Dylan

I try not to stare at the way his shirt clings to him, the outline of his muscles as he pulls the canoe out of the lake.

Don't look. Don't look. Don't look.

Crap. Wow. He's cute.

SHIT, HE TURNED. LOOK AWAY! LOOK AWAY!

Blabber to the people around me. Wave my arms around. Talk too loud, laugh too hard, smile too much.
Which is strange. Because I am an introvert, and awkward, and super quiet when I'm at home. They like this loud, don't take things too seriously, always cracking jokes, Dylan. I need a name for him. That's too long.

Blase Dylan is born.

I try not to think about my feelings too much but there's this constant awareness that he seems to always follow my gaze like those oil paintings or Izzy's creepy dolls. I stare at him from the corner of my eye, trying to act normal.

Whatever you do, DO NOT look.

Try to get as close as possible without seeming like you are trying to get as close as possible.

Later, over analyze every, single, fucking, word you said. Every single move. Everything you did. Beat yourself up over it.

Maybe he isn't even remotely interested, and I am just overthinking stuff", The way he looks at me makes me feel like a specimen he's trying to inspect...or he's trying to figure out if he likes you (or maybe he doesn't right away but is contemplating if he*could* like you)

Give consistent signals to him for awhile (like smiling, eye contact, saying "hi", initiating conversations… that stuff.

Try to be blase Dylan but he comes across as a jerk. Dylan Dylan wouldn't help matters either. They both mess things up.

Dylan Dylan overthinks things and thinks maybe he's just not that into you.

Abi calls me over to the fire-pit.

Abigail

"Dylan. Come and sit over here." I was seated around the fire. From a distance he was staring at Ryan, for far too long, taking in every inch of him. Then it hits me like a freight train.

From a distance he was staring at Ryan, for far too long, taking in every inch of him. Then it hits me like a freight train.

"Oh my gosh! You're gay." I whispered. It so makes sense now. I thought he'd been asking me what I thought about Nick and Ryan. He was comparing their attractiveness, not really asking me. How could I not have seen it? I'm so stupid.

"Did Emma tell you? Because I'm totally fine with it. Doesn't mean I won't be mad about it."

"Emma? No. I just thought that it was obvious. " And the last one to know anything. "I figured it was that or you've never been kissed like Drew Berrymore."

"Drew Berrymore? Ew." He scrunched up his face.

"She was amazing in ET. And Scream."

"Yeah. For the first few minutes, when she gets killed by Ghostface. That's about it. I used to watch ET once a week with my sister on Bubba nights. She was like obsessed with that movie."

"Bubba nights?" Whatever that was, it sounded wholesome. It made me smile and envious that I was an only child.

"Yeah, it's...we'd order pizza or have mac and cheese if my mom was working late. She couldn't say brother, yet, so she called me Bubba till she was like five. Imagine her shock when she learned what my real name was. So...Bubba nights. She was real upset I was going to be gone for two months before college, so I brought her with me so she could have a fun summer before I went off to school."

"Aw, that's sweet. Wait...Your sister is one of the campers here? Which one?"

"Izzy."

"Aw. Why didn't you say anything?"

"Oh, you know. She didn't want her big brother cramping her style."

I sensed he was lying but I didn't press him on it. "She's pretty quiet. Like the complete opposite of you."

"You mean like you?"

"Careful..." I warn playfully. "But she's been really opening up in art class."

"Yeah, it's been a...a rough year. "

"I heard that your mom was sick. That's why you didn't come last year."

He gives a nod. "Anyway. It's obvious to everyone except Ryan. That I like him.."

"Ouch. I know how that feels."

"You and Nick?"

"Nadda."

"Double ouch. Abigail Blyg is gay."

"I am NOT." I feel my face slowly turning pink, even though I know he's teasing me.

"Neither am I."

"Oh." I must have showed a little confusion on my face. Had I read him totally wrong? Or is he just messing with me again?
"I don't like to put labels on things ok? But I like guys more than any other gender but I'm definitely open... so yeah. That's OK if you're questioning it."

"How did you know? When you liked guys more? "

"When you know you...know. There's no rushing it."

That made sense. I wonder when the wise-craking jokester got to be so wise. Maybe he always was and was just hiding it. Like how I hide behind my shy exterior. No one pays much attention to you when you're the shy girl. It was easier to disappear into the background. Yet only Dylan seemed to notice me. Just two souls lost in the dark I guess.

I paused for several seconds. Trying to figure out how to put what's on my mind into words. "I mean...I might like Emma. But I know she likes Jacob...but I like Nick more." It was more of a question.

"You can like both." He says, smirking mischievously.

"I know."

"I do, and then some." He slightly laughs, his lips pressed against his bottle of soda. "Dylan Lenivy does not discriminate."

"That's how you pronounce it!" I exclaim. He pronounced it La-Neve-e (Neve, like Neve Campbell from Scream, then an e sound at the end)
"It's Italian for snow." It was also ironically Czech for lazy, from which he probably heard never ending jokes from bullies. Just like how Blyg is ironically Norwegian for a shy person. And ironically since we were in a quarry, it's also means 'miner of lead' which means someone in my family tree had been a miner.

"Snow is also another word for..."

"Yeah, I know what it means, Dylan. " I really hope he didn't actually bring some to camp, where the kids could get into it. Sure, they made us all take a drug test but when it came to screening, anyone could have brought a weapon, alcohol or drugs, it was non-existent. How did this place even stay open?

"So aptly, I know how to have a good time."

"And it's Bly. For the record. The g is silent."

Ryan was in the mess hall. He was alone. And Dylan thought it would be the best time to talk to him. He was observing the wall covered in photographs of past campers. The one he was looking at they were ten and eleven years old.
On the bottom of the picture was the year.

2014

"Good times, huh?" Dylan's voice had a mixture of sarcasm to it.

Ryan didn't flinch or look up at his sudden presence.

That summer held good and bad memories for Dylan. The awkward social situation he arrived in, was not due to be thrown into a social setting. Ok, it partially had something to do with it. He was more worried about who would remember him as the shy nerdy kid.
Upon arriving, he had recognized Jacob immediately, as one of the campers that had bullied him that summer but Jacob didn't appear to have recognized him.

That hadn't stopped Jacob from still being a jerk to him. At least Kaitlyn put him in line. He wondered if she had realized who he was and it was her way of making amends. It was all in the past now.

If this was a slasher film, he'd be the slasher, getting revenge on the people who made his life almost a living hell that summer. What he really wanted was less drama this summer. Then he could focus on getting on with his life with school.

Dylan spotted himself in the middle row. In the back row Kaitlyn was sticking a tongue out at him, in the front far right corner, second to last was Jacob. Four kids, down from him was Ryan, in the front center.

"It was my first time here." Ryan said. "You never forget how homesick you got either, after the first few days at camp, or your first time."
"Me..." He was going to make some dirty joke but decided it wasn't appropriate. Other times he wouldn't care but since it was just him and Ryan, he wanted to be serious. "mine too."

"I didn't know you were a camper here, when I was." Ryan sounded genuinely surprised. "Which one are you?"

Color nearly drained from Dylan's face and his heart thumped against his chest.

He's going to remember what a total loser you were.

"Let me guess..." Ryan moved his finger around. Till he landed on someone else. "This one."

Missed the mark. "Nope, that's Mark Davis. He was...an asshole." Another one of his bullies. He wondered what happened to that kid. Who the fuck cares? He could have lied and said yes.

No. He was proud of who he was, though he still hid it, behind his quick-witted, sometimes inappropriate humor and care-free behavior. But that wasn't entirely his fault.

"That's me." He pointed to himself behind Mark. "I was the chubby kid." with a striped shirt and a bowl cut but to be fair, most kids still had them, his cheeks always red with rosatia in the summer heat, (he could tell, even though it was a black and white photograph) which was due to his allergies not sunburn but went away with allergy medication he had been prescribed and wouldn't be the first prescription he had to take.

"Till I graduated middle school. My first year of high school, I had my glow up! I got like crazy thin and shot up like a bean-pole."

"Like Jack in the bean stalk."

He once again resisted to say something dirty. So instead he bragged,

"I got hot. Sent all the girls crazy."

"I bet."

Why did I say that? Now he's going to think I'm straight.

Or was that a sign of interest he detected in Ryan's voice?

He had always liked Ryan since that first day at camp, at eleven years old. Scratch that, at first he had been afraid of him. He asked Dylan what he brought for lunch. Ryan was way taller than him and he feared he was going to beat him up and take his lunch.

They ended up exchanging his chips for Ryan's Takis. It was ironic that he was now a head taller than Ryan.

Then two years later when he was thirteen, and Ryan was twelve, he started noticing Ryan more. The awkwardness of being not quite teenagers and just starting their teenage years, it was then he started to notice there was something different about himself. Perhaps he had tried to deny it for so long that he had felt relief more than shame and embarrassment, when he had been outed last year, at Amber fucking Abernathy's party, by Amber herself, the most popular girl at his school.

A heavy burden had been lifted off his shoulders. But he had just created another one for himself.

Blase Dylan.

On the plus side it made him feel in control of the situation and people seemed to like him.

He guessed he could work with that. It was only for the summer.