“Darling, you have got to get over this crush,” George says. “Or come up with a plan for getting his attention.”
“I’m working on it, sweetie,” I say. “I have some ideas.” I pluck a stray daisy and tuck it behind my ear.
“Oh, really?” Montgomery asks. “Like what?”
“Like I just have to make him want to talk to me,” I say, tucking another daisy behind the other ear. “If I can make him feel half as good as he makes me feel, just by talking, I know he won’t want to give that up after two weeks.”
Suddenly, as if he can hear us talking, Hudson runs over to us. George and I exchange a worried look, but he taps us each on the shoulder, and then runs back to his side. He looks behind him and grins a big goofy smile.
“C’mon, dudes!” he shouts. “I freed you!”
The three of us shrug, then stand up and run over back to his side of the line. I tuck my hair behind my ears and wait next to Hudson, who’s smiling at us.
“So, no thank-you?” he says.
“Thanks,” I say.
“Darling, it was a waste of a trip,” George says. “We’re useless at this game.”
“Nah,” Hudson says, looking right at me. “I know you’ll be good at it. Just give it a try.” I smile back at him, this stupid, doofy smile, because I can feel this warmth in my chest, this feeling like when I did a tequila shot that one time, and I feel looser and stronger. No one has ever believed I could be good at anything athletic. I’m a theater kid, a sissy, I can barely throw a ball. Even my dad said maybe it “wasn’t our thing” the first time we tried playing catch in the backyard and the neighbors snickered at us. And Hudson can see all that. He can see my painted nails and loose wrists, and he can still believe I’d be good at it if I tried.
And then he runs off. I turn to George.
“See?” I say. “He’s divine.”
Montgomery watches Hudson running. “He’s got a great ass, at least,” he says, folding his arms.
“I’m going to go for the flag,” I say, slapping my fan closed and tucking it in my back pocket. “Cover me?”
“What?” George says.
“Are you nuts?” Montgomery asks, but I’m across the line into enemy territory before I have time to answer, dodging the other campers as they try to tag me, going for the bright orange flag on top of the hill on their side of the camp. And suddenly I realize I CAN do it. I can do whatever I want, really, and I’m close to the hill and I can see Hudson ahead of me, too, and I get close, like we’re going to do this together, we’re going to steal this flag as a duo, and he looks over and flashes me that smile.
And I trip. Fall on my face. Someone tags me right away, but Hudson manages to steal the flag, and he’s running with it before someone tags him, too. He walks into jail and sits on the grass next to me, grinning, sweat pouring off him. He smells like dirt and the sun.
“Thanks for that distraction, bro,” he says, raising his fist. I realize I’m supposed to bump it, and do, though it feels forced and stupid.
“Yeah.” I nod. “I did that on purpose.”
“You were really going out there,” he says, and I can’t tell if he believes my lie. “I told you you’d be good at it if you tried.”
“I guess so,” I say.
He grabs some grass out of the ground in a handful, then puts it back down, patting it into the earth. “You know,” he says. “We don’t have to be whatever they say we are. We can be athletes and superheroes. We can be strong and fast and kick ass. We just have to put our fingers in our ears and stop listening to them, and just let ourselves want to be those things. Want to be greater. Then we can be anything.”
“Yeah,” I say, and I feel that warm feeling inside me again, like stars. I wonder if he can sense it. I wonder how I can make him feel this way.
“Come on, losers,” Ashleigh says, walking up to us slowly, like she doesn’t care, and tagging us each on the shoulder. Ashleigh actually loves capture the flag but says she prefers to be a “spy”—make them think she doesn’t care about playing, sidle up to the flag, stuff it in her pocket, and just walk back. It’s never worked, but she says one day it will.
“See you later, man,” Hudson says, running back to our side before launching himself at the enemy’s flag again.
“Later,” I say.
“You’re smiling like a chorus boy who chugged a Red Bull before the big number,” Ashleigh says.
SIX
At dinner, Brad and Hudson sit down with us without my even waving them over. Everything is going so much better than I ever could have hoped. The only disappointment is the actual food—dry hamburgers and weirdly soft french fries, like they’re wet. But no one really minds the bad food here—not when there’s so much ambiance.
The dining hall is … amazing. There’s no other word for it. A huge log cabin from the outside, but inside, every log painted a different stripe of the rainbow. Instead of fluorescent lights, there are strings of rainbow Christmas lights, and then big dangling white lamps that Joan (who’s a metalworker) made. They’re each the size of a beach ball and look like stars. Sure, the lighting is a little dim, but who wants to see the food too clearly anyway? Under the stars, dark wooden tables are set up in a square and we can all sit and eat wherever we want. Platters of food and pitchers of bug juice and water are passed around, family style, and folks with dietary restrictions can go to the kitchen door and are handed their meals. It’s astounding. Every time we eat, it’s a family meal under the night sky. And sitting next to Hudson, the dim light making his skin glow, it feels like a romantic date.
“Sucks you had to leave the pool early,” he says. The clatter of people talking around us is loud enough that by talking softly, no one else can hear. He pushes his thigh up against mine.
“Yeah, sorry,” I say.
“No worries, I get it. So, how are you liking everything?” he asks. “It rocks, right?”
“It really does,” I say. “I feel so …”
“Free?” he asks.
“Exactly.”
George elbows me, and I turn. He’s holding out a tray of fries and I take it, scooping some off onto my plate, and pass it to Hudson, who passes it on.
He sticks a fry in his mouth and I watch his lips close around it and suddenly feel very thirsty. I turn as the bug juice pitcher comes my way, and I pour for myself and for Hudson and then the tray of burgers is in front of me, looking like reheated McDonald’s. But it’s food. I take one.
“When I first came here,” he says, taking the tray and a burger, “it was just … like I could breathe? But I hadn’t known I’d been holding my breath? And there are so many different types of queer people here, too. I’m the only one I know at home. Before here, I thought that aside from me, they were all like the ones on television.”
I laugh. “What, Will and Grace reruns?”
“And Queer Eye,” he says. “That teen rom-com that came out a few months ago didn’t play anywhere near me, so I have to wait until it’s on Netflix. Maybe they’ll show it here, actually. We do movie nights when it’s raining.”