Chase stands over me and shakes the water from his hair. His kneecap is directly beside my head. With a leg swipe, I could take him out…
His eyes narrow, and I hear the rumble of a bus coming up the driveway. I stand up and grab my towel, dry off really quickly, and then I pull my clothes on over my bathing suit. “Sorry, Chase. I have to go.”
“Are those the camp kids?” he asks.
I twist my hair up into a messy ponytail.
“Yep.” This is my favorite part of the summer. My dad has been holding his camps here since my brother was three, when we realized there wasn’t a safe place to send him to camp where he could be who he is— a normal little boy with autism.
The first year we did it, we invited only kids with autism. Through the years, it’s grown. Now we have kids with challenges like Down syndrome, autism, processing disorders, and this year there’s even a group of young boys coming who are deaf. I’m excited. These boys need me. And they don’t threaten me. I don’t have nightmares about them hurting me… Not like the others.
“Is that a prison van?” Chase asks.
“Yep,” I say.
Every year, my dad invites young men from the local youth detention center to come and volunteer at the camp. They’re not violent young men and are screened carefully, and they’ll come with their own director. But they all do have a criminal history. They get community service hours at the camp.
“Are you sure that’s safe?” Chase asks.
“Yep,” I say. I’d be more worried about Chase than I would them. “You guys can see yourselves out, right?” I ask over my shoulder, not really caring about their responses.
I step into my flip-flops when I get to the gate, and I see my dad coming toward me. “You ready to go meet the new campers?” he asks, dropping his arm around my shoulders. He’s one of very few people I allow to touch me. If anybody else grabbed me like he does, I would have to take him out. Dad smiles at me and kisses my forehead.
My mom comes around the corner of the house and catches up with us, and she has my brother Lincoln in tow. Link doesn’t like to hold hands with anyone, and he rarely looks anyone in the eye, but he looks like your average kid in every other way. Only he’s not average. He has autism. He speaks when he wants to speak, and when he doesn’t… Well, there’s not much of a chance of getting anything out of him. We’ve had a lot of kids with autism at the camp, and they all have different challenges, and not one is like another. I hold out my hand for Link to give me five. He grins in that sideways way he does, and it still makes my heart turn over even after all these years.
“The prison bus is here,” my mom warns.
“I’ll go talk to them,” my dad says. “You go unload the kids and help them get settled.”
I really want to go find Pete, but instead I have to help settle kids into their cabins. Some of them have caregivers. Some of them don’t. Some of them have a parent with them. The ones who don’t will have a camp counselor assigned to their care. They’ll sleep with the boys and hang out with the boys and make sure they eat, drink, take their meds, and shower. The counselors are all from the local hospital. Some are medical students. The youth offenders won’t be responsible for the kids’ needs at all. They’ll interact with them but in a very small way.
My mom gives me a clipboard, and we pin color-coded name tags to all their shirts so we will know who the nonverbal ones are at all times. I read through the descriptions, see what their challenges are, and make notes in my head about each of their special needs.
The boys are always fun. We had girls here last month, and the girls are more of a challenge. They always have drama. Boys are just boys, and they want to ride the horses and swim in the pool and have a good time. They want to be boys in the most basic sense of the word. And this is where they can do it.
When the kids are all settled, I go to find my dad. He’s sitting on the top of a picnic table with his elbows on his knees, his hands dangling down between his thighs. He’s giving them the speech I’ve heard every year since I was eleven.
“You’ve been given a lot of responsibility, and I just hope you’re up to it,” he says. He holds up a single finger. I stand behind a tree and smile because I know this part of the speech. “I have one rule,” he says. “If you break it, I’ll send you back to the center immediately.”
The young men all look at him with expectant faces. “My daughter is home for the summer from college. If you touch her, if you look at her, if you talk to her, if you think inappropriate thoughts about her, I will chop your nuts off while you sleep.” He picks up a hatchet he had on the picnic table for dramatic effect and slams it into the wood. He waits for a minute, and I see the young men all ball into themselves. I cover my mouth to hold in a laugh. It’s always the same routine. He threatens, and then they spend the week avoiding me.
I stand there a little longer, until I feel like he’s done, and then I get ready to go talk to my dad. He’s with the parole officer so I wait. I turn and lift my foot to take a step, but the tip of my flip-flop gets caught on a tree root and I trip, my hands flailing as I careen toward the ground. But before it happens, strong arms catch me, and I tumble into something solid.
I roll over and look down. I brush my hair back from my face. I’m lying halfway across Pete, and he’s holding his hands out to the side to keep from touching me. I scamper to roll off him.
“Shit,” he grunts as he lumbers to his feet. “Ten bucks says you’re the daughter.”
I close my eyes for a second and try to control my breaths. I have wanted to talk to this man for almost two and a half years. But he looks at me like he doesn’t know me.
“And there go my nuts.”
My gaze slices to meet his. His eyes twinkle.
He jerks his thumb toward my father. “He was serious about the hatchet, wasn’t he?”
He looks so worried that I feel a bubble of laughter building within me, replacing hurt that came with him not recognizing me. “’Fraid so,” I say, biting back a grin.
“Figures,” he mumbles, and he walks toward his cabin, shaking his head. I watch him walk away. He doesn’t remember me.
Pete
Reagan. Damn, she’s pretty. Then again, she’s the first girl I’ve had my hands on in almost two years. She lay there on top of me for a second, looking down at me, and I immediately knew who she was. I’ll never forget her. But the last time we met…it wasn’t a good night for her. And she would probably be uncomfortable if I brought it up. I don’t want to get sent back to the city. I want to be here. I want to work with these kids. I want to have this damn tracking bracelet off my leg so I can go back to some semblance of a normal life. I just want to be Pete.
I wish the f**k I knew who Pete is. I had a pretty good idea of what my life would be like until my brother Matt got sick. Then things got all f**ked up.
Then I did what I did and ended up in jail. It was all my fault, and I take full responsibility for it, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck ass.
She has green eyes and the same freckles I remember across the bridge of her nose. Shit. I can’t even think about things like that. If I were at home, I would ask her out to dinner. I would tell her about how I know her. I would find out if she’s all right. Then I would ask her out on a date. But here, I’m nothing. Nothing but a man who would get his nuts chopped off for talking to her. I have no doubts that her father was serious. Dead serious. I adjust my junk and keep moving.
But then she looks over at me, glancing over her shoulder. Her face colors, and my heart starts to do a little pitter-patter in my chest. I’m an ex-con who’s still on house arrest, and she’s looking at me like I’m a real live man? She licks her lips and turns away to talk to someone else. I want her to look at me again.
Her blond hair is damp, and it’s tangled up into a messy knot on top of her head. She’s not wearing any makeup. The women I know paint their faces until they’re almost unrecognizable when they get out of the shower. This one is all natural. And I like it. I shouldn’t. But I do. I could look at her all day.
There was a second when she fell on top of me that she looked fearful. Was that because of what happened to her? Does she even remember me?
But then a motorized wheelchair zips toward me. “Hold on there, Speedy Gonzales,” I say, stepping in front of him. “Where are you going in such a hurry?”
The young man is blond and fair, and he has a piece of plastic sticking out of his neck. He signs to me, but his movements are jerky and off balance. They’re not fluid like sign language usually is. Marshmallows, he spells with his fingers. He jerks his crooked finger toward where someone is lighting a campfire.
I wonder if this is the boy I’m supposed to work with. An older woman runs up behind him, her breaths heaving from her. “Sorry,” she pants, clutching her side. “He’s hard to keep up with in that chair.” She extends a hand. “I’m Andrea. And this is my son, Karl. Karl’s excited to be a camper this year.” I shake hands with her and drop down in front of Karl.
“You can hear, right, Karl?” I ask, signing to him. He nods and smiles, but it’s jerky and crooked. He’s so damn excited he can barely sit still in his chair.
I can hear, he signs. I just can’t talk.
I nod. I get it. “How old are you?” I ask.
Fifteen. He looks around me toward the campfire. I think he really wants to get to where the other kids are congregating.
“Such a lovely age,” his mother says, rolling her eyes.
He’s fifteen? He can’t weigh more than a hundred pounds. I step out of his way. “Go get ’em, Gonzales,” I say, nodding my head toward the fire. He grins and rolls away from me, stopping beside where Reagan is now setting up chairs by the fire.
“I think he already has a crush on Reagan,” she admits.
“Reagan?” I ask. My Reagan?
Reagan stirs up more emotion in me than I know what to do with. I shake it away, and I look at Gonzo’s mom. “Can you tell me a little about his challenges so I know what I’m working with?” I ask.
“Not what you’re working with,” she corrects. “Who you’re working with.”
“That wasn’t what I meant,” I start.
She lays a hand on my arm. “Where did you learn to sign?”
“My brother is deaf,” I say. She nods, taking in my tattoos and my piercings, which I couldn’t even get back in after I got out of jail. I had to get re-pierced last night, and they’re still sore. At least I don’t feel nak*d anymore. “I didn’t mean to insult your son,” I say. Now I feel bad.
“Karl’s only limitations are that he’s in a body that doesn’t do what he wants it to do, and that he can’t speak.” She looks at him across the clearing, her eyes full of love for her son. And exhaustion. “He still has all the desires and urges of a fifteen-year-old boy. There are just some things he can’t do.” She heaves a sigh. “He gets frustrated easily. That’s the hardest thing for him. His mind is sound, and his body just won’t cooperate.”