The Way Summer Tastes

Sidney looks around to see the mess hall, a sea of red and blue tee-shirts, campers decked out in face paint and colorful wristbands. His gaze lingers on familiar red hair. Scarlett smiles at him, setting her plate down beside his.

“Are you excited?" she asks, leaning forward in her chair “Last capture the flag game ever,well until we become camp counselors of course.”

Sidney only nods pushing a sausage around his plate with his fork; he'd much prefer to spend the day inside, maybe in the art studio working on a project or tracing maps in the reading room. Even spending the day in the cabin reading old log books would probably be a more enjoyable use of his time.

Scarlett loves the annual Capture the flag game though, so he goes along with it for her sake. Today she’s decked out head to toe in shades of blue. She even painted her nails a vibrant shade of teal last night sitting in his bunk, the sticky scent of the polish burning his nose. She had offered to paint Sidneys for him, but he had politely declined her offer.

As Scarlett begins discussing strategy for capture the flag Sidney's eyes can’t help but drift over to the far table.

It’s no surprise, Kit’s the center of attention; he can’t stand not to be. His hands flailing around telling a story. Then seemingly out of nowhere, he jumps on the table acting out a dramatic rendition of the story. His friends are laughing hysterically although Sidney can’t imagine whatever he’s saying is actually that funny, at least not enough to warrant that kind of response.

“Sidney.. hello,” Scarlett says, taking his chin in her hands and guiding his attention back to her. To anyone else, the gesture might seem romantic but Sideny knows it’s anything but. “Were you even listening to anything I've been saying for the past five minutes?”

“No sorry, it's just how is that allowed?" he says gesturing over to Kit and his friends. “What?” Scarlett asks. “That,” but when he turns his gaze over to the far table Kit is gone; the only thing left in his wake is a spare napkin fluttering down to the mess hall floor below.

“Wait, don't you guys have one of your Kit and Sidney need to learn to get along meetings?”

“Oh crap we do,” Sidney says, pushing his half-finished breakfast plate to the side and grabbing an apple from the table on his way out.

Their scheduled detentions or as Scarlett likes to call them their ‘Kit and Sidney need to learn to get along meetings’ was something their head counselor had created during their second year of camp. Sidney likes to believe their rivalry started the first day they met but technically it officially began when Kit dyed all of his clothes green and Sidney retaliated by putting worms in his sock drawer.

So far, the detentions have been unsuccessful. Considering they still hate each other.

Although they don’t pull as many pranks on each other as they did during those first couple of years at camp. Their mutual dislike still stays alive through looks from afar and snide comments that are made whenever they're in the same room.

“Hey Sid, glad you could finally make it,” Kit says walking out of the storage closet with a precarious stack of cardboard boxes balanced in his arms. They are stacked so high that Sidney can only just make out the curly strands of hair at the top of Kit’s head.

“I thought I told you not to call me that.”

“But you see that’s why I keep doing it, makes your eye twitch all funny,” Kit says, setting the boxes down.

Cleaning out the storage closet quickly becomes a competition of who can lift the heaviest boxes. Kit wins although it’s definitely skewed in his favor given that Sidney’s never played a sport in his life and Kit made the varsity swim team as a freshman.

He only knows this bit of information because no one would shut up about it the summer he came back.

Just as Sidney’s grabbing the last of the boxes. Kit crouches down to inspect the box propping open the door. Before he can warn Kit the door is slamming shut.

The sound makes Sidney jump, dropping the box he was holding as Kit stumbles backward, nearly missing the stack of books and landing on top of Sidney instead.

They fall to the floor in a pile of limbs Kit’s arm is pushing into Sidney’s side. They quickly untangle themselves as Sidney gets up twisting the knob to no avail. Once he realizes they're stuck he starts pounding on the door. He’s not above screaming for help but Kit interrupts him. “What Sid scared of the dark?” He asks his tone cool and unbothered.

Sidney ignores him, continuing to bang on the door. “Wait Sidney I didn’t mean that are you actually scared of the dark.” Theirs genuine concern laced in his words and for some reason it just makes Sidney even more annoyed.

When he tries to open his mouth to explain the only sound to come out is high-pitched wheezing.

“Hey it’s ok,” Kit says “I can fix this.” He starts twisting the knob and then pushes the full weight of his body against the door as if that will do anything.

Eventually, he gives up falling down to the floor beside Sidney. A couple of seconds later he pulls on a light switch illuminating the small closet in harsh florensence.

He wants to tell him to turn it off but he still can’t speak so instead Kit has to bear witness to him like this.

With his knees pulled up to his chest, hyperventilating, rocking back and forth in an attempt to soothe himself.

“Hey Sid, I uhh- I think you might be having a panic attack.”

He holds out both his hands for Sidney and he clumsily catches onto them.

“Here follow my breathing.” He leads him in a series of exercises consisting of slow inhales and exhales. Eventually, Sidney’s breathing returns to normal; he's still shaking but only slightly.

He realizes suddenly that he’s still holding onto Kit’s hands and drops them embarrassed.

“It’s not the- not the dark that I’m afraid of” he spits out once he can finally speak again.

“It’s the tight spaces.” Sidney doesn’t do tight spaces. The suffocating nature of them makes him want to claw his eyes out.

“Makes sense,” Kit says even though it doesn’t the fear is completely irrational and Sidney knows this. Why is Kit indulging him in this way? Why is he being so kind when he doesn’t have to be?

“And the breathing exercises they helped?” Kit asks. Sidney nods he hadn’t expected them to do anything but they did help.

“My therapist taught me them. I swear that women is a saint.”

“I didn’t know you saw a therapist?” And why would he? It's not like he and Kit spend any time talking about their personal life.

“Yeah, I started seeing her after my parents split up.”

He isn’t sure why but he’s always assumed Kit had this perfect life. He’s pictured him having this loving mother and father, a brother and sister, maybe even a dog. The type of family that sends Christmas cards out every year and poses for family portraits. He certainly never pictured divorced parents and a kid who’s forced into therapy because of it.

“So the claustrophobia, how did that start? Did you like lock yourself in the bathroom as a child?”

“No,” Sidney mutters, he doesn’t like telling this story, avoids it at all costs actually but he feels like he owes Kit an explanation.

“My father locked me in his desk when I was little. I think I was playing with my toys too loud or something. So he locked me in one of the compartments. He must have lost the key or I don’t know, maybe he just forgot I was in there.” Sidney doesn’t remember how long he was forced to stay there, only that when he got out his face was blue from screaming and he couldn’t go near his father’s study for a month without crying.

“Jesus Sidney, that's awful.”

“Yeah I mean it was a long time ago.”

“It doesn’t matter when it happened. It's still awful.” Theirs genuine anger in his tone. It’s not like Sidney doesn’t know how horrible his father is but it feels nice having confirmation. And then he remembers who he’s talking to. Kit who he hates. Who he’s hated for years. Kit who’s sitting on the floor next to him and listening as he tells stories from his fucked up childhood.

“We're probably going to miss the capture the flag game,” Kit says suddenly as if that’s their most pressing issue.

“The only good thing to come out of this entire situation,” Sidney responds.

“Don’t want your friend Scarlett to hear you saying that.”

“Hmm supposed not, although I guess there's a lot of things I've been lying to her about this summer.” He finds himself telling Kit about his summer program at Brown, and how it’s going to derail his and Scarlett’s plans to both become counselors. He’s not sure why he’s telling Kit this. It’s been sitting heavy on his chest all summer though and it feels nice to tell someone else about it.

“So you're going to Brown.”

“That’s the plan.”

“No way me too,” Kit says.

“Really I didn’t take you as the academic type.” And then he pauses because he realizes how that must sound.

“Sorry that was rude I just mean- “

“No it’s ok and I’m not. I'm trying to get recruited for their swim team.”

“But hey maybe we’ll see each other around.” He says it like their old friends as if they were never out to get each other.

“Well, I haven't even gotten in yet.”

“Trust me you will. You're one of the smartest people I know.”

Sidney doesn’t know how to respond to the compliment so instead he says nothing.

“You must really care about Scarlett.”

“I do,” Sidney says “She’s one of my oldest friends.”

“So you and Scarlett aren't?”

“No definitely just friends.”

“You know everyone in our year thinks you're a thing. I think some people have even placed bets on it.”

“Have you?” Sidney asks.

“No of course not,” Kit says, holding up his hands in innocence.

“God that's so weird,” Sidney says involuntarily scrunching up his nose. “She's like a sister to me.”

They fall silent for a while until Kit nudges his foot against Sidney’s. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure,” Sidney says it’s not as if they have anything else to do.

“Why do you hate me so much?”

Whatever he had expected Kit to ask it certainly wasn’t this. “I don’t know, I guess it’s just something we’ve always done.” Hated each other. Tried to win some imaginary contest of who could annoy each other the most.

“Well I never hated you," Kit says.

“Come on, we both know that’s not true. The first year we met you dyed all my clothes green.” “Only because I wanted your attention. How was I supposed to know the dye was permanent?”

“Wait so all this time you never actually hated me?”

“No, I mean I was definitely jealous of you but I never hated you”

“Jealous of me. You're joking right, what could you possibly be jealous of?”

“Come on Sidney you know what I mean?”

“Nope can’t say I do.”

“I’m not like you. You don't have to put on an act to get people to like you. With my friends, I feel like I have to put on a performance just to get them to want to be around me. I swear sometimes I feel like I'm a show pony for their entertainment.

Even with my friends back home. I think if they got to know the real me they wouldn’t want to be my friend, they certainly wouldn’t want me to be the captain of their swim team.”

“I had no idea, You felt that way,” Sidney says.

“Yeah I’ve always been jealous of how you never care about people's opinion of you. You’ve never tried to be someone you're not.”

He tries to imagine what Kit could possibly have to hide. Why he even feels like he has to hide parts of himself to begin with?

“Do you remember that summer we had a costume party and you went as that weird 18th-century writer?”

“Yeah,” Sidney says remembering, “Edgar Allan Poe, I had to explain my costume to everyone.”

“And even when people made fun of you, you refused to change. I never told you this before but I really admired you for that for not caring what they thought”

“You know if you wanted my attention that badly you could’ve just, I don't know, tried talking to me.”

“No, I couldn’t have. I’d never had a crush before and-”

Sidney’s brain falters. A crush. Kit has a crush on him.

It’s not as if Sidney’s never thought of him in that way. He remembers mornings waking up and looking out his cabin window to find Kit swimming laps in the lake. Seeing him emerge from the water with his swim trunks clinging to his body, watching the rivulets of water fall down his back.

He’d always assumed it was a side effect of their mutual hatred. He thought of Kit so often he was bound to think of him this way every once in a while.

“Do you still have a crush on me?”

“I- look Sidney if I’ve made things awkward between us you can leave.”

“We’re locked in a closet together. I literally can’t leave.”

“Oh,” he says, his face dropping. “I forgot about that, well I guess you can hit me if you want.”

“What the fuck Kit. Even if I didn’t like you back I wouldn’t do that.”

“Wait, so does that mean-” Sidney doesn’t give Kit the chance to finish the sentence though, he’s already leaning forward closing the distance between them.

It feels different from the girls he kissed. His lips are somehow softer and far more delicate which is odd considering he’s a boy. Kit tastes vaguely of sunscreen. But also like popsicles and chlorine, and something so distinctly summer.

He tries to remember when these feelings started if they had always been there in the back of his mind just disguising themselves as hate.

Before he can come to any logical conclusion the closet door falls open and he and Kit spring apart.

He looks up to see Chris, one of their head counselors standing in the doorway, his arms are crossed and he’s staring up at the ceiling looking slightly amused. Sidney wipes at his mouth and looks over at Kit whose face is bright red. “I can explain- “ Kit starts, but Chris interrupts him. “Look kid, it's fine I’m not going to tell anyone.” “This,” he says gesturing between the two of them, “is above my pay grade.”

He goes to leave but turns around at the last second “Oh also you boys missed most of the capture the flag game. But I think they're still playing out on the field if you wanted to catch the last couple of minutes.”

They don’t bother joining the game, instead they sit on the sidelines. Every so often Sidney moves his hand to brush up against Kit’s and miniature shock waves pulse through his body each time he does.

Eventually, Kit seems to grow tired of this game and grabs hold of Sidney's hand completely. His team doesn’t win but it’s almost worth it to see the look of joy that falls across Kit’s face when his does. When he stands to cheer for them his fingers are still interlocked in Sidney’s. As he smiles at Kit he wonders how he ever convinced himself he was someone worth hating.