Dead of Summer

But clearly I’m overthinking things.

Especially when multiple entries with his name and picture pop up, and my eyebrows shoot toward my brows as I bury myself into my blanket burrito once more.

Star High School Basketball player only survivor of mountain bus crash.

High School Star Kayde Lane, of Warsaw, Arkansas, presumed dead.

There are more of them, but I click on the first article and skim through it, noting that the date is from six years ago.

Holy shit.

It’s certainly not what I’d been expecting, and I find myself completely obsessed and absorbed in reading about the bus crash in the mountains that had taken the lives of all of Kayde’s swim team.

He’d been the only survivor.

But he’d also been out in the woods for eight days before he was found.

No article talks much about what had happened after, and while I find small entries about his swim times when he’d been in high school, I can’t find anything at all for after the crash. Had he quit swimming?

Is this what had turned him into a murderer?

There’s no point in wondering, I know. Not when he’s gone to look for some other camp to terrorize and is out of my life forever. But I still skim a couple more of the articles before getting to my feet with Mint in my arms to trudge to the kitchen and forage for food.

Armed with potato soup from my favorite restaurant that had been waiting for me in the fridge and a glass of soda, I make my way back to the living room, settling on the couch. With my freshly microwaved soup in hand, I inch for my phone once more, oblivious to the cat hopping up to burrow into my blanket again.

There’s nothing more to find out about Kayde Lane. And not only that, there’s no reason to. If I was really that interested, I should’ve looked him up during the week at camp. At least then, if I’d had the balls, I could’ve actually asked him about what I’d found.

…Not that I think I would’ve had the courage to bring it up to him.

Nothing gives me much more than the first article had. There are a few scattered details, such as his family wouldn’t respond or comment and neither would Kayde himself. One article states Kayde had seemed ‘suspiciously quiet’ about the whole thing. Especially when his teammates had been brought up.

But part of me thinks that isn’t suspicious. After all, if my best friend had died, hell if I had been the only survivor of the hypothetically averted Camp Crestview massacre, I don’t think I’d want to talk about anyone that had died. And I definitely don’t think I could’ve talked to anyone about Kinsley. Not if she’d died and I had to live with that.

My stomach clenches around the spoonful of soup, and I close my eyes to stop myself from retching or chucking it all up. That would be such a waste of really good soup.

With my stomach settled, I skim through articles again, landing on one that had been from his local paper, and focused on Kayde as an up-and-coming swimmer in his high school. He’d been made swim captain junior year, and everyone had expected him to go to college on a swimming scholarship.

Now I wonder if he made it to college in any capacity, since it seems he certainly didn’t go on with swimming, if these articles are to be believed.

A picture of him from when he was seventeen catches my eye; he had just finished a race that had set his team up for the championships. He’s smiling at the camera, golden curls bouncing, and his caramel eyes are warm, filled with mirth, and nothing like I know them to be now.

He looks so…different. So fucking young it’s unreal, and just happy to be there. Really, it’s nothing like the Kayde I know, and I feel as if I’m looking at a doppelgänger, or a twin of my Kayde.

Not mine, I remind myself, my voice small and hesitant in my brain. He was never mine. Hadn’t he proved that by just leaving without a word? Without waking me up to say anything?

But that was surely his plan all along. And the fact he’d left me wishing I’d gotten something more is enough for me to know that in the end, he really did win our game. I couldn’t maintain my aloofness. I couldn’t keep hating him.

No matter how many times a day I went through it in my head. No matter how many times I tried to hate him over and over again. I don’t love him, sure. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t end up with some kind of feelings for him after all was said and done.

Did he know? I wonder, blinking down blankly at my soup. Had he been able to tell? Maybe that’s why he’d left the way he did.

Maybe that really was his goal and his plan all along. Even though he didn’t stick around to soak up his victory at my hurt and my feelings from being abandoned. I take another bite of soup and try to swallow that and the feeling that’s gnawing at my insides, though I know I’m not doing anything other than consuming cheesy, perfect carbs. Still, aren’t carbs the cure for being sad? I refuse to say I have a broken heart, or anything so dramatic as that.

After all, I was not and never would’ve been in love with Kayde.

Settling back on the sofa, I let out a sigh and dump the last of my soup into my mouth, forgoing the spoon and instead just upending the bowl. My movie is maybe halfway through, I think, though if forced to answer to save my life, I honestly really have no idea what’s going on in whatever’s playing on my television.

But I try to pay attention. It’s not like I have anything else to do, and I’m on vacation for a few more days before going right back to Camp Crestview for the last session of the year. As the summer’s sessions go by ages, this will be another group of twelve- and thirteen-year-olds, compared to the eight-year-olds we end up with in the beginning of the summer. Personally, I prefer the older kids. At least their brains work a little better, and they tend to have more personality than the younger kids.