14. Fourteen
Fourteen
Cole
Ileft Brennon sitting on the steps of my cabin.
Lately it felt like he and I were a couple of whack jobs trading conspiracy theories.
It was nearly breakfast time, and as I wandered towards the dining hall, the sounds of benches scrapping on floors and children laughing got louder and louder.
As they ran past, a few boys waved and shouted hello, heading to set their cabin tables for the forthcoming meal.
Through the tall windows that lined the whole front wall of the building, I could see kids inside scrambling to grab dishware and cutlery.
But no one’s actions really registered. My thoughts were entirely on Mitchell Greer.
Thoughts of Xavier and Toni were sprinkled in there, too, but I had plenty of practice not thinking about them. I’d been doing that since the autumn I turned fifteen. And more than ever since last summer when I’d had to listen to Xavier talk about them fucking.
Greer on the other hand was a new consideration.
Once the meal was in full swing, I did what I normally would.
Walking amongst the various boys’ tables, pausing to chat or tell a joke or even just say a quick ‘Hi’.
Only today, for the first time, I paid more attention to the cabin leaders than the kids.
Which was why I noticed Hassan helping Jonathan come out of his shell by playing a game of tabletop football with Cheerios.
Jonathan apparently had good hand-eye coordination and made for an excellent goaltender.
Using his small fingers, he deflected the shots from his cabinmates easily, resulting in cheers around the table.
I watched and cheered alongside them for a minute and the big smile on his face when I walked away brought a grin to my own.
That same attention was also how I noticed Xavier, slippery as ever, seated at the staff table, not speaking to or even looking in Toni’s direction.
If they were strangers, if I didn’t know their history or even if I didn’t believe Brennon’s version of events, there would be no way of knowing they were involved.
But because I did know, all I could feel was the electric current that ran between the two of them.
One that made something like loneliness pang deep in my gut.
Then, wordlessly, he got up, and because he could somehow make himself invisible to everyone but me, slipped through the kitchen door and vanished.
Finally, my unusual focus was drawn by Francis Barrett, sidelining his way across the hall after pulling a disappearing act to rival Xavi yesterday afternoon.
I’d overheard Jack bitching about it under his breath when I passed him coming back from the parking lot.
I’d been on my way to the library to help setup an indoor games tournament for one of the junior cabins.
I hadn’t caught much of his grumbling, but ‘Barrett’ and ‘motherfucker’ had stuck out.
Almost like I’d expected it to happen, when Francis headed to the coffee station and made a big show of filling his cup, Mitchell got up from his table and joined him, leaving his group of thirteen-year-old boys to clear their table undirected.
As if. Beside Francis, Mitchell looked shrunken.
Cartoonishly-so, thanks to his over-inflated arms. Meanwhile, Francis had the height to match mine, and the muscles, too.
He’d proven that the day he shook my hand, but he also moved robotically.
It was like he’d never quite learned how to operate his giant limbs. A monster playing at human being.
From my distance, several tables down, I could barely make out the movement of their lips over the rim of their mugs, but it was there.
From the way both of their faces darted to the staff table, and Toni’s back, where she chatted with one of the nurses, it didnt take more than one guess to know what, and who, they were talking about.
There was blatant hunger in Mitchell’s eyes as he stared at her that set my teeth on edge.
I was seeing, for the first time, something I now suspected had always been there and I’d been too self-absorbed or pissed off at Toni and my former friends to notice.
There was only one person I trusted to tell me the truth, to give me a real, unbiased opinion of Mitchell. One that, unlike Brennon’s, wasn’t tainted by sexual frustration or paranoia.
With the mornings’ programs keeping her and everyone else around camp busy, I wasn’t able to track Michele down until the last of the picked-program session ended.
The Creative Cluster was still full of kids, some of whom were collecting their artwork or crafts, including Jonathan’s sister, Alison, who stood in the corner beside the racks of completed works.
Pottery was always a popular choice of material amongst the younger kids, and I watched for a second as she gently brushed her tiny hands along several drying pieces.
When her hand darted back to her side, she spun to face me, her eyes wide and terrified, until she realized it was me.
I waved and smiled softly. Most kids liked it when I was loud and cracked jokes, but Alison didn’t seem like that kind of kid, and my efforts at gentleness, foreign as they were, were rewarded with a small smile.
Michele was nowhere to be seen, but I suspected she was in her favourite hiding spot.
The supply closet. She always made a point of taking stock after the day’s formal programs ended, counting out paper stock, inventorying clay, paints, and other supplies to ensure there was always enough.
Art supplies weren’t easy to get delivered all the way out to Agonde, so she did her best to plan well in advance.
She was so caught up in it–or specifically, in organising tubes of acrylic paint into some order only she understood–that she didn’t clock my entry until the closed the door behind me.
The soft latch was just loud enough for her to look up from the shelf, which to me looked like nothing but a mess. Then again, the whole room looked like that to me. Its floor to ceiling wooden stacks were almost all bursting with or sagging under the weight of art supplies.
At the sight of me, her initial smile faded, and her shoulders slumped immediately.
“What are you doing here, Cole?”
I countered her question, “Were you expecting someone else?”
She just sighed and turned back to her paints, continuing to re-organize while I watched.
Even a week ago, I’d have used this time to try to beg and plead for her to take me back.
There was still a tiny voice in my head that said our getting back together would solve all my problems. A lying little voice that said we could go back in time, ignore whatever was going on with Brennon, Toni, Mitchell or Xav.
Part of me very much wanted to put the jack back in the box and carry on as if Antoinette Barrett had never crashed back into my life.
But those feelings all felt far away and hard to find, hidden behind a growing fear that I’d missed something that had been right in front of my face for a long time.
I finally broke our mutual silence, “Michele, I want to ask you about Mitchell.”
“Why?! Did something happen?” She answered, immediately on high alert.
I pumped the imaginary breaks with my hands, “No, no, no,” I said, hoping to ease the panic that had sprung seemingly from nowhere. Another clue I’d been an idiot.
“Nothing happened, but I’d like to get your honest opinion of the guy.”
She eyed me suspiciously, “Why?”
“Please, Michele?” I pleaded.
Her eyes narrowed further still, “You really can’t see it, can you?
“I think I might be starting to.”
She laughed, and it was a harsher, more jaded sound, that I’d ever heard from her before.
“What, just because he’s ditched you for his new pal?”
The comment about Francis was unusually sarcastic for her.
Our year apart had changed her, just like it had changed me.
You couldn’t quite call it patience, but a year of hard losses and time spent alone after screaming at one too many teammates, had slowly taught me that jumping down peoples’ damn throats all the time wasn’t the road to enduring relationships.
I was determined not to become a carbon copy of Carl Michaels.
Alone, with only empty beer cans for company.
I didn’t explain my change of heart. I just asked for the information I needed to hear.
“Mich, just tell me.”
“Okay, if you really want to know how I feel…”
I skipped lunch. Any appetite I had died after hearing Michele’s version of last summer’s events.
Instead, staggering like a drunk, I wandered around the woods wracking my brain for how I could have got things so wrong.
Somehow, despite the fact that I’d spent years keeping Greer at arms’ length, I’d taken his version of events as gospel.
When he told me Toni had accepted his advances, when he told me that Xavi and Brennon beat the shit out of him in a fit of jealousy, I’d believed every word.
Not for a second did I bother to investigate further.
There were no moments of hesitation or reflection, no pausing to wonder if Mitchell was telling the truth.
I had been so buried in my anger from the past, that I’d never stopped to think about how things were playing out in the present.