Olivia
Chapter ten
What have I gotten myself into? These people are absolutely bonkers.
Do I feel bad for throwing their special stick into the fire with the other kindling? Of course I do. But I don’t think we need to have a funeral for the darn thing.
Linda decides that in lieu of the sharing stick, we can hold hands in a circle and lift our joined hands when it’s our turn to share.
It’s as if we don’t need a sharing stick at all! Imagine that! This whole day has got my patience level at full snark.
A woman I haven’t met yet is on one side of me. I hold out my hand to her, and she takes it, albeit with great reluctance. I manage to hold back an eye roll.
Gage is on my other side. When he slips his hand into mine, every nerve ending in my body goes on high alert.
His rough palm sliding against mine and his thumb slotted into the space between my thumb and fingers are enough to make me shiver.
I glance at him, but he gives no indication that the contact has the same kind of effect on him.
“Remember that the idea with this icebreaker is to be vulnerable, to share something important about yourself, so that we can build trust as a group,” Linda tells us. “The question we’re each going to answer tonight is ‘what is your biggest fear?’”
I groan to myself. I would rather throw myself in the fire pit than share vulnerable feelings even with my closest friends and family. There’s no way I want to share my biggest fear with a group of strangers who all apparently hate me.
“Let’s start with our new staff members,” Linda continues. “We only have three this year. Matt, why don’t you go first?”
Matt, who’s standing on the opposite side of the circle between Brynn and Nina, is a muscular guy with brown hair and average height. “Um,” he hedges. “I don’t know. Maybe snakes?”
We all wait for him to say more, but when he doesn’t, Linda goes on. “Okay, thank you, Matt. Delaney? What about you?” Her tone has an edge to it when she says my name, but I can tell she’s working hard to let the whole sharing-stick incident go.
It probably doesn’t help things when I grin and answer, “You know, my biggest fear is probably destroying a sacred talisman on my first day of work, leading to all my new coworkers hating me.”
I laugh to let them know I’m joking. Still smiling, I dart my eyes around the circle, only to be met with a lot of glares. On my right, I hear Gage groan softly.
“Too soon?” I whisper to him out of the corner of my mouth.
Gage sighs but doesn’t answer me, so I elbow him in the side until I see him bite back a smile.
“I see,” Linda says. “Gage, how about you?”
I turn my attention to Gage, my hand still firmly encased in his.
“Uh,” Gage hesitates a moment before answering, meeting my eyes briefly before focusing on the fire as he speaks. “I guess it would be never knowing who I really am.”
Whoa. Did he give a real answer?
Linda beams at him, then calls on the next staff member to share.
Gage still isn’t looking at me, but I feel compelled to support him somehow after that confession. I shift my hand in his so that our fingers are interlaced, and I squeeze.
He looks at me in surprise, and I smile. It’s not like I’m proposing here, just comforting my best friend’s brother.
He squeezes my hand back, holding the pressure steady throughout the rest of the activity.
When Linda calls the session to a close and dismisses us, I try to catch up with Nina or Brynn to do some damage control, but they disappear pretty quickly.
So instead, I approach a group of counselors talking and laughing near the fire.
“Hey!” I wave. “I haven’t met everyone yet. I’m Delaney.”
Their chatter stops and they stare at me, animosity written all over their faces. “We know,” one of the women says, her arms crossed over her chest.
My smile falters, but I freeze it in place. “You’re Sara, right? And Malik and Gabi and Beth?” I try to remember from the icebreaker activity, but I’m not very good with names.
“Bethany,” the woman in the back with light brown hair corrects.
“Oh, right. Bethany. Sorry about that.”
Sara, who seems like the ringleader of this little group, turns away and starts walking. Over her shoulder she says, “We’ve actually got plans right now.”
The other three counselors follow her.
“Oh, right. Of course. See you tomorrow, then!” I call.
Gage comes up behind me chuckling. “I’m guessing that didn’t go as well as you’d hoped?”
I turn toward him. “What is wrong with these people?” I gripe. “It’s a stupid stick!”
“A stupid stick with tassels on it. You’re forgetting the tassels.”
As we talk, we leave the fire pit area and start walking toward the cabins.
I scoff and shake my head. “Oh yeah, my mistake. The tassels really add that air of mysticism to it for sure.”
Gage laughs. “They’ll get over it.”
I bump him with my shoulder. “Sure they will, Mr. ‘RIP Sharing Stick’. What the heck was that?”
Gage smirks. “It is the sharing stick. Decades of camp tradition. That’s a pretty big deal.”
I groan in frustration. “How do you even know?”
Gage scuffs his feet and puts his hands in his pockets. “My mom went here when she was a kid.”
I lift my eyebrows. “Dawn did?”
“Uh, no. I meant Maggie, actually.”
Maggie is Annie and Gage’s birth mom. Their parents adopted them as infants, but Maggie has always been a part of their lives. They even spent a month or more with her most summers growing up. Her adoption is not something Annie wants to talk about often, so Gage bringing it up surprises me.
The pieces click into place. “Does this have something to do with what you shared at the fire circle?”
Gage rubs the back of his neck. “Kind of. Maggie was talking about how it’s a tradition in her family for kids to come to camp here. Her ten-year-old son Duncan will be here for a week in July.”
I nod my head. Duncan and Callie are Gage and Annie’s brother and sister—the kids Maggie had after she got married about thirteen years ago, before I knew them.
“So anyway,” Gage continues, “I thought I’d come check it out, you know? Participate in the family tradition.”
“That’s really cool, Gage.”
We approach a wooden dock that juts out into the lake. Gage gestures to it, an unspoken question in his expression. I nod, and we walk to the edge of the dock and sit, our feet dangling over the edge above the water.
“How old is your little sister?” I ask.
“Callie’s eight.”
“She’s not coming to camp this summer?” Eight is the minimum age to be a camper at Camp Prairie Star.
“No. Maggie feels like she’s still too young. This is Duncan’s first year even.”
I swing my legs slowly, the edge of the dock digging into my thigh. “I’ve never met them. Duncan and Callie.”
Or Maggie either, for that matter. Whenever Annie sees Maggie, she usually goes to their house in Fort Worth. I think Maggie must have come to our high school and college graduations, but I don’t remember meeting her. Those days were such a blur, and I was celebrating with my own family.
I know Annie and Gage’s parents, Dawn and Ted, well of course. We were always at each other’s houses in middle and high school.
“I know.”
Reticence is not usually Gage’s style, at least it wasn’t back when we were kids.
Maybe that’s changed in the last five years, but I doubt it.
I think about how he worded his greatest fear during the activity: “never knowing who I really am.” Does he feel like he doesn’t know who he is because he was adopted?
It’s not something that ever seems to bother Annie.
I study Gage’s face in profile. Despite the darkness, I’m close enough to see that the corners of his lips are turned down. He looks so serious, so unlike the Gage I remember.
Maybe he senses me watching him, because he lies back on the dock and focuses his attention on the night sky.
I lie down next to him, careful to settle far enough away that we don’t accidentally touch. I chuckle to myself. This is not where I expected to be, or who I expected to be with, when I got in my car to drive to camp this morning.
We lie in companionable silence, looking at the stars, listening to the cicadas chirping in the trees.
Gage shared a piece of his real struggles with me tonight.
That was brave, considering how we left off after high school and that we’ve hardly spoken since.
We were so close once, all three of us. There wasn’t anything we didn’t know about each other.
Well, except for my feelings for Gage. I kept those a secret from both my best friends, for obvious reasons.
Maybe he kept a secret or two from me, too.
I feel like it’s off-balance between us now, knowing that Gage shared something real while I’ve been joking around. Maybe I can be brave too.
“My biggest fear is actually being vulnerable,” I say quietly into the night sky.
Gage reaches over and takes my hand, intertwining our fingers. He squeezes. I take it as a friendly gesture, the same way I intended him to take my similar gesture earlier. Entertaining anything more than that makes things too complicated.
Before long, I pull my hand from Gage’s and haul myself up off the dock. “It’s been a long day.”
Gage hops to his feet, sliding his hands into his pockets. “Yeah.”
“Good night, Gage. See you tomorrow.”
“Good night, Olivia.”
Though still tentative, our truce seems promising. Maybe we can be friends again like Annie wants.
I let myself into the empty cabin. Nina must be off somewhere with her boyfriend. Or avoiding me.
I take a quick shower, change into pajamas, and brush my teeth. Burrowing into the blankets on the bottom bunk of my bed, I look around. I hate being alone at night. I’m not a fan of solitude in general, but at night the quiet is overwhelming.
I peel back the covers and jump out of bed to retrieve Panda from my duffel bag. Snuggling back into bed, I hide him under the blankets between my body and the wall.
Adding to my typical nighttime unease is the fact that I’m enemy number one at Camp Prairie Star.
It doesn’t hurt my feelings that my new coworkers aren’t speaking to me—I experienced enough Mean Girls-style cliques in high school and college that it usually rolls off my back—but I’m not sure how long I can last without talking to anyone.
Except Gage, I guess. I flop my head back against the pillow. There’s another problem. I don’t want to get too buddy-buddy with him, but if my choices are to talk to no one or to talk to Gage, I’m going to talk to Gage. I’m not wired for seclusion.
Still feeling restless, I check my phone, prepared to scroll mindlessly through social media. I notice a text from my sister Molly, sent a couple of hours ago to our sister thread.
Molly:
How’d your first day of camp go?
I text her back, grateful for the distraction. I also figure she might find my current predicament funny.
Olivia:
Well I destroyed 30 years of camp tradition and I think I’m shunned now
I’m surprised when she responds right away.
Molly:
What?
Olivia:
But Gage says this isn’t a cult so
Molly:
Gage? Annie’s brother Gage?
Oh shoot. I shouldn’t have said anything about Gage.
Olivia:
Yeah. He’s working here too
Nicole:
That’s interesting…
Olivia:
Omg Nicole aren’t you supposed to be on your honeymoon?
The rest of the week, Gage remains the only coworker who will talk to me. Even Nina makes herself scarce. So, it’s the two of us, partnering up for orientation sessions and sitting together at meals.
It’s nice, actually. Not as bad as I feared.
I slip back into the familiar comfort of his friendship, and it feels like how we were back before everything got complicated at prom.
Hanging out with Gage satisfies my need to be with other people, and actually I have a tough time even noticing all the cold shoulders beyond our little bubble.
At least until Thursday when the junior counselors arrive.
Junior counselors are high schoolers assigned to each cabin to assist the adult counselor with their group of kids. Gage’s junior counselor is a sixteen-year-old kid named Jayden, and it's Gage’s job to train Jayden ahead of the first group of campers arriving on Sunday.
My job is to create the activities schedule, rotating each cabin through swimming and water sports, arts and crafts, and nature hikes throughout the week.
I use the bulletin board in the main office to map out the schedule, giving each cabin a color in addition to the number Linda has already assigned them.
It’s easier for my brain to find the patterns that way.
As someone who thrives being around other people, working on my task alone on Thursday and Friday is unbearable.
I’ve been waiting for the whole I-burned-your-sharing-stick fiasco to blow over on its own, but I realize I might need to help things along.
I make a plan, and hope that Gage will be willing to lend a hand.