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Mosquito Bites
They’re in the staff bathroom just after Lights Out, which shouldn’t be romantic. A yellowed fly strip hangs, curling, from the ceiling. The fluorescent light hums ominously. Padma glances up at the crappy mirror, in which everyone looks jaundiced and exhausted, and watches herself applying calamine lotion to Daphne’s back.
The only time she’s ever felt anything remotely like this was with Michael Corner, although this feels far more lawless, unregulated. It isn’t that Michael was a bad kisser, exactly — just overly practiced. Their carefully scheduled makeout sessions, and her related curiosity, had never felt passionate so much as academic.
Not that there wasn’t real want there. It just had its limits.
But as Padma dabs the baby pink lotion carefully onto the mosquito bites, her square fingers pressing gingerly against Daphne’s pale back, brushing accidentally at the edge of her hiked up Camp Pigwidgeon shirt, something low and reckless stirs within her. Words like desire are not exactly allowed. But what she feels is close enough that she has the sense to be frightened by it.
She looks up at the mirror again, at them together, to find Daphne staring at her. Her eyes are blue, and Padma doesn’t know exactly what that look is. Something sad, possibly beseeching. This close, even in the terrible mirror, she can see flecks of green in them, of gray. The tiniest dot of something warm, like honey. Her long dark blonde hair is pulled high on her head in a sloppy pony. Daphne’s tough but she’s delicate too.
For some stupid reason, Padma wants to run her fingers over her fine cheekbones, her dainty nose.
All of the mosquito bites are covered, but she doesn’t want to move her hands.
The huge metal door creaks and clangs open, and Lavender bursts through in a cloud of perfume and abrasive pastels, a tri-color Caboodle in tow.
Padma and Daphne jump back from each other as though burnt.
“Oooooh!” Lavender says brightly as she makes a beeline for one of the battered gray toilet stalls. “I have some on my back I can’t reach! Will one of you do me next?”
Padma locks eyes with Daphne, but she’s not sure what she’s trying to convey or what confirmation she’s looking for, and the sound of Lavender prattling on about how much her mosquito bites itch while she pees completely destroys what little ambiance there was to begin with.
The moment is irretrievably broken. Padma looks down, and Daphne turns away.
“Are you going to shower in those?” Daphne asks with unmasked disdain. Her face twists skeptically as she squints at Lavender’s sparkly pink jelly shoes, peeping out from under the stall door.
“Why not?” Lavender sounds perky even when she’s defensive. “They’re so much cuter than shower shoes, and they’re made of plastic. Who cares?”
Wordlessly, Padma collects her shower kit and hurries out as fast as her flip-flops will take her. She checks on her campers, who are all silent if not asleep, breathing heavily in the dark of the Eagle girls’ cabin. Once she is back in her narrow bed in the counselor cabin she stares, through the deep gray of the night, at the plywood of the top bunk overhead, trying desperately not to think of Daphne lying there approximately four feet above her.
Daphne’s Journal
Thursday, July 7, 1988
Her eyes are so liquid, almost black, but kind of soft. She just looks like someone who knows things.
She’s just . . . Quiet, but in a smart way. So many people are too fucking loud.
I could have killed Lavender. I almost felt like she was trying to tell me something, before that, with her eyes.
This is so stupid, anyway. She dated that milquetoast fuckwad for like fully a year. There’s no way she likes girls.
Why am I even writing any of this down, do I have a death wish?
Eyelash
Padma finds her leaning against the back of the Snake girls’ cabin, the smoke curling up from her semi-forbidden cigarette. They aren’t supposed to smoke on camp grounds, but almost everyone does. Daphne has a new model Walkman with Fontopia earphones, which Padma covets. She glances at Padma then slides the tiny bud out of one ear, assessing her neutrally.
“Are you going to report me?”
“Not if you share.” Padma slips in beside her, holding out her hand.
“You don’t smoke.” It isn’t a question.
“There’s plenty you don’t know about me.” Padma presses her lips together in a dry little smile. Still holding out her hand, she jabs Daphne gently with her elbow. Honestly, she doesn’t smoke that much, usually only at parties, but she is trying to broadcast a message, perhaps telepathically: I am like you. We are the same.
“Aren’t you going to be a doctor or something?” Daphne grumbles, but she fishes out a cigarette and a lighter from the pocket of her denim skirt and hands them over. She watches with interest as Padma lights the cigarette and inhales, then passes the lighter back to her.
Padma shrugs. “Supposedly. I might go into journalism instead. I’d like to. But it would really piss my parents off.”
Daphne snorts. “Something else we have in common.” She gives Padma a long once-over as she pulls on her cigarette, looking her right in the eye as she exhales. Padma does her best to meet her stare evenly, as though standing within ten feet of Daphne Greengrass doesn’t feel extremely dangerous. Something within her may ignite without permission. “It’s not your day off, is it?”
Padma breathes out a puff of smoke, hoping she looks elegant and casual and not like a complete idiot. “It’s my fifteen.”
Daphne looks cute in her civilian clothes, and Padma fusses with the neck of her dorky camp tee, wishing she was wearing anything else. The air is thick, humid, and it is hot even in the narrow strip of shade. “What are you listening to?”
Daphne passes her the free earbud, and Padma is immediately assaulted by Morrisey’s loud warble.
And in the darkened underpass
I thought oh God, my chance has come at last
(but then a strange fear gripped me and I
Just couldn't ask)
She can’t bear to look at Daphne right now, so she stares into the dappled light of the sparse woods before them. And then she can’t bear not to look at Daphne, so she glances over. Daphne immediately looks away, taking a drag of her cigarette, brushing her hair out of her eyes. The song is going to swallow them. Padma wants the moment to last forever and also needs it to end immediately.
“I like this one,” Padma says, turning back towards the trees, “but their self-titled album is better.”
“You know The Smiths?” Daphne wears scuffed Docs and appears vaguely disaffected but there is something about her voice that is distinctly upper crust. She seems, always, like she is trying to unpolish herself. She probably had to take diction lessons as a kid or something.
“I know things,” Padma says only a little defensively, flicking ash away. She tucks a strand of loose black hair back behind her ear. She is starting to feel dizzy and she would like to blame it on the cigarette, so she stubs it out carefully, even though she’s only smoked half of it.
“I still think you’re a philistine,” Daphne says, but there is something warm in her tone. It feels like she’s giving Padma shit, but in the way you only bother to do if you actually care about someone. “The Queen is Dead is a masterpiece.”
“It’s a good album.” Padma gives a little shrug as she says it, like she is humoring Daphne, even though it really is a good album and they both know it. Daphne just rolls her eyes and shakes her head, but her lips are quirking up in the cutest way.
“Freeze,” Padma says quietly, and Daphne stills, looking at her. She strokes her thumb from the side of Daphne’s nose and under her eye, where a loose eyelash is fluttering against her skin.
For a moment it seems that they’ve both stopped breathing.
Padma presents her thumb, the eyelash resting daintily upon it. She lowers it to just in front of Daphne’s mouth. “Make a wish.”
Daphne blows. A warm breeze of tobacco and Dr. Pepper lip balm wafts over Padma. She feels the eyelash land, improbably, on her own lower lip. Before she can brush it off, Daphne lifts her thumb and draws it, with torturous solemnity, over Padma’s lip.
Neither one of them looks away.
“So is my wish going to come true or not?” Daphne asks. As always, she is bewildering, unreadable. A little defiant, with her other hand on her hip like that, in her fitted black tee and tight jean skirt. Her cigarette has gone out.
Padma hates that, up close, every cliche about blue eyes is true. She hates that they are ocean eyes, eyes like the sea after a storm. She hates that she wants to drown in them, earnestly and unironically.
Anything could happen right now. And it almost does.
But in the space between almost and irrevocable, Padma’s walkie talkie beeps, and a shrill voice stutters out through the static. “Padma! Where are you? Rose Zeller fell and skinned her knee. I’ve got to take her to Nurse Pomfrey, but I need you to watch the other kids.”
Padma removes her earbud, and the cinematic swell of the music is replaced by the mundane soundtrack of camp: crickets, a generator humming, children screeching in the distance. The heat is suddenly oppressive and her limbs feel heavy. The world is too bright. She presses down the red button. “Copy that. Sorry, Lavender. Lost track of time.”
“Fine, but get down here!”
Padma passes the remaining half of her cigarette back to Daphne, because cigarettes are a currency here. Their fingers touch, barely.
“I think it just depends on if you want it to come true or not.” Padma regrets it immediately. The thing she might have said before they were interrupted, said several moments too late.
“What does?” Daphne says, yanking out her other earbud and fully joining Padma in the listless, disappointing reality of Camp Pigwidgeon.
“Your wish.” Padma looks down, half smiling. She starts to walk away, but something pulls at her. Cursing herself for it, she looks back over her shoulder.
Daphne has been watching her go. She crinkles her eyes at Padma, a smile that doesn’t quite reach her mouth, and raises her hand in a salute. “Copy that.”
Padma sweats through her shirt before she gets halfway to the kickball field.
Daphne’s Journal
Friday, July 15, 1988
Working at camp is whatever, but at least I can make some of my own money so I don’t have to go back home. I have no idea what I’m doing with my life, but I know I’m not going back there.
Some of the people here are actually okay. There’s a girl from California who’s pretty cool. And some of the usual suspects who aren’t that bad.
Far better than not bad, though I don’t know why I can’t stop feeling this way.
What is she doing to me? What does she want from me?
It feels like a trick. And I don’t know how anything good could come of it.
And if a double-decker bus
Crashes into us
To die by your side
Is such a heavenly way to die
Checking for Ticks
Camp is fine, fun even, sometimes, as summer jobs go. But by the fourth week, Padma is fixed on the future, long-anticipated and now finally rising up right in front of her in shining spires. She is unmoved by the endless parade of capture the flag and homesick campers and relentless humidity and uninspiring institutional food and songs about socks. She has made enough lanyards to last a lifetime.
Padma daydreams about the affordable studio apartment in Boston she has already signed the lease on, not too far from campus. With her full-ride scholarship and a part-time job, it should be manageable. She is already decorating it in her mind with a simple black futon. Mentally stocking her kitchen with ramen noodles, daydreaming of visiting historical sites on weekends. She feels acute longing for a list of textbooks that she knows will be waiting for her in a few more weeks.
Although there is something here that still occupies her attention, distressingly. Someone.
Someone on the outside — Hermione, maybe, or Fleur — might say that she and Daphne have become friends. An easy camaraderie has blossomed between them, something that was never there in the years they’d been at camp together in the past. The hidden aspect of it, though, the undeniable more of it, has expanded like a balloon in Padma’s rib cage. There is no longer room for her to breathe.
Padma shakes herself from her thoughts and helps Susie tie off her lanyard. She compartmentalizes her way through lunch, successfully thwarting one of Josh’s daily attempts at starting a food fight by seizing a green Jello cup from his hand just before it goes airborne. That kid is truly the bane of Camp Pigwidgeon.
In the afternoon, Charlie leads a surprisingly successful camp-wide game of Manhunt in the woods, and despite the languid apathy that has hung like a low cloud over the camp for the past week, all of the counselors become surprisingly invested. By the end of the game, which, improbably, Josh has somehow won, Padma and Daphne are dirt-smeared and breathless as they head towards the outdoor showers.
They are barely in the changing stall when Daphne chucks her camp ringer tee on the bench and stands before her in a slightly shiny white bra. “Check me for ticks?”
Padma is tangled in her own uniform tee, so she shrugs it all the way off, standing there awkwardly in her white cotton sports bra. Walking towards Daphne is like moving underwater.
Standing slightly behind her, Padma traces a finger over Daphne’s back. She lifts Daphne’s left arm and then her right, inspecting her smooth armpits. She runs a finger gingerly under the band of her bra, pulling it back to make sure there aren’t any bugs there.
She smooths her hands down Daphne’s flanks, one hand on each side, feeling her breath catch. This is not strictly necessary, and she half-expects Daphne to pull back or look at her in alarm.
Instead, Daphne lifts both of her arms and puts her hands on the nape of her own neck, using her fingers to comb her hair up. She stands there, bold as anything in only her bra with her elbows up, her honey hair cascading through her fingers, and glances back at Padma through the crook of her elbow with one brow arched. “Check my neck?”
The balloon in Padma’s ribcage abruptly bursts.
Devoid of anything approaching thought, Padma tightens her left hand on Daphne’s side, slides it along her waist. She runs her right hand up over her back and combs it up through the hair that has fallen loose from Daphne’s hands, until her hand is resting over Daphne’s hands, tangled in her golden mane. There are no ticks on Daphne’s neck, but Padma is suddenly certain that was not ever the point of this exercise. She lowers her mouth to Daphne’s elegant, delicate neck.
Daphne makes a soft noise, then stills. She slowly disentangles herself.
Perhaps Padma has miscalculated, which would be an incomprehensible mistake. Her heart is in her throat, and she mentally prepares herself to be slapped. If Daphne tells anyone, to have her credibility at camp destroyed.
If her parents find out, to be disowned.
But Daphne just turns and faces her, looking very small. She rests her tiny hand on Padma’s arm.
“You don’t like girls,” Daphne says. It isn’t a question.
“I like people.” Padma shrugs. No one ever seems to believe this, but it’s true.
Not that she’s told many people. It isn’t something they seem to want to hear.
Daphne’s arms are crossed, and she’s biting her lip. Something has crumpled in her face, and all at once Padma sees that she is afraid too.
“Hey.” Padma tucks one finger, very softly, under Daphne’s chin. Daphne looks up at her and waits. “I like you.” She throws herself into Daphne’s eyes, bracing for the undertow.
Anything could happen right now.
And it does.
Daphne walks across the concrete floor and fastens the latch on the pine door. The golden hour light is slanting in through the space above and below the door. Otherwise, it is darker in here. Hushed.
Daphne closes the space between them. Padma threads one hand through the hair at the nape of her neck and finally, finally brushes her lips against Daphne’s perfect mouth.
Kissing Daphne is not like kissing Michael Corner at all. It is better in every way.
For one thing, her lips are soft. Everything about her is deliciously soft.
For another, a current runs between them and Padma is pretty sure they have invented electricity.
It turns out desire is the right word after all. And Padma will say it, sing it out, pour it into Daphne’s mouth, whether it is allowed or not.
Daphne’s Journal
Thursday, July 28, 1988
I still don’t know what I’m going to do this year. Whatever my parents are least likely to be able to spin into some socially acceptable half-truth, probably.
I guess I could just go backpack around Europe, but god, what a cliche. And then they’d tell all their friends that I’m “abroad.” And also. . .
There’s nothing stopping me, really, from moving to Boston. Except perhaps stalking laws.
Let me sleep on the floor of your sensible apartment, I want to tell her. Let me microwave frozen dinners for you while you study. Let me be the imperfect mark on your otherwise pristine life.
What even is this? What are we doing?
God, I hope no one ever finds this fucking journal.
Stay
Padma’s watch alarm goes off at 5:45 am on the last day of camp. From where she’s muffled it under her pillow, it is loud enough to wake her up but quiet enough that it shouldn’t disturb anyone else. Across the cabin, Hermione snores and turns over. Creeping out of her bunk quietly, Padma climbs onto the first step of the ladder and taps Daphne’s foot until she feels her twitch awake.
The grounds of Camp Pigwidgeon are still quiet this early, pensive with dew and birdsong. Perhaps Percy Weasley is doing calisthenics somewhere, but there’s not a soul in sight. Tonight there will be a dance, and tomorrow everyone will go home. Right now, though, it’s just them.
Bundled in sweatshirts, Padma and Daphne sit on the long L-shaped dock, facing east, dangling their bare feet in the cold, still water.
It is a really nice sunrise.
“Daph—” Padma turns to her, grasping her hand. Daphne looks back at her with sad eyes. Like it’s the end of an era.
“Yeah?”
“Come stay with me in Boston.” It isn’t a question.
Daphne is looking blankly out over Black Lake, so Padma continues. “For a little bit, at least. I don’t want to stop you from doing whatever you end up wanting to do but—” Daphne finally looks back at her, and Padma swallows. “—I’m not ready to say goodbye yet either.”
“Really?” Daphne’s voice is small.
“Really really,” Padma says, squeezing her hand.
“Okay,” Daphne says, and her smile lights up her entire face. Padma takes a quick glance around and then wraps her arms around her. Daphne kisses her softly, tenderly, her fingers trailing sparks against Padma’s back.
Perhaps they get a little bit carried away.
They’re startled apart by a small squeaking noise. Padma pulls back to see Lavender in a rumpled dress, clearly slinking back from wherever she spent the night, her jelly shoes squelching in the wet grass. Grinning widely, she flashes them a double thumbs up.
Daphne’s face is frozen in horror. But Lavender looks so happy for them that Padma's worries start to fade. She flashes a shy smile at Lavender and holds one finger over her lips. With the other hand, she squeezes Daphne’s hand reassuringly.
Lavender nods enthusiastically, still beaming, and mimes zipping her lip and throwing the key in the lake.
Daphne’s Journal
Wednesday, August 10, 1988
Padma’s apartment is pretty nice. We’re finally moved all the way in, not that we really have too much stuff.
I got a job at a coffee shop a few blocks away. It’s not forever, but I like the idea of taking a little time to figure out what I want to do next. And whatever this is, it’s good. I want to give it a chance.
We spent today moving furniture and unpacking, so we got pizza. Now she’s looking over her orientation materials in her sweatpants while I write this.
She’s so fucking cute.
I swear, I could die happy.