CHAPTER 20
Aunt Chey,
Please don’t pass on my letters to the school like you did last year.
I said please.
Kisses,
Cassie
Cassie plops her tray down and takes a seat at our table for breakfast a few days later. Grover and I are continuing our awkward silence, but Cassie manages to break it. She picks up her glass of water and takes a sip. Grover, Bek, and I stare at her. It’s a relief to have her back.
On her tray is a pile of scrambled eggs and a piece of toast.
“Sticks,” Grover says in a serious tone.
“What?”
“Don’t freak out, but a carbohydrate is sitting on your plate. Do you need me to kill it for you?”
She rolls her eyes. “Zander’s eating a pig.”
“I’m sick of oatmeal.” I steal a quick glance at Grover. He hasn’t taken his notebook out since I gave it back to him.
“I’m sick.” We all look at Bek as he shovels a bagel in his mouth.
“Duh, Baby Fat. You’re sick in the head.” Cassie rolls her eyes. “We’ve got more important things to discuss than food.”
“Nothing is more important than food.” Grover gestures to his tray. “This is the doorway to everything.”
“Sex is important.” Bek takes another bite.
“I wonder what Maslow says about sex?” Grover says to Bek.
“Who the fuck is Maslow and why does everyone keep talking about him?” Cassie pokes at her eggs.
“He’s my dead uncle,” Bek says. “He kind of invented gravity.”
Cassie fills her spoon and drops a small amount of eggs into her mouth. I don’t think she chews. “Back to the important things,” she says.
Grover wags his finger at her. “Nothing is more important than food and sex.”
“Is that all you think about?” I ask.
“Yes,” both the boys say at the same time. It’s the only word Grover has spoken in my direction in days.
Cassie leans in toward the center of the table and motions for us to huddle together. Grover’s leg brushes up against mine and our knees touch. I wonder what he’s thinking about at this exact moment. The odds would point to sex or food or both, but then he pulls away. And I’m disappointed again.
“It’s Black Out Night,” Cassie says.
“What does that mean?” I whisper.
“It means it’s time,” she says.
“Time for what?” I ask.
“The duffel bag.”
Grover smiles and Bek looks totally calm when Cassie says the words, but everything inside of me gets tight.
“I’ll bring it down to the lake this afternoon and stash it in the back of the equipment shed behind the life jackets,” Cassie says.
“Why?” I ask.
“God, you ask a lot of questions, Z.”
“Just tell me.”
“Just trust me,” Cassie barks.
“Fine.” I cross my arms and sit back in my seat.
“Cassie,” a voice rings across the mess hall. We all look up at the same time to find Kerry pointing at an empty chair next to him at the counselors’ table. “You have to sit with us.”
Cassie doesn’t move. She doesn’t even look at Kerry. Slowly every eye in the room lands on her, but she just sits back in her seat, grabs a chunk of her hair, and starts braiding it so that it’s sticking straight up in the air.
“So your uncle invented gravity?” she asks Bek. He nods.
“Cassie,” Kerry says again.
She grabs another section and braids. “I thought God invented gravity.”
“My uncle is God,” Bek says. “I just don’t like to tell people because then they treat me differently.”
“Why did your uncle God make you so fat?”
“He died before he could tell me.” Bek pats his stomach.
“Cassie,” Kerry yells one last time.
She finally looks at him. The two braids resemble antennae. “What?”
“Your seat.” Kerry points aggressively at the chair.
“I’m busy talking to Bek about his uncle God. But thank you for the offer.”
“I’m not offering. I’m telling you,” Kerry says.
“And I’m telling you that I already have a seat.”
“Cassie, please take this seat.”
“God, Kerry, you sound kind of desperate for me to sit with you.”
“Please don’t take the Lord’s name in vain,” he says.
“I think you mean Bek’s uncle’s name in vain. And I’m pretty sure he doesn’t give a shit about me because he already knows I’m going to hell. What do you think, Bek?”
“You’re probably going to hell,” Bek says.
“See.”
“Cassie. Sit down,” Kerry says through tight teeth.
“Jesus Christ, Kerry, you’re pushy. I bet Uncle God doesn’t approve of that.”
“Cassie!” He pulls out the chair. “Sit here.”
Cassie rolls her eyes and gets up. She stretches her arms over her head and yawns. Her tank top rises so high the whole room can see her stomach and ribs. I can’t tell if she’s gained any weight, though it doesn’t look that way. But there are bite marks on her toast, and only half of the eggs are left on her tray.
“Cassie!”
“Okay. Okay. Jesus Christ.”
“Cassie!”
“Goddamn it, Kerry. Give me a second.”
Cassie shoots the table a grin, and I push her tray toward her. She needs to finish her toast.
“Don’t forget about tonight. You have to come,” she says. “Please.” Cassie makes her way over to the counselors’ table, her braids bobbing as she walks.
When the bell rings for our first activity, Cassie’s tray still sits on our table, so I clean it up. A pit forms in my stomach when the toast goes into the garbage can. But there’s always tomorrow.
“Are you staying for arts and crafts, Durga?” a voice says behind me.
I turn to find Hayes with an armful of newspapers. He sets them down on a table.
“I don’t know,” I say.
“It’s okay not to know.” He goes to one of the cabinets along the wall and pulls out a bucket. “It’s hard for people to admit that they don’t know something. But the truth is that life isn’t about getting the right answers. It’s about asking the right questions.” He fills the bucket with water from the faucet.
“I guess I’ll stay.” I shrug. Spending the morning with Hayes doesn’t sound so bad.
He gets some flour from the kitchen and mixes it in the bucket of water.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Good question.” Hayes winks. “We’re doing papier-mâché today.”
While Hayes makes a paste in the kitchen, I help him rip a stack of newspapers into strips. A few other campers join us. I recognize the younger kid who Cassie beat at tetherball our first day of camp. That day feels like a long time ago even though it wasn’t.
When I pick up another section of the newspaper and start to rip it up, I notice the date on top of the page. It’s late July. Time moves fast here. Or feels fast. Or maybe I just feel time here.
“What’s black and white and red all over?”
I look up as Grover stands above me. “What?”
“It’s a riddle. What’s black and white and red all over?” His eyes are hesitant.
“I don’t know,” I say.
“A newspaper.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Neither do I. I just heard my mom say it once.”
“Oh.” I push my strips all together on the table, organizing the pile to distract myself from the awkwardness of the moment. I’m sick of it, and while I don’t want to go back to the way it was with Grover, I don’t want to stay here. “Hayes just told me life isn’t about answers, it’s about questions, so maybe it doesn’t matter if we get it,” I offer.
“Maybe.” Grover wipes his hair out of his face. “Did you ask him about Maslow and sex?”
I shake my head and look at Grover’s lips. He licks them and my stomach jumps. It only makes me more frustrated with him.
“Have you noticed that sometimes Bek doesn’t speak English?” Grover asks. I force my eyes off of his lips and on to anything else. “I asked him what he was saying and he told me he has no idea. Apparently, he has a metal plate in his head that picks up frequencies from a French radio station.”
“Why do you put up with him?” I ask.
Grover licks his lips again. Damn it. “Why not?”
“But you can’t believe a word he says.”
“But I can’t miss the possibility either.”
“The possibility of what?”
“That one day he’ll tell the truth. I need to be there for that,” Grover says.
“It’s worth waiting for,” I say and nod.
“Exactly.”
Grover and I hold each other’s gaze as we stand quiet. I watch him as he watches me. The air is thick with words unspoken, like I could swim through them.
I just need the right question.
“We all have a divine light within us,” Hayes says, breaking the moment, his hands in a prayer position at the center of his chest. “But it’s our job to seek that divine light and let it shine. To take what’s on the inside and show it on the outside. It is the only way to true enlightenment.”
As an exercise to help us tap into our inner selves, Hayes tells us that we will be making papier-mâché masks of our own faces.
“You can decorate the outside in any way that you want, but it must represent who you are on the inside.”
“Can I be your partner?” Grover asks, when Hayes tells us to pair up. Grover’s eyes go back to being hesitant, but it feels like the right question.
“Sure,” I say.
Hayes demonstrates how to make papier-mâché. How to dip the newspaper strips in the paste. How to lay them over our partner’s face.
“So it doesn’t stick, you’ll have to add a layer of Vaseline to your skin.”
“I knew I’d love this craft,” Grover says out loud to the group.
With our supplies gathered, Grover and I find a table and get started.
“Do you want to go first?” Grover holds up a container of Vaseline. But for the first time since I met him, I decide to make a move. I don’t need to be tricked into it or forced into it. I jump in on my own accord. I grab the container from Grover.
“You first.”
I set out the supplies as Grover sits down in a chair and looks up at me. I think I hear his voice tremble when he says, “I trust you, Zander.” And he closes his eyes.
I pop the top open and run my fingers through the gel that feels like thick water. I take a step closer to Grover and look down at the space between us. Our knees are almost touching. Almost. I move in closer so that they do—they touch. His chest rises as he pulls in a breath.
“My dad yells at my mom.” Grover’s words make me freeze. His eyes stay closed. “She’s tried to divorce him five times, but she can never follow through. Last year, he was arrested for public indecency. The cops found him riding his bike around town without any pants on. And the year before that he tried to kill himself. I found him passed out on the bathroom floor.”
“Grover,” I start to say.
“And I’m scared I’ll be just like him. That no matter how hard I look, I’ll always be lost.” He inhales and pushes more words out. “I’m scared that waiting to die will be my only way of living.”
“What do you need from me?” I ask.
The second I say it I know I’ve found the right question.
“Remind me that I’m not him,” Grover says.
I rub my fingers together until they’re coated in Vaseline, like thick water that won’t come off. My heart pounds in my chest as I move Grover’s hair from his forehead with my other hand. When my skin connects with his, shivers run across my arms. I’m electric when I touch him and terrified at the same time. Like I’m breaking open over and over again.
But so is he.
We’re breaking open with life.
I feel it.
And Grover needs to feel it, too.
I glance around the room to see if anyone is looking at us, but no one is. I take my time rubbing circles around his forehead even though my cheeks are burning and my fingers tremble. I can’t rush this.
The room is so quiet. Grover is so quiet.
I listen to the sound of his breathing.
A whisper in. A whoosh out. Whisper. Whoosh. Whisper. Whoosh.
I move from Grover’s forehead to his cheeks. Breathing doesn’t always sound this way. Breathing doesn’t always sound so natural.
My fingers stroke the bridge of his nose.
Sometimes the only way to breathe is through a machine.
My throat closes tight, but Grover says nothing. He just breathes and he breathes. So I do the same.
For a moment, I pull away. I shake my hands out at my sides and feel the air between my fingers.
Again, I feel.
“Are you okay?” Grover finally speaks, his eyes still closed.
I didn’t breathe before I got here. That’s why my dad cried. That’s why I’m here.
“Yes,” I say.
I go back to him—to his face and his skin and to the shape of him. I circle my finger over his eyebrows and around the soft spot right under his bottom eyelashes. My fingertips travel down the side of his face to his jaw. They stop there.
His chest rises.
Grover is not his dad. He is alive.
I lean in.
His chest falls.
I lean in closer.
His chest rises.
My hand presses against his cheek now, and still he doesn’t open his eyes.
His chest falls.
I lean in so that my lips are inches away from his.
Grover breathes in.
I close my eyes.
He exhales.
I feel his breath on my mouth.
I feel.
I lick my lips and taste the air that’s been inside of Grover.
Beautiful breath.
“You are not your dad,” I say. I place my hand on Grover’s chest. When it lands there, he shudders. For just a moment, he doesn’t move. I don’t move. I feel his heart beat through the soft cotton of his shirt. And, again, he takes a breath. In and out. In and out. He repeats the simplest—the most instinctual—act of living. Over and over.
He is alive.
The moment I think my hand has stayed too long on him, that if I don’t move now I might never let go, Grover puts his hand on top of mine. His voice is soft, nearly a whisper. “I’m so glad you’re real.”
“And you’re alive,” I whisper back.
Slowly, he opens his eyes.
“Remind me to write a thank-you note to the makers of Vaseline. Signed every teenage boy.”