Chapter Text
In the weeks leading up to Camp Rock, Ryan finds himself uncharacteristically fatalistic. There’s a pervading fear of impending catastrophe that’s completely unfounded for someone who’s had as good a life as he has, but that’s kind of the point—statistically, he’s got to get his hopes crushed at some point, right, to lose something important to him, and he’s so scared it’s going to be this. Time at camp is steeped in oversaturation and played in a major key in his memory. It’s magical, a dimension unto itself, and every year, it feels impossible that he’d be allowed that much happiness again.
This year in particular, too—as a dance instructor for the junior campers rather than a program participant himself, he’ll have a lot more freedom, with none of the late-night responsibility and lack of privacy that would come with being a counselor. An entire summer with Kelsi and without Sharpay, something he’s literally never experienced in his life—it makes sense that he keeps feeling like it’s too good to be true.
“I don’t get why you’re so excited about this, anyway,” Sharpay says, sipping the first of what’s sure to be many strawberry daiquiris this summer (virgin, of course—well, mostly). “You’re going to be working all summer.” She wrinkles her nose, and Ryan rolls his eyes.
“Yeah, teaching dance. It’s not like I’m going to be lifeguarding.” They grimace in tandem; his skin is not cut out for that much sun. “Besides, you used to love camp.”
“Yeah, when I was like thirteen,” she huffs, and he doesn’t mention how she sobbed all through the Final Jam jam session and the whole plane ride home last year. She’s convincing herself she’s more grown up when she pretends not to give a shit, or something, and nothing Ryan does is going to talk her out of it, so he may as well just ride it out. “You’ll call me, though, right?” she adds after a second, forgetting to make it come out as an order, and he tips his piña colada in her direction and holds it there until she clinks her own glass against the rim.
“Promise,” he says. “Ms. Darbus finally got wifi that reaches all of the staff cabins, so we can Skype, too.”
Sharpay nods, mollified by this, and launches into her plan to win both the Star Dazzle Award (again) and the eye of the senior from NYC who vacations at the country club every summer and has, Ryan points out, never so much as glanced in her direction. Sharpay, of course, is undeterred. “It’s summer, Ry,” she says, sweeping her drink in a grand gesture to the pool, the sun, the high thread count towels he’ll be longing for after about two showers in the freezing cold water. “Everything changes.”
Well, he thinks, hopefully not everything.
*
“Excuse me, can I get an autograph?” Ryan asks. “I’m a huge fan.”
Kelsi turns, startled, and her entire face lights up when she realizes it’s him; she throws her arms around his neck and Ryan drops his (very expensive) bags in the grass to hug her back, still memorizing the expression on her face in all of its three dimensions, high definition that’s impossible to translate through a laptop screen. It’s been over six months since his parents flew her out to Newport for a week as a Christmas present, and he’s felt her absence in his chest and gut and veins every second since then, wishing she was with him in a way that texts between classes and IMs late into the night can’t fully sate, although he’d rather have her in his life like that than not at all. He tries not to live for their time together, as if the rest of his life doesn’t matter, but things are different at camp; six-week intensive music and dance programs tend to attract a certain kind of applicant, so Ryan has always been relaxed here in a way he can’t be at school. No one squints at his outfits or does a double-take when he sings about a boy; most of them are wearing and doing the exact same kind of thing. It’s like if the theater department were all of his classes at school, in which case, maybe he’d have better attendance.
“I love all of my pursuits during the year,” Ms. Darbus says during her opening speech every year, “but here” —deep inhale, like it’s the atmosphere here rather than the oxygen that she needs to keep living, and sharp exhale with a relieved smile— “I’m a square peg in a square hole.” And Ryan feels that, has every summer since he was thirteen, not the feeling of coming home so much as leaving behind the expectation that he has one. Creating a space where he fits by virtue of embracing how much he doesn’t.
“We’re in cabin 23,” Kelsi says, pushing her messenger bag higher on her shoulder, and Ryan nods.
“After you,” he says, gesturing at the path with a slight bow.
“You just want me to clear any spiderwebs,” she accuses, laughing, and Ryan grins. She knows him so well, better even than Sharpay, who for all intents and purposes is an extension of his person more often than not, and vice versa.
It’s good to be back.
Their cabin is between the older campers’ and the pro staff’s, an apt visual metaphor for the in-between phase they're in. The camp wasn’t at risk of going under, Ms. Darbus had assured them, but hiring two seventeen-year-olds for the competitive rate of room, board, and 24/7 access to the practice rooms would definitely make things easier than paying the salaries of professionals for the summer. And the experience will look great on their applications to Juilliard, even moreso because it’s technically volunteering. Win-win, even if the new dynamic may take some getting used to. Plus, they get to share a cabin now, and Kelsi is happy to give Ryan the full decorative freedom he’s deserved for years.
First, curtains on the windows, and mattress toppers on both their beds—Ryan brought two, because he knew Kelsi wouldn’t buy one for herself—and then photos on the walls, perfectly spaced (him and Sharpay, mostly, and plenty of Boi), and his poster signed by Adam Lambert from when he and Kelsi went to see a show from the Wicked tour together two years ago. Their cabin has four beds, and between the two of them they eventually manage to shove the two spare ones together, piling them with pillows once they get the sheets on. (That part takes a while, because the maid usually makes Ryan’s bed at home, but he’s not about to mention that. Kelsi makes fun of him for it when she comes to visit enough to last the whole year.)
“I swear, you and your fucking Mary Poppins bag,” Kelsi says, shaking her head in disbelief once they’ve got the place set up. Okay, so he brought a desk lamp that clips to the bed frame since there aren’t any actual desks, and a box fan, and a few collapsible storage systems for the bathroom and his shoes and stuff, nothing outrageous. And the rug, but like, the wood floor is a fucking safety hazard, okay, no way is he about to get a splinter when he gets up to go pee in the middle of the night. There isn’t a decent pedicurist in a hundred-mike radius.
“You love it,” Ryan says, and he’s not wrong; she certainly isn’t complaining about the extra set of bamboo sheets he “happened” to bring in her favorite shade of green. It coordinates nicely with his preferred hot pink, which is why they’re perfect for each other.
“Guilty as charged,” Kelsi agrees happily, and he hugs her again, just because he can.
Ryan goes on a walk before dinner, partly to revel in the luxury of his unstructured schedule and partly to remind himself this is real. The wind from the lake is a lot less painful than pinching himself, and it isn’t even intense enough to threaten his hat’s carefully-angled perch on his head yet. He wanders past the cabins and towards the mess hall, figuring he’ll scope out the practice room, see if the staff sign-ups for rehearsal slots are open yet. When he gets to the side entrance, though, he stops with his hand on the door handle. It seems somebody’s beaten him to it; soft but confident piano music drifts out to the porch, a strong voice joining it after a few measures, warm and melancholy. “I know the world can see me in a way that's different than who I am,” they sing, “Creating space to leave me, ‘cause they don’t understand. I need some faith, please give me strength, strength to believe…” Ryan catches himself holding his breath, hoping they’ll keep going, hoping that the chorus, whatever it is, will let some of that building tension crash down into momentum. He isn’t disappointed.
“We're breakin’ free,” the singer announces, proclaims it so desperately Ryan aches at the center of his rib cage, “We're soarin', flyin', there's not a star in heaven that we can't reach if we're tryin'. Yeah, we're breakin' free—oh, we're breakin' free!” Ryan feels rocked to his core in the way he really only gets during a concert or a long cry, but he knows the longing in those lyrics, he’s lived it. He stands on the porch trying to both catch his breath and keep back tears, and in the thirty seconds it takes him to get presentable and prevent his mascara from getting all over himself, the singer must leave, because when he opens the door, the practice room is deserted.
*
The food tonight is better than the sum total of every meal last summer, which is promising, and the mess hall is buzzing as campers speculate about the upcoming Opening Night Jam performances. A few slots at the end of the night are reserved for staff, and Ryan made sure to snag one before getting a tray for his food. He and Kelsi have been planning this for weeks, emailing lyrics back and forth and rehearsing on Skype, which was kind of a nightmare but will definitely be worth it tonight.
If Ryan can stop thinking about the mystery singer long enough to perform, that is.
“Have you heard this song before?” he asks Kelsi, and hums a few bars. She tilts her head, considering.
“Not that I’m aware of. Why?”
He explains about overhearing it from outside the practice room, the illogically profound connection he felt to the lyrics about defying societal expectations and living to tell about it—not only that, but relishing in it, rejoicing in it. “It hit hard,” he finishes, an understatement that Kelsi lets slide.
“Well, maybe they were practicing for the open mic tonight,” she suggests, and Ryan blinks.
“Kelsi, you’re a genius.” He hopes she’s right.
She pats him on the shoulder. “Oh, I know, dear.”
One welcoming speech and eleven volunteers later, though, and Ryan hasn’t had any luck. There are a few covers, including one particularly inventive variation on a Whitney Houston song, and Ryan jots down a few notes on a napkin about the younger performers’ choreography styles (or lack thereof, but that’s okay, that’s what he’s here for), but while the original numbers are good, none of them bring him to the brink of tears thinking about the freedom found outside of heteronormative society and gender roles, so. Maybe his bar is a bit high.
“And now,” Ms. Darbus says at the end of the evening, eyes positively twinkling, “a special treat from the winners of last year’s Final Jam.” A ripple of curious chatter travels through the mess hall, first year campers craning their necks to glimpse the cleared section of the floor that’s serving as a makeshift stage. Kelsi grins at him, and Ryan winks at her before they step forward together.
The acoustics in the mess hall frankly suck—you’d think a music camp maybe could’ve planned accordingly if they wanted to have performances there every first night of the summer, but Ms. Darbus had bought the property from some sports program and the remodeling budget had mostly gone to making the auditorium serviceable. She always says the setting makes people more comfortable putting themselves out there the first night, knowing there’s a ceiling (literally) on how good you can sound. Ryan isn’t sure whether that’s true or not, but he knows hearing the faintest trace of their own voices bouncing back at them makes him grin, yet another proof that they’re here together, interference far more welcome than the static on a Skype call.
“All I wanna do,” they sing together, simple and triumphant and honest, “is be with you,” and Ryan’s heart is too full to fit behind his sternum, insistent and proud the way it only gets when he’s texting her, talking to her, with her. Despite the centrality of the theme in his career of choice, he doesn’t really believe in romantic soulmates, but platonic ones? It’d be hard not to, after Kelsi looked at his bratty and awkward fifteen-year-old self sprawled across the mess hall floor and decided yeah, that one, that’s the kid she would stick next to through infinite rich people problems and boy drama and homework assignments and squabbles over key changes. And it goes both ways, of course—there’s no way Ryan won’t make her move out of her shitty parents’ house and in with him the second she graduates, no mountain he wouldn’t pay someone else to move for her, no nail he wouldn’t break. He wears the novelty t-shirts she gave him for the past two birthdays in public. He loves her more than anything in the world.
Kelsi gets the whole crowd clapping at the second chorus, bouncing and waving at everyone to stand up, move, sing along. She’s been a force of nature as long as he’s known her, but since their performance at Final Jam last year, she’s started to make that more obvious to others around her. The campers join in at her encouragement, picking up on the lyrics easily enough and belting them out with all the emotion Ryan feels: “No matter where life takes us, nothing can break us apart, you know it’s true—I just wanna be with you.”
The applause is loud enough for him to feel it in his bones. Ryan beams and squeezes Kelsi’s hand tight when they bow, letting the energy chase away the last of his concerns. He’s got a good feeling about this summer.