Chapter 21

Lacey woke with Abby a few inches away from her in bed. She felt confused. Then she remembered the night before. It had been her own idea to sleep in the same bed, and nothing weird had happened. Abby had been crushed by the events at the party and Lacey was worried about her, despite the lanky redhead’s insistence that she wouldn’t do “anything like that”. Probably she really wouldn’t, Lacey thought, but it was hard to know just what anyone would do in an emotional crisis, so she’d told Abby to lay in her bed and the girl had agreed.

Before they went to sleep, Lacey had gone to the ice machine to make an ice pack and put it on Abby’s bruises. “I can’t believe I lost a fight,” Abby said as Lacey tended to her, referring to the fight with Todd.

“Well it was to a boy,” Lacey said.

“I only lost because I fought him honorably, that was my mistake,” Abby said pridefully, “I should have kicked him in the balls.”

“Damn straight!” Lacey agreed with a laugh. “Any boy who fights a girl deserves that and more.”

Lacey put away the ice and lay down. Abby pulled the sheets over them but didn’t try to cuddle up. “Thanks, Lacey,” Abby said, “You’re a true friend.”

And that had been that. Abby slept through the night. Lacey had never expected to comfort her tough roommate like that, but it had been a traumatic evening. They fought off the bully lifeguards, more or less, but the actual trauma had been from Laura Ballard in her business casual attire, manipulating everybody and somehow driving a wedge between Abby and Nicole. Yeah, Lacey thought, they were lesbians, but did that give Nicole’s family the right to be so cruel? In Lacey’s own family, if a girl was found to be a lesbian, the family would kick her ass. In a rich family like the Ballard’s, the treatment was much more sophisticated, that was for sure, with threats about trust funds and reputations at college, but it didn’t seem any more humane, especially with all the stuff Laura and her family had done to hurt the group just so Nicole and Abby would break up.

It was evil. There wasn’t much Lacey could do about it, she was just a waitress, after all. She had hoped to come back to Summer Lake, the money was good here and it was a pleasant place to spend the summer, but she couldn’t imagine returning now, and there were plenty of places to go be a waitress. Maybe she’d go to Hawaii or California next summer.

Well, there was one thing she still could do this summer. She wasn’t sure if it would even fix anything, and it might actually put the final nail in the coffin of the group, but she had to do it. She carefully got out of bed, so as to let Abby stay sleeping peacefully, then threw on stretchy shorts and a pink cotton tank top and ran a comb through her hair. She wrote Abby a note then went over to the boy’s side of the room where she knocked on Nick and Eric’s door.

Nick opened the door in his boxers. “Oh hey Lacey,” he said, sleepily, “You’re up early.”

“Is Eric here?” she asked.

“No, he’s working till three putting gardens to bed, whatever that means,” Nick said.

“Did Eric tell you what happened last night?” she asked.

“Pretty much,” Nick said somberly, “Laura bitched you out and upset everyone, and got Nicole to go back with her. Eric told me what happened, but he didn’t really understand why any of it happened. You know Eric. He’s just worried about Abby.”

Lacey extended her hands to her boyfriend’s chest, pushing him back a few steps, then walked into the room and closed the door behind her. He gave a disappointed look as he realized this wasn’t a romantic gesture.

“So, why are you telling Laura Ballard all the group’s secrets?” Lacey asked bluntly. She didn’t normally get worked up about things, people walked all over her and there wasn’t much she could do about it, but Nick betraying the group seemed like something she couldn’t overlook.

Nick looked at her, having gone from hoping for horny sex to seeming full of shame, but he didn’t say anything yet.

“Laura knew all about Abby’s cross-dressing, and other things that only people in the group knew. That narrowed it down to you, Esmie, or I guess Eric. But she also knew about you and me on the roof. That only left you, Nick.”

“Okay,” Nick said, “But can I explain myself?”

Lacey looked at him dubiously.

“They were holding back all my money from this summer,” Nick said, “And I’m not in a situation to fight it.”

Lacey sighed. “That’s it? Nick, you’re a real pussy.”

He sighed and didn’t even get mad. “Yeah, I guess I am,” he said. “What was I supposed to do? Sue Summer Lake, as an illegal immigrant, in a county I’m leaving in a day, where they’re the biggest employer and taxpayer? Mitch probably plays golf with the judge. My family’s poor as dirt, Lacey. I can’t go home without a nickel.”

“I mean, I think you go to the state department of labor before any of that, file a complaint,” Lacey said, “I doubt Mitch Ballard has much sway there.”

Nick looked at her in surprise.

“Every Larue is a high school dropout. We know all about working lousy jobs and getting screwed by the boss,” she explained.

“Well it’s still an academic point now,” Nick said, sitting down on his unmade bed, head in hands. “I did their dirty work and now they’re gonna pay me my 30 pieces of silver. I’m a pussy, like you said. But they’re the Ballard’s, they always win over losers like us. Just like Mitch is running this place even though he got fired for some scandal with a girl younger than Esmie when he worked here on staff. The Ballard’s are filthy rich though so he just came back and bought the place, doesn’t matter what your personnel file says if you’ve got eight figures in the bank.”

“Wait, what?” Lacey said, sitting down next to her boyfriend.

“Oh, I found the Summer Lake archives,” he said, “Remember I told you about those old photos of the jazz bands and Cab Calloway and the set-lists from the 1940s?”

“Yeah, you just told me you found all this boring old stuff, not the fucking discipline records.”

“Well it’s only to 1985,” Nick said.

“And that stuff about Mitch is really in there?”

“Yeah,” Nick replied.

“Anything else we can blackmail them with?” Lacey asked.

Nick laughed, obviously not taking her seriously. “Yeah, photos of Mitch in blackface, and Laura too. Apparently they used to have a Minstrel Show themed party and slave auction, back before political correctness came to the North Woods. But the real thing was Mitch got caught fooling around with a girl under 12 back when he was a lifeguard, according to the file. He’s a monster.”

“Lovely,” Lacey said sarcastically, “Nick, you had this and you let them push you around?”

“Yeah,” he said, as if not seeing the connection. “It was almost 20 years ago, the statute of limitations has long since expired.”

“This is the hospitality industry. Do you know how much they fear negative publicity? A newspaper article about the creeps running Summer Lake would ruin this place. Their regular customers are dying off and the last thing they want is to scare away the few families interested in bringing their kids here. Plus Mitch wants to be loved by everybody, and make Laura some kind of big-shot politician or something one day. They’d do anything to avoid people knowing what they’re really like.”

“Lacey, we can’t just blackmail the Ballard’s, have you been listening to anything I’ve said? People like that always come out on top in life.”

Lacey sighed. “Nick, you more than anyone destroyed the group. You should see how Abby is. Nicole went back with Laura last night, mostly because she knew someone in the group sold us out. And that somebody was you. I don’t know why you think you even have a choice here.”

Nick looked at her and blinked, then gave a stoic look. “My last chance to not be a pussy, huh?”

“Bingo.”

Nick sighed. She thought he probably wanted to argue that it was too risky, that he had a lot of money on the line, or worse yet he’d say that he just wouldn’t do it and they’d break up. It was his choice, ultimately. It’s not like she could actually make him do anything. Most people would take the sure money rather than blackmail their boss, it was a rather crazy idea.

But she and Nick weren’t most people. “Fine, let’s do this,” he said with a sigh.

“Only thing is,” Lacey said, “Didn’t Laura take her keys back? How are we gonna in there to get the documents? We’ll need them for this.”

“I had Eric make me copies of all her keys first.”

Lacey laughed. “Oh of course,” she said, “You always knew you weren’t gonna sell us out in the end, right?”

“Yeah let’s go with that,” Nick said with a grin. “Well, before we commit career suicide, there’s one other dumb thing I meant to do before we ship out.”

Lacey looked at him curiously as he took out his pocket knife. Her boyfriend carved “Nick Sanchez ‘90” into the beat-up wooden dresser, with the names of several other employees going back to the summer of ‘79. He offered Lacey the knife and she wrote her name under his.

Then Nick took the knife wordlessly and carved a heart around their names.

Esmie was going to miss many things about Summer Lake, but working at the concession stand wasn’t one of them. The customers were rude, it was so miserable cooking food in that hot cinder block shack, and worst of all was the smell of that awful lettuce. The other employees had treated her pretty lousy all summer, following the boss’s cue, and she felt like half of it was because her skin was brown and the other half was that she hung out with Abby’s group. They ignored her or gave her the worst tasks, and didn’t invite her to anything after work.

It didn’t matter, though. A job was a job. Her parents worked much worse jobs than this and she actually made pretty decent money here. Combined with the free housing for the summer and not spending lavishly, she’d saved up almost a thousand dollars. It wasn’t as much as her brother, but he got paid much more and he lived like a miser, and he was older so it was more expected of him to be responsible. Even teenagers older than her spent all their summer earnings already, just yesterday Lacey had bought two shopping bags worth of dumb stuff from the lobby gift shop to give her relatives back in Florida as if she’d been up here as a silly tourist.

Many of the guests had cleared out by now, as it was early afternoon on Monday and the last of the official Labor Day events concluded at one, and the big end-of-season gala had been the night before. The lobby had been thick with guests checking out that morning, and now only the die-hards remained to stay until the evening when Summer Lake finally, truly closed for the season at sundown. There was a closing ceremony of sorts but it wasn’t anything the resort official promoted.

Nevertheless, the closing was an annual tradition for the staff and most frequent guests. Nick said it was all very sappy and something like “only in America do people get so sentimental about a for-profit resort briefly pausing its frenzied swallowing of every tourism dollar in sight”, but that was her brother for you. Esmie was glad to be getting off at three-thirty and free to enjoy the closing festivities. Then she just had to run away with Eric. That was all. She tried not to think too much about that just yet.

As her shift was winding down she was surprised to see Abby waiting in line. With the concession stand closing for the summer in a few hours, the usual order of the place was breaking down and she easily slid onto the register to take the last few orders before Abby made it to the front of the line. She was wearing her lifeguard’s bathing suit and looked to have on heavy makeup, which was unusual for Abby.

“Hey,” Esmie said, “What can I get you, Abby? On the house of course.”

Abby smirked. “Ooh well in that case ... four cheeseburgers, two baskets of fries, two chocolate milkshakes...”

“What are you pregnant?” Esmie teased. Only once the words were out of her mouth did she realize the irony, having thought she herself was pregnant just a week prior.

“Oh yeah, you know I’m such a likely candidate to get knocked up,” Abby joked back. “Just get me whatever you can without getting in trouble.”

Esmie shrugged. “What do I care about that today? I’ll get all that stuff if you really want it.”

Just then someone dropped all the ice out of a big bag onto the floor, and Esmie turned around to see some co-workers running around frantically, while another pair were making out by the soda machine. Their boss was nowhere to be seen.

“Chaos and pandemonium,” Abby said, “Lord of the Fries.”

“Oooh you’re so funny, Abby,” Esmie said, getting the joke.

“Anyway I’m ordering for me and your boyfriend, we’re waiting for you to get off,” Abby said, “I just finished my shift and so did he.”

“Oh okay, I think I’ll just duck out now actually with our food,” Esmie said, hearing a co-worker in the back yelling that they were running low on salads and cringing at the thought of being the one who had to make them.

“Okay but don’t get fired on my account.”

“Relax!” Esmie said, then took another order until someone could relieve her. Things were getting even more chaotic in back and a guy was angrily shaking the soft-serve machine which had gone on the fritz for the last time. He may have initially been trying to fix it but when two girls started cheering him on the shaking became more chaotic until soft serve started squirting everywhere. It provided the perfect distraction as Esmie stepped over bags of nacho chips and a half-used loaf of bread and grabbed up all the food she could then clocked out 10 minutes early and stepped out the back door.

Outside it felt somewhat more orderly and she gathered herself as she carried the bags of food over to a picnic table where the twins were waiting, Eric saving the seat next to him for her, and Abby across the table from them.

“Girl, you okay?” Esmie said as soon as she sat down and looked at her friend’s face.

Abby shrugged. “You noticed huh?”

“Yeah, I mean, you barely ever wear makeup and now you have it caked on,” Esmie said.

“I’m surprised Eric didn’t tell you, but I guess we all worked morning shifts,” Abby said, “We got into a scrape at the lifeguard party, all four of us.”

Esmie started looking over Eric’s body in concern, pulling his long sleeves up and finding many band-aids.

“Did girls claw you Eric?” she asked in a voice that surprised even herself with how jealous it sounded.

“Y-yeah, but just because I was hitting their boyfriends,” Eric said defensively, “Nick cleaned them and put on Neosporin.”

“You should have gotten me!” she pouted.

“It was early morning by the time we got in, baby, and I knew you had the early shift,” Eric said awkwardly.

She frowned but didn’t push it now, and Abby gave a rundown of what happened. She didn’t like it, but Abby, Eric, Nicole, and even Lacey were definitely the sorts to solve things with their fists rather than their brains, and she and Nick (who did solve things with their brains) had decided to let them have their night. She’d spent the evening with her brother, realizing it might be the last time she’d see him for a few months until the running away thing blew over.

It did upset Esmie to learn about what Laura Ballard did, which was much worse than the physical fight. Laura came in with all her sneaky information and managed to get Nicole and Abby to break up, which was a real shame.

“So Nicole left the group?” Esmie asked sadly. “The bad guys won?”

“I can’t really blame her,” Abby said glumly, “We told her we were so great, that the group was so powerful ... then we worked with her family against her.”

“They tricked you,” Esmie said, “But didn’t you guys think about what the Ballard’s would do? Families like that don’t just let their perfect daughter become a lesbian and run off with her girlfriend.”

“Well she wasn’t running off with me, she was going to a school where she could be herself,” Abby said. “And maybe I’d join her there next year, but who knows?”

“My point is, you were playing it nice, doing what felt good ... but you’re up against the ultimate bullies who scheme and collude and do anything to get their way. Of course you lost.”

Abby sighed. “Well, that’s blunt, but I guess you’re right. They even knew stuff from inside the group, like how I cross-dressed that night. It was just an innocent thing to us, but she thought it meant all this awful stuff about how I secretly want to be a man. It’s just not true.”

Esmie took Abby’s hand across the table, sensing the strong girl was near tears, which was rather shocking since she was pretty sure Abby hadn’t cried all summer about anything.

“Wait, stuff from inside the group?”

“Yeah,” Abby said.

“Well it wasn’t me,” Esmie said awkwardly.

“Abby just told me who it is, we know now,” Eric said with a bit of Batman-style vengeance in his voice. Esmie would normally like that in her boyfriend, but with a sinking feeling, she knew it must be directed against her brother now.

“Let me deal with him, baby,” Esmie said, “For all his intelligence sometimes he overthinks things. They probably tricked him too.”

“Lacey left a note saying she’d handle it,” Abby said, “I’m not getting my hopes up, but we should let her try.”

Everyone ate for a while as if drowning their sorrows in junk food. Esmie even had an excuse, her clothes were still loose and she needed to put on weight to get healthy again. Eric knew she needed to gain weight and kept pushing more food over to her.

“So, what now?” Esmie asked eventually. “Are you gonna try to make up with Nicole?”

“Seems a little late for that,” Abby said, then sighed. “I mean, she was my first girlfriend, I wanted to try to be with her. But her family just meddled too much, and I screwed up royally. She went with her cousin at the end, not me. I guess you’re right, they won. Maybe she’ll break away one day, but I don’t see what I can really do at this late date. Our uncle picks us up in a few hours.”

Esmie frowned. “You’re just so tough. I can’t believe you’d lose like that. I’m not trying to be a bitch, you know I’m your friend.”

Abby squeezed her hand. “Yeah,” she said, “I didn’t tell you guys this since it’s embarrassing, but I never had any friends before this summer except Eric. You and Lacey and Nick were real friends. I guess maybe that’s why I’m not causing a scene, trying to get Nicole back. We had two months there where I had a girlfriend and real friends. The group was powerful. Even if the Ballard’s always win in the end, they can’t take away the good parts of the summer. It was a partial victory.”

Esmie smiled. That sounded good, and it was better than everyone going home hating each other, but it still seemed hollow. She could have told Abby that was great and it might have been the end of it, but Abby was right, the group had been powerful. It had been something special. She didn’t want to let it end like this, and she knew just the words to ensure Abby wouldn’t either.

“A partial victory is still a partial defeat,” she said to her friend. “You should show everyone that we aren’t losers.”

Abby and Eric looked to her. They were the hyper-competitive ones, she was the tiny little girl. But she was speaking their language now.

Then they all looked out across the lake to Suicide Bluff, where employees supposedly jumped off in a bygone era to prove their heroism. The time to jump was just a few hours away. Esmie had heard at work that the betting odds favorite was that no one would jump at all this year.

Abby smiled. “Well, I’d thought Nicole and I would do it together ... in all the drama it had slipped my mind. But you’re right, Esmie. I’m surprised you’d suggest it though.”

Esmie smiled. “I’m full of surprises.”

“Well, Eric, care to join me?”

“Ummm,” he said, “I need the time to say goodbye to Esmie. I’m sorry.” Esmie thought his voice was a little shaky because of the white lie about what they’d actually be doing – using the opportunity to make their escape.

“Don’t be sorry,” Abby said, stoically, “You fought for me last night, and you’ll probably fight for me all this school year too. Besides, you’ve picked up some summer flab from all that concession stand food Esmie swiped for you. I don’t like your chances with a 150-foot jump into water. I don’t even like my own and I’ve had diving training.”

Eric gave a belly laugh. “Fair enough, my twin,” he said. “It couldn’t be a foot over 145 though. You’ll be fine. Probably.”

Esmie let them tease each other, hoping they were both exaggerating about the height, then Abby stood up and said goodbye to go begin her preparations.

“Your sister’s something else,” Esmie said.

“Tell me about it,” he said.

They tossed their trash then walked down to the lake. They’d both clocked out and only had to collect their final check and they were no longer Summer Lake employees. Then they’d run away with each other. It was what they’d agreed to, they’d even set aside the money for bus tickets to St. Louis, which they figured was far enough from their families to lay low for a while until they could call and beg for forgiveness.

All of that had been planned earlier in the summer, though. When they were having unprotected sex when Esmie thought she would end up pregnant. Then, the future felt so impossibly far away, past the end of summer, and it seemed like it was never going to come. But now the future was a few hours away. If they were going to run off together, they had to actually do it now, before their siblings realized what was happening. Abby jumping off Suicide Bluff actually created the perfect distraction for them to make their exit.

Eric held her tiny hand. They looked out across the water. It was very late in summer now and a cool wind blew across the lake. Esmie leaned into Eric for warmth.

Minutes ticked by. This was the time to be frantically making their escape, but they just sat there in each other’s arms.

“We’re not really going to run away, are we, Esmie?”

“No,” she said with sadness.

“I’ll still do it if you want to, Esmie,” Eric said with that steely strength that attracted her to him. “I’ll take you to the ends of the earth if you just say the word.”

“I know,” she said. “If I had been pregnant ... we would be doing it. But I’m not pregnant. We have lives back home, we have siblings who need us. You heard Abby ... she’s counting on you. And my idiot brother has screwed everything up, I need to get his nerdy ass back on track.”

“Yeah you’d better, cause if not I’ll have to kick his butt,” Eric laughed, then breathed a sigh of relief.

He’d been doing what he thought was right, offering to support her no matter what, but he seemed happy now that he could just go back to his ordinary life. And why not? He was not even 17 yet, and a star athlete. Running away would have been as bad for him as for her. It had only felt so right when the future was so far away.

“You know, Alabama has the best college football program in the country.”

“Oh, it does?” she said with a grin, “I’ve actually heard a thing or two about that. We live in Birmingham. That’s not even an hour away. You graduate high school next May, right?”

“Yeah,” Eric said.

“Well, now you have to lose that summer flab and you’d better play great this fall, I’ll come up on the bus to see at least one game.” she said, “Your queen commands that you get on the team at Alabama so we’re only apart for a year.”

“Yes, Queen,” Eric said with a smile, snapping back into his old, submissive self that she loved so much now that the drama was over. “I must do as you say. It won’t even be a year, though. After I graduate, I’ll be there for the first day of spring practice.”

“Then I will be there too, in the stands cheering your name.”

They hugged each other on the terrace. The cool wind of the north woods in late summer whipped across the lake hard now, but Esmie felt completely warm and happy.

Nicole sat on the bare mattress in her cabin. Everything was packed neatly into her three suitcases, even the bedsheets. Laura had come by to check and said she packed too quickly for a girl.

“Do you want me to dump it out and start again?” Nicole asked flatly. That sounded exactly like something Abby would say.

Laura just rolled her eyes. “I’ll drive you to the airport at eight,” she said before turning and leaving.

Nicole looked down at the plane tickets on the mattress next to her. The destination read “San Francisco International Airport”. Everyone knew San Francisco was supposed to be a city with a lot of gays. They meant gay men, but she assumed there must be plenty of lesbians too. Of course, she was heading a half-hour south to Stanford. There were probably lesbians there too, but she was taking a pledge that she wasn’t a lesbian in order to join the swim team which had produced more women Olympic swimmers than any other.

The pledge wasn’t official, it wasn’t like they put it in their recruiting materials, and maybe it wasn’t a literal pledge like “I Nicole Ballard do solemnly swear to not lick any pussy”, she thought darkly, but it was something that happened there. If she didn’t say she was straight, especially with her family hinting to the coach that this might be an issue, she wouldn’t make the team. She’d lose her athletic scholarship. She’d be out before she was even in.

She collapsed limply onto the mattress. She wished Abby was here to rub her shoulders. But if Abby was here she’d also want to strangle her. How could that girl work with her family? Everybody worked with her family, that was the whole problem. They always got what they wanted, everyone kissed their butts, they always won.

The worst part, though, wasn’t just that she and Abby broke up like that. Okay, it was an awful way to lose her first real, adult girlfriend. But she and Abby were probably breaking up anyway unless they fell into a magical lesbian utopia where girls with short hair were free to frolic in pants as they held hands with other girls under rainbows and unicorns. Nicole was a year older and headed to college, Abby was going back to Milwaukee a thousand miles away from either college Nicole might have gone to. Maybe they’d have gotten back together one day, but for the time being this was a summer romance.

No, the worst part hadn’t been the relationship with Abby ending. It had been the whole group falling apart like that. That was what made her feel so lousy. She’d finally found people who had each other’s back, who weren’t just using each other for social advantage, with whom she’d had the best summer of her life going to the quarry and cheating at Monopoly and driving around aimlessly in her car. It was what she’d always wanted, and her family crushed it because the people she actually liked were the outcasts of Summer Lake.

It was all so hopeless. She couldn’t be a lesbian, what had she been thinking? She was a Ballard. They’d raised her to be the perfect All-American girl, and that’s what she was going to be whether she liked it or not. And here she was crying about having to go to one of the best colleges in the country to please her filthy rich family so they gave her a trust fund. Maybe pathetic was a better word for it.

She reached for the utility knife she’d left out when packing. She wrapped her blue Summer Lake t-shirt sleeve around her shoulder, exposing her armpit, and pressed the knife against her skin. Not enough to draw blood yet, but even this felt good.

“What the hell are you doing, freak?” Laura said, standing in the doorway.

Nicole pulled the knife away quickly and slid it under her butt. Her back had been to the door and she wasn’t sure how much Laura had seen.

“Nothing,” she said.

“My dad wants to see you,” Laura said, “That was him at the door just now.”

Nicole looked at her blankly.

“You didn’t hear him coming in? Damn, you must miss your girlfriend.”

Nicole knew her cousin didn’t mean it sympathetically. She waited for Laura to turn then hid the knife under the mattress and followed her.

“Don’t worry, you bludgeoned the gay out of me,” Nicole said sarcastically.

“Good,” Laura said.

There was Uncle Mitch looking slick in his seersucker suit, sitting on the black leather couch in their cottage’s loft-style common room. She knew this was a busy day for him, with the summer ending and all of the seasonal employees heading home, so she wondered why she rated the personal visit. Through this whole sordid affair, Uncle Mitch had sat in the front office pulling the strings, and the few times they’d talked he’d always been quite pleasant, as if he wasn’t directing his daughter Laura to ruin her life and destroy the group.

“Hi Uncle Mitch,” she said, standing there on the Navajo rug in front of the couch.

“Please, sit down,” he said, gesturing to the recliner, and she sat. “Laura, would you mind walking the terrace, putting out any fires? And if there are no fires, just mingle with the guests?”