Twenty-Six

twenty-six

By the time I slink into the kitchen after dinner I am less of a girl and more of an emotionally derailed swamp creature, my face puffy, my hair in so many directions no tie could hope to tame it. I can’t decide how to be when I walk in—sheepish, defensive, or apologetic—but Leo’s there, with a plate of food next to him that has way too many Flamin’ Hot Cheetos on the side to be meant for anyone but me, and all pretense goes out the window.

“You heard our little sideshow?”

Leo nudges the plate across the counter. “Clear as Day.”

I’m too upset by everything else in my life that it eclipses any reason I have to be upset with him. Even when I am at my worst he knows exactly what to say to soften my edges, still looks at me like I am something precious to him.

I let out my usual groan, and our bit has played out, some tentative order between us restored. I’m bracing myself for Leo to try to make peace between me and Savvy, but he lowers his voice and says, “Do you want to talk about it?”

I do, but I don’t. I do, but not right now, when there’s really nothing to say that doesn’t lead me right back where I started: mad at everyone, but mostly at myself.

“I’m too hungry.”

He lets out a laugh and grabs the plate and walks over to me, but instead of handing it over, he sets it down on the shiny metal counter by the door. Then he puts his hands on my shoulders, this quiet beat of asking permission. I don’t even let myself look him in the eye. I lean in the rest of the way, because I’m tired. I’m so tired. My brain feels hollowed out and my heart hurts, and if I really do have to quit Leo, maybe I can put it off until tomorrow, when I leave camp for good.

I burrow my face into his shirt, into sweat and cinnamon, a little bitter, a little sweet.

“I’m sorry I ditched you for dinner,” I mumble into him.

There’s no way any regular human could decipher what I said, but Leo still manages. “When you didn’t come back I was worried something happened to you.”

I stiffen, only because it’s hard to tack the guilt of that onto the guilt of everything else.

“I know,” he says, misinterpreting the stiffness. “Yet again—what did you call it?—Benvolio-ing you.”

I pull away, nudging his shoulder with the heel of my hand.

“It’s probably my last night here,” I tell him.

Leo nods, pulling back to look at me. He tilts his head toward the door. We wander outside, wordlessly settling back on the bench where we watched the lightning streak—except this time the sun is only just starting to set, the sky clear enough that we can see the light gleaming across the water and the beginnings of yellows and oranges where mountains meet the sky.

Leo and I sit with a full foot of distance between us, an invisible barrier. I can’t decide whether it’s a disappointment or a relief, so I decide not to decide at all. Instead I tuck into the dinner Leo saved for me, only realizing just how hungry I am once I take the first bite and start coming at it like a lion.

“What is this?”

Leo glances toward the water. “Pork menudo. Another Filipino dish. Mickey taught me how to make it,” he says, embarrassed but pleased. “Except traditionally there aren’t Flamin’ Hot Cheetos crushed into it.”

I crack a smile. He knows me too well. “I’m glad you and Mickey laid down your spatulas and decided to make peace.”

“Turns out making menudo is a hell of a lot easier than making war,” he says. “Also, Mickey was kicking my ass.”

“Eh, you held your own.”

I shift some of the dinner on my plate, easing into the bench, recognizing this moment for what it is—not a chance to confront Leo, but a chance to have the kind of conversation we had before I let my stupid feelings get in the way. Maybe the last one we’ll get in a long while.

Except Leo leans in with one of those stupidly compelling grins of his, one where he’s so excited about something that he’s a little bit out of his own body, and the thought of keeping my distance is shot to hell.

“But she’s gone way beyond dishes now,” he tells me. “Like—she tells me all the stories behind how she learned them from her aunts, the ones here, and the ones in Manila, too. And tons of stuff about her family. Like how her grandma’s convinced that if you leave rice on a plate it means you won’t ever get married. Or how her aunts think when someone drops something in the kitchen it means someone’s coming to visit.”

He’s at an infectious level of “information dump,” the kind that pulls me in with its own force.

“The way Finn and I took care of kitchen duty, we should be expecting a lot of visitors.”

He laughs, pulling out his phone and opening it up to an infinitely long thread.

“Her younger cousins have been putting her in random WhatsApp groups to prank her all summer. They ambushed me last week and put me in one, too. Now they’re all spamming us with K-pop links and Disney lip dubs they’re making on some app.”

“Well that’s ridiculously precious.”

“Eh, it’s all fun and games until they swore up and down they were teaching me how to say ‘good morning’ in Tagalog and I ended up telling Mickey to ‘go eat shit.’”

Even in the depths of my possibly bottomless self-pity, that gets a laugh out of me.

Leo knocks his shoulder into mine, another reminder of how fast we’ve filled up the air between us. “Yeah, yeah, kumain ng tae.”

“I would, but my mouth’s already full,” I say, tilting my head at the plate I’m eating from so sloppily that several curious birds have flitted their way over. Carefully, I ask, “Do you think it’s helped at all? I mean … with the not knowing?”

Leo considers the question, staring down at my half-eaten plate.

“In some ways, kind of? I mean, who even knows if my parents came from anywhere near where her family is, but … it’s nice to learn about anyway.”

There’s a beat, then, that I know isn’t the end of the thought, but the thought taking a new shape. I watch it in his face the same way I always have, wishing I could take it for granted. Wishing I knew if there would be a chance to watch it again.

“It’s weird to think … in some other life … Carla and I would be living there. Like there’s some alternate version of us who do. You know?”

I almost laugh. My alternate version is a few hundred yards away, no doubt busting gum chewers in the rec room and fuming over what I said earlier. Leo catches the ghost of it on my face, and his head dips as if he’s thinking the same thing.

“The test, though—I’m kind of relieved I didn’t find anybody,” he admits. “I don’t know if I was really thinking about what might happen if I did. What it might dig up.”

I nudge some dirt on the ground with the heel of my shoe. “I hope what happened with me and Savvy wasn’t what scared you off.”

That hope is dashed when Leo answers without hesitation.

“That’s just it, though. It’s different. This thing with your parents—they must have known you’d find out eventually. This whole mess is more on them than on you.” He shakes his head. “But with me—if these people are even still out there—they set the terms. Nobody ever lied to anybody about it. Which means there’s a chance if I did find them, I’d be digging up something they’re not prepared to handle. Something I’m not prepared to handle.”

I’m not really sure what to say, or if there’s anything to say. We both know he’s right. But it makes me ache for him anyway, knowing Leo well enough to understand that the decision is less about protecting himself and more about protecting other people.

And if there’s anything I’ve learned in the last week, it’s that we all have a lot more to protect than we think.

“I’m letting it go for now.” Leo says the words more to the ground than to me. It’s clear he’s been thinking about this a lot more than he let on, and the decision isn’t easy for him. But he looks up at me with fresh resolve and says, “I want to focus more on the future. On this school in New York. It’s kind of opened this door where I can learn more about cooking, but also about my background. It’s not what I was trying to do, but maybe—maybe I was meant to feel like this so it could lead me here. Maybe…”

I nod, compelled by the possibility at the end of that maybe, by the weight of it. He’s always been so driven, always thrown his whole self into his ideas. And I’ve always been the first one to jump with him. It’s weird to think I won’t get to anymore. No matter what happens between us, something is definitively ending—his future is thousands of miles away, and mine’s still mired in high school and big decisions and the mess I left in the parking lot earlier today.

“So you think you’ll ever go out and meet Mickey’s cousins?” I ask. “Teach them how to say ‘good morning’ in Elvish?”

“I’m going to talk to Carla about taking a trip next summer.” He pauses, some thought poised on the tip of his teeth, and adds, “And I think—well, this is a long way off, and assuming I don’t get laughed out of New York—but Mickey and I started talking about one day opening, like, a fusion restaurant. Menudo meets Cheetos. Lasagna balls meet banana leaves. Mickey’s childhood meets Leo’s. You know?”

I do know—I can practically see it. Somewhere medium-size and homey and warm, the kind of restaurant where everyone who goes there once immediately finds an excuse to go again.

I wonder if it will be in Seattle. I swallow down the lump in my throat, too scared to ask.

“Well, shit,” I say. “If I’m going to invest in this I’ve gotta find a way to get rich, fast.”

Leo lets out a rushed laugh, like he’s been waiting to float this past me for a while and is glad he finally got the chance.

“We’ll settle for you taking staged food pics for the website.”

“As long as I get to eat everything I shoot, you two have got yourself a deal.”

We both settle into this quiet that becomes less of a coincidence and more of an understanding. The grins on our faces falter at the same time, our eyes struggling to hold each other’s.

“So … tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” I echo, turning back to the water.

“You’re really leaving?”

I lift up my palms in a half shrug. “Doesn’t look like I have a choice.”

“You’re not gonna push back?”

I try not to stiffen. Leo may know that I’m not good at fighting my own battles, but he doesn’t understand this battle isn’t mine. It’s just one I’ve been in the cross fire of since before I was born. “No.”

Leo lowers his voice, the question gentler than the one that came before it. “You’re not mad?”

I don’t really want to talk about it, but it’s Leo. I can tell myself to put him out of my mind, to keep my distance, but nothing can erase more than a decade’s worth of spilling my guts out to him.

“I was. I am. But mostly I guess I’m just—”

I’m going to say scared, but it feels too dumb. These are my parents.

And I’m not scared of them, really. I’m scared of me. I’m scared things are going to change, now that the truth is out in the open. I’m scared that we will be tiptoeing around one another forever, trying not to wake the sleeping beast in every room.

I’m scared I won’t get to see Savvy again.

The fears build up, one on top of the other, one badly constructed, extremely flammable mound. I hadn’t put reason or words to them before, but that’s the thing. Leo is my touchstone. My compass. The steadying force that puts all the shaky things into view.

So I skip past all that and say the thing that scares me most—the one that has followed me since long before I found out about this.

“I’m—I’m scared I’ll always feel like I’m not good enough.”

Leo jumps on this like he’s the lifeguard of my brain, plucking out a drowning thought. “Your parents don’t think that. I know they—”

“It’s not only them. It’s … everything. With this thing with Savvy, with school, with…”

I’m getting too close to us—to the BEI, and what happened after. To how Leo and I are so far apart that I didn’t even get to be a part of the biggest decision he’s ever made. To this perpetual feeling that only gets heavier with every year, that I’m not cut out for what the world has in store.

“Abby … things are always going to move for different people at different times. You’ve gotta be patient. Set your own pace.” His voice goes so quiet that it sounds like one of the little waves that laps on the shore, like he’s pressing some quiet current into my ears. “It’s like I told you at the beginning of the summer. You’re an original.”

I huff out a laugh. I can hear the smile in his voice, even though I’m not looking at him.

“Good things are coming, Abby. I know that because I know you. You’re talented and you’re stubborn and you’re braver than you give yourself credit for.”

I want to believe the words so badly—not just because I’ve been trying to grow into words like that my whole life. But because the words are coming from him.

“I wish you saw yourself the way I see you.”

I press my eyes closed for a moment, but when I open them I’m every bit as shaken. “Leo…” It’s not confronting him, really, but it’s as close as I can get after a day like this. “You didn’t even tell me you were thinking of leaving.”

His mouth opens slightly, fast enough that he can’t hide the surprise on his face.

“Abby, it wasn’t like that, really,” he insists. “I just—I didn’t even think I could get in. I didn’t tell Connie either.”

I wince.

“Yeah, but we’re…” Different, I want to say. But I guess we’re not.

I glance over at him, grappling for a change of subject. But his eyes are so earnest that mine get stuck on them, tipping me over into some part of him that’s always been mine. Some ache under the surface we’ve always shared, except now it’s as plain as ever, the light of the dimming sun exposing it in every plane of his face.

“I’m gonna take your picture.”

Leo watches me for a beat. “No, you’re not.”

“I am.”

“You don’t photograph people. Like, ever.”

“Yeah, well—I’m getting some practice.” This is not exactly a lie, given the Phoenix Cabin shenanigans I’ve been documenting. He’s right, though. I don’t photograph people.

But this—the sky casting its warmth on him, like his face was made to catch light. The gold in his eyes, the straight plane of his nose, the sharp curve of his jaw—these parts of him I’ve tried so hard not to notice, now on such full display that trying to look away would be like trying to deny every moment I pined for him, when it feels like the last thing I want to do is forget.

I pull out Poppy’s camera, glad I snuck into the cabin to grab it during dinner. It takes an extra second to turn on, one that seems to last so long that it’s not the camera, but the universe: Are you sure about this? Is this what you want?

I don’t understand why it’s asking until my eye is in the viewfinder, and Leo is staring at me through the lens.

This isn’t a photo, I understand. It’s a memory. I’ve spent my whole life trying to capture perfect moments, treating each of them like a victory. This is the first one I am capturing out of defeat.

“Abby?”

The next twelve hours will be a minifuneral, saying goodbye to everyone and everything here, but this is a goodbye, too. Leo will spend the rest of summer here, and I’ll spend it in summer school. Then I’ll go back to Shoreline High, with all my classes and tutoring sessions, and Leo will be gone. The problem is solved before it could even become a problem; I’ll never have to tell Leo the truth about how I feel about him. We’re out of time.

I should be relieved. Nobody’s feelings will be hurt. Nobody’s pride will be compromised. And nobody’s heart will break except mine.

I focus Leo in the frame and click.

There’s this uneasy silence that follows, me poised with the camera level with my chest, Leo’s stare fixed on me like the camera was never there at all. I think about uploading the photo, and it scares me, thinking of what I might see. What I won’t.

Leo breaks his gaze first. I’m not the coward anymore.

“I wish…” Leo leans forward, frustrated. “Oh my god. Abby!”

“What—”

“Your camera, get your camera, it’s—”

“Holy shit.”

There they are, off in the distance. A pod of orcas. They’re unmistakable, slick and gleaming as their backs slide in and out of the water, their distinctive fins cresting over the ripples.

“Take the picture,” says Leo. “It’s the perfect shot.”

Poppy’s camera is too old. It doesn’t have a prayer of capturing them at this distance. I could sprint to the cabin maybe, grab Kitty, and get back in time to catch something magnificent. The kind of photo I’ve dreamed of taking for years.

But no photo will capture this—the soar of my heart in my throat, the swell of my whole body, this weightlessness that makes me feel like we’re in free fall, untethered to the earth. Without consciously deciding to, we take off at a run to the edge of the water, giddy and disbelieving, chasing this feeling louder than words.

We watch them in silent awe, our excitement pulsing off each other like something we can touch. Then it happens—one of them leaps out of the water, this joyful, enormous, impossible thing, so far offshore but somehow close enough that it feels like he is leaping just so the two of us can see.

We turn, our eyes cracking into each other’s like the lightning on the first day at camp. It is energy and chaos, but rooted in something so deep that for once, it doesn’t scare me. I feel strangely invincible, like the moments happening right now don’t count for anything, but somehow count for everything at once.

Somewhere buried in the back of my mind, I know I shouldn’t let this happen. It’s the exact opposite of how I was going to handle this. But maybe it’s like Savvy said, about things getting worse before they get better. Well, this is the worst thing I can think of: giving Leo another chance to reject me. And if he doesn’t, giving myself a chance to know what this might feel like, even if it can never be mine.

I’m not seeing anything beyond Leo by the time my eyelids slide shut, something stronger than any one sense guiding us forward, pulling us into each other. It’s inevitable. Thunder after lightning. Order after chaos. Hope after—

“Have you seen Finn?”

The kiss is interrupted before it can begin, but neither of us jump. We’re frozen. His eyes are so wide on mine that I can only assume he never meant for it to happen. I’m the one who has to take control and take the quiet step back before Mickey comes into view. Leo is blushing furiously enough to warrant a trip to the nurse, but oddly, I am calm.

The feeling was enough, I think. Just to know it. To have it in my bones, make it a part of my history. There was a beautiful before, without an after to wreck it on the other side.

“Not since this afternoon,” I answer for us. “Why?”

Mickey didn’t even notice us nearly playing tongue hockey in full view of half the camp. Her brow is furrowed, and she’s rubbing her arms so anxiously that I’m afraid she might peel Princess Jasmine clean off.

“I can’t find him anywhere. I tried to cover for him, but Victoria’s gonna notice soon, and—”

Leo clears his throat, wiping his palms on his shorts. “Have you checked in with Savvy?”

Mickey shakes her head. “I can’t find her either, but I know Jo called, so…”

Leo finally steps away from me. I can sense him searching my face, but when I look over, I don’t know what to make of it. It’s almost like he seems disappointed, but I can’t tell if it’s in himself, or in me.

“Abby has to go pack, but I’ll help you look,” he says to Mickey. “I’ve got a few ideas.”

They talk it over and are off in separate directions within the minute, leaving me out on the beach with my camera still dangling around my neck. I look out over the water, unsurprised to find the orcas are gone.