Camp Utopia & the Forgiveness Diet (9781940192567) (35 page)

Most nights after dinner, Gabe and I went off to fight. He never made a full-on move on me, and, after a while, I just assumed he wouldn't. Camp was ending soon anyway. Now was not a good time for getting hot and bothered. We had boxing for that.

Late at night, we'd walk back to MontClaire Hall, taking the most indirect route. Usually we'd stop at the parking lot and visit
ni modo
. One night, standing beneath a streetlight next to his busted-up truck, Gabe held the driver's side door open for me. “Bethany, let's drive across country.”

And we did.

Alright. So we didn't actually drive across the country. We only pretended to drive across the country, and pretending to drive is a lot easier than actual driving.

“Can you see it?” Gabe asked, pointing toward Copernicus Hall. “It's the Golden Gate bridge.”

I shielded my forehead with my palm. “It's rather tall.”

“And the hills, Bethany. Feel the butterflies in your stomach?”

“I do,” I said, “so quit riding the brake.”

“I am not riding the brake.”

“Indeed you are.”

Gabe raised an eyebrow and slid next to me. “You think you can do better?”

“I doubt I could do worse.”

“You drive then,” he said. “Show me how it's done.” So I shoved my butt in his face as I shifted into the cockpit of
ni modo
. I was sure glad we were pretending because, once there, I felt about twenty feet off the ground. The bent, rusted hood stretched for miles. I turned the key and, of course, nothing happened.

“Hear that?” he asked.

I acted as if the cricket chirps were engine noise. “Churns like a dream.” Then, all business, I gave him my tour of San Francisco, which involved barking sea lions, glittery hills, and everything else I'd learned from watching
Dragon Fight
.

“Keep your eyes on the road, Bethany. And make sure you signal,” reminded Gabe, who taught a lot like my dad. So I kept my eyes on the road and made sure I signaled. And I must've impressed him with my mock-driving abilities, because after that first night, I fake-drove Gabe everywhere. We faux-drove to New Mexico, where he admired the mountain chains, sagebrush, and rock formations, all the while telling me to check my mirrors and blind spot. He named the wide Indian reservations and remarked on the sky.

“You've never seen a sunset like that, now have you?”

“No,” I said, eyes peeled. “I believe these New Mexico sunsets are enchanting.”

“They are purple. Purple like—”

“An eggplant?”

“Not quite as dark.”

“A bruise?”

“Yes! A fresh one.”

“I see the bruised sunset of which you speak.” I sighed. “It's lovely.”

“Bethany, you have quite a way with words.”

“So I've been told.” I slammed the brake to avoid imaginary tumbleweed. “Stop looking at me while I drive.”

“I can't.”

How cheesy to drive around Oregon, Arizona, and Texas without actually using the motor, without leaving the parking space! Only with Gabe you could be supremely ridiculous, and he went along. This guy's imagination rivaled mine. Whether it was video-gaming or pretend-driving, we somehow managed to create a fantasy world together. I'd never done that before. With anyone. I was always willing to step into TJ's world, but he never quite managed to step into mine. Not Gabe. It was like in a cartoon, when the character would draw a little door on the wall when you needed to escape. Only Gabe walked right through with me.

Sometimes, when we were make-believe driving, he'd jerk the steering wheel and warn I was headed straight for a wild buffalo or a baby stroller. Then we'd pretend to park in Baltimore like a rich Roland Park couple. “That gown is beautiful, Miss Stern. Blue is your color.”

“It's yellow.”

“I meant yellow. I'm colorblind. Either way, it's ravishing.”

Sometimes Liliana and Cambridge and even Tampa Bay piled in the truck's bed and joined us as we drove to the National Air and Space Museum in DC, but mostly they didn't. Mostly it was just me and Gabe who liked going nowhere.

66

GUILTY

WITH ONLY TEN days left of camp, a canopy of stars above us, Gabe wanted to see Los Angeles. So while I navigated highways with more lanes than a music clef, Gabe pointed out the sites. Then Gabe grabbed the wheel and said, “Turn here. It's the Hollywood sign.” I did as he instructed, and together we looked through his cracked windshield, pausing to take in the landmark's magnificence.

“Wonder what it's made of,” Gabe said.

“Silicon,” I posited. He laughed and covered his mouth with his hand.

The night was warm and damp. Bugs swarmed in the streetlights of the parking lot and tapped against the windshield. He directed me toward the view of a Toyota Prius parked next to us.

“I just wanted to let you know,” Gabe said to the Toyota Prius, “that I'm not going to kiss you. I'm not going to kiss you in front of this Hollywood sign.”

I didn't know why he was suddenly narrating. Or why he felt obliged to point out why he wasn't kissing me. I also didn't understand why he was sharing this with the Toyota Prius all the while moving closer to me.

“I'm not going to kiss you because I have feelings for you,
verdad
. And with your camp ending and my final project coming up, well …”

Fine,
I thought.
Let's not state the obvious, dude
.
We're just driving.

Then he looked at me. “And Hollywood, right? How crazy would it be to make a move, you know, here. In the middle of the city.”

Colossally crazy. And if he was so adamantly opposed to our kissing then why was he leaning in? Why was he parting his lips in that anticipatory way? If he wasn't going to kiss me then what was with all the flitting butterfly wings in my stomach? Why did I swallow my gum?!

“I can't kiss you because you're not the kind of girl that I only want to kiss once. You're the kind of girl I want to keep kissing. The kind of girl I want to put my hands all over. The kind of girl I could fall …”

And then we were kissing. Not soft and sweet kisses. No way. The making-up-for-lost-time kissing. The I-can't-get-close-enough-to-you kissing. The I-want-to-turn-myself-inside-out kissing. “I'm not going to take off your shirt,” he said as he took off my shirt. The look of reverence as he totally stared at my bra was priceless. And then we kissed some more even though he kept saying we weren't. His hands were not in my hair either. My hands were not on his chest. They did not slide along his smooth stomach. Nor did they burrow into his pockets. Searching. Feeling.

OMFG.

I did not feel anything.

“I'm so glad we're not making out,” Gabe said.

“This is neither the time or place,” I replied.

“That Hollywood sign is an atrocity.”

“A nuisance.”

There in his truck, next to the Toyota Prius aka Hollywood sign, I lifted my arms and he peeled off my sports bra. Things slowed down then lost their urgency. He stared at my naked breasts so long I'd thought they'd hypnotized him. Then he held my face in his hands and began to kiss me again, slowly. Softly. He lingered over my lips. He kissed my mouth and my neck. He kissed my throat, groaned softly in my ear. “I am not in love with you tonight,” he said. “I am not in love with you here next to the Hollywood sign.” I could only listen as he told me how much he didn't love me. How he hadn't loved me since he first saw me by the mermaid fountain with trash in my hair. How even when Liliana got sick, he was pissed, but it did not affect his not-love. And I believed him. He really didn't love me. In fact, I'd bet he practically choked on his not-love for me. And I wanted to tell him that I didn't love him either but right then, leaning back as he pulled me forward, I felt something skitter down my shoulder. Something tiptoeing almost, like the blades of a pinwheel. Gabe stopped, searched the torn pleather seats and raised a weathered Kleenex.

I took the tissue from him. “Where did you find this?”

“I think it came out of your bra.”

My bra? Why did I have a piece of tissue in my bra?

We uncrumpled it slowly, carefully, as if it were a treasure map. Then by the light of the moon and streetlamp, I could see what it was. A tattered napkin. The words, the purple ink and the handwriting were all mine. It read,
I forgive the doves for flying back
.

I jolted upright; my hand went for my heart, but landed on my boob. I covered myself with my sports bra. “How did you get this?” I yelled, though I hadn't meant to.

“It just appeared. I don't know,” Gabe said confusedly.

“But that's TJ's trick,” I said. “Where did you find it?”

Gabe held up his hands defensively. “I swear it came out of nowhere.”

I turned it this way and that. Leaned in closer to the windshield, which we'd steamed up pretty thick. How had it gotten here? Was it carried by the wind? Tangled in my bra? Was it TJ? Had he planted it somehow? I knew Gabe was waiting for an explanation, but I couldn't talk. Silence had gripped like a boa constrictor, squeezing me for every word. If it weren't for this truck and the fact that my door refused to open, I would've taken off running.

Sitting in silence for what felt like hours, Gabe finally took his index finger to the steamy windshield, where he wrote the following two words:
Tell me.

I rolled the forgivelet between my fingers. And despite the fact that I had every reason not to, I told him anyway. I told Gabe everything.

“It was me,” I said. “I let the doves out. I let TJ's doves out.”

Of all of the contents of my forgiveness bucket, this one had been the hardest to write. The one secret I felt sure I'd take to the grave. “No one stole them, Gabe,” I continued. “I opened the cage door myself and said, ‘fly.' I never thought they'd come back. The whole time we searched the city and nearby counties, I never said a word about it.” My one secret, the only one left, fluttered between Gabe and me like wings.

Well, there went that.

When he reached across me, I thought for sure it was to open my door and push me out. His hand stopped and floated over mine for a spell. Then it dropped, and his fingers closed over mine.

“All that rage,
verdad
?” He brushed away my tears with his fingertips. “Like your mom was saying in the newspaper, all that rage had to come out. He hurt you. So you hurt him back. It's basic Isaac Newton.” He took the paper from my hand, rolled it in a ball, and flicked it out the window.

I stared at him curiously.

“I mean those doves?” he continued. “That's your basic rocketry principle number three.”

His breath was wintery when he leaned in close. He smiled, his bottom teeth crooked. “All effort comes back. Every action has an opposite and equal reaction.”

“Is this what you guys talk about in math camp?”

“Listen.” He positioned his face directly in front of mine. “It all comes back. That's the way the universe works. You call it magic. I call it physics. It's what happens when two things collide. One lets go, and the other holds on.”

“But the birds,” I said, remembering them balanced on the phone wire. “The birds flew back. Both of them.”

“Exactly,” shouted Gabe. “You let go. They came back. Physics.”

We sat out there until dew slipped into his truck's various cracks and wept on the dashboard. Next to me,
Señor
Einstein went on about billiard balls and asteroids and equal reactions. Even though I'd be late for crew, I let the professor have his lesson about force and mass and other equations of the heart. Oddly enough, the more he informed, the more it made sense. And the more it made sense, the more I let go. I fell for Gabe the way you fall through space: feet off the ground, eyes closed, and totally independent of gravity. I didn't know if Sir Isaac Newton had even half the swagger Gabe did, but if he did then look out. All that talk about science and rockets. Thrust and control. Actions and reactions. It did things to me. Made me tremble all over. Made me row that scull later that morning in some kind of frenzy all the while thinking about bowling … seventh-period study hall … dissecting fetal pigs … Disney movies with talking cats … yodeling … dodge ball … citing sources … anything, anything, anything, but ...

Gabe.

67

HASTA

A FEW DAYS later, we were climbing Mount McKinley in Alaska. I mean, in the parking lot. Gabe pointed at the white Mazda Protégé next to us, “Check out that iceberg.”

“Are there icebergs in Alaska?”

“It's an avalanche.
¡Dios!
It's crumbling, Bethany! Floor it! Floor it!”

Panicked, I went, “The truck won't start. We're doomed.”

“Step on the gas!
Entonces vuelte a llave. ¡La llave!
”

So I stepped on the gas. And I turned the key and you know what? The engine started. True story.

I must have screamed for fifteen straight seconds.

“The beast is alive,” shouted Gabe “
¡Sabes! ¡Sabes! ¡Lo vive!
Let's take her out, Bethany.”

This world seemed huge in a vehicle that actually drove! Should we see the real Hollywood? Las Vegas? Seattle? Before I talked myself out of it, I reversed Gabe's truck (expertly I might add), drove it around the parking lot, then returned it to its original space.

“I don't like driving,” I said. “It scares me.”

Gabe touched my hand. “It's only scary at first.”

I shook my head. “I kinda just want to stay here,” I said and, conveniently, the truck stalled.

“Yeah. Me too.”

“I mean with you.”

“
Hay ver
,” Gabe said, looking at me sideways. “
Entra más profundo
, eh?”

“
Sí
.”