Calmly, Carefully, Completely (The Reed Brothers 3)

I want to tell Chase to f**k off, to tell him that he can just stop trying because I’m never going to be the easy girl who will fall into bed with him. But I can’t tell him I was raped because then he’ll look at me with pity. That’s the last thing I want.

I pretend like I didn’t hear his comment about getting wet. The type of wet he’s talking about isn’t even in my vocabulary. Chase grunts and pulls himself from the water. I don’t know why I invited him over. He brought his buddies, and I don’t know which one of them gives me the creeps more. Even worse, they brought their girlfriends. These are the same girls who look at my little brother like he’s some kind of carnival sideshow.

Chase stands over me and shakes the water from his hair. His kneecap is directly beside my head. With a leg swipe, I could take him out…

His eyes narrow, and I hear the rumble of a bus coming up the driveway. I stand up and grab my towel, dry off really quickly, and then I pull my clothes on over my bathing suit. “Sorry, Chase. I have to go.”

“Are those the camp kids?” he asks.

I twist my hair up into a messy ponytail.

“Yep.” This is my favorite part of the summer. My dad has been holding his camps here since my brother was three, when we realized there wasn’t a safe place to send him to camp where he could be who he is— a normal little boy with autism.

The first year we did it, we invited only kids with autism. Through the years, it’s grown. Now we have kids with challenges like Down syndrome, autism, processing disorders, and this year there’s even a group of young boys coming who are deaf. I’m excited. These boys need me. And they don’t threaten me. I don’t have nightmares about them hurting me… Not like the others.

“Is that a prison van?” Chase asks.

“Yep,” I say.

Every year, my dad invites young men from the local youth detention center to come and volunteer at the camp. They’re not violent young men and are screened carefully, and they’ll come with their own director. But they all do have a criminal history. They get community service hours at the camp.

“Are you sure that’s safe?” Chase asks.

“Yep,” I say. I’d be more worried about Chase than I would them. “You guys can see yourselves out, right?” I ask over my shoulder, not really caring about their responses.

I step into my flip-flops when I get to the gate, and I see my dad coming toward me. “You ready to go meet the new campers?” he asks, dropping his arm around my shoulders. He’s one of very few people I allow to touch me. If anybody else grabbed me like he does, I would have to take him out. Dad smiles at me and kisses my forehead.

My mom comes around the corner of the house and catches up with us, and she has my brother Lincoln in tow. Link doesn’t like to hold hands with anyone, and he rarely looks anyone in the eye, but he looks like your average kid in every other way. Only he’s not average. He has autism. He speaks when he wants to speak, and when he doesn’t… Well, there’s not much of a chance of getting anything out of him. We’ve had a lot of kids with autism at the camp, and they all have different challenges, and not one is like another. I hold out my hand for Link to give me five. He grins in that sideways way he does, and it still makes my heart turn over even after all these years.

“The prison bus is here,” my mom warns.

“I’ll go talk to them,” my dad says. “You go unload the kids and help them get settled.”

I really want to go find Pete, but instead I have to help settle kids into their cabins. Some of them have caregivers. Some of them don’t. Some of them have a parent with them. The ones who don’t will have a camp counselor assigned to their care. They’ll sleep with the boys and hang out with the boys and make sure they eat, drink, take their meds, and shower. The counselors are all from the local hospital. Some are medical students. The youth offenders won’t be responsible for the kids’ needs at all. They’ll interact with them but in a very small way.

My mom gives me a clipboard, and we pin color-coded name tags to all their shirts so we will know who the nonverbal ones are at all times. I read through the descriptions, see what their challenges are, and make notes in my head about each of their special needs.

The boys are always fun. We had girls here last month, and the girls are more of a challenge. They always have drama. Boys are just boys, and they want to ride the horses and swim in the pool and have a good time. They want to be boys in the most basic sense of the word. And this is where they can do it.

When the kids are all settled, I go to find my dad. He’s sitting on the top of a picnic table with his elbows on his knees, his hands dangling down between his thighs. He’s giving them the speech I’ve heard every year since I was eleven.

“You’ve been given a lot of responsibility, and I just hope you’re up to it,” he says. He holds up a single finger. I stand behind a tree and smile because I know this part of the speech. “I have one rule,” he says. “If you break it, I’ll send you back to the center immediately.”

The young men all look at him with expectant faces. “My daughter is home for the summer from college. If you touch her, if you look at her, if you talk to her, if you think inappropriate thoughts about her, I will chop your nuts off while you sleep.” He picks up a hatchet he had on the picnic table for dramatic effect and slams it into the wood. He waits for a minute, and I see the young men all ball into themselves. I cover my mouth to hold in a laugh. It’s always the same routine. He threatens, and then they spend the week avoiding me.