The landscape rose and fell like waves as my father drove the interstate. Green trees blanketed the North Carolina mountains. Green everywhere. Yet, I didn’t want to go to summer camp — an irony that was not lost on me at 13 years old.
I enjoyed playing in my neighborhood woods. But I was a homebody. I craved my routine and surroundings. I stuck to my family, including my young brother. I didn’t even like sleepovers with other friends.
Summer camp was an entire week with strangers.
Dad drove through the camp entrance, around the lake, and past the outdoor basketball courts. We parked at one of the boys’ cabins — a small, wood building with weather-beaten walls and dirty windows. After dropping my bags on a lower bunk bed, Dad gave me a strong hug and said he was proud of me. I thought for a second that he might take with me with him.
After Dad drove away, I watched a few of my fellow campers claim their bunks, then rush off to explore the rest of the camp. Rather than endure the friendliness of my college counselor, I escaped behind the cabin and plopped down on the back steps, drumming my fingers on an unopened book in my lap and blinking back tears.
Finally, it was time for supper. The cafeteria was a larger version of the cabin. A buffet had been setup at the far end. Laughter hung in the air along with the smell of hamburgers. Boys were high-fiving, girls hugging. I shuffled through the line with my plastic tray, then over to an empty table. I glanced at the kids sitting a few tables away.
There was Megan.
She was a popular girl from my middle school. She made straight As and was the star of the school’s soccer team. I’d had a crush on her since the first day of sixth grade when I’d happened to see her descend the steps of the school bus and march confidentially into the main building. But I’d never even meet her eyes, much less introduced myself.
I concentrated on dipping french fries into my puddle of ketchup. Suddenly, my attention was yanked from my food.
At the far end of the room, a group of older boys had begun pounding the table with their fists in time with a chant. As more campers joined in, I caught the words:
“Kiss a girl, Bill Bateman, kiss a girl. Kiss a girl, Bill Bateman, kiss a girl. We won’t shut up ’til you pucker up. Kiss a girl, Bill Bateman, kiss a girl.”
My stomach flipped. How could this be allowed? And what if they called on me? My face turned the color of ketchup as I slouched in my chair.
I stole a glance at Megan. She had stood up to see.
A tall, blond-haired boy also rose from the table where the chant began. He took his sweet time strolling across the cafeteria. The chant grew even louder:
“Kiss a girl, Bill Bateman, KISS A GIRL!”
Bill Bateman stopped before a camper with golden hair pulled back from her suntanned face. Then, Bill Bateman leaned over and kissed her lips.
The cafeteria exploded in cheers and applause!
Despite the noise, I still heard a voice just beside me: “Holy shit.”
It was then I noticed the other boy sitting at my table.
~
His name was Rusty. It turned out that he was in my cabin. While I was all elbows, knees, and freckles, Rusty was short, solid, and dark-haired. He had a deep voice, liked to curse, and ate twice as much as me at every meal.
After that first dinner, Rusty showed me the hole in the chain link fence at the far corner of the basketball court, which he had discovered last summer. Stepping through the hole, I entered the dark woods. The ground fell sharply to a little stream that burbled over rocks of various sizes. Rusty wanted to haul rocks out of the water and up the opposite bank in order to build a fort in a small clearing among ferns. I told him I was in.
The counselors kept us busy with activities, but Rusty and I retreated to our construction project every free chance. After a few days, we had built four walls. Our enclosure was just large enough for us to sit side-by-side with our knees pulled to our chests. It was quiet and cool in the woods. The little stream sang beneath us.
I wondered if we might sneak our meals out of the cafeteria and eat in the fort. Rusty was worried that we’d be forbidden to return to our fort if we got caught. I conceded because I didn’t want to lose my only friend.
But I would have risked almost anything else to avoid the “Kiss a Girl” chant, which happened more often as the week wore on. Even wrapped safely in my sleeping bag at night, I could hear the rhythmic pounding on the tables in my head.
Once, Rusty teased that he would start a chant with my name.
I would have preferred to die.
~
On the last afternoon of camp, Rusty and I had a shouting match. At his insistence, we had made a thatched roof. But it was hot sitting under the pine branches and the needles itched my skin. And why did we even need a roof? I’d been letting him call the shots all week, but I’d finally had enough. It was stupid. Damn stupid.
In response, Rusty used all his cuss words in their various and sundry combinations.
The dinner bell interrupted us. Rusty spun on his heel and stormed off. I climbed up the bank after him, thinking I had less than 24 hours until I was back home. I squeezed through the fence for what I realized might be the last time.
Megan stood there.
“Hey! I know you from school!” She grinned. Her perfect, white teeth. “It’s great to see you!”
She waited, but I could only manage a weak croak. Rusty introduced himself.
“So, what were you guys doing down there?” Her hazel eyes were bright with interest. “You mind showing me?”
“What the hell are we waiting for?” Rusty barreled back through the hole. I searched Megan’s face for any sign of ridicule. She merely tucked her shiny dark hair behind her ears.
As my throat was completely dry, I gestured for her to go first.
As we descended the bank, I tried to focus on the ground beneath my feet and not on Megan’s shapely legs. I didn’t want to stumble and fall on my butt. As nimble as a doe, Megan leapt across the little stream and bounded up the far bank.
Rusty gestured to our fort with a grandiose flourish: “Cool as shit, right?”
Imagining how it looked to Megan, a week’s worth of work suddenly looked like nothing more than a pile of dirty rocks.
She walked slowly around the fort, nodding in approval like an art critic. “That’s really cool, guys.” There was not a trace of insincerity in her voice.
Rusty began to describe his designs for the pine branch roof. She listened thoughtfully until he had finished.
“What about magnolia tree branches? You wouldn’t have to worry about falling pine needles. And the leaves would even keep out the water.”
Rusty eyes got wide: “Fuck, that’s brilliant! There’s a magnolia just on the other side of the basketball court!”
He took off back down the hill. I went to follow, but then I felt her eyes on me. I turned to her.
“I think I’ll wait her,” Megan said softly, stepping into the rock fort. Even more quietly, she asked, “Would you sit with me?”
With our knees pulled to our chests, my right elbow just barely touched her left. We didn’t say a word for five, ten, fifteen minutes. There was only the sound of the little stream singing until Rusty came back up the hill, breathless and sweaty. He dumped the magnolia branches on the ground.
“Fuck yeah!”
~
Twelve summers later, I stood outside a bar in a college town next to a young woman. We had split some sushi, then walked down the street for a drink. My future wife and I stood on the sidewalk as pedestrians slipped around us like rushing water. The leaves in the trees were bright green, and I got up the nerve to say what I had wanted to say to Megan all those years ago in that rock fort:
“I’d really like to kiss you.”
*This is a work of creative nonfiction. Names have been changed as well as some identifying characteristics.
Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the pastor of Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church in Chapel Hill, NC. His forthcoming book is a collection of his columns for the Chatham News + Record titled “Hope Matters: Churchless Sermons: In the Time of the Coronavirus.”