Gage
Chapter twenty-nine
I’m feeling chagrined as I watch for Olivia to come into the mess hall for breakfast the next morning. I’m not a man afraid to show my feelings, but I dumped a lot of heavy emotions on her last night.
I feel better about Maggie this morning, though I’m still wrung out.
It’s always a swirl of mixed-up emotions when I see her.
I love Maggie, and I’m excited to spend time with her, but I’m also nervous about trying to contain all the fears it brings up.
It gets overwhelming, and I can’t always hold it all in.
Despite the tornado of conflicting moods seeing Maggie causes for me, I never regret any of the time I spend with her.
I know that pattern of nervousness, excitement, and breakdown is typical, so I probably should have warned Olivia ahead of time. I literally cried on her shoulder while sharing my innermost fears. Plus, I almost told her I love her.
I mean, I am in love with her, but I have a feeling saying so would ruin everything. I’m running out of time, though. There are only three weeks left of camp. Three weeks left until the expiration date Olivia originally set for this “fling.”
When she squeezes my shoulders in a hug from behind and then sits next to me on the bench, I flash one of the cheerful grins that aligns with what people expect from my normally buoyant personality.
Her eyes are deep with concern. “Are you doing okay this morning?” she asks quietly.
“I’m feeling much better,” I assure her.
“Promise?” She leans in and lays her hand on my arm, studying me.
“Promise.” I peck her lips. “I’m looking forward to hanging out with Duncan all week.”
Her expression brightens. “He’s a great kid. They both are. And they adore you.”
I think about the kids at dinner last night and smile. “The feeling’s mutual.” I pause. “And after you finish breakfast, I’m looking forward to combing through job ads on the computer with you.”
Her mouth pops open. “We don’t have to do that this morning.”
“Don’t think I forgot. My cabin is ready for the campers, which means I’m free for the next”—I look at my phone screen—“two hours before they start arriving.”
We finish breakfast and walk to the main office to use the computer there.
After thirty minutes of searching, we find two positions for Olivia to apply for.
One is at a private K-12 school called Virtus Academy in South Austin, not too far from Olivia’s house.
The other is at a charter middle and high school focused on science called the Brightline School, but it’s all the way up in North Austin, almost to Pflugerville.
Both require a bachelor’s degree and some relevant experience, and neither expect applicants to have a state teaching license.
As we read through the postings and then the websites for the schools, Olivia grows more and more animated.
“So, these look good?” I ask her.
She beams. “They look great!” She throws her arms around my shoulders from her chair next to mine in front of the computer.
Then her cheeks blush pink. “I feel like I can think about the future with hope now. I’ve …
I’ve been feeling pretty defeated about how I’m kind of floundering in life since college ended, since soccer ended.
I’ve been taking things one day at a time because any more than that and I’d get so panicked and demoralized. ”
Is that why she hasn’t been willing to commit to anything more than a summer fling?
She keeps her eyes on mine. “Thank you, Gage. For your help. You found possibilities for me that I couldn’t see because I was so stuck in my own rut.”
I take her hands in mine. “Sometimes it takes someone with an outside perspective to see the answer that’s right there. That’s all I did. Thank you for trusting me enough to let me in.”
I press a kiss to each of her hands. “Now, what next?”
She raises her chin, thinking. “I have to revise my résumé for this kind of job, but once I do, I’ll apply for both.”
I look back at the computer screen. “Do you need any help with your résumé?” I know that kind of written work isn’t the easiest for her, but I don’t want to overstep either.
“No, you’ve helped enough already. I have to be able to do something for myself.” She laughs, but it’s laced with deprecation.
“I’m here if you change your mind.”
And I always will be.
Maggie, Kent, and Callie arrive right on time to drop Duncan off at camp.
I’m greeting all my kids for the week—helping them get settled and answering their parents’ questions—so I don’t get to tour the camp with my family.
Other than at the prospective family open house Camp Prairie Star holds every January, Maggie hasn’t been back since her own idyllic summer session twenty-five years ago.
I’d love to follow her around and hear her recount her memories, but maybe there will be time for that after Skit Night on Friday.
My focus this week is Duncan, not that I’m planning to play favorites with the kids in my cabin. I mean that I’m looking forward to experiencing Camp Prairie Star through Duncan’s eyes.
It’s not lost on me that Duncan is the son Maggie did choose to raise.
I know the situations were completely different.
When Annie and I were born, Maggie was barely sixteen.
She wasn’t married, or even with our birth father anymore.
He wasn’t interested in being a dad at all. And there were two of us.
When Duncan was born, Maggie was thirty years old and in a loving marriage with a supportive partner who was excited to be a dad.
But still, if I had grown up with Maggie as my mom, I would have come to camp for the first time when I was ten, like Duncan is doing this summer. I would have grown up with Camp Prairie Star as a part of me, like Maggie did and like Duncan, and eventually Callie, will.
In my imagination, there’s a ghost Gage, an alternate-dimension Gage, who had that experience.
Like the many Peter Parkers in the multiverse of Spider-Man, I can sometimes see another version of myself in my mind—the Gage that could have been if Maggie had kept me, right alongside the Gage that I am as Ted and Dawn’s son.
And the most disturbing part is that sometimes I’m not sure if the me I actually am is the real Gage or if ghost Gage is the true version. I don’t know which Gage is better off, though it’s easy to look at any challenge in my life and imagine the grass would have been greener in my ghost kingdom.
Being here this summer, and especially being here with Duncan, who is like a shadow of who I might have been, is my effort to combine my current self with the ghost Gage that could have existed if the adults in my life had made other choices when I was born.
That night when all the families have left and it’s me, Jayden, and the seven boys who live in our cabin this week, we’re all trying to get to know each other better.
One of the boys picks up on the familiarity between me and Duncan and asks, “Do you know each other already?”
“We do,” I confirm, nodding my head, but I realize I never stopped to think about how to explain our relationship to the rest of the cabin. Adoption is not the easiest thing to explain to a bunch of kids.
“Is he your uncle or something?” another kid asks Duncan.
I’m about to step in to take the pressure off him, when he smiles.
“Gage is my brother,” Duncan says confidently. “My mom had him before she married my dad, but she couldn’t take care of him, so he went to live with another mom and dad. But he’s still my brother because distance doesn’t erase family.”
His simple explanation steals my breath, and I suddenly feel ashamed that I’ve been thinking of him in terms of my ghost self instead of in terms of being my little brother.
He’s not me. He’s not a version of me from a potential other dimension. He’s Duncan, and a pretty cool little kid. I vow to remember that this week.
I lay my hand on his shoulder. “That’s right,” I agree. “Duncan is my favorite brother, as a matter of fact.”
Duncan rolls his eyes. “I’m your only brother.”
I chuckle. He is, as far as I know anyway. No one’s kept tabs on my birth father over the years, so maybe I have more siblings out there somewhere.
The answer seems to satisfy the other boys.
“Although,” I say to Duncan with a wink, “you should have saved that information for our game of Two Truths and a Lie. Truths that sound like lies are the hardest to guess. Does everyone know how to play? I’ll go first.”
I always play Two Truths and a Lie with my campers the first night. It’s fun and easy to play and helps us all to get to know each other. I usually start, though Jayden does sometimes instead. The idea is for us to model how the game works.
“So, my name is Gage. Let’s see…” I pretend to think, even though I always use the same three statements. “I have a twin sister. My favorite baseball team is the Atlanta Braves. And I have never lived outside of Texas.”
“That kid can’t answer,” one of the boys says, pointing at Duncan.
“Fair point.” I nod. “Duncan can’t answer for me, and I can’t answer for him. Now, which of my statements was the lie?”
“I don’t think you have a twin sister,” a boy with black hair and dark brown eyes guesses.
Duncan giggles.
“Wrong,” I say. “I have a twin sister named Annie.”
“The Texas thing,” another boy shouts. “You’re a grown-up so you’ve probably lived all sorts of places.”
“Wrong again. I’ve only ever lived in Austin, Texas.”
“Who’s your favorite baseball team, then?” one of the campers asks.
“The Rangers, of course. Who else?”
This starts a cabin-wide discussion of baseball teams, and which ones are the best. There’s a pretty even split between Rangers and Astros fans, with a couple of kids with outlier teams like the Dodgers or Yankees.
I clap my hands together to get their attention back. “Okay, who’s going next?”
One by one, the boys introduce themselves and share three statements. We all try to guess which one is a lie. Some of them make it easy—like a boy named Liam who says he rides a dragon to school—but most do a great job of making their lies believable and their truths suspicious.
When it’s Duncan’s turn, the boys remind me that I’m not allowed to guess.
“Um …” Duncan begins. “I have a dog named Biscuit. I love anything having to do with math. And … this is my first summer at Camp Prairie Star.”
I know the Gray family has a dog named Macy because Maggie made a big deal about naming the dog after a singer she loved when she was a teenager, so that must be the lie. Of course, I know it’s Duncan’s first summer here, but I didn’t know that he loves math so much. That’s pretty cool.
I realize that Duncan’s become this whole little person when I wasn’t looking.
I mean, I know he’s always been a person, but when he was born, he was the baby, and then I kind of thought of him as a generic little kid.
But I’ve gotten older, and he has, too. At ten years old, he’s got interests and hobbies and a whole personality that I haven’t gotten to fully understand because I don’t see him often enough.
I’m really looking forward to changing that this week.
By lunchtime on Monday, all the boys in my cabin are best friends, including Duncan, whose typical shy demeanor has disappeared. He’s wrestling with the other boys, coming up with ideas for pranks, and racing his canoe across the lake.
For Wacky Wednesday, our cabin decides to coordinate outfits.
The boys have Nina help them tie-dye shirts during craft time on Tuesday—including ones for Jayden and me—and use up the rest of my mousse the next morning on their crazy hairstyles.
Mostly it looks like they had a competition to see who could get their hair to stick straight up the highest.
We eat waffles with whipped cream and bacon for dinner. Duncan, who’s sitting next to me, smothers his waffles in syrup while talking a mile a minute. “Mom says waffles are better than pancakes because waffles hold your syrup for you in these little boxes.”
“Yeah, but pancakes can have fruit inside them, like blueberries or bananas,” I counter.
He looks at me like I’m the biggest idiot on the planet. “You can put fruit in waffle batter, too.”
I hold up my hands. “Point conceded. My apologies.”
Duncan laughs and looks up at me, his brown eyes sincere and his mouth half full of waffles and syrup. “This has been, like, the best day of my life.”
I’m inclined to agree with him. These past few days with Duncan have been my favorite at camp so far—not counting the weekends. It’s been almost magical at Camp Prairie Star, and I understand why Maggie clings so tightly to her memories here.
I don’t know why those thoughts make my eyes well up, but they do. I hide the sudden onslaught of emotion by shoveling an enormous bite of waffle in my own mouth.