Chapter Two Dean
Chapter Two
Dean
Resolutely, I put that particular fear aside until the end of camp.
Because soon there will be no room for any distractions, except for one.
Margot Berry.
I sigh long and loud. Then I sigh again, etching a lightning bolt onto my clipboard.
As an avid student of the planet, I know there are some things humans are simply not meant to understand. Margot Berry is mine. Since age thirteen, she has been a yearly struggle, though the fabric of that struggle has changed. A lot.
At thirteen, she just confused me. And by me, I mean my body.
But it has been a few summers since my body was confused.
It knows exactly what it wants from Margot now.
If only she would stand still long enough for me to figure her out.
When my mother was alive, she was obsessed with The Sound of Music.
Would watch it every year around Christmastime, when the campgrounds were covered in frost. There’s a line from one of the songs about trying to catch a moonbeam in your hand.
That’s Margot.
She beams. She’ll burst into spontaneous tears over a camper’s art project.
She’ll dance in the dining hall when no music is playing. At breakfast, no less.
Most notable of all, she is never not plotting a prank. Against me.
I’m quiet. I study flora and fauna. I rock climb. I have a clipboard.
I hate pranks.
Last summer alone, Margot treated me to a frog in my bed. Gave me wrong directions on a scavenger hunt and faked a deadly snakebite. In the span of three weeks.
I haven’t spoken to her since the snakebite incident.
I’m surprised I can speak yet at all, I was so sure she was going to die. Probably because she sobbed, I don’t know, I think I heard it rattling before it struck, then proceeded to fake a seizure.
For all the chaos she emits, I genuinely can’t imagine a world without Margot.
I don’t want to even try.
As if on cue, I hear her voice coming down the trail from the girls’ side of Camp Firefly. She’s leading her campers in a familiar chant, which they echo back to her after every line. Early in the morning, when I was fast asleep, I heard a little birdie, going cheep cheep cheep . . .
Margot comes into view carrying one camper on her back, holding the hand of another girl who looks like she’s been crying.
There’s always one camper who spends the first few days homesick, but I bet a hundred dollars that she’ll be cured by tonight’s campfire.
It’s impossible for the girls to be anything but happy around Margot. She’s so . . . authentic.
And God, she’s so beautiful.
Her grandmother was a famous French actress named Colette Delacroix, and I often think it’s where her personality and looks get their sense of drama.
Her chin is blunt and stubborn, the total opposite of her cheekbones, which are high and defined.
Of course, they would have to be to compete with her eyes.
Gray eyes that sparkle constantly, as if she’s right on the verge of spilling a secret.
Her dark-brown hair is in a braid right now, down the center of her back, and she only takes the braid out for two reasons.
She’s going swimming.
Or she’s upset.
Margot crying out of sadness, not joy, is my least favorite thing in this world, followed by littering and pollution.
Yeah, Sad Margot is at the top of my Absolutely Not list, so yes, I let her prank me and get the mischief out of her system.
I don’t fire her for nearly causing me to have a heart attack, even though I’m basically her boss now.
I allow her to dance on the dining hall tables and flout the lights-out policy.
Because . . . she’s the light of this camp.
My moonbeam.
What am I to her, unfortunately?
The nature nerd who is the eternal punch line of her jokes.
Like I said, I’ll be that for her, because it makes her happy.
I’m just not masochistic enough to ask her out.
She’d probably insist on a picnic, then fake a bigfoot sighting.
“Dean,” says one of my campers, tugging on my sleeve. “What is the challenge this year? I know you said you won’t give us a hint, because then we’d have an advantage, but if we don’t beat the girls, they’re going to be so annoying for three weeks.”
“No hints.”
“Bro.”
“Everyone finds out the challenge at the same time. If you can’t win fairly—”
“You’ve already lost,” he groans, echoing the lecture I gave them at breakfast. “Why do you have to be such a stickler for rules?”
I’m growing distracted as Margot draws closer, easing her piggyback passenger onto the ground before opening her arms for the crier.
Is there something different about Margot?
Her body is exactly as I remember it—and I remember it frequently.
Right now, her blue Camp Firefly T-shirt is tied up beneath her breasts, and she’s wearing frayed jean shorts with very soft-looking back pockets.
I would kill to slide my palms inside of them and squeeze what’s underneath.
Pull and lift her up against me, watching her eyes fill with awareness that there’s more to me than hiking safety tips.
What the hell is different about her?
“We don’t have to talk to the girls, do we?” says another camper, standing at his friend’s elbow, both ten-year-olds riveted by the arrival of their opponents. “I’m not talking to them.”
“Guess what?” I say. “They’re saying the same thing about you right now.”
They trade a defiant glance. “Good.”
“You have to be nice to the girls so they’ll show you how to make lanyards. It’s the same concept as braiding. Girls have the competitive edge in that department.”
“Why can’t you show us?”
“I’ve done my time in the lanyard studio. I’m a free man now.”
They grumble for a few seconds, then one of them points directly at Margot. “Is it true that she once dressed up like a bear and scared the crap out of you at the campfire?”
“Yup,” Margot says, hop-skipping to a stop in front of our trio, hands clasped behind her back. Is she holding a prop knife or something? I lean sideways to check, and she raises a curious eyebrow at me before continuing to address the boys. “Practiced my bear noises for weeks. Want to hear them?”
Their eyes light up.
She lights everything up.
Even when she’s growling and snarfing, lumbering in a circle like a bear, sending my campers into hysterics.
Why does she look different this morning?
Last night at the welcome campfire, she was gorgeous enough to make me forget my speech several times, but the gray of her eyes is so .
. . vivid right now. What’s going on here?
“Wait, Dean. I have an idea,” chirps one of the boys. “Can Margot teach us to make lanyards? She’s a girl!”
“I am?” she breathes in mock horror. Then, “Of course I can teach you. I taught Dean when we were thirteen.”
“You’ve been coming here that long?”
“Uh-huh.” She elbows me in the ribs. “Making his life hell since 2018 and countin—”
“Are you wearing lipstick?” I interrupt, perplexed.
“Yes,” Margot says on a laughing exhale, her eyes fastened on mine. Her fingertips lift to her lips, but fall away before touching. “Thanks for noticing.”
Little does she know I notice anything and everything related to her mouth.
“Do you think it looks . . . good?” she asks, sort of hesitantly.
“Ew. Let’s get out of here,” mutter my campers, slinking away.
My attention drops to my clipboard, where it’s safe. “Why are you wearing it?” I ask, making an absent note about a lanyard-making crossover event.
“For a confidence boost.”
I don’t hide my skepticism. “The one thing you don’t lack is confidence, Margot.”
She shifts in her hiking boots, which incidentally, have neon-pink laces. “I mean, most of the time you’re right. I am witty and engaging and have a pretty great singing voice. I’ve got an arsenal of campfire stories, too, as you know . . .”
“Again, I question the need for more confidence.”
“I don’t know.” She presses her blush-colored lips together. “Maybe I’m hoping my crush will notice me back this summer.”
I’ve just been impaled by a steel beam.
Margot has a crush? At camp? Is that what she’s saying to me right now? And she implied that it’s someone who has been here before, thus my attention immediately darts to the other counselors who oversee the twelve- and thirteen-year-olds. Is it Aiken? He was the only one working here last year.
“Oh,” I say, winded, scribbling a black hole with my ballpoint pen. Scribbling until the spot is soaked with ink and rips. “Great. I hope he likes it.”
“Me too.” She does a double take. “Wait, what?”