Chapter Four #2
“Is this the rest of them?” Steph asked a few minutes later.
I was unpacking my toiletries in the bathroom, and I poked my head out to see her pointing at the framed photo beside my bed. Me and Chelsea and the rest of last year’s college crew, crammed together for a picture on the last day of summer.
“Yep, you’ll meet them all tonight.”
“So there are boys,” Steph said. “Oh, he’s adorable.” She was pointing at Wes, who was standing shirtless, his arm wrapped tightly around me. His wavy hair was sun-bleached and messy, his chest bare. I was pressed so closely to him that it looked like we were one person, rather than two.
“Is he your boyfriend? He’s so hot. They all are. Damn, you guys have it right. Maybe I should live at a summer camp.”
I felt oddly vindicated that she thought Wes was hot, though I wasn’t exactly sure why. “That’s Wes. He’s actually my ex-boyfriend,” I explained, hoping to sound casual and breezy. “We broke up in December.”
I avoided Chelsea’s eye, though I could feel her pointed stare on my face. She still wasn’t happy with me.
“What about him?” Margo asked. She was pointing to the boy on the other end, the tallest one with a shock of dark hair and a smile that was more like a dare. He was the only person in the photo not looking at the camera; instead, his gaze was on the lake behind us.
I coughed, only somewhat idiotically. “That’s Trevor. Lifeguard the past few years, but he’ll be waterfront manager this summer.”
She gave me a small, dangerous smile. “Let me guess, he’s your current boyfriend?”
“No,” I said, but the word was too quick, the sound too high-pitched. I wanted to explain—we’re just friends; he’s way out of my league; it’s not even an option—but it was too late.
“I wouldn’t go there. Trevor’s kind of a mess. He’s nothing like Wes,” Chelsea said from the top bunk, and the three of us turned toward her in unison. Her face turned pink, like she hadn’t been expecting the full weight of our combined attention.
“What kind of mess? Besides a hot one,” Steph asked with a Cheshire cat grin as she threw her arm around Margo’s shoulders.
“He is not a mess,” I huffed, because I couldn’t help myself.
Outside the window, a bird chirped.
“Carolina chickadee. And don’t listen to Greer,” Chelsea said. She sighed and rearranged herself so that her feet were dangling off the side of the bed. “She has a soft spot for him. She likes to stare at his abs.”
“Excuse me, I do not—”
“I’m not saying he’s a bad guy,” Chelsea said, cutting me off.
“But he’s just kind of adrift, you know?
He graduated from UGA two years ago, but he’s got no plans at all for a life, or a career.
This is what he does. He wastes nine months in some dead-end job in Atlanta, then comes to Dread’s to tan by the lake for a few months. Rinse, repeat.”
We could all hear the disdain, stark and clear in her voice. She might as well have called Trevor a hopeless, bumbling loser, which was completely unfair. I loved Chelsea, but she wasn’t exactly afraid of jumping to conclusions.
“All right, so Tall Trevor—who definitely doesn’t have nice abs—is on probation until we feel him out, then. What about this one? Please tell me he’s single.” This was Steph again, blessedly redirecting the conversation into safer territory.
She pointed at Garrett, the second tallest. I knew that he was objectively handsome, had a nice, white smile, but I still made a face. “He’s my cousin.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “That’s kind of fun. Anyone else from your family work here?”
This time, Chelsea beat me to it. “Her mom’s Anita Olsen. They own the whole camp.”
I wanted to stare daggers at her, but Steph would see.
Chelsea knew that I got weird talking about my family, especially with strangers.
Dread’s Cove was famous in Georgia, and across most of the Southeast. My grandfather Dread Olsen purchased an abandoned POW camp from the state after World War II, and he’d turned it into a summer camp.
He was a character, later in life becoming a senator, and his contributions to Georgia’s environmental policies over the years had made him a quasi celebrity.
Before he died, he passed the reins down to his only daughter—my mother, Anita.
When my grandfather got sick and she took over as a fresh-faced college grad, she became a bit of a celebrity in her own right.
She overhauled all the old buildings and keyed in on our marketing efforts.
In a matter of years, Dread’s Cove became not just a summer camp but the summer camp of the South.
It quickly became a rite of passage for kids to spend their summers here, deep in the mountains, and the waitlist became years long.
My mom had breathed new life into this place, and it was her greatest achievement. One day, it would all belong to me.
It was a duty I took very seriously, even if it was sometimes overwhelming. I also hated the strange sort of fame that came with being associated with my family and the Cove.
It made me feel cheap somehow, like I wasn’t a real person. My last name was merely an emblem of the family I had done nothing to earn.
Chelsea saw this all very differently. Although she wasn’t an Olsen, her dad was now married to one, and she’d lived here her entire life.
Because Chelsea had an annoying amount of pride in her own heritage, she never understood why I was so hesitant to tell everyone I met about my family.
So although she knew I hated it, she felt the need to call me out every chance she got.
As if I could ever forget exactly who I was and what was expected of me.
“Shut up,” Steph said, looking between the two of us, like she was checking to see if we were messing with her.
“Yeah, um, that’s true. My mom is Anita.”
Steph put a hand over her heart and blinked at me. “Wait, seriously? That’s…” She trailed off, like this reveal had made her speechless—which seemed like a hard thing to do. “M, did you hear that? Isn’t that amazing?”
“Absolutely wild.” Margo didn’t turn around from her suitcase, but she answered in a singsong voice that was either mocking in a nice way or mocking in a mean way.
I couldn’t tell which. But then she stood and spun around, then looked at me like she’d never seen anyone more interesting.
She was starting to give me whiplash. “So, what’s the dress code for this party tonight, Little G? ”
“Oh, Little G is good!” Steph beamed at both of us, before winking at Chelsea. “You’re next, don’t worry.”
I smiled like I was pleased, though the name felt like it might have been an insult. I couldn’t quite put my finger on why.
“Hear me out: What if we went all out and did matching?” Steph said from her bed, clapping her hands together. “We could wear pink!”
“Not a chance. You know how I feel about pink, Stephanie Bennett.”
“She only says my full name when she’s serious,” she explained, putting her hands on her hips. “And that’s only because you know I look way better than you in it.”
At that, prim and slightly stuffy Margo grabbed her pillow from her bed and whacked Steph over the head with it. Within seconds, they were both laughing, and I found myself smiling, too.
As I watched the two of them just be together, I couldn’t help but think about my friendship with Chelsea.
She was in almost every one of my best memories.
When we were kids, the adults would call us the twins.
She was sixteen months older than me, and we looked nothing alike, but we were each other’s shadows.
There was never one of us without the other.
But she’d been shocked when I’d told her I wanted to leave for a few years and go to college, live on campus.
She’d opted to get her degree remotely so that she could stay at Dread’s Cove full-time and had just assumed I’d do the same.
That had been one of the only times that we’d ever genuinely argued.
She’d warmed up to the idea after a while, told me she trusted my judgment, even if she didn’t understand.
And it had prickled at me, in the back of my mind—for years now—if she’d really meant it.
For the most part, it was easy with Chelsea, but it wasn’t always fun. Margo and Steph, though—they had fun. You could tell, by the way they smiled. Like they were sharing a secret.
It didn’t take long for me to decide that I wanted to know the secret, too.
I wanted it more than I wanted anything.