“I don’t know. I still don’t even know what happened between us at graduation.”
“You haven’t asked her?” Annie’s eyes widen.
I shake my head. “It’s all so tentative. I don’t want to do anything that will scare her off or make her ghost me again.”
It sounds pathetic, what I’m willing to put up with to have Olivia around at all.
Annie tilts her head, regarding me. “That doesn’t sound like a very healthy relationship, Gage.”
I puff out a breath. “I know.”
“So, whatisyour plan?”
I shrug. “Convince her to let this be a real relationship before the summer ends?”
“How?” she asks, crossing her arms in front of her.
I consider her question, but the truth is, I don’t have a very good answer. “With my charming smile and abs of steel?”
Annie looks at me with squinted eyes. “I think you’re going to need more than that.”
I throw my arms up, nearly smacking them against the ceiling of the treehouse. “Well,you’reher best friend. Help me!”
She shakes her head. “You know I love you, Gage. And Delaney. But the two of you need to figure this out for yourselves.” She hesitates.
“What?” I ask.
Annie holds eye contact. “Just … just be prepared if it turns out her feelings aren’t as deep as yours. Be careful.”
I exhale a breath.Not exactly the encouragement I was hoping for.
“I’ll try,” I say. “Don’t say anything to Olivia, please. She can’t know that you know.”
Annie scrunches her nose. “I’ll do my best.”
Back at camp for week nine, I have my biggest group of kids yet. All twelve of the bunks in my cabin are occupied, so Jayden and I have our hands full.
Jayden’s been a great junior counselor this summer. He gets impatient with the campers, especially when they’re hyper, but he has a talent for crowd control and thinking of fun ideas for games and skits. He goes home to Houston most weekends, giving me the cabin all to myself, which is another point in his favor.
I hardly have a moment to think, let alone see Olivia, all week. On Friday evening, when the skits are all finally over and every one of my campers are packed up into their parents’ cars and heading home, I can finally turn my thoughts to what’s next. Namely, my weekend with Olivia and my nervousness about my little brother coming to camp next week. He’ll be in my cabin.
I still get this weird, kind of uneasy feeling in my stomach whenever I call Duncan my brother or Callie my sister or even Maggie my mom. Almost like I’m not sure I’m allowed to use those terms.
Even though by any definition Duncan is surely my brother. We’re genetically related and we have the same mom, even if we weren’t raised by the same people or in the same household. And I’m not sure who I think is authorized to give me that permission. Maggie’s fine with it and so is my mom.
Our family situation is messier and more complicated than a lot of people are comfortable discussing, even if I wanted to share all the personal details with a stranger.
Or then there are some people who find out I’m adopted and think that entitles them to know everything about my story because it’s different and they’re curious. No matter how polite I am when I decline to share, they still walk away looking offended, like they have a right to hear about my life, and I’m rude to deny them.
But either way, Duncan is my brother. Annie and I both fell in love with him instantly when we held him for the first time in the hospital when we were thirteen. The same for Callie two years later.
Duncan is kind of a quiet, shy kid. He reminds me a lot of Annie at that age, actually. Maggie asked Linda, the camp director, for him to be assigned to my cabin. She thinks it will help him adjust to camp more easily.
I meet Olivia in the mess hall for a simple dinner and remind her that Duncan will be at camp on Sunday. Plus, Maggie and her family booked a hotel in the town nearby for Saturday night so they can take me to dinner before Duncan’s week at Camp Prairie Star begins.
“Oh, yeah!” Olivia says, sitting on the bench across from me and stabbing a forkful of taco salad. “Are you excited to see everyone?”
I give her a half shrug as I push my food around on the plate more than eat it. “Yes, but also kind of nervous?”
