37. Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Seven
Cole
There was still no sign of Xavier at breakfast the next day.
I’d spent last night in Mitchell’s cabin.
After all, I knew he wasn’t about to come back, and I wasn’t about to leave his kids with a junior staff member and a bunch of unanswered questions about where their cabin leader had fucked off to.
The boys had taken the news that Mitchell had left early in more stride than I’d anticipated.
They were downcast and upset, of course, because, at thirteen, Mitchell was the kind of guy that most boys thought was cool as hell, but they accepted it.
The special ice cream sundaes I brought as a late-night snack helped soften the blow.
In chick flicks, it’s always the girls crying and eating ice cream to soothe their heartbreak.
Michele taught me that ice cream’s powers were not gender specific.
This morning, things were easier. The boys still looked down as I got them out the door, but after a quick chat with Kevin, the junior staff who’d been supporting Mitchell all summer, we at least had a game plan where they were concerned.
Kevin would take over. Their parents would be here in twenty-four hours anyway, and most of that time would be spent packing or participating in campfires and Agonde’s other goodbye rituals.
I was waiting at the mic stand when Brennon and Toni walked in for the morning meal.
Bren caught my eye and shook his head. Toni, on the other hand walked like a zombie.
She didn’t react to a single sound, barely registered Brennon’s touch as he steered her to the staff table.
She didn’t even look up when both Abbi and Michele tried to get her attention.
Just before the meal was due to start, Abbi turned up at my side.
“What the fuck did you do to her?” Her brown eyes looked ready to kill as she slicked her tongue across her front teeth.
I held my palms up, “Whoa, this time, for once, nothing. Abbi, I swear.”
She cast a worried glance back to Toni who sat holding a spoonful of cereal but never lifting it to her lips, “Well, if you didn’t do anything, then what the fuck am I looking at?”
“Xavi.”
“Huh?”
I scanned the dining hall for Jack, “Things… uh… got… um, really fucked up yesterday. We were forced to split up, and none of us have been able to find Xav since. He never made it out of the woods.”
A lick of fear coursed up my spine at the reminder that we had no idea what happened to him.
Followed immediately by an internal reprimand.
A reminder, that sounded suspiciously like my father, that real men don’t get scared.
Except I knew that wasn’t true. I did. Fear is normal.
Fear for someone you care–cared–about, even more so.
Still, my habit of self-hatred was the hardest to break.
But I had to try, because even though undoing the harm I caused to Toni and to Xav before that was impossible, forgiveness probably forever out of reach, I had to do something.
My friends had all managed to find their way back to each other while I’d stubbornly clung to my identity as the monster of Carl’s making.
From today on, I was going to try to find a new middle path where at least I wouldn’t end every day filled with regret.
That path meant finding Xavier. Because I knew with everything in me that he wouldn’t just vanish.
He wouldn’t do this. Not to them. Not after how they’d been the last few weeks.
The shift in their relationship had been impossible for me to ignore.
They weren’t overt, but the love I remembered being part of burned so brightly in every movement they made.
Now, neither Brennon nor Toni seemed quite sure of what to do or how to even stomach the food in front of them.
After making the announcements and waiting until the noise in the dining hall was loud enough to serve as distraction, I snaked behind them at the staff table.
“Eat,” I ordered.
“Both of you.” I pointed at their full bowls, “We will find him.”
Toni didn’t move, but Brennon looked over his shoulder with watery eyes, “How?”
“Because he didn’t just disappear. He wouldn’t leave you. He wouldn’t leave her.” I pointed to Toni, who still hadn’t looked up or reacted to a word I’d said.
“Not like this. So, he’s here somewhere, and we’re going to find him.
But that won’t happen if you’re both starving.
So, eat!” I ordered again, this time, more forcefully, “Besides, you’re both far too skinny for your own good anyway.
” I muttered at Brennon, who at least managed a half-hearted half-smirk at my comment.
On my way out the door, I caught him jostling her shoulder and forcing a spoon into her hand.
Fuck breakfast. I was going to start searching, and with Mitchell out of the picture and no sign of Stephanie, either, I knew exactly who–or where–to start.
Unfortunately, my search for Jack proved futile. As did a sweep of every fucking building on the property. I even checked each of the damn program sheds. There was no sign of Xavier, and eventually, duty called.
With pick-up tomorrow, the afternoon was dedicated to cabin clean-outs and packing rather than games and programs. Abbi and I worked together, going around to each of the cabins to check.
Everywhere, kids were snatching still-damp bathing suits off clothing lines, and duffle bags covered in sand were being pulled out from under bunk beds.
Even cabin leaders were starting to get their shit together.
They’d have the afternoon tomorrow to finish packing, once kids were gone, but still, after three months living on the property you tended to accumulate a ton of shit.
We started on the boy’s line, then the girls.
Both Hassan and Bella had the awful job of packing up sleeping bags and clothes for two kids who’d seemingly vanished into thin air.
The strain and the unsaid horror of not knowing woven into every badly faked smile from the lot of us as we discussed what to do with Alison and Jonathan’s things.
I settled on taking them. Because after we found Xav, we were going to find those kids or at least help the police do it.
We did the same in the Village, going door to door amongst the staff cabins, reminding them to at least start getting their shit packed.
We didn’t bother with Abbi’s, because, as she explained, “I’ve been staying in Riley’s cabin since my walls are still covered in phosphorous thanks to those sickos.”
Nor did we bother with Francis’. I had a feeling it was locked anyway, but both Abbi and I agreed, we didn’t give a fuck if he ever came back for his shit. When we knocked on Toni’s door, there was rustling and Brennon’s voice called out through the door “Two seconds!”
Abbi laughed. I didn’t. It was impossible to laugh when a flushed Toni answered the door.
Her hair was loose over her shoulders and nothing but Brennon’s tank top hung off her, barely covering her curves.
She blinked in surprise and mumbled, “Oh, fuck! Sorry!” before tucking her whole damn self behind the door.
Which only made it more obvious what had been going on, because without her blocking the doorframe, all I could see was a very naked Brennon, tattoos, chest, and even his fucking legs on display.
In fact, the only thing he was covering was his dick.
Between Toni and the scene I was now looking at, my brain short-circuited, and my mouth just gaped like some sort of fucking fish.
Abbi on the other hand just shook her head, “This is your packing reminder.”
From behind the door Toni squeaked, “Thank you.”
But, of course, because she’s Abbi, she couldn’t just let me sort my shit out in peace, so she just wagged her finger at all of us and said “Toni, girl, you know I love you, but y’all are so fucking weird.”
Toni blushed. God, she turned such perfect shade of pink. I bet I could make her whole ass flush that colour. And that thought made my own cheeks hot.
Abbi just motioned us to the door, “Let’s go, weirdo.”
I couldn’t even deny it with the x-rated thoughts that had just run through my head.
The rest of the evening was much more sombre. The final dinner, followed by the awards ceremony, and then each of the sections went their separate ways for campfires. Boys, girls, and elites.
I both loved and hated closing campfires in equal measure.
I always had. There was something so poignant in having everyone together, in seeing firsthand the kind of closeness between friends young and old, as all the boys and cabin leaders squeezed along the benches that encircled our campfire.
I always opened the night with a greeting. But before long I was closing it, too.
There was an old poem that my mom used to read to me when I was really little in an old book she’d left behind.
That stupid book of poetry, one of the only things of hers I still had.
I might hate her for leaving, but I never could get rid of that book.
I pulled it from my pocket. The yellowing pages were thinner and more fragile than I remembered as I cracked the spine open to the page I wanted.
Not that I needed to. This poem was by far, the one I’d read the most.
I had to clear my throat and steady my voice; this was a poem about goodbyes. A poem that said all the right things so that I wouldn’t get them wrong. I’d gotten so many things wrong.
“If I could linger,
Just a little longer.
Be it a day, a week, a year-
If I could hold tonight,
And all its firelight,
And never let that disappear-
Then come tomorrow morn’
And all the days you’re gone
I would never need to fear.
But I cannot hold tonight
Nor touch the firelight.
I cannot keep us here.
So, all I can do,
Is read this poem for you
And hope that you’ll remember.”
Across the campfire, Brennon’s eyes shone.
The orange flames standing out against their blue.
I couldn’t look away from him, even as the old book trembled in my hands and the last words were a fight against the rising threat of tears.
When I broke our eye contact and looked around, many of the boys wore similar expressions.
Some of the younger ones openly crying, while the older boys, conditioned to try and hide their feelings just like I was, pretended to rub smoke from their faces.
At my feet was the torch, wrapped with a bundle of pre-greased towels, guaranteeing it would burn.
I lifted it and held the end to the flames, and of course, it didn’t take long to catch.
Holding it overhead, I led our boys’ camp procession down the cabin line, right to the Point.
Abbi was already waiting there, her own torch lit and held aloft.
We would wait at the top of the hill while the boys got seated, and only then would we walk our torches to the pire at the front, using that to light the last campfire of the summer.
Once it was just the two of us, I asked softly, “Jack?”
“He’s down there,”
“Okay, then. We ready?”
She nodded and braced herself. The torches were heavy, the night dark, and though we both knew this path well, it wasn’t exactly steady ground.
At the bottom of the hill, Jack stood waiting for us on the stage.
Once we’d lit the fire behind him, we both took our seats.
Abbi joined Toni and Michele in the front row with Bella and her little girls.
Brennon was just behind them, keeping a close eye on Toni, who held her friends’ hands and cried.
No one in the crowd was waiting for me, so I shuffled to the edge of a bench near the front.
Throughout the campfire, there were audible sniffles, and with every song that passed, there was a heavy feeling that came with knowing this was the end of another summer.
Jack’s closing remarks felt trite. Unfeeling.
Probably because he hadn’t really been a part of this summer for the rest of us.
He dismissed the cabins one by one. Cabin leaders would take their kids somewhere around the property for a late-night snack.
A final opportunity for the kids, many of whom wouldn’t see each other again until next summer, to be all together.
There had been a sign-up sheet in the section office last week, and all the cabin leaders had picked their spots.
That way Abbi and I could perform our last acts as Section Heads for the day by delivering trays of cake to each cabin.
Once I was done, I was going to track down Brennon and Toni, and we’d discuss what to do about Xavi.
It took a while to make my way around in the dark, but eventually I delivered the last tray and hustled my way back to the dining hall. All around me, the camp property was quiet, and the lights from inside the dining hall shone across the Centre Circle thanks to its many windows.
What I hadn’t anticipated was the silhouette of the man I’d been looking for all day.
But there was no denying those curls belonged to Xavier.
I’d know them anywhere. There was also no denying when another, bigger shadow, came up behind him and hit him so hard that Xavi stumbled and vanished from my line of sight.
I’d already been picking up the pace. Instead, I switched to a full-on sprint.
The doors smashed as my hands collided with them.
Of course, I hadn’t stopped to think, to assess or plan the way Xavier would have done in my shoes.
I just crashed through the doors, and right into the last thing I expected to see.
Toni and Brennon tied up and shaking on one of the benches watching the stage.
Where a bad horror film was playing out in real life.