Boot Camp, page 21
“Maybe I’ll be the first,” I grumble, dabbing at my eyes with the damp collar of my shirt again. “I just . . . I . . . I think this was all a mistake, Poppy. I bit off more than I could chew coming here, and I’ve met too many people and learned too much about myself and opened my heart in the wrong way, and now I-I’m confused and heartbroken and u-unsure and—”
“Whitney,” Poppy says sharply, using that same no-nonsense tone Axel uses. It snaps me out of my trance. “I want you to take a deep breath, okay? You’re not making any sense.”
I do as she says, breathing in and out with the rustle of the branches of the tree above my head, wishing I was as small and insignificant as the blue jay perched on one of them. “Okay.”
“Good. Now what do you want to say?”
“I don’t know,” I whisper, my throat clogging up with tears again. “I really don’t.”
“That’s okay,” she soothes, but her tone wavers, like she knows nothing is okay. “Try to calm down, and call me back later, okay? We’re all excited to see you again, especially Dad.”
“He misses me?” I perk up.
“For sure. He can’t wait for all the rounds of golf we can play together when you get back.”
I hang up and sob even harder.
Chapter Twenty-four
After my falling-out with Axel, my eyes are set on one goal and one goal only: going home. Only one day stands between me and my parents’ house, surrounded by the suburban peace and quiet I now crave.
I could barely crack my eyes open at the blare of my alarm this morning, having dreamt I was back holed up under my covers in my childhood bedroom after that tennis disaster with Dad, Poppy, and Levi. Still spooked, I checked my reflection in the mirror twice for any purple coloring around my puffy eyes as I got dressed, almost wishing I had to deal with a black eye and not a bruised heart.
Apparently, concealer only works on the outside.
“Hey.” Martina slowly walks up to me in the middle of Room 100, where all sixteen of us have been waiting for the past ten minutes. “Are you mad at me?”
My heart cracks at her crestfallen expression. “No, of course not.” I reach forward and pull her into a small hug. “I’m going through something dumb and didn’t want to blow up in your face by accident. That’s the last thing you deserve.”
“Don’t worry about it, Whit,” she says, giving my shoulder a squeeze and letting go. “We should probably be more worried about what he’s gonna tell us right now.” She extends her thumb towards Bob, who’s begun making his grand entrance.
He’s developed more of a tan since I last saw him but still bears that same stony expression, slate gray eyes narrowed and judging us all. Without him having to say a word, we straighten up and smooth out the jagged line we stand in.
“Congratulations to all of you, first of all,” he says, folding his hands behind his back. His tone is anything but congratulatory. “You definitely aren’t the uncoordinated sloths you were five weeks ago.”
We all look between each other and then back at Bob.
“As we approach the end of this experience, Cindy and I decided this would be the perfect time for you to obtain a concrete idea of your progress.” He clicks a button on the remote in his hand, and it turns on the large screen behind him. “Here is a list of activities you’ve tried and skills you’ve developed while being here. Longer than you thought, right?”
We take a moment to peruse the listings. Most are familiar, apart from “rock climbing” for activities and “accuracy” for skills. I’m positive that, despite all the physical improvements I’ve made here, I still can’t properly hit, throw, or catch a ball to save my life, despite what Dad might hope.
“To make it easier to conceptualize your progress, your final team challenge is quite simple: a 5K race. How you complete this race doesn’t matter this time. You can run, walk, jog, sprint, or patent a hovercraft on your way from the starting line to the finish line for all I care. But if you put the effort in, some of you may be surprised by the results.” His eyes move in the vicinity of where I’m standing, but I have no idea if he means me. “With that being said, we’ll go through a quick warmup and then reconvene outside.”
Ten minutes later, I’ve learned that Bob’s definition of a “warmup” is a workout in itself and my stomach sinks with my hopes of running the whole race. After all, despite all the improvements I’ve made here, it’s barely been three months since the last race of this kind I attempted, and the trauma still hasn’t fully subsided. Worse yet, when Axel and I run, he doesn’t usually fret over distances; most times, I end up dead and out of breath without him ever telling me how many miles I recorded.
“Okay, the race starts here,” Bob says once we’re outside, pointing to the yellow marker on the ground. “You’re going to run down this road in a loop around campus until you get back to where you started. If you can’t figure out how to do that, I wonder how you’re still valuable to society, but I digress.”
As we situate ourselves, I look off over Bob’s head to check if he’s recruited any trainers to monitor our progress. I find a couple scattered in the distance—Danielle, Ryan, another whose name I never learned—but no Axel.
“Race starts in five, four, three, two, one— go!”
I blink, and five girls have sprinted ahead of me. I take a few seconds to figure out a comfortable speed, knowing there’s no way they can run that fast without slowing down eventually. Joanna and Kennedy have already started to regret their pace and relax it, and we all run in one neat line. I know thinking about my competition will only backfire, if this is even a competition.
Do I even have to try at all? The pessimistic part of my brain that’s ruled over me this past day says I don’t have to, but I know I can’t let my training go to waste, so I charge ahead.
My sneakers pound the pavement, and my ponytail whips against my back, fueling my desire to make my steps defter and my strides longer. Minutes whir by, and I’m still going strong. I look behind me to find that I’m ahead of almost everyone, with only a few feet separating me from Joanna and a couple more from Adriana, whose face is already contorting in agony.
“Let’s go, guys, keep going!”
I have no idea who said that, but all I know is it wasn’t Axel.
I realize I don’t need verbal encouragement from him either, as with each heavy stride, it’s my own voice in my head telling me that I can keep going and that I’m stronger than I think. I never imagined my own thoughts could feel like they belong to a stranger—a very peppy, upbeat, and self-assured stranger—but I could get used to her living in my head.
Halfway through the race, as my thigh muscles constrict and breathing starts feeling like a chore, I wonder why I’m trying so hard myself, knowing we even have confirmation from Bob that walking is acceptable. In that moment, Joanna passes me again, and I throw those thoughts into the garbage. I press forward and run as fast as I can, until I can’t make out a single face behind me. At this point, my stamina is coming from no place other than spite and the competitive straight-A student in me that refuses to let me go out without a bang.
With this much distance over everyone else, I reduce my pace to a brisk walk and finally suck in a lungful of fresh air.
I stare off at the majestic evergreens towering above my head, then close my eyes and allow the warm sunshine to beat down on my face and arms. By the time I open my eyes again, I spot a hint of a yellow line in the distance. Breaking into a sprint, I straighten my back, narrow my gaze, and allow that color to be all I see.
A couple more feet, a couple more feet, a couple more—
I open up and discover I’ve already crossed the finish line.
That’s all it takes for me to double over and calm my ragged breathing, reveling in the feeling of being done, in every way possible.
—
“Whitney, I’d like to have a word with you.”
After lunch, Bob stops me in the middle of my walk up the hill with Martina, and I swallow a gulp, knowing whenever a person of authority utters those words, it never means anything good. Face scrunching up in horror, Martina looks one step away from giving me the last rites as I reluctantly agree to follow behind him, and I mouth pray for me over my shoulder.
Making some stiff small talk, Bob leads me to the Central Building and up the stairs to his office, the same one Axel and I enjoyed a cup of coffee in a couple of days ago. I peek my head in through the open door and expect to find it empty. To my surprise, Axel reclines in one of those club chairs in front of Bob’s desk, his head turned to the right.
“Have a seat,” Bob orders. He lowers himself into his black leather office chair and drops his folded hands down on his desk.
Axel looks up from his phone at the jarring thud. We exchange a dry greeting before I turn to Bob, finding it hard to make direct eye contact with his intimidating gray gaze. I distract myself with the picture frames on his desk, able to make out the photographs they hold from where I’m sitting. The word family is imprinted all over one of the frames, encasing a rare photo of Bob smiling. He stands behind a slim woman with dark skin, while a gap-toothed young girl holding a rainbow lollipop sits on his shoulders.
“Let me get straight to my point,” Bob says, tilting the picture frame away from my view. “You, along with a few of your fellow campers, have caught our attention as potentially promising individuals in the world of fitness. You, Whitney, stood out because of your sheer willpower and constant desire to improve, which, in my opinion, is sometimes even more important than raw athletic ability. Right, Axel?”
“For sure,” Axel says, nodding. Looking up from his phone again, he seems as forced to be here as he did during the trainer-camper soccer game. “She always keeps me on my toes.”
“Compliments aside, we’re here to propose an offer.” Bob’s following offer hits me like ten tennis balls to the face: “How would you feel about joining Camp Campbell as a trainer next summer?”
“Me?” I slap my palm against my front, as if he meant Axel.
I clear my throat and amend, “Oh, wow, that definitely sounds interesting.”
“I was hesitant at first after your fight with Willow, but I noticed you’ve worked out your interpersonal differences, a strong indication that you’d make a good leader. Now, logistically, you would need to become a certified personal trainer, but we would cover the costs of the course, exam, and necessary training. The only thing we’d ask of you is to be available in early June of next year to participate in our orientation and pre-camp training period.”
Axel is busy staring at the stack of papers on Bob’s desk. I squint and make out a printed-out version of my application at the top of the pile. A sticky note with the words needs to put in effort but will probably survive in Bob’s scrawl stands out in bold.
If he wasn’t currently staring me down, I’d probably laugh out loud.
“How long do I have to consider this offer?” I ask him.
“Ideally, you get back to us within the next month or so.”
Bob leans his elbow over the stack, and Axel rips his attention away from the papers. “It might be helpful to read this packet outlining the full extent of your duties—which are a lot, I won’t sugarcoat it.” He fishes out a stack of papers from his desk drawer and pushes it towards me.
“Thank you,” I say, knowing deep down the mere idea of this job isn’t the problem. It’s who I will be spending the next summer with, but I know I can’t make the rift between me and Axel obvious. “To be honest, I never thought I’d come to like exercise this much.”
Bob cracks a smile and stands up, extending a hand. “That’s the goal here, Whitney. Do let us know when you decide.” I return his firm handshake, and he nods at Axel. “I appreciated all your valuable contributions to this discussion, by the way.
Feel free to add anything else.”
Bob leaves the room, letting the door bang shut behind him.
Maybe he thinks it’ll make Axel more comfortable to speak, but we both continue staring at different corners of his office.
Axel notices my eyes lingering on the picture frame. “That’s Bob’s wife and his daughter, Remi.”
“Bob has a kid?”
Axel chuckles, nodding. “She’s nineteen now and probably the only person on earth besides his wife that can turn that man into a total softie. Not that he’d ever admit it, though.”
Wow, Bob having a soft side. Who would’ve thought? For a moment, I question my ability to read people, realizing maybe I’m not as skilled at it as I thought.
Axel exhales. “Can we talk about yesterday, Whitney?”
“What’s there to talk about?” My defenses fire up, and I rise to my feet, grabbing my informational packet and water bottle.
“You made your point clear.”
He opens his mouth to rattle something back before snapping it shut, curling his fingers around the nape of his neck. On my way out, I linger in the doorway, giving him a chance to speak again, to justify himself, but he says nothing and slips past me out the door.
And somehow, his silence feels worse than anything he said to me yesterday.
Chapter Twenty-five
“I can’t keep living like this.”
One day into my misery, and I’m already saying my thoughts out loud. Technically, I’m also telling them to Martina, but it’s unclear if she’s been listening to me this whole time, considering her only reaction to my recount of Axel’s rejection was a dry
“Fuck men. And women too.” If I wasn’t close enough to watch the rise and fall of her chest underneath her folded hands, I’d wonder if she’s still even alive.
I sit up. “Wait, did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“That sound.” I climb up to my knees on my bed and arch my ear towards the window, making out faint yells and a low beat, sounding like an EDM song is playing on a speaker somewhere. “There’s a party outside.”
Martina hmphs.
“Come on, Martina.” I roll off my bed. “We cannot be entering a timeline where I’m more excited about the idea of a party than you are.” I lean over the foot of her bed and press my palms into her down comforter, almost as flat as a pancake at this point. “The only way this friendship works is if I’m the loser, not you.”
She releases a puff of air from her nose, but that’s it.
I press my lips into a firm line, wondering if I’ve hit a dead end with her before I realize I’ve hardly exhausted all my options. No, instead, I simply have to be the peppy, fearless risk-taker of this friendship, and by taking risks, I mean go scope out my first-ever party at the ripe old age of eighteen years old.
I pry open our closet door and rifle through a small basket of unworn clothing until I find my gold mine. Martina doesn’t even glance my way until I’m standing at the mirror on the back of our door and holding that ripped blue one-piece up to my front.
“You’re not . . . wearing that, are you?”
I suck in my cheeks to conceal a smirk, already knowing it would be that easy, and swivel around with it held up in the air.
“That depends. If you come with me, I won’t. But if you wanna stay here and mope? Good luck stopping me.”
It takes a ten-second staring contest before she shoots up ramrod straight in bed, and that lively spark returns to her brown eyes. She trades me a black square-neck bikini top for a spare linen shirt to throw over her top, and with a touch of makeup, perfume, and matching oversized sunglasses to hide our puffy eyes, we’re out the door and ready to leave our miseries behind.
“There you guys are!”
Willow and Adriana run up the beach to us with a red cup in each hand, the liquid sloshing up the sides. Before I can even take in my surroundings, they thrust one into each of our hands and tug us towards the speaker blasting “Hips Don’t Lie” by Shakira.
Down the length of the beach, it’s a far cry from the barren, sandy landscape from my workout sessions with Axel.
Girls lie across neon-colored towels scattered across the sand, some trying to catch a last-minute tan in the dimming sun.
Others contort themselves into questionable positions, sucking in their stomachs long enough for their friends to take another picture. Kennedy, Neha, and Aspen have unearthed two surf-boards from who-even-knows-where and take turns trying to ride the shallow waves to shore. Joanna, currently in charge of the music selection, sips from a sweaty bottle of beer while Willow and Adriana shake their asses to the beat. She doubles over in laughter at the sight and dumps the rest of the bottle all over her feet, making me question how many she’d downed before that one.
“What. The. Actual. Hell.”
I can’t believe Martina is fazed by the sight around us, still unmoving beside me. She looks between the cup in her hands and her sister, swaying her hips and mussing up her hair while Willow records her on her phone, and then back at me.
The muscles in her lips twitch as she fights a smile.
I grab her shoulder with my empty hand and give her a little shake. “You’re defrosting now—I can feel it.” She still doesn’t budge. “Come on, you can’t deny you’re enjoying this, Martina.”
“Actually, I’m thinking about how much trouble we’re going to be in—”
I freeze. Martina worried about getting in trouble? I blink a few times to confirm I’m not actually back in bed and dreaming, but all I see are flashes of blue and gray and sweaty, moving bodies.
“—and how much I do not give a single fuck.”
She throws off her overshirt and charges ahead, and cheers erupt as she climbs up onto a flimsy plastic table and downs her entire cup in one go. Watching her let loose, I stay off to the side and slosh my drink around in a circle, catching a whiff of beer.
I don’t bring it up to my mouth, but for once, the force holding me back isn’t fear of breaking the rules.
