Page 13 of Given Our History

I propped myself up to narrow my eyes at him. “How do you know I’ll be reading?”

He shrugged, the shadow of a smile still playing around his lips. “Just a guess.”

“Are you going to be at the bonfire?” I asked. “What am I saying, of course you are.” The end-of-camp bonfire was kind of compulsory, a last chance to hang out before meeting our parents in the parking lot early the next morning. Even on crutches, Izzy would probably expect me to be there. “What I mean is, do you want to hang out that night? If you’re not busy.”

“Sure. We are friends, after all.”

“At least now you’ll remember me next year,” I joked, because I apparently didn’t know when to shut up. “You know, now that I’ve tripped you and sprained my ankle and all that.”

This time, he smiled for real. It wasn’t a wide, unabashed, toothy sort of smile. It was subtle and close-lipped and maybe a bit shy, but it was a smile nevertheless. “You’d be pretty hard to forget.”

Balancing my weight between one of my crutches and my good leg, I fed a dollar bill into the vending machine on the backside of the recreation building and selected E-3. There was a clang and I bent awkwardly to retrieve a can of Pepsi from the receptacle. I stuffed it into the kangaroo pocket of my hoodie before adjusting my crutches and hobbling toward the lake.

The smoky smell of burning mesquite carried across the field on an early autumn breeze, warm and inviting. Campers and staff alike milled about, saying their goodbyes for the summer, exchanging phone numbers. I craned my neck for some sign of Teddy, but it was hard to pick out any one person, bodies silhouetted by the flames and the orange glow dancing off the water. I spotted Darvish, a head shorter than the campers around him, and scanned his immediate vicinity. My crutches sank into the soft grass. I wore a tennis shoe on my good foot, but I couldn’t fit the other shoe over my bandage, so I just covered it with an old Bobby Jack sock because it was the only sock that was stretched out enough.

From somewhere in the dark, Izzy bounded up to me. “There you are.” She had her normally long, sleek hair crimped so that it fell in small, tight waves, and she was wearing shimmery lip gloss. “I was wondering whether you planned to turn up.”

“Sorry. Took me a while to get down here. Crutches, you know.”

“Come on.” She tugged me by the arm of my sweatshirt. “The girls are just about to start a game of telephone and I’ve got the best idea for an opening line.”

I was barely listening. Teddy was down by the shore, skipping stones across the glassy surface of the water. “I’ll catch up with you in a minute,” I told Izzy. She shrugged and wandered off, and I shuffled down the hill. My crutches were more cumbersome than helpful, sticking in the soft mud by the lake. Without noticing me, Teddy stooped to pick up a pebble and tossed it at the water. It grazed the surface twice before disappearing with a plunk. “You want to use a flat one,” I said, and he wheeled around. The gold-framed glasses were back, lenses slightly too large for his face, and he was wearing a zip-up sweatshirt over one of the camp polos. “They skip better. Here, hold this.” I passed him one of my crutches so that I could bend to pick up a rock shaped like a pancake and cast it across the water. It skipped five times before sinking beneath the surface, bull’s-eyes rippling in its wake.

“Where’d you learn to do that?” Teddy asked.

“My dad. He’s a lot better at it than I am. Thanks,” I added, accepting the crutch and tucking it back under my arm. I withdrew the Pepsi from the pocket of my hoodie, the can cool and slick beneath my fingers. “I think I owe you this. For losing you the race.” I wiped some of the condensation on my sleeve like I was polishing an apple before handing it over. He took it and reached for the tab to pop it, and it occurred to me that it probably got all shaken up in my pocket. “You might want to wait a while before—”

There was a crack followed by a hiss; he let some of the air out before opening it all the way. “I’m not sure we were ever going to win,” he pointed out.

“Maybe not.” I tried to shrug, but the motion was stunted by the crutches. “Guess we’ll never know.”

He took a sip from the can. We stood like that, away from the chatter and crackling of the fire—me with my crutches embedded in the mud, him politely sipping a Pepsi that I was almost certain was shaken flat. A breeze rustled the nearby reeds. On the far shore, the golden windows of lake houses glowed in the dark. “Thank you,” he said after a minute.

For some reason, my cheeks warmed. Maybe because it felt silly for him to thank me for something as inconsequential as a can of Pepsi. “It was only a dollar.”

“Not just for this,” he clarified, holding up the can. “Thank you for being—you know.” I didn’t know, so I raised my eyebrows, waiting for him to continue. “Nice, I guess,” he finished lamely. It was hard to tell in the dark, with only the distant light of the bonfire, but I thought maybe his cheeks had gone a bit red, too. “I’m not good at talking to people, normally, but you’ve made it easier. I like talking to you.”

Ignoring the funny swooping feeling in my stomach, I used my crutch to bump the side of his tennis shoe. “Friends are supposed to be nice.”

He stared at his feet. “And are friends supposed to exchange phone numbers so that they can keep in touch now that summer’s over?”

“They are,” I confirmed, a grin stretching over my face. “But I didn’t bring anything to write with.”

Teddy smiled shyly and produced a Sharpie from the pocket of his jeans. I held out my arm and he uncapped the marker before steadying my wrist with a hand, the felt tip whispering across the sensitive skin and leaving tingles in its wake. I was a bit ticklish, but resisted the urge to jerk away. His handwriting was neat and blockish, and his area code was different than mine, but that was no surprise, because homeschooled kids were sent to sleepaway camp from all over the Mid-Atlantic. There was even one girl whose parents drove her down from Connecticut every September.

“There,” he said when he’d finished, popping the cap back on the marker and letting go of my arm. “Now we can keep in touch.”

CHAPTER6

PRESENT

Thursday afternoon, I let the students in HIST-102 out of class ten minutes early to allow myself time to stop by the office. It’s empty, again. Almost a week into the semester and Teddy has held true to his word—he really doesn’t spend much time in the office. If it weren’t for a desk organizer filled with cheap pens and a jacket slung over the back of the chair, I’d almost think I wasn’t sharing the office after all.

I toss a few leftover syllabi onto my desk and begin rummaging through the drawers. Where did I put the meeting agendas? I printed them just this morning, but they seem to have gotten away from me. There’s a tray next to the keyboard stacked with paperwork, but a quick flip through the top few sheets informs me that I didn’t put the agendas in there. I stand on my tippy-toes to peer over the desk. It’s butted up against a wall—not ideal for meeting with students, but it’s an issue of space when you’re sharing an office this small. And there, in the space between the back of the desk and the scuffed oak wainscoting, are my agendas. They must have fallen back there when I shut the door behind me before heading to class.

I stick my hand down the gap, but my arm’s too short to reach. Huffing and swiping a lock of hair from my face, I straighten up and reassess my options with my hands on my hips. I could move the desk, but that seems drastic. Plus, the last time I tried moving furniture without asking for help, I pulled a muscle in my back and my doctor had me on Flexeril for a month. The most logical next step is to see if I can reach from underneath. I drop to my knees and crawl into the leg space, my fingers patting around unseeing behind the solid part of the desk until they make contact with a piece of paper. The pages scattered when they fell, so I pull them out one by one, creasing some of them in the process. The committee members will have to make do.

Someone clears their throat.