. Then he says, “Well, don’t make me room you with the kindergartners next door, then.”
Her eyes widen. “No way. That’s a whole new low, even for you.”
All around us, people are whispering to each other, some looking absolutely shocked someone would talk to the camp’s owner or their own parent this way.
But there’s a small spark in Adrian’s eyes now, something I didn’t expect to see since even the campfire didn’t light up his face.
For a moment, I’d swear he’s close to smiling—which would be a first for today—but then he turns back to the rest of the impatient teenagers surrounding him. He clears his throat.
“Any other questions?” Adrian looks around the group and waits a few more beats to see if anyone else will raise their hand.
“Great,” he says when no one does. “That means it’s time to introduce you to your camp counselors.
” He quickly tells us who everyone is, from the middle-aged man named David to the twenty-year-old girl who goes by Sam.
“Now, Gigi here is going to tell you who your teammates are,” he finishes.
Gigi immediately jumps to her feet, not wasting another second. She starts shouting names, which makes people high-five each other or run across the circle to be at their new teammate’s side. Others look around the group, waiting to see whose face belongs to the name of their partner.
“Vera Kuang and Naomi Schulz! Maxine Miller and Sujin Choi! Veronica Owens and Sloane Finley!” Gigi continues to shout.
From the corner of my eye, I see Liam freeze. “What’s wrong?” Noah asks before I gather the confidence.
Liam shakes their head. “Probably nothing,” they say, but their voice trembles with uncertainty.
“There’s a Veronica Owens at my school who is not exactly known for being, um…
kind. Even her former friends—who literally outed people—think she’s mean, which is saying quite a lot.
” He sighs. “Being the awkward Japanese guy at school is already bad enough. I can’t have people in my hometown finding out about my pronouns and coming up with even more reasons to bully me.
I mean, it would overwhelm their bigoted little brains! ”
Liam starts to laugh, but he’s the only one. The rest of us just stare at him in worry.
He stops to clear his throat when he notices. “Sorry,” he says. “Humor is my coping mechanism, but I forgot I’m not funny. Either way, surely there are thousands of white people named Veronica Owens, so everything is fine.”
I want to tell them they can always talk to me about this if they want to, that maybe I will understand some parts of it, though of course not everything, but when I open my mouth, they lift their hand to stop me.
“Nope,” he says, grinning. “Our official trauma dump is scheduled for week two, thank you very much.”
I mentally make a note to prepare myself for that.
“Maya Shaan and Yasmeen Qadir!” Gigi yells then, and for some reason, that prompts Liam and Noah to congratulate Maya, who is bowing like they just got handed some prestigious award. Their grin is so big, I can almost feel my jaw ache just looking at it.
When I turn to Yasmeen in confusion, she’s already waiting for me to catch her gaze.
“Cult,” she mouths again, but when her partner asks what she said, she smiles and shakes her head innocently.
“Nothing you need to worry about, babe. Why are we celebrating, though? Didn’t we choose these teams last month? ”
“Right, well, about that,” Maya starts, their grin fading into something a bit more cautious. “I knew you wouldn’t come along this summer if I told you we don’t exactly choose our own teams, so I kind of sort of lied and gave you a fake form?”
Yasmeen murmurs something in a language I don’t understand. All I know is it doesn’t sound very positive, considering her tone.
“But!” Maya tries. “I was pretty sure we were going to be teammates anyway since we’re compatible. The camp counselors make teams by observing us while we play charades and trying to predict who will work well together, so basically: Our relationship is now SMASH! approved.”
Yasmeen blankly stares at them for a few seconds, then shakes her head. Still, she can’t hide her small smile and the hearts in her eyes when she says, “You’re ridiculous. You lied to me!”
I turn to Noah, my stomach dropping as I repeat Maya’s words in my head. “Wait, so that’s what you couldn’t tell me? That we were pretty much being match-made?”
Noah nods. “It’s a tradition not to give away that secret to first-years, so I couldn’t tell you. I know you don’t like surprises, though. I’m sorry, Ellie.”
“It’s fine,” I tell him with a shrug, but I can’t shake a feeling of dread as Gigi continues to scream pairs.
While we were playing the game, I was so focused on wanting people to guess my words that I barely took the time to talk to anyone except Noah.
I didn’t connect with anyone else—didn’t even try to, too caught up in my desperation to be good at the game—and since there don’t seem to be any boy-and-girl teams, I doubt I’ll end up being paired with my brother.
So who can they team me up with, then? Someone random who doesn’t fit anywhere else, either?
I assumed they would make teams based on skill level, especially given the fact that Adrian the-beach-volleyball-legend Levine owns the camp.
He doesn’t exactly seem like the type for this whole emotional matchmaking stuff, but maybe I’m too quick to judge.
After all, he didn’t even make us play any volleyball before assigning teams, which is… a choice.
“Noah Young and Liam Miyasaki!” Gigi yells then, making my heart stop. “And, lastly, Eleanore Young and Sierra Levine!”
Gigi laughs, saying something about eighty names being a lot to call out, but I only vaguely register the words that are coming out of her mouth at this point, because the only thing I can focus on right now is Sierra.
Sierra Levine, the daughter of a retired beach volleyball legend.
Sierra, a girl in my class who I somehow have not really talked to before.
Sierra, my teammate for the next two weeks who is currently frowning at me from across the crackling campfire.
Well, this is going to be an eventful summer.