Stargazing - Complete Novella

"Whatever," Lilian grumbled, showing just a little bit of shame for the first time.

"We'll talk more about this later."

"What? Aren't you going to--"

"Later."

At least she seemed confused now. Even if she was questioning my actions rather than thinking about her own, that had to count for something.

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Chapter 11

Normally, the question of what to wear for a night out would have been a source of anxiety. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I didn't have to puzzle out what the fashion norms for a camp off night would be. Counselor laundry day wasn't until tomorrow, and I only had three reasonably clean options, which were practically identical. Jeans with my choice of band print T-shirt. Rolling Stones -- a trophy from seeing them live in Brooklyn, REM, and Pink Floyd.

I had them lain out on my bed, trying to decide which looked best with the jeans and my remaining bras, while my fashion guru campers heaped on advice.

"Don't you have anything more classy?"

"You'd be so pretty if you'd let me touch up your eyes!"

"Maybe a top that doesn't tell everybody you like boomer music."

Ahh, to be their age and think prepping was fun rather than stressful. If Sarah were here, she would tell me to ignore everything and just do whatever made me the most comfortable and confident in my own skin. Which was easy for her to say, she couldn't help naturally looking stunning, no matter what she wore. "Boomer music? I swear, I'll teach you imps some culture if it kills me."

The red Victoria's Secret bra called to me. It would royally suck to wear that underwire after getting used to my comfortable sports bras all day, but it did wonderful things for my chest. Showing off my boobs for Jess -- hell yeah. Red bra with the red tongue from the Rolling Stones shirt. Perfect.

I stole a glance in the cabin's one bathroom mirror. Casual but fun, while still being cute enough. But still, maybe a little extra...

"Alright Sylvia, get that eyeliner and keep it light."

The group gathering in the parking lot behind the mess hall reminded me a lot of frat parties back at school. People were dressed up inversely proportionally to their ages. The younger counselors wore skirts, low cut tops and makeup like they were expecting to go dancing at a night club, while the older counselors like Jess were decked out in jeans and t-shirts like mine, with hoodies slung over their shoulders. I guess the process of becoming jaded is the same here as it is for college freshmen and seniors.

It made me smile, glad that I'd guessed right and would fit in with them. In fairness to myself, even if I'd had my entire wardrobe available, I would still have matched Jess perfectly. I can count on one hand the times I've worn a skirt, and I've made damn sure no pictures exist.

Jess and Blake stood with their friend Anderson a little away from the main group, waving me over and watching what seemed to be a debate about what to do tonight.

"I'm not saying we have to go into Lake George," Madison was saying from the center of the gathering. "I'm just saying it has the most options in case people want to split up." Out of all the other counselors, Madison was probably the one I had the hardest time connecting with. She gave off a sense of liking being the center of attention, and had an attitude and strut that went with it.

Blake snorted quietly from the other side of Jess, and Anderson chuckled. "Easy, dude. Try to make it through one off night at least this year."

"Lake George sucks!" One of the boys loudly complained.

"Yeah, all the bars are super anal about IDs."

"Goddamn Americans," Chloe's French accent laughed, quickly joined up by the swath of British accents from Boys Camp decrying the downright oppressive drinking age of 21.

"I get it, trust me, I get it!" Madison said loudly, trying to regain control. "But what's the alternative? The Mall?"

He wasn't saying anything, but I swear, I could feel repressed tension radiating off of Blake. Jess and Anderson could too, but whereas I had no idea what the problem was, they seemed to think it was hilarious.

"You told us you wanted things to be different this year," Anderson laughed. "Eight days into the season would be a new record."

"What would be?" I asked, trying to keep up, but none of them answered me. In the background, the main group went on, talking themselves in circles about the relative merits of bar hopping in Lake George, going to Target and maybe a movie at the mall, and a variety of other suggestions ranging from mini-golf to go-carts.

"It wouldn't be so infuriating if it wasn't the same fucking thing every off night every single year," Blake finally said.

Jess and Anderson, who had kept up a string of jokes about Blake's rising temper, finally stopped and shifted tones. "It's to be expected. Everybody wants something different," Jess said consolingly.

"Yeah. What do you want from them?"

"I want to do literally anything but stand around all night talking in circles about it without ever actually doing anything!"

Anderson sighed. "Yeah, we've been over it a hundred times. It'll always be like this until somebody just makes a choice for the group."

"And you know what will happen to anybody who tries to be leader other than Madison," Jess went on.

"Especially if that somebody happens to be you."

Blake sighed again. "I'm too old for this high school bullshit." Then, before Jess or Anderson could object any more, he stepped up to the group and raised his voice. "Hey guys! Our car--" he waved back to include us "--is going to the river. We've got a cooler full of beer and stuff to start a fire."

Madison turned on him, looking like she was about to try to explain something very obvious to somebody very dense. "We're all deciding what to do together, Blake. You can't just pick for everybody--"

"I'm not picking for everybody," Blake cut her off, sounding cheerful and not letting any of the disdain from before show. "I'm just telling you all what we're doing. If you'd like to join us, great! If you'd rather stand around here all night instead, that's also great, we'll see you tomorrow."

And, without waiting to see if anybody would follow, he turned and started off.

"Think that's done it?" Anderson asked under his breath as we turned to catch up to him.

"Let's be serious," Jess responded just as quietly. "Blake breathing the same air as her would probably have been enough to piss Madison off."

I hadn't been sure what Jess would want or expect in terms of being open about us. After all, being openly gay at school was one thing, but this wasn't exactly a college campus. To my delight, she took my hand, gave me a kiss in greeting, and brought me up to speed. "Blake and Madison have a bit of a bad history. Best not to mention it to him."

"Oh, but you've got to tell her. But it's such a juicy story," Anderson complained.

"It's Blake's story, you gossipmonger."

"Your story too."

"Even so."

Both of them slowed down when they noticed where Blake was leading us. One of the things I love most about my truck is the surprise everybody always seems to have finding out it's mine. Whatever it says about it, I love defying people's expectations of what kind of car I'm supposed to have.

My grandfather worked as a mechanic, and his retirement hobby is fixing up and enhancing beat up vehicles he rescues from used car lots. He resells most of them, even usually makes a bit of profit, but I'm positive he lied about how much of his time and money he invested into mine. Originally, it was a beat to shit Ford F-150 with 80,000 miles on it. Full four door cab, which is roomier than most midsize cars, and a half bed. However, after Grandpa was done, very little of it was original. From reworking most of the engine and guts under the hood, to replacing the seating, to a completely redone stereo system.

He gave it to me before my first camping trip with my first ever girlfriend. "No granddaughter of mine is gonna spend a week in the woods living out of that shitty Toyota of hers," he'd said when he'd given me the keys, and the memory still made me smile.

"This is your ride?" Anderson gaped, eyes darting back and forth between my wildly contrasting small body and huge truck.

"Yep!" I said, proudly. "Get your short jokes out now, because after this I'll be wildly rolling my eyes at all of them."

"Is that a promise?" Blake chuckled.

"Yeah, if that's meant to be a deterrent, you've clearly got a lot to learn about us," Anderson's expression had settled on something like a small child on Christmas. "I don't think I've ever been more excited to DD."

I laughed at his enthusiasm, taking it as a compliment. "Honestly, I know I'm not the most subtle lesbian in the world, but what were you expecting? A lesbaru?"

Blake and Anderson both practically died, and Jess gave a choking sound. "You two are so perfect for each other," Blake eventually managed to get out.

"What?"

In answer, Jess clicked the unlock button on a set of keys she'd produced from her pocket, and a few cars down, the lights on a sky-blue Forester lit up. I glowed red. "Sorry," I stammered. "I--I didn't mean to--"

"I know," she smiled at me. "It's just something these two have been making fun of me for since I bought her."

"But if you've got a car, why do you guys need to use mine?"

"Because Jess is a maniac and drives a stick shift." Anderson's voice still carried an amused joking quality. "And she refuses to teach me how to drive it."

"What this uncivilized mongrel means is that I refuse to give him a second lesson after he nearly set my clutch on fire in the first one." Jess gave him a playful shove away from the front passenger door. "Shotgun is all mine, get in the back, bitch."

Anderson grumbled about wanting to ride with his best of friends, Blake, anyway, and climbed into the back seat. Jess made to get into the front, but got blocked by the mess of stuff I'd completely forgotten was stacked on the seat. Shit!

"Sorry," I muttered, trying to shift things.

"No problem." Jess started helping me, tossing a backpack and umbrella between Anderson and Blake in the back, but then got distracted by what was underneath. "Is this what I think it is?" She asked, unzipping one of three massive cases that held my CD collection.

"Okay, I know what you're thinking--" I started, but Blake noticed at the same time.

"Holy shit, what year is it?"

"I got the truck from my grandfather, and he's got this thing about music. He ripped out the old stereo and put in a really nice one, but after changing to cassettes and then to CDs, he said he's never shifting to a new music technology ever again." I sighed, a little embarrassed. "I could probably get a USB input hooked up, but I don't know. I kind of like it..." I trailed off, only feeling more embarrassed by Blake and Anderson's jokes about going back in time to elementary school, and wondering what they'd be valued at on Antiques Roadshow.

Jess didn't seem to notice. She thumbed through pages, pausing at a few to gasp, or mouth the title of an album, before finally giving an excited "Yes!" Quickly, she popped Chvrches -- The Bones of What you Believe out of the binder and loaded it in.

The opening bars of The Mother We Share rose through the car and we started off down the camp road, Jess's excitement growing as she fiddled with the bass settings. "Leah," she grabbed my arm, and smiled a huge smile at me. "You are full of surprises, and I absolutely love it."

I glowed red again, while at the same time, twin groans came from the back. "Christ, she's into this fucking emo band too?"

I grinned back at Jess through my blush. "I see what you mean about uncivilized mongrel."

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Chapter 12

The River referred to a spot along the bank of The Hudson, and I would have driven right by it without the group's directions. From the road, it looked like nothing. No sign, no parking other than the side of the road, not even any signs of water.

My phone had started picking up connection on the way. It had been vibrating pretty much constantly with the backlog of messages coming in, and my fingers itched to check them, but I held back. This was supposed to be a date with Jess, triggering a Sarah-episode would be terrible. But I missed her so much... and I must have had dozens of messages from her right there on my phone, waiting for me... It would be so great to share everything that had happened with Jess with her. Just a quick text couldn't hurt. Except it could. Badly.

"Help me with this?" Jess brought me back to Earth, hoisting a cooler down from the truck bed.

"Wha--Oh, yeah."

Blake and Anderson each had a bundle of firewood slung across their shoulders, and were arguing over where they were supposed to enter the trees.

"It's just here, you remember. Right by the gap in the guardrail."

"Nah. We have to go down a bit until we can see the tracks."

"You're both wrong," Jess put in, pointing at one of the trees that looked the same as all the rest. "We start here."

Jess's sense of direction left us in no doubt, and despite how inconspicuous it looked from the road, she lead us forward a few dozen feet and set us on a winding trail just wide enough for us to walk down single file. The path felt like walking in the footsteps of somebody very drunk, wandering back and forth without apparent reason before crossed over some long-abandoned railroad tracks, where I could hear the rush of water ahead. It was so thick that we couldn't actually see the river, so I thought we had a long way to go, but I was wrong. We stepped out and found the Hudson River right in front of us, and it instantly became obvious why they'd chosen this spot to come to. There was a layer of smooth rock that sloped gently downwards towards a tiny patch of beach, forming a little amphitheater with some driftwood log benches at the bottom that would be perfect for a bonfire by the waterside.

"We could probably have just grabbed firewood from back there. Would have saved you guys the trouble of carrying all that." I said as Blake and Anderson dropped their firewood down and started shaping it together.

"You'd be surprised. We've used most of the easy kindling and dry stuff over the years, it's mostly all new wet stuff left. And besides, we found out the hard way why that path takes such a round-about route, didn't we dude?"

Anderson nodded darkly. "I thought we were never going to get rid of that poison ivy."

"If you remember right, somebody told you fumbling around off the path, in the dark, in an area we'd seen poison ivy before, was a terrible idea." Jess said, putting an ironic spin on it that left me in no doubt it was her. She passed Blake a beer from the cooler and settled in beside me on the log.

"Huh... no, I don't remember that."

"I don't either." Anderson feigned surprise and turned sharply, as if seeing Jess for the first time. "Jess! If only you'd been there! I'm sure you could have saved us from our folly!"

"I take it back. You two deserved every itchy second of what you got."

Jess held a pair of blue water bottles with the camp logo on them. She offered me one before taking a long drink from hers. My nose perked up -- it definitely wasn't water.

"What's this?"

"What you said you wanted!"

Confused, I took a sip, tasted the mix of five alcohols and coke that made a long island iced tea, and remembered joking about it the night I'd met her. When had she mixed it? Had she somehow had all the ingredients sitting around, or had she gone out and bought stuff? Just for me? I took another long sip, feeling incredibly grateful and appreciative.

"I can't believe you remembered that. This is amazing, thank you so much."

The sun was setting over the trees, sending shades of red and orange across a couple of clouds in the mostly clear sky, and reflecting beautifully on the water. The trees across the water cast long shadows that gently rippled and swayed with the motion of the river's flow. The sound of the river bubbling over the rocks near us combined with the smell of smoke and crackling of the fire to make everything feel very peaceful.

Blake lit a joint and Anderson lit a cigar, informing us that his taste in tobacco was constantly evolving to new heights of sophistication. One sip at a time, the warmth of my drink spread through me. I grinned, laughing along with them as they teased each other and shared news from their cabins and activities. Of course, Blake and I had most of the same stories to share since we spent most of our activity time teaching archery together, but the slight differences in how we remembered the antics of the campers caused Jess and Anderson a great deal of amusement.

Listening to Jess telling a story about how her campers had played a prank on her co-counselor the previous night by completely removing her bed from the cabin and setting all her stuff up out on the porch like it was a bedroom, I realized the warm feeling wasn't just the alcohol in me. These guys -- they'd clearly been an inseparable threesome for a long time, but they'd adopted me. Folded me into their group and made me feel like I belonged. Even though I was a complete camp newbie, I felt a real comradery with them, and it was exactly what I needed.

Jess had her head tilted to one side, absentmindedly playing with her hair in the cute way she habitually did as she spoke. I stared, completely shamelessly, wanting to imprint the scene in my memory forever.

"How about you, Leah? Have your campers pranked you yet?"

"Not really. Not unless waking Alexis and me up at the crack of dawn every single day counts."

"Tell them about Lilian," Jess prompted me.

"God, I don't want to think about her."

"Oh? I thought you were connecting with her."

"I was. Still am, I guess." I sighed, then went on. "Actually, I could use some advice, because I have no goddamn clue what I'm doing. So, last night while I was talking to all of them for activity cards--"

"You've already started your cards?" Blake interrupted. "Dude, what do you mean you don't know what you're doing? You're already ahead of the game!"

"What? You mean you've not done them yet? They're due tomorrow!" I turned from one to the other, reading the sheepish looks on all their faces. "None of you? Wow, no wonder the head counselors keep nagging about it. Anyway--" And I told them about Lilian's vindictive episodes.

"How was she today," Jess asked when I'd finished. "Any different?"

"I actually didn't really see much of her today." I thought back, trying to remember the morning and Rest Hour. "Maybe a bit more quiet than usual? But she likes to keep to herself, so maybe that's nothing."

"She's the one with the fucked up negligent parents you told us about before, right?" Blake asked. "The one who was sitting all by herself in the dark when you got back from Lookout?"

"Yep, that's her. It sounds so creepy when you put it like that."

Blake chuckled. "Not sure there's any way to sugar-coat that. But now's the important part. Do you think she cares about what you think of her?"

I shuffled on the bench, not sure how to answer. "I hope so? I do like her, she's incredibly smart and really interesting when she does open up."

Jess smiled and exchanged a nod with Blake before speaking. "Imagine you're her. You're struggling to be noticed and feel approved of, and you know you're better than all the other kids around you. Yet your parents continually fail to notice it. And the other kids get rewarded with recognition despite doing worse than you do. How do you get your parents attention?"

The answer was obvious, but it made me depressed to realize what Lilian's home life must be like. "Acting out."