Page 24 of The Compass Series

JAX - TWELVE YEARS OLD

YEAR TWO OF SUMMER CAMP

“ A nd did you know there are like four hundred billion birds in the world? But when Kennedy was telling me about them last summer, she didn’t know any names of the birds. That’s why I made this for her, to help her learn more about the birds, because I think?—”

“Whoa there, slow down, Jaxson. I swear, I’ve never heard you talk this much before.” Mom laughed as she helped me pack my bags for my second year of summer camp. “It makes me happy that you’re so excited.”

I was excited. I was so, so, so excited.

Kennedy and I had been writing each other letters back and forth all school year, and each time I got a letter in the mail, I’d read it five million times.

I couldn’t wait to see her in person. I couldn’t stop thinking about her, and honestly I never stopped thinking about her.

Would she look different? Would she be taller?

Would she talk as much as she used to? I really hoped she still talked a lot, because even though at first I thought she talked too much, I really liked that she talked too much because it meant I had less talking to do.

I guessed she’d looked the same, only better.

I wondered if she would think I looked the same, too.

I had different glasses and was an inch and a half taller based on Mom’s markings on the living room wall, but other than that I was the same Jax who’d last seen her.

Well, my hair was longer too. I should’ve cut it.

I wondered if she’d notice anything that’d changed about me.

“I am excited to see her. She’s my best friend,” I told Mom.

“Hey now,” she said, nudging me in the side.

I laughed a little. “You know what I mean. She’s my best friend. You’re my best mom-friend.”

She leaned in and kissed my forehead before folding up another shirt of mine to put in the suitcase. “That works for me. I’ll gladly accept the best-mom-friend role. Now, do you want to grab the gift you got for her so we can pack it?”

I hurried over to my dresser where two gifts were wrapped perfectly—and I meant per-fect-ly. I’d wrapped them over and over again until each crease line was smooth. It took me over two hours to get it right, but I didn’t care. I wanted it to be exactly right for Kennedy.

I hoped she’d like the bright neon green ribbon. I would never have used neon green ribbon if it was my choice, but I knew it was her favorite color because she was my best friend and I knew those kinds of things about my best friend.

“Do you think she’ll like the gifts?” I asked, my heart feeling like it was stuck in my freaking throat. I’d worked on one of the gifts for months, and the idea of Kennedy not liking it kept passing through my mind.

Mom smiled the kind of smile moms do to make their kid feel better. “She’s going to love it, Jaxson. Trust me. I’m your best mom-friend, after all—I wouldn’t steer you wrong.”

The mom smile worked. I instantly felt better.

“Do you think you want to come down to the shop and help me lay out some plans for the houses I’m designing the landscaping for before you leave tomorrow?” Mom asked, closing up my suitcase.

She was trying to open her own landscaping company called Millie’s Haven Landscapers.

It was Mom’s heart and joy, and I couldn’t wait until the day she opened up her shop.

I loved helping her plan out designs for people.

Even though she didn’t have a big official business yet, she helped a lot of people around town with their yards.

Plus, she was drawing up blueprints for the acres of land we lived on.

“Flowers everywhere,” she’d always say. “Wildflowers blooming throughout the year. That’s my dream. ”

I didn’t like getting my hands dirty too much, but I did like being her righthand man. She said someday I could even take over the company for her, but I told her there was too much dirt involved.

I didn’t like messes.

I liked things perfectly neat.

“Or he could come fishing with Derek and me,” Dad said as he walked into the doorway of my bedroom. “Do manly things for once in his life.”

I hated fishing.

I hated the idea of the worms.

I hated the idea of the fish flopping side to side.

I hated watching Dad gut them afterward.

But even more so, I hated how Dad always looked disappointed in me when I didn’t want to do the things he was into, like fishing, hunting, and sports.

I liked libraries, and spelling bees, and writing, and Kennedy.

Dad didn’t understand any of those things, which made it hard for him to understand me.

“Landscaping isn’t a woman thing, Cole. The landscaping world is mostly filled with men, and to make Jaxson feel bad about it is disrespectful,” Mom said, backing me up like she always did when it came to Dad being disappointed in me not being more like him.

I guessed that was why she was my best mom-friend. She always had my back.

“Yeah, but he doesn’t get dirty with the job. He doesn’t do any heavy lifting or actual work,” Dad argued. Every time he did this—put me down—my stomach would flip.

Last month, Mom said if he didn’t stop it, she’d leave him, but I didn’t think that was true. She had a way of loving him even when he didn’t deserve to be loved that much.

“Drop it, Cole,” Mom ordered.

He grumbled under his breath and raked his hand through his black hair, which was slowly turning gray. He looked at me for a second before walking out of the room.

I sat up a little, feeling a knot in my throat. “Maybe I should go with him so he’s not mad at me.”

“No. You are your own individual human, Jaxson, and your father doesn’t get to turn you into something you don’t want to be. If you don’t like fishing, that is the end of the conversation.”

I lowered my head. “I wish he was nice like you.”

She kissed my forehead then gave me a tight hug. “You’re perfect the way you are, son. Don’t you ever forget that.”

The next day, Mom tossed my suitcase into the car, and we headed off to camp.

After I got settled in and Mom cried because she was going to miss me over the coming weeks, we said goodbye, and I grabbed my gift for Kennedy and rushed back to the front of the main hall to wait for her to arrive.

I sat on top of a giant rock for what felt like hours.

When that yellow car with the markings all over it pulled around, my heart just about jumped out of my chest and ran straight into Kennedy’s arms.

When she saw me, she sprinted toward me, shouting my name so loud the aliens on Mars could probably hear her screams. “Jax! Jax! Jaxxxxxxxxxxxx!” she called out, running wildly in my direction with wild arms. Even though she was so embarrassing, and people were staring at us like we were insane, I didn’t care.

Kennedy did that for me. She helped me not care that much about what other people thought.

She crashed into my arms, and we laughed as we tumbled over to the ground like complete dorks. The more Kennedy laughed, the more I did, too, because she had the kind of laugh that made everyone chuckle along with her.

She pinned me down and straightened my crooked glasses. “You got new glasses!” she exclaimed.

I sighed.

She noticed.

“You have purple hair.”

She sighed. “You noticed.” She hugged me again.

“I missed you, Sun,” I said, hugging her tighter.

She smiled big, which made me smile bigger. “I missed you, too, Moon. I missed you so much I got you a present!”

“I got you one, too!”

We scrambled to our feet, and I handed her my perfectly wrapped gift. She went digging into her backpack and pulled out her perfectly imperfect gift, which was wrapped in newspaper with way too much tape.

“You first!” She nodded as she jumped up and down with glee.

I rushed to rip the paper open and smiled big when I saw what she’d made me. It was a friendship bracelet with a moon charm on it.

She then held up her arm to show off her matching sun bracelet. “So people will always know we’re best friends.”

I slid it on really fast and couldn’t stop smiling.

“Do you like it?” she asked, biting her bottom lip.

“I love it! I’m never gonna take it off. Now, open yours.”

She tore off the wrapping paper, and her eyes got big when she saw the notebook. “A book of birds?” she asked, reading the cover.

“Yeah. I researched a lot of different kinds of birds and wrote all about them. There’s over thirty! I even drew pictures of them so we can see what we can find when we go on our hikes. And I have two sets of binoculars in my suitcases if we want see the birds up close and?—”

Before I could say anything, Kennedy was crashing into me, laying her lips to mine, and she was…?

Wait.

Is this my…?

Did she just…?

Ohmygoshsheiskissingme!

We were kissing!

Kissssssing!

Jax and Kennedy sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G!

Okay, we weren’t sitting in a tree, we were standing next to a rock, but it didn’t matter because I’d just had my first kiss. My first kiss with my best friend, Kennedy Lost.

I freaking love summer camp!

I didn’t know what to do, so I just stood there with my arms at my sides, wondering if this was what it was supposed to feel like.

It was as if my heart was going to tear out of my chest and do somersaults on the sidewalk, as if I could run a million laps around the camp and still not be out of breath, as if I was flying. Am I flying?

Am I kissing her back?

I couldn’t tell. I didn’t know how to kiss. My older brother always told me I wouldn’t have to even worry about kissing until I was like forty-nine years old, and I was nowhere near forty-nine years old.

She stopped kissing me.

Dang.

Do that again.

I stood there like a dork, unsure what to do. Kennedy stepped back, and her cute cheeks turned red. I didn’t remember her cheeks being so cute last summer, but that was the thing about Kennedy Lost, I supposed—she got better and better each year.

“Basorexia,” she mumbled. She mumbled! Like me. My heart was still trying to run away.

I narrowed my eyes. “I don’t know what that means.”

She smiled. “I looked up a lot of words in the last year, and basorexia was one of them. It means a desire to kiss.”

Oh.

My new favorite word.

I couldn’t form words because I was too busy looking at Kennedy’s perfect cheeks. She combed her fingers through her loose curls and kept pushing her cheeks higher when she smiled. “I just really love this gift, Jax, so I felt basorexia. Thank you.”

She came back in toward me, only this time she gave me a hug.

Double dang.

“Sorry if that upset you,” Kennedy said, growing nervous, which was weird because I hadn’t known a person like Kennedy could ever be nervous.

“But that was my first kiss, and Yoana was telling me your first kiss should always be with someone you care about, and well, you’re my best friend and all, and I thought?—”

She stopped her words, because I kissed her. This time I knew it was me kissing and not just me standing still, all because I had intense basorexia.