Jem spared him a quick, sidelong glance.“I’ve heard lots of people talk about Strawberry Reservoir.I’ve never been.”
“Lots of people come during the summer.In the winter, too—they have a snowkite launch up here—but the summer is when it’s most popular.The rangers stock it with rainbow trout, and people come from all over to fish.There’s other stuff you can do too, of course.We’d go on hikes.You can swim.My grandparents stayed at the campground most of the time; my grandfather was getting too old to get around much, and my grandmother liked to do word puzzles.”
“What about your parents?”
“My dad liked to fish.Liked to tell people he fished, I think.My mom was just happy to do anything that got her out of the house—seven kids made an already small house feel much smaller during the summer.”Tean thought about it.“The last time we went was before my mission.”
And they hadn’t gone again—or, if they had, they hadn’t invited him—because it was on his mission to Peru that he’d come out, come home, decided to be honest about who he was.At the time, it had seemed like a fairy tale.All those years of wanting Ammon, and then, those nights in the apartment in Lima, when Ammon had given him everything, and Tean had given him everything in turn.And Tean had come home, had faced his family, and the people he’d grown up with, and endured the sneers and the jabs and the disappointment.Because he knew that when Ammon came home, they’d be together, and the fairy tale would continue.
It hadn’t, of course.Ammon had finished his mission.He’d come home, yes, but still Ammon Young, still everyone’s golden boy.He hadn’t come out.And what he’d wanted from Tean, he’d taken with false promises and stillborn hope, until finally they’d ended up here.Ammon in jail, Daniel on the run, two families destroyed because Ammon was a coward.
To distract himself, he said the first thing that came to mind: “I decided I wanted to be a ranger the first time I saw them stocking the lake.”
Jem burst out laughing.“What?”
A smile curved Tean’s mouth.“I don’t know why.I mean, I loved camping, even as a child.I didn’t love hunting, but I loved hiking and being outdoors.And I think, even then, I knew there was some way I was different from the people around me.I saw these guys having fun, being outside—” A trace of embarrassment entered his voice.“And I might have thought they lived at the lake all year, in cabins, you know.”
“God, that’s the most adorable thing I’ve ever heard.”
“No, it’s not adorable.It’s sad.”
“It’s like if someone founded a Junior Hermits guild, and you were the first Junior Hermit.”
“It’s not like that at all.It was based on a completely mistaken assumption.”
“Was one of them hot?”
One of them wore his hair pushed back under a DWR ball cap, long enough to curl behind his ears, and it had been red-gold when the sun touched it.But Tean didn’t say that out loud.
“Oh my God,” Jem said.
“No!”
“One of them wassuperhot.”
“No, they were—they were old.They were grizzled.”Tean latched on to the words because he had the vague sense they would inspire horror in Jem.“They were probablyforty!”
Jem dissolved with laughter.He sank down in his seat.His grip on the steering wheel slackened.The Subaru drifted across double yellow lines.
“It’s not that funny,” Tean snapped and grabbed the wheel.
“Oh my God,” Jem said again—wheezed, really, through his laughter.“You have to tell me everything.”
“There’s nothing to tell.Obviously I didn’t become a ranger.”
Jem’s voice became pleading.“Tean.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say.They were shooting fish out of a cannon.What ten-year-old boy isn’t going to find that fascinating?”
“Literally millions of them,” Jem said.But he recovered enough to sit up and take control of the car again.“What do you mean shooting fish out of a cannon?That sounds awesome.Why haven’t we ever done it before?”
“Because—”
“Scipio wants to do it.”
“It’s not really—”
“Scipio wants to push the button that fires the cannon.”