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“Me?Panicking?No.Nope.Perfectly calm.As cool as… something cool.Is that even a saying?A cucumber!”Shit, why was my voice coming out all squeaky like that?It should have sounded deep and calm.
“When you say it real quick like that, it really hammers home your point,” he said.
“Fuck off.”I smiled, a little relieved to find he was still the same old Aiden.
“Just tell me what’s freaking you out, and we’ll work through it.Surely you’ve done the bro job thing before?Parker fucks straight guys on a regular basis.”
“Um.No.”
“Never?”Aiden looked shocked, then confused.“Hold up.Has Parker been lying to me to try to manipulate me into letting him play with my dick?”
I cleared my throat, not really sure what Parker had to do with anything.“I don’t know the answer to that, but I was a virgin, before last night.Or maybe I’m still a virgin?Am I?I don’t know.”The word vomit wouldn’t stop spilling out of me, so I slammed my mouth shut.
Aiden blinked at me.“Oh.”
“Anyway.Let’s get this done.I’m not sure I’m ready to talk about my… that.”I glanced toward Aiden and found him studying me, his face inscrutable.He nodded and handed me a pump.We worked together for a while in silence, filling bottles, and something about the mundane manual labor involved in operating the pump eased whatever tension had been building inside me.
“Better?”he asked after a bit.“We don’t have to do anything again, if it’s stressing you out.Or if you wanted to like, save yourself for love or something.”
“Oh.It’s not that, it’s…”
“Guys!We found bear poop!”Devon’s voice interrupted us, and I spun around to find him ambling across the meadow toward the creek.
“Cool, you’ll have to show it to us, buddy,” Aiden said absently.I frowned, craning my neck and trying to see what Devon was carrying.
“Don’t worry, I brought it,” he said, holding out his hand, which was full of bear scat.
“Cool, huh?”Devon’s sidekick, Octavius said.
This may have been the first time I ever saw Aiden at a loss for words.
nine
Aiden
Iblinkedatthetwo middle schoolers standing in front of me.My mouth opened, then closed again.Then opened.
“I—” Nope, I still couldn’t think of what to say.My brain hadn’t caught up to the sudden change of topic.It was still compiling flirty thoughts about Jay.
Jay sighed and stepped forward, whipping out a packet of sanitizing wipes from somewhere, like a cleanliness magician.“Use these wipes to clean up — under your nails, everywhere.Wild animals carry disease.”
“Seriously, guys?”I asked, my brain finally catching up as I watched Jay hand them way too many wipes.“Why would you pick the bear scat up?”
“We wanted to show it to you,” Devon said.Jay was pacing back and forth in front of him, glaring at him as he wiped his hands, pointing at spots he’d missed.
“You could have walked us to where you found the droppings.”I turned, running my hands through my hair and tugging a little.“Guys!To be clear,” I yelled across the campsite.“No picking up animal feces.”A chorus of pre-teen giggles echoed across the meadow.
“What?It was so cool!Bear poop!”A very short, very ginger 13-year-old named Octavius was Devon’s partner in crime, and was vigorously defending his friend.Which probably meant he’d touched the bear poop, too.
“The naturalist who gave us that talk on animal scat touched deer poop!She said it was for science,” Devon argued.
“She was a trained professional.She understood what she was handling.Octavius, you sanitize too!”I was sure that little fucker had touched the scat.
Octavius shook his head.“How are we going to learn anything if we’re afraid to touch nature?”
“Again.We’re not afraid to touch nature, we’re afraid to touch poop,” I snapped.The kids snickered.“Right.Afraid isn’t the right word.Why don’t we say cautious instead?We’re cautious around poop,” I added, trying to maintain my status as the cooler of the two counselors.Jay laughed softly at my fumbling for words, and I shot him a grin.Arguing with them felt like a losing battle, but I really didn’t want to be the counselor who had to tell the parents at pickup that the kids spent four weeks picking up poop.
I clapped Devon on the back.“Once you’re all clean, pick up and bag those wipes, then walk the campsite and look for anything we might have left behind.”
