The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth

where the flag was hanging at this particular pool. That “I’m sorry” seemed the right way to handle things.
    But this summer Lindsey had come back a lot taller, and she’d changed other things, too. She’d chopped off the ponytail that she used to tuck up into her swim cap and she’d bleached what was left of her hair a bright white. She soaked it in conditioner before meets to keep the chlorine from turning it green. She also had an eyebrow ring, a little silver thing that the stroke judges made her remove before she could compete. Coach Ted said she had a butterflier’s shoulders, and that there was nothing I could do about my own non-butterflier shoulders but train harder.
    Between races Linds and I sat together on beach towels, playing Uno and eating icy red grapes from the bottom of a pink Sally-Q cooler Aunt Ruth had already been awarded for her commitment to the company. Lindsey told stories about Seattle, where everything sounded edgy and cool, stories about the concerts and parties she had been to, all the crazy friends she said she had. I told her about the hospital, the secret world we’d discovered by breaking in. From our beach towels in eastern Montana we listened to mix tapes of bands I’d never heard of, our heads close together, each of us with one ear pressed to one side of Lindsey’s black headphones.
    A couple of weekends in we were at the Roundup meet, Lindsey’s home water for the summer, and I was rubbing suntan lotion on her back, those butterflier shoulders—her skin soft and warm from the sun. She used the oily stuff that smelled like coconuts, like Coach Ted, even though she didn’t need it, as tan as all of us were; little natives , Grandma liked to say. All of us practiced for hours a day in summer sun, and there wasn’t anything all that special about putting lotion on each other, but there was when I did it to Lindsey. It made me jittery, anxious, but I couldn’t wait for her to ask me, each and every meet.
    My hands were all gooped up with stuff and I was trying to do under the straps of her suit when she said, “If I was back in Seattle, I would be at Pride this weekend. Now that’s supposed to be a fucking blast. Not that I would know.” She tried to sound all nonchalant while she was saying this, but I noticed her trying.
    Lindsey was always talking about these Seattle events and concerts that I’d never heard of before, so not knowing what kind of Pride she was talking about didn’t necessarily mean anything to me right at that moment.
    I kept on rubbing, working that soft area at her lower back, where the required team racing suit just allowed for a window of skin, a couple of knobs of vertebrae. “What do you mean not that you’d know ?” I asked.
    “Because June is always Pride month, and I’m always in Montana in June,” she said, moving her shoulder straps so I could reach better. “It’s not like Roundup-fucking-Montana has a Pride.”
    “Yeah, no kidding,” I said, still working the lotion.
    She shifted herself around at this so she could look at me, trying, not very well, to keep the smirk on her face from stretching wider. “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you? Like at all.”
    I could tell by her face, her tone, that I had somehow missed something important in what she’d said, and had again revealed myself as the small-town hick I often felt like around her. My answer to this was to feign indifference. “I’m not an idiot. You’re talking about some festival you miss every year.”
    “Yeah, but what kind?” She leaned closer, her face so close to mine.
    “I don’t know,” I said, but then, even as I said it, I think part of me did know, sort of, like it washed over me and I knew. I could even feel my stupid blush, my body’s way of telling me that I knew. But there was no way I was gonna say it out loud. So what I said was “German Pride?”
    “You’re adorable, Cam,” she said, her face still close enough for me to