Boot Camp, page 10
Unlike Willow’s mother, my mom has pretty much left me to my own devices at camp. She’s called me only twice since I left, saying she wanted to give me a sense of independence, but with the number of conflicting experiences I’m having—my undeniable attraction to Axel, my quickly dwindling aversion to exercise, and my encounters with a semitolerable Willow—I need some reassurance from my mother. (A hug would be nice too, but I’ll take what I can get.)
“All right, Whit, spill the beans. Is this camp worth all the moolah we shelled out?”
Ten minutes later, sitting on one of the benches behind the dorm, I’ve poured out my thoughts on the workouts, the people, and the food. I’ve mentioned almost everything except my trainer being a guy named Axel.
“All that in less than two weeks?” She chuckles. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you came back home an Olympic athlete.”
“Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves,” I laugh. “How are you, Mom? I talked to Poppy a little while ago, and I’m not sure what to think about the situation.”
She shuffles and then there’s a click of a door on the other end of the line. “Sorry, your dad just hopped on a video call.
Alice and Dave—Levi’s parents—left a couple of days ago, so the house is remarkably quiet. Empty without you, of course.”
We’re not on a video call so she can’t see my wide smile. “Is Alice as bad as Poppy says?”
“I thought I was controlling, but damn, does that woman take the cake. To be honest, I’m not sure where Levi got his personality from with those two for parents. Dave isn’t so bad; he’s practically a clone of your father, apart from the righteous profession.” She refers to the long line of doctors on Levi’s dad’s side. “Sorry, I’m ranting to you like one of my Pilates friends.”
“I miss home,” I say dreamily, shading my eyes from the sun. I hate that Dad is on another call, secretly having hoped he would’ve asked to talk to me himself. “Hey, Mom, could you ask Dad if . . .”
I swallow tightly, unsure how I even want to finish that question. He’s around later? He could call me back? He’s proud of me?
I shut myself up before I blurt out a variation that’ll keep me up at night, regretting it ever rolled off my tongue.
“Could you tell Dad I say hi?” I ask meekly.
“Of course, honey,” Mom murmurs after a moment, and I wonder if she even knows that’s not what I wanted to ask. “If you ever feel like this experience is too much, you can always come back home.”
“Oh no, I can’t look like a quitter, Mom.”
“That’s my Whitney,” she says.
—
After breakfast, we gather in the large gym of the fitness center down the hill from the dorms. It looks like an elevated version of my high school’s gymnasium, minus the blinding fluorescent lights and hopefully the asbestos in the wall paint. When I spot the rope climbing station on the other side and Willow behind me, I may as well be reliving that embarrassing day all over again.
“Welcome to your second team challenge,” says Danielle, another trainer. Her curly hair is piled up in a bun, and her petite frame is draped in baby pink from head to toe. “Today we have four stations planned, each testing different skills you’ve learned over the past couple of weeks. For two of them, you will be facing off against a member of another team, while the other two are team-based. Remember, while competition is healthy, collaboration is also key.”
Cindy and Danielle shepherd us across the gym, explaining we’ll first have to climb up the ropes and then jump over a series of hurdles, one member of each team against the other. I crane my neck and realize the ropes are at least a little shorter than the ones in the middle of the woods and even the one I fell from in gym class, putting my racing mind at ease.
“You should have each tried out rope climbing before with your trainers, but remember, we’re judging on completion, not perfection.” Cindy walks towards one of the ropes, getting a feel for it, before turning to us again. “For a little bit of fun, the faster climber in each round will win a special-edition camp sweatshirt.”
“Does it have Bob’s face on it or something?” Martina asks in my ear, and we giggle.
“Everything okay, girls?” Cindy asks.
“All good,” I mumble.
Willow and Adriana walk up to the two ropes and get a hold of the material. Adriana swallows a gulp as she cranes her neck, while Willow feigns confidence, her long arm extended in an elegant line.
“Three, two, one, go!” Danielle says, and they shuffle up their ropes.
Their strategies differ; Adriana climbs like a young child, pinching the rope with her feet, while Willow mirrors Axel’s perfect form, giving her a clear advantage over her struggling friend. As I watch them, that stupid memory from high school resurfaces, making me wish Adriana would speed up and overtake Willow for my sake. But, of course, the latter reaches the top in seconds and then lowers herself down, dainty hand by dainty hand.
Martina is nudging my side, beckoning me to go next. I snap out of my thoughts and notice Cindy gesturing to me and Joanna. Her neutral expression and spindly legs, almost half the length of the rope, unnerve me even more. Once my sweaty hands latch onto the rope, the only way I can drag myself even an inch up is by pretending I’m back outside with Axel.
You know how to do this, Whitney, my inner voice screams. As I climb, Axel’s smooth, deep voice overpowers my own mental words of encouragement, telling me I can keep going and that I’m almost there.
In what feels like seconds—because maybe it’s been only that long—my hand hits the rope’s fixture.
“Nice job, Whitney!” Cindy cheers when I descend, holding up her hand to give me a high five.
Willow shoots lasers at the side of my head when I return her mother’s high five, and for a moment, I wonder if I shouldn’t have done that. Then, I remember I couldn’t care less how she feels and march past her to the next station.
The hurdles that follow don’t go as smoothly, mostly because my average height becomes my downfall when my sneaker gets caught under one and knocks it over, and Joanna speeds past me to the finish line. I hold more hopes for the weightlifting challenge, considering we’re scored based on how many combined pounds our team can lift.
“Martina, that one might be too—”
Martina ignores Cindy’s warning and swings a fifty-pound kettlebell like it’s nothing, leading our team to victory. I lift my arm up for a high five, and she slams it back hard enough to almost knock me off my feet.
“This last activity is usually one of the toughest on our beginners, but it’s a great chance to gauge your arm strength,”
Danielle explains, stopping in front of a set of pull-up bars.
Facing away from us, she steps onto a stool and latches onto the bar, allowing us a view of all the indents and curves of the muscles in her back. She hops back down after a few seconds.
“This is known as a dead hang. Your task is to hold on for forty seconds. If you fall off before forty seconds are up, your team earns zero points. If you make it forty seconds or more, your team earns one point. The team with the higher number of points wins another piece of camp merchandise.”
“And what if there’s a tie?” Adriana asks.
“We’ll cross that bridge if we get there,” Cindy says.
I step under the bar to the far right, hoping it’s the lucky one. Before climbing onto the stool, I send a mini prayer to the universe that my arms won’t fall off.
That’s impossible, right?
“Go!”
I squeeze my fingers around the bar, feeling the metal bite down on my soft palms. Martina seems relaxed as she holds on, while Willow stares down at her purple Golden Goose sneakers, sparing her neck.
“Ten seconds in, girls!”
Danielle yells that meager amount of time, and my arms are already aching. I bite down on the inside of my cheek and wiggle my legs a bit, trying to spread the pain out all over my body, even though I know it defeats the purpose of a dead hang.
Martina’s arms start shaking, while Aspen, on the other side of her, already fell down a few seconds ago, looking like she was holding back tears. In seconds, Martina follows her lead and hisses out a curse.
“Twenty seconds in, and two are already down. Keep going, Whitney and Willow!”
“You tired yet?” I ask her, glancing to my right.
“No. You?”
“No,” I lie.
Exhaling loudly, I adjust my grip. Willow’s hands slip a few inches, probably covered in as much sweat as mine. Seconds later, one of my arms begins to give out. I half let go of the bar to shake out my left arm but almost send my whole body careening to the floor when I try to regain my grip, only saving myself at the last minute.
“And . . . forty seconds are up!” Danielle says after what feels like three hours.
Willow and I fall to a heap on the ground, red-faced and breathing heavily. Cindy pats me on the shoulder and then smooths down Willow’s hair, who yanks herself away and glares at her mother like she just slapped her across the face.
Cindy blinks some emotion away before forcing out, “Great job, girls. You gave it your all today.”
I climb up to my feet, while Willow stays there on the ground, hands clenched into fists, staring off at the blue padded wall across from us. I can’t tell if she’s lost in a trance or about to faint, but when I open my mouth to ask if she’s okay, Martina’s hand lands on my shoulder.
“Come on, Whitney, let’s go enjoy our freedom,” she says and tugs me away.
Week Three
Chapter Twelve
“Ready for a hike?” Axel asks, stretching his arms behind his head.
“Is now a bad time to mention I’ve never actually completed a hike before?”
He laughs. “Whitney, at this point, I don’t expect you’ve done anything remotely athletic before. But you can try humoring me.”
I brush past him and begin the climb up the trail, realizing the terrain is far steeper than it looks, challenging the limits of my perpetually sore leg muscles. Between bouts of fanning the heat away from my face as the hot July sun peeks out of the clouds, I have to swat a fly or a bee or whatever other buzzing flying creature jumps into my line of vision every few seconds. I don’t feel bad for laughing in his face when a wasp lands on Axel’s forearm and he lets out something closer to a squeal than a yelp.
“A-are we any closer to the top?” I ask through a couple of huffs, unable to catch my breath. I press my hands to my cheeks, which feel hotter than a stovetop burner after cooking a long meal. I use the outside of my water bottle as an ice pack to temper my skin before guzzling down half of it.
“Impatient today, aren’t we?” he hums without even turning around.
I can hardly make out a droplet of sweat on the back of his neck, while I look like I dunked my entire head under the sink.
Twice.
“I’ve been wanting to ask you something, Axel.” He turns around. “How did you get into fitness?”
He nods before taking a huge swig of water, finally convincing me he’s human. “I boxed in middle school through an after-school program and then joined a gym instead of trying out for a sports team in high school. I used to sneak out there most nights with my friends.” I giggle at the mental picture of him sneaking out to go to the gym of all places, and he rolls his eyes. “Very badass of me, I know. But it was a great escape from all the pressures of home.”
“I guess I’m escaping home too.” He perks up, and I explain,
“My family is made up of a bunch of Ivy League college athletes, and being in that atmosphere all the time was suffocating. So, I signed up for a fitness camp, and here I am”—I toss my arms up in the air, laughing—“still barely able to run a mile.”
He doesn’t laugh along, which sucks all the humor out of me.
“Why didn’t you try working out from before, then? Wouldn’t your family have motivated you?”
“Not exactly,” I say, hating myself for bringing up this topic.
Because now he deserves an answer. I leap over a rock and continue. “Sports has always been my sister’s thing. School was, too, so I guess in all ways, she’s better than me.”
“Says who?” he scoffs.
My dad, probably.
“No one,” I mutter and shake my head. “I’m being insecure and stupid.”
At my answer, he stops in his tracks, and there’s a tight crease of disapproval between his eyebrows, like me insulting myself insulted him.
“Whitney.” My name comes out of his mouth like a warning, so I force myself to make eye contact with him. Despite his harsh tone, his eyes soften, pure olive green in the bright sunlight, and it makes my heart flutter in that weird way again. “I don’t know why you really feel inferior to your sister, but you’re not in competition with her. Or anyone else for that matter. In fact, nothing you accomplish here at this camp should be to prove a point to anyone but yourself.”
“But what if I like proving myself to you?”
I know I’m deflecting, mostly because my throat was starting to close up, and I was one more hypercritical thought away from a tear rolling down my cheek in front of him, but I didn’t expect the words to leave my lips in that drawn-out, flirty way. Hell, I don’t even know how to flirt.
Axel presses his lips together in thought, and with each passing second, my stomach twists with the realization that just like that evening in his room, I did it again.
I made everything awkward.
He turns around and forces out, “Let’s keep going.”
Lagging behind him by five feet, I drag myself up the rest of the trail, swatting my thoughts away like the bees that keep whir-ring by my ears. I wish I could’ve opened up to him instead, told him why I’ll never feel good enough, but the topic of fathers is already a sore spot for him. It’s not like Dad’s favoritism towards Poppy has ever felt like a real enough reason to tell anyone else either.
What if it’s all in my head, anyway?
Maybe the bitterness I’ve been harboring all these years is a symptom of an untreated case of younger sister syndrome, or perhaps it’s just plain jealousy.
With that sinking realization, I don’t notice the jagged rock inches from the tip of my sneaker and stumble to my hands and knees, sprinkling dirt onto my face and lips. Tasting the earth’s elements, I begin to clamber up to my feet, but a hand around my bicep spares me the rest of the effort and hauls me up in one go.
Face-to-face, Axel and I are still for a moment, breathing heavily as we look into each other’s eyes. Slowly, he lifts his other hand and cups my face, and I can’t breathe as his thumb slides down my cheek in a slow, torturous line. The rattle of my heart against my rib cage drowns out all the sounds of nature around me—the chirping, the buzzing, the rustle of leaves in the breeze that’s fanning the heat away from my face.
I close my eyes in bliss, thinking this is it.
I’m finally going to have my first kiss.
“There. That was bothering me.”
His hand falls away, and he lets me go. Heart sinking, I open my eyes to see the dusting of dirt on his thumb that he wipes away on the corner of his T-shirt, and I come crashing back down to earth.
—
Martina and I are five minutes late to tonight’s “relax and recharge” session when we slip into the entrance of the yoga studio, but we go unnoticed among all the buzz and chatter.
Cindy stands before a table in the center of the room, adjusting the tarp that covers its surface, like a magician setting up before a show. Before I can even begin to guess what’s behind it, she quiets us down and pulls off the tarp in one stroke, revealing a puzzle and a pile of missing pieces next to it.
“You all might be puzzled at what you’re looking at right now—good pun there—but I promise it will make sense in a bit.” Girls exchange skeptical looks across the room, and a few even laugh. “Any volunteers to try to finish this puzzle?”
By no surprise, Adriana flings her arm up into the air and heads over to the table before Cindy can even call on her. For the next five minutes, we watch the back of her pink-clad body as she shuffles through the pieces, pressing in and removing ten different ones. Her leg bobs up and down faster with each failed attempt, until eventually she snaps and drops her hands to the table.
“I-I don’t get it,” she breathes, looking up. “Why can’t I solve it?”
Cindy places a hand on her forearm, a soft motherly touch.
“How about we let someone else give it a go?”
She doesn’t budge until Martina grumbles something in Spanish to her that I imagine would translate to Move your ass right now or else.
A girl named Neha takes a stab at it next, and unlike Adriana, she tests out three pieces at random before tossing her long hair over her shoulder and passing off the torch to her friend Kennedy, who allows herself a solid minute to stare at the twenty or so options lying on the table.
“It has to be this one,” she says and presses it into a hole in the puzzle with a crack. She freezes and holds up the two broken pieces for us to see. “Okay, never mind— not this one.”
The competitive straight-A student in me awakens watching each girl try and fail, and I volunteer next. Somehow, I’m convinced I’ll be the one to finish this mysterious puzzle, which is starting to feel more like one of those unsolved problems in mathematics that my calculus teacher would assign us as extra credit we could never actually earn.
All eyes are on me as I stand before the low table, making my heart thump slightly as I survey the puzzle itself, a portrait of a bouquet of roses missing a single petal. With my hands by my sides, I dart my eyes between the empty center of the puzzle and the pile of pieces and twist, flip, and turn over each one in my head. My brow furrows more with each piece that isn’t a match, until I realize that’s exactly the point.
“None of these pieces fits,” I say when I’ve exhausted all my options, looking up at Cindy. “There’s no solution here.”
“That’s right, Whitney,” she says. In my head, there’s a tiny version of me pumping my fist and hissing out a yes, but I simply grin as I hurry back over to my spot between Aspen and Martina.
“All right, Whit, spill the beans. Is this camp worth all the moolah we shelled out?”
Ten minutes later, sitting on one of the benches behind the dorm, I’ve poured out my thoughts on the workouts, the people, and the food. I’ve mentioned almost everything except my trainer being a guy named Axel.
“All that in less than two weeks?” She chuckles. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you came back home an Olympic athlete.”
“Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves,” I laugh. “How are you, Mom? I talked to Poppy a little while ago, and I’m not sure what to think about the situation.”
She shuffles and then there’s a click of a door on the other end of the line. “Sorry, your dad just hopped on a video call.
Alice and Dave—Levi’s parents—left a couple of days ago, so the house is remarkably quiet. Empty without you, of course.”
We’re not on a video call so she can’t see my wide smile. “Is Alice as bad as Poppy says?”
“I thought I was controlling, but damn, does that woman take the cake. To be honest, I’m not sure where Levi got his personality from with those two for parents. Dave isn’t so bad; he’s practically a clone of your father, apart from the righteous profession.” She refers to the long line of doctors on Levi’s dad’s side. “Sorry, I’m ranting to you like one of my Pilates friends.”
“I miss home,” I say dreamily, shading my eyes from the sun. I hate that Dad is on another call, secretly having hoped he would’ve asked to talk to me himself. “Hey, Mom, could you ask Dad if . . .”
I swallow tightly, unsure how I even want to finish that question. He’s around later? He could call me back? He’s proud of me?
I shut myself up before I blurt out a variation that’ll keep me up at night, regretting it ever rolled off my tongue.
“Could you tell Dad I say hi?” I ask meekly.
“Of course, honey,” Mom murmurs after a moment, and I wonder if she even knows that’s not what I wanted to ask. “If you ever feel like this experience is too much, you can always come back home.”
“Oh no, I can’t look like a quitter, Mom.”
“That’s my Whitney,” she says.
—
After breakfast, we gather in the large gym of the fitness center down the hill from the dorms. It looks like an elevated version of my high school’s gymnasium, minus the blinding fluorescent lights and hopefully the asbestos in the wall paint. When I spot the rope climbing station on the other side and Willow behind me, I may as well be reliving that embarrassing day all over again.
“Welcome to your second team challenge,” says Danielle, another trainer. Her curly hair is piled up in a bun, and her petite frame is draped in baby pink from head to toe. “Today we have four stations planned, each testing different skills you’ve learned over the past couple of weeks. For two of them, you will be facing off against a member of another team, while the other two are team-based. Remember, while competition is healthy, collaboration is also key.”
Cindy and Danielle shepherd us across the gym, explaining we’ll first have to climb up the ropes and then jump over a series of hurdles, one member of each team against the other. I crane my neck and realize the ropes are at least a little shorter than the ones in the middle of the woods and even the one I fell from in gym class, putting my racing mind at ease.
“You should have each tried out rope climbing before with your trainers, but remember, we’re judging on completion, not perfection.” Cindy walks towards one of the ropes, getting a feel for it, before turning to us again. “For a little bit of fun, the faster climber in each round will win a special-edition camp sweatshirt.”
“Does it have Bob’s face on it or something?” Martina asks in my ear, and we giggle.
“Everything okay, girls?” Cindy asks.
“All good,” I mumble.
Willow and Adriana walk up to the two ropes and get a hold of the material. Adriana swallows a gulp as she cranes her neck, while Willow feigns confidence, her long arm extended in an elegant line.
“Three, two, one, go!” Danielle says, and they shuffle up their ropes.
Their strategies differ; Adriana climbs like a young child, pinching the rope with her feet, while Willow mirrors Axel’s perfect form, giving her a clear advantage over her struggling friend. As I watch them, that stupid memory from high school resurfaces, making me wish Adriana would speed up and overtake Willow for my sake. But, of course, the latter reaches the top in seconds and then lowers herself down, dainty hand by dainty hand.
Martina is nudging my side, beckoning me to go next. I snap out of my thoughts and notice Cindy gesturing to me and Joanna. Her neutral expression and spindly legs, almost half the length of the rope, unnerve me even more. Once my sweaty hands latch onto the rope, the only way I can drag myself even an inch up is by pretending I’m back outside with Axel.
You know how to do this, Whitney, my inner voice screams. As I climb, Axel’s smooth, deep voice overpowers my own mental words of encouragement, telling me I can keep going and that I’m almost there.
In what feels like seconds—because maybe it’s been only that long—my hand hits the rope’s fixture.
“Nice job, Whitney!” Cindy cheers when I descend, holding up her hand to give me a high five.
Willow shoots lasers at the side of my head when I return her mother’s high five, and for a moment, I wonder if I shouldn’t have done that. Then, I remember I couldn’t care less how she feels and march past her to the next station.
The hurdles that follow don’t go as smoothly, mostly because my average height becomes my downfall when my sneaker gets caught under one and knocks it over, and Joanna speeds past me to the finish line. I hold more hopes for the weightlifting challenge, considering we’re scored based on how many combined pounds our team can lift.
“Martina, that one might be too—”
Martina ignores Cindy’s warning and swings a fifty-pound kettlebell like it’s nothing, leading our team to victory. I lift my arm up for a high five, and she slams it back hard enough to almost knock me off my feet.
“This last activity is usually one of the toughest on our beginners, but it’s a great chance to gauge your arm strength,”
Danielle explains, stopping in front of a set of pull-up bars.
Facing away from us, she steps onto a stool and latches onto the bar, allowing us a view of all the indents and curves of the muscles in her back. She hops back down after a few seconds.
“This is known as a dead hang. Your task is to hold on for forty seconds. If you fall off before forty seconds are up, your team earns zero points. If you make it forty seconds or more, your team earns one point. The team with the higher number of points wins another piece of camp merchandise.”
“And what if there’s a tie?” Adriana asks.
“We’ll cross that bridge if we get there,” Cindy says.
I step under the bar to the far right, hoping it’s the lucky one. Before climbing onto the stool, I send a mini prayer to the universe that my arms won’t fall off.
That’s impossible, right?
“Go!”
I squeeze my fingers around the bar, feeling the metal bite down on my soft palms. Martina seems relaxed as she holds on, while Willow stares down at her purple Golden Goose sneakers, sparing her neck.
“Ten seconds in, girls!”
Danielle yells that meager amount of time, and my arms are already aching. I bite down on the inside of my cheek and wiggle my legs a bit, trying to spread the pain out all over my body, even though I know it defeats the purpose of a dead hang.
Martina’s arms start shaking, while Aspen, on the other side of her, already fell down a few seconds ago, looking like she was holding back tears. In seconds, Martina follows her lead and hisses out a curse.
“Twenty seconds in, and two are already down. Keep going, Whitney and Willow!”
“You tired yet?” I ask her, glancing to my right.
“No. You?”
“No,” I lie.
Exhaling loudly, I adjust my grip. Willow’s hands slip a few inches, probably covered in as much sweat as mine. Seconds later, one of my arms begins to give out. I half let go of the bar to shake out my left arm but almost send my whole body careening to the floor when I try to regain my grip, only saving myself at the last minute.
“And . . . forty seconds are up!” Danielle says after what feels like three hours.
Willow and I fall to a heap on the ground, red-faced and breathing heavily. Cindy pats me on the shoulder and then smooths down Willow’s hair, who yanks herself away and glares at her mother like she just slapped her across the face.
Cindy blinks some emotion away before forcing out, “Great job, girls. You gave it your all today.”
I climb up to my feet, while Willow stays there on the ground, hands clenched into fists, staring off at the blue padded wall across from us. I can’t tell if she’s lost in a trance or about to faint, but when I open my mouth to ask if she’s okay, Martina’s hand lands on my shoulder.
“Come on, Whitney, let’s go enjoy our freedom,” she says and tugs me away.
Week Three
Chapter Twelve
“Ready for a hike?” Axel asks, stretching his arms behind his head.
“Is now a bad time to mention I’ve never actually completed a hike before?”
He laughs. “Whitney, at this point, I don’t expect you’ve done anything remotely athletic before. But you can try humoring me.”
I brush past him and begin the climb up the trail, realizing the terrain is far steeper than it looks, challenging the limits of my perpetually sore leg muscles. Between bouts of fanning the heat away from my face as the hot July sun peeks out of the clouds, I have to swat a fly or a bee or whatever other buzzing flying creature jumps into my line of vision every few seconds. I don’t feel bad for laughing in his face when a wasp lands on Axel’s forearm and he lets out something closer to a squeal than a yelp.
“A-are we any closer to the top?” I ask through a couple of huffs, unable to catch my breath. I press my hands to my cheeks, which feel hotter than a stovetop burner after cooking a long meal. I use the outside of my water bottle as an ice pack to temper my skin before guzzling down half of it.
“Impatient today, aren’t we?” he hums without even turning around.
I can hardly make out a droplet of sweat on the back of his neck, while I look like I dunked my entire head under the sink.
Twice.
“I’ve been wanting to ask you something, Axel.” He turns around. “How did you get into fitness?”
He nods before taking a huge swig of water, finally convincing me he’s human. “I boxed in middle school through an after-school program and then joined a gym instead of trying out for a sports team in high school. I used to sneak out there most nights with my friends.” I giggle at the mental picture of him sneaking out to go to the gym of all places, and he rolls his eyes. “Very badass of me, I know. But it was a great escape from all the pressures of home.”
“I guess I’m escaping home too.” He perks up, and I explain,
“My family is made up of a bunch of Ivy League college athletes, and being in that atmosphere all the time was suffocating. So, I signed up for a fitness camp, and here I am”—I toss my arms up in the air, laughing—“still barely able to run a mile.”
He doesn’t laugh along, which sucks all the humor out of me.
“Why didn’t you try working out from before, then? Wouldn’t your family have motivated you?”
“Not exactly,” I say, hating myself for bringing up this topic.
Because now he deserves an answer. I leap over a rock and continue. “Sports has always been my sister’s thing. School was, too, so I guess in all ways, she’s better than me.”
“Says who?” he scoffs.
My dad, probably.
“No one,” I mutter and shake my head. “I’m being insecure and stupid.”
At my answer, he stops in his tracks, and there’s a tight crease of disapproval between his eyebrows, like me insulting myself insulted him.
“Whitney.” My name comes out of his mouth like a warning, so I force myself to make eye contact with him. Despite his harsh tone, his eyes soften, pure olive green in the bright sunlight, and it makes my heart flutter in that weird way again. “I don’t know why you really feel inferior to your sister, but you’re not in competition with her. Or anyone else for that matter. In fact, nothing you accomplish here at this camp should be to prove a point to anyone but yourself.”
“But what if I like proving myself to you?”
I know I’m deflecting, mostly because my throat was starting to close up, and I was one more hypercritical thought away from a tear rolling down my cheek in front of him, but I didn’t expect the words to leave my lips in that drawn-out, flirty way. Hell, I don’t even know how to flirt.
Axel presses his lips together in thought, and with each passing second, my stomach twists with the realization that just like that evening in his room, I did it again.
I made everything awkward.
He turns around and forces out, “Let’s keep going.”
Lagging behind him by five feet, I drag myself up the rest of the trail, swatting my thoughts away like the bees that keep whir-ring by my ears. I wish I could’ve opened up to him instead, told him why I’ll never feel good enough, but the topic of fathers is already a sore spot for him. It’s not like Dad’s favoritism towards Poppy has ever felt like a real enough reason to tell anyone else either.
What if it’s all in my head, anyway?
Maybe the bitterness I’ve been harboring all these years is a symptom of an untreated case of younger sister syndrome, or perhaps it’s just plain jealousy.
With that sinking realization, I don’t notice the jagged rock inches from the tip of my sneaker and stumble to my hands and knees, sprinkling dirt onto my face and lips. Tasting the earth’s elements, I begin to clamber up to my feet, but a hand around my bicep spares me the rest of the effort and hauls me up in one go.
Face-to-face, Axel and I are still for a moment, breathing heavily as we look into each other’s eyes. Slowly, he lifts his other hand and cups my face, and I can’t breathe as his thumb slides down my cheek in a slow, torturous line. The rattle of my heart against my rib cage drowns out all the sounds of nature around me—the chirping, the buzzing, the rustle of leaves in the breeze that’s fanning the heat away from my face.
I close my eyes in bliss, thinking this is it.
I’m finally going to have my first kiss.
“There. That was bothering me.”
His hand falls away, and he lets me go. Heart sinking, I open my eyes to see the dusting of dirt on his thumb that he wipes away on the corner of his T-shirt, and I come crashing back down to earth.
—
Martina and I are five minutes late to tonight’s “relax and recharge” session when we slip into the entrance of the yoga studio, but we go unnoticed among all the buzz and chatter.
Cindy stands before a table in the center of the room, adjusting the tarp that covers its surface, like a magician setting up before a show. Before I can even begin to guess what’s behind it, she quiets us down and pulls off the tarp in one stroke, revealing a puzzle and a pile of missing pieces next to it.
“You all might be puzzled at what you’re looking at right now—good pun there—but I promise it will make sense in a bit.” Girls exchange skeptical looks across the room, and a few even laugh. “Any volunteers to try to finish this puzzle?”
By no surprise, Adriana flings her arm up into the air and heads over to the table before Cindy can even call on her. For the next five minutes, we watch the back of her pink-clad body as she shuffles through the pieces, pressing in and removing ten different ones. Her leg bobs up and down faster with each failed attempt, until eventually she snaps and drops her hands to the table.
“I-I don’t get it,” she breathes, looking up. “Why can’t I solve it?”
Cindy places a hand on her forearm, a soft motherly touch.
“How about we let someone else give it a go?”
She doesn’t budge until Martina grumbles something in Spanish to her that I imagine would translate to Move your ass right now or else.
A girl named Neha takes a stab at it next, and unlike Adriana, she tests out three pieces at random before tossing her long hair over her shoulder and passing off the torch to her friend Kennedy, who allows herself a solid minute to stare at the twenty or so options lying on the table.
“It has to be this one,” she says and presses it into a hole in the puzzle with a crack. She freezes and holds up the two broken pieces for us to see. “Okay, never mind— not this one.”
The competitive straight-A student in me awakens watching each girl try and fail, and I volunteer next. Somehow, I’m convinced I’ll be the one to finish this mysterious puzzle, which is starting to feel more like one of those unsolved problems in mathematics that my calculus teacher would assign us as extra credit we could never actually earn.
All eyes are on me as I stand before the low table, making my heart thump slightly as I survey the puzzle itself, a portrait of a bouquet of roses missing a single petal. With my hands by my sides, I dart my eyes between the empty center of the puzzle and the pile of pieces and twist, flip, and turn over each one in my head. My brow furrows more with each piece that isn’t a match, until I realize that’s exactly the point.
“None of these pieces fits,” I say when I’ve exhausted all my options, looking up at Cindy. “There’s no solution here.”
“That’s right, Whitney,” she says. In my head, there’s a tiny version of me pumping my fist and hissing out a yes, but I simply grin as I hurry back over to my spot between Aspen and Martina.
