Nothing Happened Read online

  “Maybe you’re right,” she admitted. “Maybe I am looking forward to seeing Claudia.”

  “Oh really?” I teased, relieved by the change of subject.

  “Really,” she admitted. “But I don’t know if I’m over Christopher.”

  I bit my tongue. Come on! At least Claudia was someone new for Hana to obsess over. Not that jerkwad Christopher, who’d yanked her around all year, then dumped her, reducing my beautiful Hana to a phantom who could barely get out of bed.

  “Okay,” I said. “But what if this summer, we just did our own thing?”

  “What?” I could already hear the defensiveness in her voice.

  “I just mean…” I fought for the right words. “What if we just swim, and play improv games, do crafts, and hang out with Margo—”

  I cut myself off with a sharp breath in. We had reached the part of the path where it divided into three separate trails: One led to the center of camp and our giant log cabin mess hall—Beaver Dam—and the sandy clearing out front with the flagpole. The second led to our swimming waterfront. Docks, buddy board, all that camp swim stuff.

  And then there was the third option: a steep, scraggly path, hidden in the summer by ferns that were just starting to revive now. This little trail led up to Eagle’s Nest, a clearing at the top of a hill hidden by trees, with a perfect view of the stars. AKA Nest, one of our counselor party spots.

  Last Fourth of July, after our annual sparkler party, two of the counselors had stayed behind to clean up and had returned to their respective cabins just before morning meeting, causing wild intrigue and rumors to fly throughout camp.

  That night.

  “Bee,” Hana’s soft voice ventured.

  “What?”

  “Last summer…with you and Ben—”

  “Oh my God.” I groaned and stalked toward the water. “I’ve told you a hundred times: nothing happened.”

  BEE WAS TERRIBLE at keeping secrets. She always cracked and spilled her guts. When we were little, if we did anything wrong, like take extra cookies or break a glass, I knew Bee would confess the second Mom walked in the room.

  “Mom, I am so sorry, but we betrayed you again!” she would announce, bursting into tears. Eventually I figured out that if I wanted extra cookies, I had to keep my big sister in the dark.

  So how had she kept this secret all year? I wished for the millionth time that she would confide in me. But I’d learned to let the question go, and for the millionth time, I did.

  The sea felt gorgeous—wind danced across the water, flicking spray onto my face. Thick fog had rolled in, concealing the little island off our shore. I scooped some of the freezing ocean into my water bottle.

  Bee stood on the swim dock, arms crossed, staring ahead into the haze. Her tall, dark silhouette almost disappeared into the mist. I wondered what song from Les Mis was playing in her head.

  “Bee!” I called cheerfully. “Let’s go get pizza!”

  After dinner, Bee announced she was done for the day, and she’d be in the den studying. My parents both looked at me pointedly—Bee’s love of paperwork was legendary, and I knew they wanted me to follow, ask her what was wrong. But I just shrugged back at them; I knew she wanted to be left alone.

  Instead I went up to my bedroom and poured this afternoon’s saltwater into one of the glass vases on my windowsill. The bits of sand and plant swirled. This vase was halfway full now—it was my seventh. A long line of little vases, holding bouquets of waves.

  My therapist, Louisa, and I had developed these “coping skills” to help with my depression. “Exercise” (swimming), “sleep schedule” (I’m not great at this), “school” (I kind of didn’t do homework last fall), and “self care” (semi-insane craft projects).

  My bedroom reflected the last one. A line of water vases, a stack of “adult & teen!” coloring books, and a shoe box full of tiny lucky origami stars, which I folded obsessively. I’d cleared out the camp art building, Painted Turtle, of all the rainbow origami paper. Still have to tell Mom about that.

  When summer started, Donald and Ellen, our art leader, would give me new crafts to do. Tie-dye T-shirts, friendship bracelets, lumpy handmade candles…I could spend all day between the ocean and Painted Turtle. Just swimming and crafting.

  And absolutely no Christopher.

  I paused my social studies reading to check my phone.

  No Christopher, even if I wanted him.

  My ex…whatever. I guess I couldn’t really call him an ex-boyfriend. We’d never been official. But he was still my ex-something.

  I just needed to get through the next month and a half of school. Three more swim meets, three more papers, one guy I still couldn’t shake. I mean, he mostly ignored me at school anyway, which was good. My therapist and I agreed it was good.

  Except that I spent most of the school day waiting for him to accidentally make eye contact with me. I didn’t tell Louisa that.

  Suddenly, my phone lit up. Three texts in a row, all from Claudia.

  No way. I had no idea they were coming back. Texting them now

  Those idiots. What happened to “this is our LAST SUMMER”?!

  TBH I’m excited though. That just made this summer even better

  I smiled and quickly typed back.

  Same!! I really can’t wait

  Claudia. Once we got going, we’d be up till two or three talking. It didn’t matter what we talked about. I just liked this routine: I liked that someone else was awake that late, too; I liked that the later it got, the flirtier we’d get; I liked that every part of me would grow warmer, just for a few hours.

  Seriously. School needs to be over

  I know those feels. But we’re so close!

  Yes. And then we’ll be together

  Together. That was such an incredible word. I melted reading it. Being apart made that word different. Together meant in the same place, her body in front of mine, and hearing her voice, soft and smoldering, like charcoal pencil strokes.

  Claudia lived in Connecticut, hours away. We never saw each other, except for summers. All of this texting started a few months ago, during a weekend when Christopher had blown me off again. But it got more intense in the last couple months, when Chris and I had split. Well, he’d split from me. And I’d just wanted someone to talk to—and suddenly, she was there, in my messages, whenever I needed her.

  And I’d felt that glow begin.

  Sometimes I looked at pictures of her online and just stared, dumbfounded. Black hair streaked with gray and white strands, wiry arms, serious lips that grudgingly loosened into smiles. Could this beautiful person really be on the other end of these conversations? It didn’t feel real.

  Somewhere around eleven, Bee appeared in my doorway, catching me by surprise. She looked at the phone in my hands, said a tight “Good night, I love you,” and then I heard a knob click.

  I knew she was just worried about me, but it still hurt.

  Sometimes I wish my sister wasn’t so judge-y

  Ha! It’s not like she doesn’t have secrets too. *Cough cough* Ben *cough cough*

  We stayed up till three thirty, the longest we’ve ever talked. Claudia complained about her old, crappy group of friends. I told her about drama on our swim team. We whined about school and would it ever end? I think we both knew, even if we couldn’t say it, what the end of the year meant:

  The beginning of us. Maybe?

  In between texts, I folded star after star, pinching my summer hopes into the paper points.

  FOR THE LAST eight years, the end of June meant one thing—the beginning of Camp Dogberry. But Camp Dogberry meant a lot of things: wheezing in dusty cabins, no sleep, mosquito bites on sunburns, complete responsibility for a million children, the same food for two months straight, and boats. I hate boats.

  Also, camp meant this one person, whose wicked laughter and glares I brought home at the end of summer. And like every June, I felt, like, so excited to see her. But I tried to squash those habitual fe
elings, told them to cool it. We hadn’t so much as texted this entire year. Did she hate me? I had no idea where we stood anymore.

  And also also, whatever, more importantly, Camp Dogberry meant my best friends and the best place in the entire world. Especially after spending a year trapped in the city of Boston, summer camp in Maine seemed like a rural paradise.

  But this June wasn’t supposed to be about camp. I’d made a solemn vow last year that it was my last year. I’d declared this, publicly, many times. I knew finding summer internships during college would be important, and any part of me that still clung to the idea of coming back was blown to smithereens that one night. After that I’d just plain sworn off Camp Dogberry forever. Which was terrible, because I loved it.

  Life was so complicated.

  And there I was, year nine, waking up at fudge o’clock, rolling off the couch, grabbing a sleeping bag, kind of brushing my teeth, kissing my sisters’ sleeping heads…then getting Layla a cup of water because she’d woken up when I’d kissed her sleeping head.

  Finally, I wrote a note to my mom and left it on our new kitchen island.

  “Ben! Look! Our own private island!” Mom had said, beaming, when we’d moved in the week before. I still wasn’t used to her real smiles, but they automatically made me grin back.

  I stumbled down the apartment building stairs, outside, and into Claudia’s car.

  The great thing about Claudia was that she understood I was not a human before ten a.m. I got in the car, we grunted at each other, she turned on the radio, and next thing, I woke up to the sound of tires crushing gravel as we pulled into the familiar Dogberry parking lot. Counselors’ families and cars swarming, the smudged white check-in tent waiting to the left. I felt at home, but also like I might throw up.

  “Ben, are we gonna get out or what?”

  I startled, realizing that I’d been spacing out into the bushes in front of the car. When I looked at Claudia, I startled again at her new hair. For as long as I’d known her, Claudia’d had this long black sheet of hair. Now it was clipped short, shorter than mine. You could really see all her little white hairs peeking up throughout the black. She was the only seventeen-year-old I knew who actually had salt-and-pepper hair.

  “Yeah, sorry, let’s go.”

  Camp smelled like pine needles, saltwater, and good old dirt. It was a sunny morning, still chilly for June, but that was Maine for you, especially a little farther north. We grabbed our gear out of the trunk. A couple other cars were already there—I saw Donald’s ridiculous green Mercedes and couldn’t help smiling. It would be awesome to have everyone back together again, even if it felt like cheating adulthood.

  “Oh hey.” Claudia pointed ahead. “There’s Hana.”

  Leonato Jr. held the check-in clipboard under the welcome tent. Her whole face lit up, and she waved us over. Claudia hesitated for just a second and fell behind me as we walked up. Jesus. Put Claudia in the path of a pretty girl, and she became a ball of idiot.

  “Ben! Claudia! It’s so good to see you!” Hana reached out for a hug. She must’ve had a growth spurt or something—she was nearly as tall as me now. Maybe a little taller?

  “Hey, Hana!” I squeezed her back. “Did you grow or did I shrink?”

  She laughed in my ear.

  “Hey,” Claudia mumbled behind us.

  Hana pulled back and reached out tentatively to hug Claudia, who went in for an intense grip for one second, then let go immediately. Weirdo.

  “I’m so glad you both came back this year!” Hana smiled, unflustered by Claudia’s bizarro hug. “I thought you weren’t going to?” That last part was directed at me. It only stung a little.

  “Well, here I am!” I said cheerfully.

  “Yeah—wasn’t last summer your last summer, Ben?”

  A voice stopped me cold. I tried to compose myself, but when I turned around, I still wasn’t prepared for Bee Leonato. Fierce, beautiful, perfectly witty and weird. Always an inch or so taller than me, now even more so—her black hair was braided in intricate spirals that pulled into a faux-hawk on top of her head. Gold hoops hung from her ears, trembling in the force that buzzed around her.

  Had I ever stood a chance?

  Our gazes met. My eyelids fluttered rapidly, like I was looking into the sun. I forgot about replying and just focused on looking at my feet without falling over. My heart pounded into the dirt.

  Bee didn’t miss a beat. “Claudia!” She turned and gave her a quick smile and a non-awkward hug. “Great to see you.”

  “You too.”

  “So, Ben, what’s up?” Bee tried again. “Are you here to drop off the girls? That’s next week.”

  “What?” I fumbled. Another three seconds to prepare had not helped. Especially since her eyes were now fixed on me in their familiar glare. “No, I’m sports leader.”

  “Right…” Her glare slid over me. My stomach gulped. “You’re sports leader this year. Even though you said you were done with this place, a million times.”

  “I…um…”

  I glanced at Hana, for support, but she just blinked at me apologetically and pulled Claudia off to the side. Great.

  So much for my hope that everything might be magically forgotten.

  Bee was still staring at me, arms crossed. How was it she looked the same but everything was completely different? We should be catching up on the past year. I wanted to know where she was going to college. Plus I was full of news too—about the move, my sisters, Boston. I was bursting to tell her everything…but she kind of looked like she wanted to murder me.

  “So yeah—” I tried—

  “Why did you come back, Ben?” She had cut me off, her dark eyes clouding over, unsearchable.

  “Family stuff.” I lowered my voice. “We moved out. My mom and my sisters and me. It’s complicated.” Where did that come from? I’d sworn I wasn’t going to tell anyone.

  “Oh.” Her glare softened the tiniest bit, and I instinctively leaned in closer. We could fix this. If I could just figure out the right thing to say—

  “Bee, can we—”

  “Beeeeeeee!” We both turned as Margo threw herself into Bee. I stepped back to shield myself from the hug explosion. Margo’s hair sprang every which way, which was normal, but usually, it was a bright, fiery orange. Now it was a deep, shiny purple. Did Dogberry send out a memo that we all needed new hair this summer? After a full minute of squealing and jumping around, Margo finally noticed me.

  “Ben! You’re back!” She grinned, like this was just a little amusing.

  “Hey, Margo.”

  We hugged, and then they went back to yelling in one another’s faces. Bee and I were clearly done for now. Hana, while beingsqueezed by Margo, told Claudia and me that we could wait in Dam, where we’d all be meeting soon.

  I hiked my orange duffel bag higher over my shoulder and led the way down the wide, shady dirt path, vaguely aware of Claudia trailing somewhere behind me.

  My reunion with Bee was over, just like that. I’d been daydreaming about it for months, but in my dreams, I was a lot cooler, and Bee was a lot happier to see me.

  We approached the biggest building at camp, an enormous pseudo–log cabin with a large porch and a flagpole area out front. Claudia tripped up the stairs. I wasn’t the only one in a daze.

  We pushed open the double screen doors; they shut with a comforting slam behind us. Rows of colorful tables and chairs, white twinkle lights wrapped around the rafters, the big welcoming window to the kitchen, the wafting smell of blueberry pancakes. Home.

  “Hey! Nerds!” Donald called out as he sauntered across the hall and pulled each of us in for bro hugs.

  “Hey man, how ya been?” I clapped his back.

  Sunglasses, Afro, always the tie-dye shirts with designer jeans. Did he even own shorts? “Killin’ it,” he assured me. “It’s good to see you.”

  He pushed his sunglasses back on his head. “Claudia, your hair’s gone!”

  “Really? I hadn’t
noticed,” Claudia said sarcastically. Well, almost sarcastically—it had that awkwardness that kind of ruined the effect of sarcasm. I made a mental note: the hair thing was sensitive.

  “Huh.” Donald stared at her head for a moment before turning to me. “So, freshman year! How’d you do?”

  “Oh, fine.” I shrugged. “Good grades.”

  “Who cares? Do you have a girlfriend?” Donald pointed an eyebrow at me.

  “I’m premed,” I reminded him.

  “So nobody wanted to fuck you?”

  “I don’t have time.”

  He snickered. “Please—virgins have tons of time on their hands.”

  I shoved him.

  “Claudia?” He turned to her. Her entire upper half had disappeared into her duffel bag, rooting around for something.

  “No, I don’t have cash for a beer run,” she answered from inside. I laughed.

  “That too. But I was asking if you got a girlfriend this year.”

  Claudia pulled her head out, blushing. “Shut up. No.” I laughed again. I really had missed Claudia. She reminded me of myself when I was twelve. Not that I would ever tell her that, since she was seventeen and a lot more muscular than twelve-year-old me. Or nineteen-year-old me.

  “That makes three of us, then.” Donald sighed and shook his head. “Single and back at summer camp. Pathetic.”

  “So nobody wanted to fuck you?” I asked innocently.

  Claudia fist-bumped me. Donald laughed but then got serious and pushed both of us toward the corner of Dam with the drink machine—pretty much the only place at camp you were guaranteed privacy—glancing back over his shoulder. I looked in that direction: John, his halfbrother, with Connie and Bobby. They had formed a trio last summer.

  “Actually, yeah, someone did want to fuck me,” Donald whispered, under the buzz of the machine.

  “Can I submit that to the camp newsletter?” I whispered back. Claudia smirked.

  “But that guy”—Donald jerked a thumb in John’s direction—“screwed it up for me.”