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The bus supposedly leaves at 6 am sharp, which means that Cole has to get up at some absolutely ungodly hour to make it to the school’s parking lot in time.
It’s a particularly rude awakening after his lazy routine over summer break. If he was a little smarter, he might have tried to get back into some kind of normal routine over the past week instead of staying up all night and waking up past noon every day, but it’s too late now. It’s a long drive, so he figures he may as well catch up on some sleep on the way.
To add to his irritation, his father is, as always, annoyingly chipper – a morning person if there ever was one.
“You kids sure are lucky” he chuckles, pulling up to the school gates. “I would have done anything to spend the first week back from summer vacation on a camping trip.”
Cole plasters a slightly false smile on his face. “Yeah. It’s great.”
He hauls his kitbag and sleeping bag out from the back seat, slings his backpack over one shoulder, and waves half-heartedly as his father drives off, before making his way across the deserted campus to the teacher’s carpark, where the bus is waiting.
Of course, of-fucking-course, he is the first person there.
“Ah, Cole!” his teacher calls. “Good to see you here bright and early! You can put your stuff in the compartment under the bus – make sure you get it right to the back, so we can fit everyone’s bags in.”
Resigned to the fact that his poor kitbag is now undoubtedly going to be squashed under a mountain of other people’s luggage – and knowing some of the girls in his class, it’s no laughing matter – he places it on the ledge and gives it a solid shove with his foot, sliding it all the way to the back corner. His sleeping bag follows suit.
“Much appreciated” his teacher says, nodding approvingly. “Now I just wanted to check the room assignments we decided on last term – you’re still fine rooming with Jay, Zane, and Kai?”
“Yeah, absolutely” he affirms. It’s one of the things he has actually been looking forward to about this trip, especially considering he hasn’t seen them all summer.
“Great! You would not believe how many emails I’ve already had requesting room changes, it’s ridiculous. Amazing how fast friendships fall apart after summer break, huh?”
“Um. Yeah.” He forces a weak chuckle.
Thankfully, a couple more students arrive after that, and his teacher occupies himself directing their luggage and trying to sort out the apparently messy room situation.
It’s already past six, and he’s seriously starting to wonder where the hell the others are. He has his phone out, ready to text Jay asking if anything’s wrong, when a loud horn blaring behind him makes him startle, and he turns to see Kai pulling into the parking lot, Jay in the passenger seat beside him.
All four of them got their drivers licenses before summer break, but Kai is the only one who actually owns a car. It’s only a beat-up old Ford, but it’s miles better than having to ask to borrow his parents’ car all the time. He’d love to offer to drive Jay to school, but his dad needs the car for work in the mornings and he’s usually stuck with the bus.
“You know you’re not allowed to park in the teacher’s carpark” Cole says automatically, when the two of them have gotten out.
“Hello to you too” Kai says, rolling his eyes a little behind his aviator sunglasses. “It’s fine, it’s only for the day and I already cleared it with Principle Wu. I asked Ronin and Nya to get it back home this afternoon.”
“You trust Ronin with your car?” Cole asks incredulously.
“Uh, no. But I do trust Nya” Kai replies. He grabs his own bags – and for some unknown reason, Jay’s as well – and starts hauling them over to the bus.
Cole gives Jay a quizzical look, which Jay returns with a look of equal confusion.
“What is it?”
“Why’s Kai carrying your stuff? Did he lose a bet or something?”
“No? He’s just being nice.” There’s something about his expression – it’s not smug exactly, but it’s definitely gratified.
“Uh, alright then. So. How was California?” Cole does not actually want to hear about California, but at the same time, he kind of totally does.
Here’s the thing - just before summer break began, Kai had announced that he was going back to California for two weeks to visit his grandparents, and invited the rest of them to come along. In the end, it was only Jay who went because Zane and his father were travelling in Eastern Europe, and Cole had a dance competition his father all but forced him to attend.
He’s still peeved about it, and not just because the thought of Kai getting Jay all to himself for those two weeks really got under his skin.
“Oh, oh my god, it was amazing Cole! Kai’s grandparents’ house is huuuuuge, and it’s right on the beach and everything! And the beach is so nice, and the weather was perfect the whole time, and Kai’s grandfather has all these contacts in Silicon Valley, so I got to see all these incredible technological innovations people are working on, and just” he sighs, dreamy, “I so want to live out there one day.”
“Ojiisan was thrilled to have someone other than Nya around who actually cares about his tech mumbo-jumbo” Kai smirks, back from his luggage trip. “Did Jay tell you he was learning to surf?”
“He was pretty vague about everything on social media” Cole says, slightly accusatory.
“Well, we were busy” Jay says defensively. The tips of his ears have gone slightly pink.
Kai’s smirk widens. “Yeah. Busy.”
“Kai!” Jay squeaks, elbowing him sharply. His whole face is going red now.
Cole is well and truly perplexed. “Okay seriously, what is up with you two? You’re acting weird.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about” Jay says. “Oh look, Zane’s here!”
Cole shoots Kai an inquisitorial glare, which he returns with a shrug and an infuriatingly innocent expression.
“Better get to the bus, or all the good seats will be taken” he says.
It’s almost a quarter to seven by the time they actually get on the road. The four of them have managed to snag some prime real estate – four adjacent sets near the back, with working air con and a window that actually opens.
Zane ends up sitting next to him, which means it’s the perfect time to catch up on their respective summers. It turns out his first irl meeting with his online girlfriend – daughter of some family friend of the Juliens, kicked ass at counterstrike, and known to Cole only by her screen name P.I.X.A.L. – went miraculously well, and that his extended family in Bulgaria were all doing fine.
Cole offers some vague descriptions of the dance competition in return, neglecting to mention that he had totally flubbed his routine because he was so preoccupied with the whole California thing and hadn’t even placed in the top ten. Zane can apparently tell that things didn’t go so well anyway, because he tactfully changes the subject. Zane is the best friend ever.
In front of them, Kai is showing Jay something on his iPod, their bent heads tethered together by the red cord of his headphones. Kai’s musical taste is, in Cole’s honest opinion, universally terrible, but Jay seems to like whatever it is well enough.
After about an hour or so of this however, the battery of Kai’s iPod (thankfully) dies, because he’d apparently forgotten to charge it last night. He moans dramatically about this while Jay consoles him and reminds him that he can recharge it as soon as they get to the campground, but eventually he shuts up and produces a pack of cards from his backpack. The four of them play scum, and last card, and even a few rounds of old maid before they’re all slowly falling asleep, lulled by the rhythmic hum of the engine.
Despite his body still protesting this morning’s early start, Cole is the last one awake. He keeps glancing over at the pair sitting in front of him. Jay’s head resting on Kai’s shoulder as he sleeps is nothing new, honestly, but with all their weirdness this morning, he can’t help but pick at every little gesture between them, like it might be significant somehow.
***
“I went down to the river”
“Can you seriously shut up?”
“The river”
“No really Kai, this is painful.”
“The river”
“Ka-a-a-a-i-i-i”
“I went down to the river”
“Guys come on, back me up here.”
“And what did I see?”
“ONE DEAD TROUT!” Jay chimes in, gleefully.
“It has been” Cole says through gritted teeth, “at least an hour. I do not care that you went down to the river. Nor do I care what you saw there.”
“This is our marching song!” Kai proclaims. “I’m boosting troop morale here.”
“This is a half-day hike on a high school camping trip, Kai. It’s not exactly Gedrosia.”
“I have no idea what that means” Kai says pleasantly.
“I wouldn’t expect you to.”
“One of Alexander the Great’s campaigns” Zane helpfully supplies.
“Isn’t that the one where everyone died?” Jay asks, making a face.
“More or less” Cole replies.
“Ugh.”
This hike is supposed to be about appreciating nature, but none of their classmates are exactly taking it seriously. A few of the more athletically-inclined girls are enthusiastically checking their fitbits and comparing step counts, but most of the others are just complaining about getting sweaty. Some of the rowdier boys are whacking at each other with fallen sticks, darting up ahead to hide in the bushes and ambush their friends, and at least one of their classmates is diligently attempting to play Pokémon Go, despite the patchy signal and general lack of Pokéstops or indeed, Pokémon this far out from civilisation. A loud clump of stragglers at the back are whining that this kind of forced exercise is torture, and that their teachers are probably violating some kind of United Nations convention.
The four of them are all in pretty good shape, so the hike isn’t much of a challenge for them. Mostly it’s just kind of boring.
They finally reach the river after about two hours of walking, where they stop for lunch. Some of their classmates have taken their shoes and socks off and are wading in the shallow water, prompting their teacher to warn them that there are eels in this part of the river. Upon hearing this, some of the boys immediately declare it to be ‘eel hunting season’, and set about sharpening the sticks they were using to hit each other with earlier. They don’t seem to be having any luck actually finding any though.
Cole, mildly entertained by their flailing and also vaguely intrigued by the potential prospect of blood, doesn’t notice the frog until it’s too late. It lands on his bare leg with a wet splat, causing him to yell in surprise and fall backward off the boulder he was sitting on.
Jay, Kai, and Zane promptly burst out laughing.
“Ouch! That actually really hurt, you assholes” Cole grumbles, as Zane extends an arm to haul him up. The frog, disgruntled by all the sudden shifts in gravity, hops off his leg.
“Sorry, sorry” Jay giggles. “You’re like, fine though, right?”
“I will live, yes.”
“Good thing you didn’t squash the poor froggy when you fell” Kai says. He extends a hand out to where the frog is now perched on top of a smaller rock. “C’mere, little guy” he calls.
Cole shudders. “Ugh, I hate frogs” he says.
“Aww, why?” Kai asks. “They’re cute. Aha, gotcha!” he exclaims, managing to grab hold of the frog. He deposits it into his now-empty lunchbox. “I’m so totally keeping him. I’m gonna call him Pepe.”
Cole just rolls his eyes at that one, because, really.
“I think you gotta, like, keep his skin moist” Jay says, scooping up some water from the river into the lunchbox.
“Oh, good idea. Thanks Jaybird” Kai replies, giving Jay a one-armed hug while trying to keep the lunchbox balanced so that ‘Pepe’ doesn’t escape.
“Two more minutes, then we have to get going guys!” their teacher calls.
“Awww sir, just let us find one eel! Please?”
***
“So what was all the screaming about?” Kai asks when he gets back to their cabin after his trip to the bathroom.
“Apparently cabin three is haunted.”
“And the screaming before that?”
“The girls in cabin six found a huge spider.”
“And before that?”
“One of the boys in cabin four farted, and no one’s owning up to it.”
“Geez. I am so glad we got to pick our room assignments” Jay says. He’s curled up on the end of Kai’s bed, nibbling at a packet of barbeque-flavoured potato chips.
“Dude, don’t you have your own bed?” Cole blurts, before he can stop himself.
Jay looks confused. “Well yeah, but all the snacks are over here. Besides, Kai doesn’t mind, do you Kai?”
“’Course not” Kai smirks. “Feel free to occupy my bed anytime.”
This is standard Kai flirting, but Jay isn’t giving him the standard Jay response of mock outrage and protestations regarding his chastity. Instead, he’s just grinning pink-cheeked at the bag of chips in his lap.
Cole huffs. “Whatever. I’m going to bed.”
In his annoyance, he fails to notice that the others are suddenly watching him very intently. He unzips his sleeping bag and slides inside it, only to shriek when his foot comes into contact with something slimy.
For the second time that day, the three of them burst out laughing at his expense. He yanks his sleeping bag open to reveal a very unhappy-looking Pepe.
“Kai,” he says, very calmly, “if you do not remove that frog from my bed right now, I swear I will squash it.”
“Fi-i-ine” Kai says, scooping Pepe back into his lunchbox.
“You know, he’s not looking so good” Jay says, peering at him. “Maybe you should let him go.”
“You’re going to need your lunchbox tomorrow anyway” Zane adds.
“Fair point” Kai sighs. “I’m gonna miss the little guy though. And not just because he makes Cole squeal like a little girl.”
“HEY!”
“There’s a bunch of frogs in the pond at my grandparents’ farm” Jay says. “We can go catch some when we visit during spring break.”
Since when was Kai invited to spend spring break at your grandparents? Cole thinks, but he manages not to say it out loud.
Kai brings the lunchbox over to the window, before bowing formally to Pepe and pretending to wipe a tear from the corner of his eye.
“Be free, little chaos God” he says. And then he slides open the window and unceremoniously dumps him outside.
***
“I am telling you, Gurren Lagann is the best mecha anime of all time” Kai is saying around a mouthful of nachos.
“Oh please, it is not. It’s an amusing gateway series at best” Zane replies smugly. “The best is obviously Mazinger.”
“Longevity doesn’t equal quality, dude. It just means rehashing the same concept over and over, forever.”
“Gurren Lagann is barely even a mecha anime! Mazinger is a much better representative of the genre as a whole.”
“Uh, no, it’s just a good representative of the super robot subgenre. Gurren Lagann is a brilliant deconstruction of the mecha genre, which makes it the better representative here.”
“If we’re nitpicking now, I’ll just point out that Gurren Lagann is specifically a deconstruction of the super robot subgenre.”
“I am sorry” Kai says, “that you have such irredeemable taste, Zane. Jaybird, help me out here. What’s the best mecha anime?”
“Um, well, I wouldn’t claim it was the best or anything, but I really liked Gundam Wing” Jay says shyly. “The, um, the main protagonist? Heero? He reminds me of you, a little.”
Zane grins. “Who does that make you then Jay, Relena?”
“No!” Jay protests, his whole face going flaming red.
“Of course not. Jay’s obviously my super awesome tech-savvy American co-pilot, Duo.”
“Awww, you really think so?” Jay beams.
“For sure. Hey Cole, you’re pretty quiet over there. Care to nominate a series?”
Cole blurts the first title that comes to his mind, which is, “Evangelion? Not uh, the newer movies though. The original TV series.”
Kai snorts. “Oh my God, you’re so pretentious.”
Zane shrugs. “It might be considered overhyped now, but it’s impossible to argue that it didn’t have a huge influence on the genre at the time. And on anime in general.”
“Yeah, but it’s still pretentious.”
Cole opens his mouth to retort, but before he can say anything, their teacher stands up and calls for silence.
“Alright guys, I hope everyone enjoyed dinner! Why don’t we give a round of applause for our fantastic helpers this evening, cabins three and four!”
There is a round of lacklustre clapping.
“After we clear the dishes, we’re going to proceed to our evening activity. Tonight’s game is flashlight tag, which I know a lot of you have really been looking forward to, so let’s get this dining room cleared as fast as possible!”
As they’re being herded out into the large clearing behind the campground, Kai pulls the three of them aside.
“Let’s make this game a little more interesting, shall we?” he says, grinning wolfishly. “We’ll sneak over to the woods, and then split up. Last person to get tagged is the winner.”
“Isn’t this kind of like, the epitome of a bad idea?” Cole asks.
Kai snickers. “Always knew you were a chicken, Cole.” He makes some exaggerated squawking noises for effect.
Cole looks over to Jay a little desperately for support, but Jay is looking over at Kai like the two of them are plotting something.
“Well I’m in” he declares, and then darts off into the woods. Kai laughs gleefully and sprints after him.
Cole looks at Zane, who only shrugs and says “Not like we have anything better to do.” He walks off in the opposite direction to where Jay and Kai went.
Cole bites his lip, unsure, and then goes after Zane.
It’s much darker inside the woods, with the trees blocking the moonlight, and it takes his eyes several minutes to adjust. He can hear laughter and the sound of running feet off in the near distance – some of their other classmates must have snuck in too.
He’s starting to get disorientated amongst the trees, not sure if he’s still going in the same direction as Zane went or not.
“Zane?” he calls, hating the way his voice wobbles a bit. He is not starting to panic. “Zane? Jay? You guys out here?”
Oh God, what if the three of them had regrouped back at the clearing and were planning to leave him wandering alone in the woods for hours?
“Guys?” he calls, a little desperately. His eyes are stinging worrisomely. “Guys?”
“Dude, you don’t have to cry” Kai says, popping his head out from around a tree. Jay’s head materializes behind him.
“I thought you assholes had gone back to the clearing and left me here” he snaps, wheezing a little.
“Harsh, bro” Kai says. “We wouldn’t do something that horrible to you, geez.”
Cole sniffs, eyeing the two of them with suspicion. They’re both pink-cheeked and breathing heavily, hair mussed and shirts slightly rumpled. “And what happened to splitting up?” he says sharply. “I’ve been wandering around these stupid woods alone for almost half an hour, and then I find the two of you cozied up here together, doing God knows what…” he trails off, a horrible realization beginning to take shape.
Before he can vocalize it though, he hears their teacher’s voice announcing the end of the game from the clearing, and he panics. “Shit, where’s Zane? We have to find him before we get caught!”
“You really need to calm down” Kai exclaims. “If I’d known you were gonna freak out this much, I wouldn’t have suggested sneaking out here. Knowing Zane, he probably got bored and went to wait for us out in the clearing.”
Sure enough, when the three of them exit the treeline, they spot Zane perched on a fallen log, preoccupied with his phone.
“You guys have good timing” he calls. “The teacher just went to go yell at some other kids who also snuck into the woods. If we head back now, you probably won’t get caught.”
“All’s well that ends well, eh Cole?” Kai says, flinging an arm around his shoulders. Cole pushes it off irratibly.
“Okay, what is your problem, Cole?” Kai snaps. “You’ve been acting weird this whole trip.”
“I’m not the one acting weird, you and Jay are! Ever since you got back from California, things have been weird! Haven’t you noticed it, Zane?”
Zane looks between the three of them. “No” he says flatly. “I am not getting involved in this. You guys sort it out.” He turns and marches back to their cabin.
“Well?” Cole prompts.
“Well, what?” Jay retorts, surprising Cole with the sharpness of his tone. He grabs Kai’s arm and pulls him in the direction of the cabin as well. Cole has no choice but to trail behind.
The cabin is silent as the four of them get ready for bed. Zane puts his headphones in and pulls the covers over his head pointedly. Kai, the closest to the door, turns out the light and rustles his way back inside his sleeping bag.
Cole can’t get to sleep, his mind whirring incessantly. He hates it so much when Kai has all of Jay’s attention. He hates it even more when Jay is angry with him. He doesn’t want to think about that awful realization he had earlier in the woods. It’s all he can think about.
Across the room from him, he hears Kai’s sleeping bag rustle, then the sound of his feet padding over to Jay’s bed.
“Hey Jaybird, I know you’re awake” he whispers, very softly. “I can’t sleep either.”
Through slitted eyes, he sees Jay sit up slightly. He does his best to keep his breathing even, even though his heart is thudding loudly in his chest.
“You think the others are asleep?” Jay whispers back.
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Good, let’s just, ugh. Let’s get out of this cabin, go for a walk or something. I feel like I’m going insane trapped in here.”
The two of them fumble around quietly, reaching for their sneakers and pulling sweaters over their pyjamas, before exiting the cabin and shutting the door carefully behind them.
Cole waits for a minute, before sliding out of bed himself. He quietly pulls his own shoes on and checks to see if Zane is still asleep, and then follows Jay and Kai out the door.
The night air is chilly, and Cole has to wrap his arms around himself for warmth. He makes his way soundlessly around the campground, wondering where the others had gone.
When he gets to the dining hall, he hears someone murmuring softly from around the back. There’s a stifled giggle, followed by the unmistakable soft, wet smack of a kiss.
Before he can stop himself, Cole bursts around the corner, and stops dead in his tracks at the sight of Kai and Jay against the wall, mouths pressed together.
“I fucking knew it” he hisses.
The two of them spring apart, startled.
“C-cole” Jay stutters. He looks guilty as hell.
Cole folds his arms expectantly and waits.
“We were going to tell you eventually” Kai says. Unlike Jay, he doesn’t look at all mortified, just grim.
“Does Zane know?”
“Yes.”
“Right. So that’s how it is, then.”
He turns and walks away. He feels numb all over. He doesn’t know what time the others headed back in, but when he returns to the cabin just as the first pinks of dawn break across the sky, they’re in bed, asleep.
***
“God-fucking-dammit Cole, would you slow down for one fucking second and let me speak?”
Cole doesn’t reply, just climbs even faster. Kai has been needling him all day, and has now even followed him up the massive rock climbing wall that Cole has been itching to try since they arrived here. He’s delusional if he thinks he has any chance of catching up – Kai might be a track star and a talented basketball player, but he has shit upper-body strength.
When he reaches the top, he pauses just long enough for Kai to start scrambling hopefully toward him, only to immediately drop and belay himself back down.
He hears Kai’s cursing all the way from the ground, and it’s almost enough to make him smile. He starts fiddling with the buckles on his harness.
There’s a loud thump from where Kai lands behind him, scrabbling to keep himself upright.
“You’re going to have to listen sooner or later. You can’t avoid this forever.”
“Watch me” Cole mutters, but it’s half-hearted at best. He sighs. “We are not doing this out here.”
Kai nods. “Let’s see if we can sneak back to the cabin, then.”
The two of them peel off their rock climbing gear and pass it off onto their classmates, and then manage to make it back without being spotted by any of the teachers.
Kai pulls the door shut, and then sits down cross-legged on his bed, patting the space next to him. Cole perches uneasily at the foot of the bed, almost exactly in the same spot Jay was sitting two nights ago.
“So. The first thing I wanna say is that we really were going to tell you. And that what happened last night was not exactly how we wanted you to find out.”
“So why not just tell me?”
“Because… I don’t know, dude, Jay didn’t want to tell you because he knew you’d be pissed. And I kept trying to tell him that the longer he dragged it out, the angrier you’d be, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. And he begged me not to tell you either, and I – shit, it’s just really new, you know? And I didn’t want to mess this up. Selfish, I know.”
Cole takes a second to digest this. Honestly, he’d just sort of assumed it was Kai who didn’t want to tell him, but looking back, yeah, Jay was the one who’d kept insisting everything was normal.
“If it was just the two of you keeping it a secret, I would. Sort of understand it, I guess” Cole says slowly. “But all three of you were hiding this, from me specifically. You must understand how shitty that feels.”
“If it makes you feel any better, we weren’t going to tell Zane immediately either. But he figured it out on his own in about five minutes, you know, ’cause he has that creepy sixth sense sometimes. And then he said the only reason why he wasn’t going to tell you himself was because it would be letting us off the hook too easily.”
He really said that?” Cole asks. He’s relieved to know that Zane had stood up for him like that.
Kai nods. “Look, Cole, I know that you… well, you’re really protective of Jay. And that you sometimes wish I’d never come along.”
“That’s not true” Cole protests.
Kai laughs. “Sure it is. You hated me so much when I first transferred here, I could tell.”
“Maybe a little” Cole admits.
“Here’s the thing, I’m not trying to, like, drive a wedge between you guys or something, I swear. But I really, really like Jay. A lot. You of all people should understand that. I’m not going to pretend that I’m not ecstatic that he chose me, because I am. And I’m also not just going to give him up because it hurts your feelings.”
“I can. Respect that, I guess. And I appreciate your being so upfront about it.”
Kai grins at him. “I appreciate that you’re like, one of the only people I can be so blunt with, you know?” He offers Cole his hand. “Still friends?”
Cole takes his hand and shakes it. “Bros before hoes, and all that” he says.
***
“So. Kai says you two sorted things out” Zane says, as they make their way down to the final-night-of-camp celebratory bonfire.
“More or less. He told me that you stuck up for me. Thanks for doing that, it really means a lot.”
“Of course I did. You’re my best friend, Cole. That means I’ll always have your back.”
They make their way over to where Jay and Kai are roasting marshmallows on a log next to the bonfire.
Zane goes over to talk to Kai, while Cole sits down on the log next to Jay.
“Hey” he says quietly.
“Hey yourself” Jay replies.
Cole makes a show of checking the area around them. “Any frogs I should be aware of out here?”
Jay giggles, just a bit. “No, I think it’s all clear.” He bites his lip. “Cole, I’m really sorry for. Well, all of this, really. You had every right to be angry.”
Cole sighs. “Just be honest with me next time. That’s all I ask” he says. “And, Jay? I’m happy for you.”
Jay flashes his heartbreakingly gorgeous smile and throws an arm around Cole, squeezing him in a tight hug. “Thank you.”
They shuffle further down the log so that Zane can squeeze in beside Cole, and the four of them spend the rest of the evening laughing and stuffing themselves with sticky, sugary goodness.
Cole still feels a sick twisting in his chest when Kai throws his arm over Jay’s shoulders and Jay curls in closer to him. But with Zane sandwiched against him on one side and Jay still there next to him on the other – just a little further away now – he thinks that things might be okay.