At night, I’d lie awake and picture what Camden’s life was like. I’d think of him in his turquoise church, painting like his mother. Reading books I’d never heard of. Playing guitar or piano, whichever worked best for the songs he wrote. Because surely he wrote songs, surely it wasn’t possible for a boy to look like that and not write songs.
I knew a third definite thing about Camden, eventually. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it myself.
One day, Camden came to the lake wearing a black baseball cap with a white X on it.
It was a specific white X. Deeply specific, at least for me, and maybe for him, too: the logo for the short-lived TV reboot of Silver Arrow from a few years back.
He knew about my show.
He knew.
About. My. Show.
And so three times. Three times, I started walking over to where he sat by himself on the Navajo blanket. Practicing the line in my head. Laughably simple, really, but then again, all the best beginnings are. Nice hat. Are you a Silver Arrow fan?
The fourth time was going to be the charm, I swear.
Then Danielle was suddenly at my side, tugging on the hem of my rashguard. “Ari, I got a splinter.”
“Again?”
“It’s not my fault, it’s the freaking dock’s fault.”
“Don’t say ‘freaking.’” I took her hand and led her to the lifeguard station, where they probably kept a pair of tweezers with her name on it. And yes, I’ll admit I didn’t mind the extra time to get my nerve up even higher.
But when we got back, Camden was packing his stuff to leave.
I bit down hard on the tip of my thumb as I watched him walk away.
This is what I remember from the next time I saw Camden. It was late August by then.
Camden and his friends on the dock, waiting in line for the diving board.
The girl—I now knew her name was Eliza, I’d heard the boys yell it enough times—reaching out and taking Camden’s hand.
Camden letting her.
Then, Camden leaning in to kiss Eliza.
Eliza letting him.
Their faces breaking apart but their hands staying connected, until it was his turn to dive.
Me not watching that dive. Me not seeing Eliza laugh at whatever he did.
Me, walking up the beach and toward the parking lot and away, away, away from the lake, already closing the book on summer. So mad at myself for being afraid.
And as I drove home, it occurred to me that my thinking about safety could be all wrong. Maybe safety lay in actually pursuing the things you desired. Maybe the real danger was not pursuing them and never knowing what would have happened if you did.
Maybe regret was the thing that really knocks you off balance into whatever’s waiting below.
September, then Halloween. November and Christmas.
The dreams would come randomly, when I hadn’t even been thinking about him (I swear). Sometimes once a week and sometimes more. Often, they came at the end of a Black Diamond ski slope day, the kind of day where you have to be an expert at life to get to the bottom without breaking a bone.
It was always something simple and pathetically G-rated. We’d be walking. We’d be holding hands. We’d be driving in a car with the windows down. When I woke up, I’d try to go back to sleep and pick it right back up. More, I begged the powers of, well, whatever’s in charge of this stuff. Please, please, more.
“Destructive,” was Kendall’s comment when I got up the courage to tell her about the dreams. We were back at her house early from the lamest-ever New Year’s party, turning on the TV to see the ball drop.
“I have no control over them,” I protested.
“Maybe not,” she said. “But there are other things you can control. It’s not like he moved away or was only visiting town from another country.”
“He goes to Dashwood. That may as well be another continent.”
“Why don’t we figure out where he spends time outside of school, and then, you know, go to that place. A radical idea, I know.”
“Then I would still need the guts to talk to him.”
“Ari,” she continued, her patience wearing thin; I could see it. “You either have to find a way to connect with this guy or move on. It’s not healthy for you. And it’s not healthy for me to watch it be not healthy for you.”
I nodded. I knew she was right.
But then a week later, I saw him.
It was the frozen dead of January. On my to-do list that day was a trip to the bookstore to pick out a gift for one of Dani’s friends. I rounded a corner toward the kids’ section and there was Camden. My mental images of him were so deeply seated in summer that I almost didn’t recognize him in his parka, his hair longer as if he’d grown winter fur.
“Check this one out,” he said to his friends, the boy and the girl, the kissing girl Eliza, as he held open the pages of a graphic novel.
They checked out what he wanted to show them and then they all laughed, hard. Loud. I fought the urge to go peek over their shoulders. Maybe Eliza sensed that, because she started to turn around.
Which is when I fled like I was running for my life. A detour through the cookbooks, through the door empty-handed, the sound of Camden’s laughter jingling after me into the cold.