determined to ignore the mesmerizing beauty of the lakeside camp, she felt herself being unsettled by the deep isolation, the pervasive quiet, the haunting views.
The last thing she was expecting, out here in the middle of nowhere, was to meet someone. Turned out a boy her age had also been sentenced to summer camp, though for entirely different reasons.
When he first walked into the main pavilion at the dinner hour, she felt a funny kind of heat swirl through her and thought maybe the summer was not going to be so boring after all.
He looked like every dangerous thing grown-ups warned her about. He had a tall, lean, powerful body and a way of carrying himself that exuded confidence, maybe even arrogance. He was of mixed race, with tattoos marking his café au lait skin, pierced ears and long dreadlocks.
He sauntered over to the buffet table where she was standing, as if drawn to the invisible heat coursing through her.
“Just so you know,” said the tall kid, “this is the last place I wanted to spend the summer.”
“Just so you know,” Daisy said, making herself sound as cool as he did, “it wasn’t my choice, either. What’re you doing here, anyway?”
“It was either this—working on this dump with my brother, Connor—or a stint in juvey,” he said easily.
Juvey. He tossed off the word, clearly assuming she was familiar with the concept. She wasn’t, though. Juvenile detention was something that happened to kids from the ghetto or barrio.
“You’re Connor’s brother?”
“Yep.”
“You don’t look like brothers.” Connor was all clean-cut and WASPy, a lumberjack from the wilds of the North, while Julian looked dark … and dangerous, alternative’s alternative.
“Half brothers,” he said nonchalantly. “Different dads. Connor doesn’t want me here, but our mom made him look after me.”
Connor Davis was the contractor in charge of renovating Camp Kioga to get it ready for the fiftieth anniversary of Daisy’s grandparents. Everyone was supposed to be pitching in on the project, but she hadn’t expected to encounter someone like this. Even before learning his name, she sensed something fundamental about this boy. In the deepest, most mysterious way imaginable, he was destined to be important to her.
His name was Julian Gastineaux, and like her, he was between his junior and senior years of high school, but other than that, they had nothing in common. She was from New York City’s Upper East Side, the product of a privileged but unhappy family and a tony prep school. He was from a crappy area of Chino, California, downwind of the cattle lots.
Like moths around a candle flame, they danced around each other through dinner; later they were assigned cleanup duty. She didn’t raise her normal objection to the manual labor. An intimate camaraderie sprang up between them as they worked. She found herself fascinated by the ropy strength of his forearms and the sturdy breadth of his hands. As they were hanging up their dish towels, their shoulders brushed, and the brief encounter was electrifying in a way she’d never felt with a guy before. She’d known her share of guys, but this was different. She felt a weird kind of recognition that both confused and excited her.
“There’s a fire pit down by the lake,” she said, searching his strange, whiskey-colored eyes to see if he sensed anything, but she couldn’t tell. They were too new to one another. “Maybe we could go down there and have a fire.”
“Yeah, we could hold hands and sing ‘Kumbaya’”
“A couple of nights without TV or internet, and you’ll be begging for ‘Kumbaya’”
“Right.” His cocky smile quickly and easily gave way to sweetness. Daisy wondered if he realized that.
She found her dad as he was leaving the dining room. “Can we go make a fire on the beach?” Daisy asked.
“You and Julian?” His suspicious eyes flicked from her to the tall kid.
“Duh. Yeah, Dad. Me and Julian.” She tried to maintain her attitude. She didn’t want him to think she was actually starting to like it here, stuck in this rustic Catskills camp while all her friends were partying on the beaches of the Hamptons.
To her surprise, Julian spoke up: “I promise I’ll be on my best behavior, sir.”
It was gratifying to see her dad’s eyebrows lift in surprise. Hearing the word sir come from the mouth of the Dreadlocked One was clearly unexpected.
“He will,” Connor Davis said, joining them and passing a look to his brother. The stare he fixed on Julian showed exactly which brother was in charge.
“I guess it’s all right,” her dad said. He could probably tell Connor would kick Julian’s ass if the kid stepped out of line. “I might come out to check on you later.”
“Sure, Dad,” Daisy said, forcing brightness into her tone. “That’d be great.”
She and Julian were both pretty lame at making a fire, but she didn’t really care. They used a box of kitchen matches down to the final one before the pile of twigs finally caught. When the breeze wafted smoke right at her, she happily wedged herself snugly against Julian. He didn’t put the moves on her, but he didn’t move away, either. In fact, simply being near him felt amazing, not like making out with guys from school, under the bleachers at the athletic field, or at the Brownstones at Columbia, where she lied about her age in order to get into a college party.
Once the flames were dancing nicely in the fire pit, she saw him studying the reflection on the black surface of the lake.
“I was here once before,” he said. “When I was eight.”
“Seriously? You came to summer camp?”
He laughed a little. “It’s not like I had a choice. Connor was a counselor here that year, and he was stuck watching me that summer.”
She waited for a further explanation, but he stayed silent. “Because …” she prompted.
His smile faded. “Because there was no one else.”
The loneliness of his words, the thought of a child having no one but a half brother, struck her in a tender place. She decided not to press him for details, but man. She wanted to know more about this guy. “So what’s your story now?”
“My mother’s an out-of-work performer—sings, dances, acts,” he said.
What, did he think she was going to let him off the hook? “That’s your mother’s story. I was wondering about yours.”
“I got in trouble with the law in May,” he said.
Now that, she thought, was interesting. Fascinating. Dangerous. She leaned forward, pressing even closer.
“So what was the incident? Did you steal a car? Deal drugs?” The minute she said the words, she wanted to die. She was an idiot. He’d think she was racial profiling him.
“I raped a girl,” he informed her. “Maybe I raped three.”
