Camp is empty, and I see the last tail lights of Joshua's van glowing down the long drive. The wind is cold, and it blows my hair around. I tighten the belt of my sweater, and cross my arms under the light in the center of the camp, and start to cry. I miss Adam, and I don't know why I keep ending up in the city, but the deception I've entered into with Drama means faking it no matter what happens next. I can't tell anyone why I'm crying, but I know whoever is still here with me is going to ask.
The sweater is Marilyn's. I recognize it by sight, smell, and touch as the patterned knit she wore in photos on the beach with the rolled collar. I tug it around my waist, tight in the wind, and wish fate would give me a pair of pants.
"You have killer legs," a voice says behind me.
I turn to find Dean standing in the doorway of the counselor's cabin, holding a broom, and wearing white jeans and no shirt. His hair is tucked back under a baseball cap he has on backwards. He balances his arms on the top of the broom, and rests his chin on them, his stern face breaking into a grin, that freezes to something cold when he sees I'm crying.
"Are you okay?" he asks me.
I rush toward the warmth of the cabin, wiping my eyes.
"Yes," I tell him. "Yes. Were you cleaning?"
He flips the broom upside-down, showing off.
"Nope," he jokes. "I was practicing for Stomp."
We ignore the fact he tells me that every time he's caught cleaning, but it makes me laugh every time.
I list into the cabin, where the smell of cigarettes is thick under the nails of the room. It clings to the upholstery of the antique furniture, and in the curtains. The room looks clean, but I see ashes collecting in the corners, and crumbs between the couch cushions. There's a film in the air from our dancing and sweat and sex.
"I guess we left kind of a mess," I tell him. "Do you want help?"
I see him hesitate, and I watch the reasons for his hesitation roll by quickly. He doesn't want me to do what he sees as his job, and he doesn't think I'd do a particularly good job, although he would never say, and he doesn't really want company when he's cleaning, unless he can find a way to turn me loose doing something he wasn't going to do anyway. Panic, vulnerability, passivity, and order all cross his face.
"Hmmm," he pretends to be thinking, and I sit on the couch. "Well, I don't want you cleaning when you're sad."
I kiss his cheek, and he touches his hand to the place my lips met his skin.
"No, it was a happy thought," I tell him. "I was overwhelmed."
He pulls me into a hug.
"Hey, is this my sweater?" he asks me, and I nod without thinking.
"Yeah."
"Well, it looks great on you. You look beautiful in it."
I tug at my collar, uncomfortable. The truth is I don't, but Dean would never say that, or see that. According to him, I was always Marilyn, and it was just a matter of time before he could prove it. He raises his matching dark eyebrows beneath his bleached hair.
"Hey, are you sure you're okay?"
"I just want to sit awhile," I tell him. "I'll watch you clean."
Dean chats animatedly about his brushes with celebrity while he sweeps the cabin out, and applies different cleaning products to the various surfaces.
"This is something I made," he informs me. "It's mostly vinegar and tea tree oil. I like that because it smells green and it'll slow down the mildew."
He mists the curtains and the air changes to something biting.
"We're going home tonight," I tell his back, flexing as he reaches toward the windows.
"Yeah," he agrees. After a pause he admits the elephant in the room.
"It was quiet," he says.
Missing was the great sweep of understanding that we anticipated. The bricks built into the structure of the time spent at the camp proved themselves to be empty when it was time to leave; the quest about Dean's sacrifice and the location it was meant to take place is now buried under rain and lost expectations.
"I guess we got busy with our own lives," I suggest to him, pulling at a thread in my sweater.
"Clyde explained to me that sacrifice is sometimes not necessary," he says, his voice softening to a dreamy tone he reserves for the recitation of Clyde's words.
"That's true," I sigh. "I think it's usually reserved for specific or even dire circumstances."
"He said it's an act of love."
I twist my ring around my finger nervously. There was too much I worried his sacrifice would symbolize, things that were primitively secret to me about being a family. What it would take... what it would take to make the isolated into a family.
"I'm going to tuck you in," I tell him, and he stops his cleaning to accept.
"Okay."
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