Page 12 of Run to Me
A pretty blush spreads across his cheeks. “I like to call it supervising.”
Sputtering a laugh, I shake my head. “Yeah, okay Mr. Supervisor. How about you add a hotdog on top of that.” His laughter drifts off into the distance as I head for the car to collect the tent from the trunk. My stomach clenches when I see Rick laughing with another guy from the football team. Of course his ass is here. Maybe they ruled high school, but they won’t be shit to anyone in college. Rick didn’t get the football scholarship he’d hoped for. I couldn’t help but smile at that. It’s not often guys like him get what they deserve.
Rick’s smile falls when his eyes land on me, and his friend looks my way when he whispers something in his ear. I grab the tent and our bags, looking anywhere other than where the loud snickering is coming from.
“Look. Nate brought his dog with him,” Rick’s friend chimes.
“Nah, dogs are more civilized than that freak. He better set his tent up far away from everyone else’s. Who knows what kind of shit he’ll pull when we’re all sleeping.”
I keep walking, ignoring them like I have been during our last weeks of school. I’m too close to being out of here with Nate to fuck up now. At first I didn’t want to go to school in another city, but the thought of being far away from these fuckers and this gossiping town increases the appeal.
“Everything okay?” Nate pulls a bottle of water from an ice chest, water dripping from the plastic.
“Yeah. Just Rick being his usual asshole self.”
Anger flashes in Nate’s big blue eyes. “What did he say?”
I drop everything to the ground and wave him off. “Nothing. It’s not important. Where’s this hotdog you were supposed to be getting me?”
His smile is back, and if only it were possible to wrap myself in it and get forever lost in the hope it gives me. “Oh, right.” He takes a swig of his water. “I’ll be back.”
In only ten minutes, I have the tarp for the pop-up tent fully open, and Nate returns carrying plates in both hands and a chair under his arm. Balancing the plates on top of one another in one hand, careful not to drop our food, he unfolds the chair as best he can with the other. Jumping to his rescue, I grab the food from him before it can all crash to the ground. “Looks like I need to supervise you instead.”
He swats me away, straightening out his chair before sitting down. “Is that your way of thanking me for getting you food?”
“No. My thanks happened when I stopped you from feeding the ground instead of us.” I wink, handing him his plate.
I open a chair next to his and we eat our food in mostly silence, taking in the noises of nature. Chirping, buzzing, and swaying branches. Large trees look like they’re touching the sky, and birds fly above the setting sun.
“So this is camping?”
Nate smiles, swallowing his last bite of hotdog. “Yup, and it’s only going to get worse from here.”
After we have the tent fully set up and where we want it, far from the others, we lay out our sleeping bags next to each other. Nate grabs our bags from the car and I examine our camping area before settling in front of the fire with some of the others. Rick and his girlfriend are out swimming in the lake, and I’m able to relax a lot easier with him gone. Nate’s latest crush, Gabe, hands me a beer and smiles down at me. “You need to loosen up a bit man. Have fun. Relax and shoot the shit. This is our last summer of not having to worry about adult responsibilities.”
“Right,” I respond, twisting the cap open with my palm and pocketing my trash, not wanting to join in on everyone else’s littering frenzy. Gabe plops down into one of the chairs next to me, not deliberately avoiding me the way the rest of his friends do, and when Nate’s finished laughing with some girl he hardly talked to at school, he turns to me and whispers, “Remind me toadd ‘cares about the earth too much’ to your notebook when we get home.”
I stifle a laugh, rolling my eyes, and he leans his shoulder against mine, his eyes glowing from the fire. I’m here for him. I’ll go anywhere he asks me even if I don’t care for anyone else around us.
“So who’s going to tell the first spooky story?” Gabe asks before sipping his beer.
“Oh, I will,” one girl says, raising her hand. It’s hard to keep up with all these people’s names, especially when they all dress and act alike. Why does Nate hang out with these assholes? I guess Gabe isn’t so bad, but he also isn’t my favorite person either.
Even though Nate never admitted it, I know Gabe is the real reason for him coming. At least the main selling point. I mean, I guess I get it. The guy’s charming, classically handsome, with perfect hair. Not to mention his mom isn’t married to Nate’s dad.
Would it really make a difference anyway? Nate and I probably wouldn’t be as close as we are if we didn’t live together. He’d still talk to me, though, only because he has a thing for rescuing wounded wild animals who no one else wants to be around. I’m very similar to the malnourished one-eyed kitten he picked up from the road three days ago and took home to nurture back to health.
The only difference is, the kitten has a better chance in blending back in with society than I do. He has a defect on the outside which people will overlook in time, but no one here will ever forget where I came from and what I did before. It’s an inner demon they assume I’ll always carry, eventually going off like a ticking time bomb.
I know they’re all waiting for it with bated breath by the way they keep their distance at the grocery store and leave the church bench my family sits at mostly empty. The kitten will go on tobe like the rest of his kind, with his other senses heightening to make up for the lost eye. I, on the other hand, am as unpredictable as the man who raised me, hiding a dark side that has yet to be discovered.
They won’t ever stop reminding me I’m the same as my father, and Nate won’t stop pointing out all the ways I’m different.
“Your dad is the nightmare people ran from, and you are the type of person who wakes them up so they can be okay again,”he told me once, as we sat in an abandoned tree house in the woods behind our house.
Nate perks up beside me, a red solo cup in hand with something amber colored swirling inside as he rests it in the cup holder. “Oh, is it that time already? I love camp stories.”
“Yup, and Tina’s up first. Let’s see what you got. I better be scared shitless soon.”
