Camp Utopia & the Forgiveness Diet (9781940192567) (25 page)

Gabe walked toward the TV and pointed a finger at our old dorm window. Just barely I made out Liliana's face. She was holding something, a piece of white paper, the teeny words “she's lying” almost indecipherable. The camera man might've seen it too because before Mount Hollywood erupted with more BS, we were back with the anchor lady and her stupid smile. “Thank you, Amber. Now let's check in with weather.”

I barely heard the announcement—“Fireworks will be postponed due to an unseasonable rainstorm ...”—because my heart pumped in my ears. My hatred for Hollywood ignited my forehead and swooshed down to my feet.
I'm not violent
, I thought viciously.
If only I'd caught her phone. Bashed it over her skull. Rage? I'll show her rage
.

Watching me, a little nervously I might add, Gabe clicked off the television. “Forget her.” Then he closed his laptop, silenced his phone. “Remember what I said earlier?
Entra más profun
—”

“Thanks,
sensei
,” I replied, too harshly. “Wise advice.”

The dorm was silent except for Cambridge's rhythmic snoring and the rain spattering outside. I'd hurt Gabe's feelings, I knew. He picked up his skateboard and spun its wheels quietly. His inky-black hair, parted in that zigzag, fell evenly against his jaw. At least he'd tried to help. No need to bite his head off. Sure, Liliana's sign was misspelled and hardly visible, but she'd tried too. They'd all tried.

I nudged Cambridge in the bed. “We've gone from campers to fugitives to terrorists in three hours. We should leave, Cambridge. Now!”

Zen as always, Cambridge folded her arms behind her head. “I don't want to go.” She felt around the floor for her cigarettes, checked her pockets and then decided, I guessed, smoking was too much of an effort. “I think it'll all work out.” Rain slithered down the panes; droplets tapped the roof. “Don't you want to know how it ends?” she asked, all innocence.

“It's going to end badly,” I said. “
Very
badly. What more proof do you need?”

She looked from me to Gabe then back to me again. “I disagree.”

On some level, like a molecular one, I knew I couldn't leave without either of them.

I sat down next to Gabe on his desk, and we stared at the sloppy, wet branches outside. “All this will be dry by tomorrow,” said Gabe, “and we'll be driving to San Francisco. You'll see.” I let myself believe him for a minute. Then Gabe scooched closer to me. “Hey, why do you let that girl get to you anyway?” he asked of Amber.

Because she's beautiful, I wanted to say. Because her clothes fit, and her boyfriend stands next to her in photos. Because her father answers her phone calls. Because girls like her make girls like me hate themselves.

“I don't know why,” I said.

Gabe blew his bangs out of his face. “Not everyone goes for the Hollywood type, you know.”

When his fingertips grazed mine, I flinched a little. He'd only been squishing the Knock Out glove into my hand. “What do you think?” he asked, beaming at his PlayStation. “Wanna play?”

46

#LUCKY

NO ONE EVER said you couldn't enjoy the moments before your life shot up in flames, right? So while I waited for more AMBER Alerts, Gabe and I played some prodigious rounds of Knock Out. Gabe (Martinez) taught me (Holyfield) how to punch, all knuckle and downward thrust. He taught me how to squint like a professional and how to hit first with your left and then cock back your right arm, your power arm, and let it fly. He threw out advice as often as he jabbed:
Only hit them in the head if it's clear. Try for soft tissue, it's easier on your hands. Not your knuckles, the space between your knuckles. Maintain your footwork. Good!
I tried to keep it all straight, and I must've because in round two, Gabe looked at me like I'd just sprouted wings.

“What?” I asked him. “What I'd do?”

“I can't believe it,” he said, wide-eyed and amazed.

“WHAT?”

“You just knocked me out.”

“For real?”

He indicated the screen where a ref was chopping his hand. Three. Two. One. “Beginner's luck,” I said, and then an hour later, sweaty and out of breath, I knocked him out again.

Afterward we made popcorn, and Gabe dumped a macaroni and cheese flavor packet in the bag and shook it. Very ingenious. Then he popped out a jar of peanut butter from his bookcase and, sitting next to me on the desk, we alternated sticking plastic spoons into it.

Whether it was because he thought we'd get away with everything or because we didn't, we laughed like it was our last night on Earth. Even Cambridge, who fell back asleep, chuckled in her dreams. We downloaded three hundred ringtones to Hollywood's phone and took countless shots of our middle fingers and once, for good measure, Gabe's butt. Then, around nine, when the rain tapered off, Gabe put his headphones on me and told me to close my eyes. I expected hip hop or rap or anything other than the obnoxious sound that sliced through the wires.

“It sounds like cat sex in a garbage can,” I said. “How do you stand it?”

Gabe tensed. “That is sick
mierda
right there. You don't know what you're talking about.”

He stared at the tablet like the problem was there. “Just close your eyes, Bethany. And listen.” He placed his hands on the earbuds and gently pressed. Then he shuffled to a song that was kinda nice—slow and melancholy. I listened until a whiff of Cheetos forced my eyes open. When I did, Gabe's face was so close to mine, he could've counted my freckles. “Your face is purple,” he said. “It's that god darn radio.”

“What?” I screamed.

He lowered the volume and then, without backing up, he repeated what I'd misunderstood. “Your face is perfect,” he said. “Like the golden ratio. One point six one eight. That's the ratio that nature mimics. The closer you get to it, the more it makes people, like, respond.”

Was he seeing some kind of equation in my eyebrows?

He leaned away, removed the earbuds.

“I'm sorry I don't like SPOOGE,” I said. I had no idea how to respond to Gabe's ... mathematical analysis? Observation? Flirting?

“I'm just saying that in spite of your substandard taste in music, Bethany, I find you … well. Ever since the fountain. You know, the first time I saw you, I thought you were. I found your ratio … dammit. I thought you were
linda
.”

I absolutely positively could not look at him. “Who's Leenda?”

Gabe laughed and covered his mouth with his hand. “
Linda
, as in pretty.” He looked down at his scratched-up knee, hesitated. “As in
boscocha
. As in
estoy loco para ti
.” He unlooped the wires from around my head and then, rather subtly, moved closer. The desk squeaked awkwardly. “Bethany, the first time I saw you I was like, here's a girl who gets it.
Linda,
as in beautiful.”

All my life I had waited for someone to use the words
Bethany
and
beautiful
in the same sentence. ALL. MY. LIFE. Only it wasn't TJ. It was Liliana's brother?!

“You mean you don't think I'm fat?” I was beginning to feel a little dizzy.

“Are they mutually exclusive?”

“I don't know. Is that a math term?”

“In my mind, it is possible to be both beautiful and fat.”

“And happy too?”

“Sure,” said Gabe, easily. Outside, something crackled, followed by a boom so loud my spine rung. Must've been thunder.

“I like your world then,” I said, and meant it.

From the corner of my eye a light flickered.
Perfect
, I thought,
the police are here to ruin this very intense moment
. Only when I turned toward the window, outside a dot burst into a million silver squiggles. They shimmered brightly, then dimmed. Not a chance these were police lights. They weren't illegal firecrackers either. These were the real deal.

“I guess they decided to do the fireworks even though it's raining,” Gabe said, moving closer to me. Another blast and red and white strings blossomed behind him. With both our heads now tilted toward the sky, I could see Gabe's hair radiating light, his eyelashes sharpened into points. “In fact, I think it stopped raining.”

In my estimation, the best part of fireworks was the interval between the first thump and the final explosion. Not the oh-ah moment that came afterward, but the electrical moment preceding it, when you thought,
I wonder what will happen next?
as a spark sprinted upward. It was during this tiny splinter of time, the seconds between contraction and detonation, when Gabe's blinking quickened; when he turned to me, and I was embarrassed to be caught watching him. I shifted my gaze away, concentrating on a patch of night erupting into a sugary web. He did not turn around to see the constellation behind him. Instead he tugged the plastic tips of my sweatshirt strings, pulled me closer, and kissed me.
Kissed me
.

At first our cheese-coated teeth collided sharply. Then, it was every kind of soft and sweet and wet and quiet. Our lips layered in each other's as tender as the rain collected in the sills. First his hand to my cheek, his other behind my neck pulling me closer, closer. I could have died.

Since it'd been a year since I'd kissed anyone, I'd forgotten how it went. Blood rushing to my head, a red flush prickling my neck and ears. Quiet parts inside me suddenly singing, tingling. His lips, softer than I would have imagined, swept mine. When I pulled back, Gabe's face was still there, eyes opening little by little. He leaned his forehead against mine, a bit self-consciously,. He swallowed. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I just went for it.”

“That's OK,” I said, hating myself for receding. Why didn't I trust the moment?

“I've been waiting to do that for a long time.”

“You just met me,” I pointed out.

“Not true. I saw you get out of your minivan weeks ago.”

“When I gave you directions?”

He nodded. “And told me Copernicus was dead.”

“That made you want to kiss me?” I wondered what he'd found appealing about my big belly, busted flip-flops, and bad attitude. In my mind, my irrational and pathetic history repeated itself, starting with my birth and including pretty much everything after it. “But I'm so damaged,” I said. How to explain my competitive mother and deadbeat dad and magician love and pretty sister and, and …

Gabe's lips fell like confetti on my forehead, my eyes, my neck. “No you're not,” he said. “You're funny and smart.” I shivered when his breath found my ear. “You knock me out.”

His cheeks turned bright red. “Lili called it. She was all,
'mano,
you're sweatin' Baltimore, and I realized my sister was right. The time frame? After the minivan and before right now. That's how long I've wanted to kiss you.”

I tried to see what was right in front of my face—Gabe and his zigzag part. His layered tees. The Velcro circles on the pockets of his shorts. Not a single deck of cards in his room. Gabe. With his finger beneath my chin, he lifted my face toward his. “I walked around this whole campus trying to find that party last night. I knew you'd be there. I waited there for hours, but never saw you. Then we both left at the same time. I heard you calling me across the football field.” He laughed and twisted my sweatshirt string around his finger. “Even when Cambridge yacked all over my shirt, I swear it, Bethany, I was thinking,
Thank you, Dios. This is my lucky night
.”

We leaned back and watched the fireworks finale, my head on his chest, his hands in my hair, booms so powerful his cell phone trembled on the desk; chunks of color streaked past the window. We watched until the sky quieted to black, his hungry heart beating like a metronome. Me thinking: Cue the music, people. Close the curtain. Here's your happy ending.

47

THEN AGAIN, MAYBE NOT

BAD NEWS KNOCKED at six in the morning. Then bad news knocked again. Louder. Military-style. A knock that said, So long, folks. Thanks for playing.

I sat up quickly, leaned over and shook Cambridge, who had fallen off the bed last night and now slept on the floor. In a moment of terror, Gabe swung open his closet in an effort to hide us in there, I guessed, when a very familiar voice roared, “Do not make me kick this door down, young man.”

Poor Gabe. The last thing he wanted was to be the guy with me when everything went to hell. But we all know how life works, so of course, Gabe was with me when it all blew up. Judging by the Spanish curses, he wasn't happy about it either. You might assume I was just as angry, and you'd be right. Gabe and I were supposed to be driving off into the, um, sunrise by now. But I knew this moment was coming. Hell, we all did.

KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK.

Might as well open the damn door myself.

Up close to it, I stopped. I stood there waiting for my X-ray vision to kick in.

“Bethany Mitzi Goodman Stern?” roared the voice from outside the door.

Must he be this loud? Did he have handcuffs? I hoped he didn't have handcuffs. I leaned my head on the door. He was awfully old-sounding for campus security—really familiar-sounding too.

“Is Tabitha Calliope Nelson with you?”

“Yes,” I answered timidly.

“Open the door,” he spat.

Cambridge stretched, her dreadlocks spilled down her back. “Just open the door for the clown, Bethany. Let's get it over with.”

The man was shorter and fatter than I remembered. He dressed in clothes that someone not from California would consider Californian: flip-flops, long shorts, Hawaiian printed top, 49ers ball cap. Cambridge looked at me then back to our arrestor. “Who in the hell are you?” she asked.

The man stepped forward again. He appeared surprisingly soft, chubby. His shorts and shirt were wrinkled and his rimless glasses seemed fragile.