The Summer I Didn't Drown

The vitamin D gummies stared back at me from my nightstand—Mom's parting gift before shipping me off to Camp Wawona for the summer. "You need sunshine," she'd said, as if forcing me into a counselor role at age sixteen would fix my crippling social anxiety. Spoiler: it wouldn't.

"You're on swimming duty," Jenna, the head counselor, announced, flipping through her clipboard with practiced efficiency. My stomach did that familiar lurch thing. I'd barely survived mandatory swim lessons in middle school, and now I was supposed to supervise a lake full of hyper twelve-year-olds?

I stood waist-deep in the murky water, whistle dangling uselessly around my neck, watching campers splash like excited fish. Then I saw him—Lucas, the senior counselor who'd been giving me low-key heart palpabilities since day three—diving gracefully off the dock. His hair plastered perfect-model-style against his forehead, smiling at something.

Probably at someone else. Definitely not me.

The walkie-talkie crackled. "Bear spotted near the north trail. All counselors, bear protocol NOW." My heart hammered. Not because of the bear—okay, partially because of the bear—but because Lucas grabbed my arm. "You're with me. We need to sweep the cabins."

We walked in uncomfortable silence through the woods. I should've said something cool. Something funny. Instead I blurted, "So, do you like... take vitamins?" WHAT?!

Lucas laughed. Actually laughed. "What kind of question is that?" But he was smiling, so I counted it as a win.

Then lightning cracked the sky open. The storm that'd been threatening all week finally broke, sheets of rain dumping down like the sky was personally offended. We ran for the nearest shelter—an old gazebo with peeling paint and a weird sphinx statue someone'd donated years ago. Its stone face seemed permanently amused by our misery.

"Great," I said, shivering. "Now we're trapped with the world's ugliest lawn ornament."

Lucas leaned against the sphinx's base. "You know, ancient Egyptians believed sphinxes guarded sacred knowledge."

"We're literally hiding from a bear in a storm. What sacred knowledge could possibly apply here?"

He looked at me, really looked at me, rain dripping from his eyelashes. "That sometimes you don't have to be the person everyone expects. That you can just... be. Even if that person is scared of bears and takes lame vitamins and says weird stuff."

My face was so hot. "You saw the vitamins in my cabin?"

"Everyone saw the vitamins. You have, like, three bottles on your nightstand."

We sat there while the storm raged, bear incident resolved, nowhere else to be. And for the first time all summer, I wasn't swimming in my own anxiety. I was just... me. And Lucas seemed okay with that.

"Your hair looks stupid like that," I said, because apparently I was now brave.

"Yours too," he grinned.

Best. Summer. Ever.