The Camino Club Read online

  Raves for The Camino Club

  “Kevin Craig’s The Camino Club is an intricately woven story of laughter and heartbreak, loss and love. In it, six troubled teens take a journey through the heart of Spain alongside their court-assigned counselors, finding their way through the issues that brought them together. Funny and poignant, this story of friendship and falling in love will remind you that our paths are not defined by our pasts, but the choices we make each day.”

  —Danika Stone, author of All the Feels, Internet Famous and Switchback

  “A beautiful book filled with heart. THE CAMINO CLUB takes readers on a pilgrimage along the Camino de Santiago in Spain with six delinquent teens. Not only do they find themselves along the way, but they also discover they’re all worthy of love. I laughed, I cried, I couldn’t put it down. “

  —Kip Wilson, YA author of White Rose

  “Often hilarious and always heartfelt, THE CAMINO CLUB is an uplifting story about six mismatched teens on the journey of a lifetime, who learn that the only way to get over the past and head for the future is to live in the moment.”

  —Tom Ryan, author of Keep This to Yourself and I Hope You’re Listening

  Copyright © 2020 Kevin Craig

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN 13: 978-1-945053-97-9 (trade)

  ISBN 13: 978-1-945053-72-6 (ebook)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2020939802

  Published by Duet, an imprint of Interlude Press

  www.duetbooks.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and places are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, either living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

  Cover and Book Design by CB Messer

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Interlude Press, New York

  In Memory of Davida, who raised me, Connie Grisley, who walked with me in 2014, and Deborah, who followed along from home in 2019.

  “I believe in the good things coming.”

  —Nahko Bear

  Contents

  Chapter 1 — Diego Nelson

  Chapter 2 — Shania Reynolds

  Chapter 3 — Troy Sinclair

  Chapter 4 — Diego Nelson

  Chapter 5 — Shania Reynolds

  Chapter 6 — Troy Sinclair

  Chapter 7 — Diego Nelson

  Chapter 8 — Shania Reynolds

  Chapter 9 — Troy Sinclair

  Chapter 10 — Diego Nelson

  Chapter 11 — Shania Reynolds

  Chapter 12 — Troy Sinclair

  Chapter 13 — Diego Nelson

  Chapter 14 — Shania Reynolds

  Chapter 15 — Troy Sinclair

  Chapter 16 — Diego Nelson

  Chapter 17 — Shania Reynolds

  Chapter 18 — Troy Sinclair

  Chapter 19 — Diego Nelson

  Chapter 20 — Shania Reynolds

  Chapter 21 — Troy Sinclair

  Chapter 22 — Diego Nelson

  Chapter 23 — Shania Reynolds

  Chapter 24 — Troy Sinclair

  Chapter 25 — Diego Nelson

  Chapter 26 — Shania Reynolds

  Chapter 27 — Troy Sinclair

  Chapter 28 — Diego Nelson

  Chapter 29 — Shania Reynolds

  Chapter 30 — Troy Sinclair

  Chapter 31 — Diego Nelson

  Chapter 32 — Shania Reynolds

  Chapter 33 — Troy Sinclair

  Chapter 34 — Diego Nelson

  Chapter 35 — Shania Reynolds

  Chapter 36 — Troy Sinclair

  Chapter 37 — Diego Nelson

  Chapter 38 — Shania Reynolds

  Chapter 39 — Troy Sinclair

  Chapter 40 — Diego Nelson

  Chapter 41 — Shania Reynolds

  Chapter 42 — Troy Sinclair

  Chapter 43 — Diego Nelson

  Chapter 44 — Shania Reynolds

  Chapter 45 — Troy Sinclair

  Chapter 46 — Diego Nelson

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Content Advisory:

  Some readers may find some of the scenes in this book difficult to read. We have compiled a list of content warnings, which you can find below or access at www.interludepress.com/content-warnings.

  minor character death

  homophobic bullying

  discussions of conversion therapy

  homophobic parents

  Chapter 1 — Diego Nelson

  It all started with fire. I wanted to show Sabrina Vincent I’d do anything for her. Naturally, I set fire to the garbage in the first floor washroom, strategically near a sensitive smoke detector. Now I’m forced into The Walk, and Sabrina still doesn’t even know I’m alive. Well, she may know the name of the guy who gave everyone a free period. But, I mean, she doesn’t know me know me. Unrequited love’s a drag.

  I still think it might have been worth it. I mean, I did get my name on the map of her universe, right? Maybe now she wants to know more about Diego Nelson. Maybe she’s intrigued. Who knows? Maybe I’m now a satellite in her night sky. I just have to wait for her to turn her telescope on me.

  I know one thing for sure. The first part of the summer is not mine. The Walk Youth Diversion Program owns my ass, and there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it. If your one and only slipup is a big one, your leverage gets taken away from you. Juvenile detention or The Walk.

  This Gilbert dude who runs the program sounds like a total douchebag, too. My life is over. First of all, who the hell is called Gilbert, and why wouldn’t they change their name if they could? Clearly his parents had it in for him. A week and a half with him, and I’ll be ready for death. Hell, I was ready for it after fifteen minutes with him in the meeting with Moms, Principal Peters, and that lawyer. Dude is about as interesting and relevant as a dead cat. I might die of boredom before exhaustion ever even takes place.

  But I guess The Walk is known for exhausting people. I don’t even know how it’s legal to take a kid out of his own country and force him to walk a gazillion miles in the hot sun over mountains and shit in a foreign country. I mean, you’ve got to be kidding me.

  By the time I get back, summer will be almost over, and I will have missed any and every opportunity I would have had to keep myself in Sabrina’s universe. I’ll fade from her sky, probably forever.

  Slight exaggeration, I know. A week and a half does not a summer make. But the beginning of summer is the most important time for setting things up socially. Hell, even my best friends will forget who I am by the time I come back from Spain.

  Lesson learned? Don’t set fires for people who will never appreciate the gesture even if you’re mad crushing on them and desperate to get them to notice you. Dude, it just ain’t worth it.

  Now I find myself—me, Diego Nelson—packing a backpack with all this random crap, preparing for a flight across the frigging Atlantic Ocean. I mean, I’ve never been on a plane before. I’ve never even been outside Toronto.

  Moms must totally hate me. Why else would she send her one and only child into the jaws of death just for setting a little fire at school? No matter how much my abuelita thinks it’s a great idea.

  I still remember the day the ultimatum came down. Moms freaking out all the way home on the subway, ranting about not having money for the program. “Look at all these thin
gs, Diego. Look at them—the backpack alone. I cannot afford this. What have you done?”

  “I’m sorry, Moms.” I pleaded with her to calm down. People around us were staring, listening in. “We won’t do it. I’ll take the other one. I have to.”

  “And have a record? Be with those bad boys? I’ll never get you back. You’ve ruined everything. Everything your grandmother and I worked so hard for, Diego, paving the way for your success. It’s gone.”

  She stormed off the subway at our stop. Didn’t even look back to see if I followed.

  When we got home it was even worse. She told my abuelita everything. Watching my grandmother’s face sink as she learned of her grandson’s crime? It felt like a piece of me died as that look of disappointment washed over her. I was mad. Mad at myself for being so stupid. Mad at Moms for telling her after she said she couldn’t, after she said she wanted to spare her the shame and the hurt.

  When Moms brought up the alternative to juvenile detention, though? The second she told my abuelita about the diversion program—about the Camino de Santiago—the look on her face changed instantly.

  As Moms cried in desperation because we couldn’t choose the costly diversion program, my grandmother took Moms’s hands in hers, looked her in the eyes, and said, “He must go.”

  “Mami, he can’t. I cannot do this. I can’t afford these things,” Moms said, tossing down the crumpled list she pulled from her purse.

  My grandmother picked it up, glanced at the long list of random crap, set it back down, and said, “He goes. Ana, it is the Camino de Santiago. The pilgrim’s path, the way of St. James. Pilgrims have been walking the Camino for hundreds and hundreds of years. Since before the Middle Ages. They walk to the bones of the apostle St. James that rest in the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela. They walk to find themselves. He goes, Ana. That is all. You tell them. Make the arrangements. It will be his penance. He is a good Catholic boy.”

  So not only have I totally disgraced and humiliated the two most important women in my life, I’m also going to the Camino de Santiago on my poor abuelita’s dime, her cherished savings.

  “Ma?” I yell as I continue to scroll down the Things to Bring list. “What’s a spork?”

  “It’s a spoon and a fork in one.”

  I barely hear this. She’s in the kitchen. I know what she’s doing. The same thing she does every morning when I’m getting ready for school and she’s getting ready for work. She’s standing at the kitchen counter having her cup of instant coffee and her one slice of slightly burned toast with a light spreading of cottage cheese. Ack.

  This morning isn’t a schoolday or workday, though. This morning is the day of my flight. The bad kids’ field trip begins.

  “Why do I have to bring a spork, anyway?”

  “Because Gilbert told you to, Diego.” I can hear her walking down the hall. Coming to lecture me again. Just one more time. Again.

  “Starting today, that man is your boss,” she says as she arrives at my bedroom door, spork in hand. “You do what he says, when he says. If that includes carrying this spork on your nose across Spain, then you will do it. Do you understand me, mister?”

  She tosses the spork onto the bed.

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Don’t yeah but me, Diego Nelson. You will listen to him, young man. I didn’t raise an arsonist. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Moms has been on high octane ever since the incident. She’s a tough cookie at the best of times. I don’t blame her, really. She has all these dreams for me—university and a career—and she’s seen how close I came to destroying it all. I’m such a loser.

  “You’re almost done packing, Dee. Just finish that list and come to the kitchen and eat your breakfast. You need to eat before we head to the airport. Breakfast is the most—”

  “Important meal of the day,” I say, finishing her once-a-day-repeated mantra on the importance of breakfast. Even though she herself lives on her daily piece of toast. “Yeah, Ma. I know. Almost finished.”

  “Roll, Diego.” She pulls the three single, solitary T-shirts I’m allowed to bring out of my backpack and unfolds them so she can roll them up instead. “Rolling is better than folding when you’re packing. Even for a backpack.” She hugs my shirts. “Oh my God, I’m sending my baby across the world with nothing but the clothes on his back. I’m a terrible mother. Oh my God, Diego.”

  She’s losing it. She said she wasn’t going to lose it. She promised.

  “Moms, it’s okay. It’s like you’re sending me on an adventure. It’ll be amazing, right? Like Gran says. Summer camp in a whole new country. Remember how happy Abuelita was when she found out, Moms? It’ll be good. My abuelita is never wrong, Moms.”

  I smile and I hope it looks sincere enough to pass off the lie and not as fake as it feels. I think she buys it. When she looks at me, though, I can tell she knows this walk is the last thing in the world I want to do. But she plays along with me.

  “Roll, Diego. Less wrinkles.” She gives my shirts one last hug before sending them into the backpack to join the assorted randomness inside. I have a toothbrush, a flashlight, a notebook, a spork, Q-tips, Kleenex, wet wipes, a flattened roll of toilet paper, a towel, a water bottle, diaper pins, hiking socks, etc., etc., etc. “Looks like you’re ready to go, my baby.”

  She grabs me and hugs me tight. She has coffee breath. I love that smell. I don’t drink coffee. It’s disgusting. But when I smell Ma’s coffee breath, it smells so good. So… home. Yeah. I hug her back.

  When I feel like she might snap me in half, I try to step out of the hug. But she holds on a little longer. I let her. I know she’s crying. How could I do this to her? I’m, like, the worst son in the universe.

  “Come, puppy,” she says when she finally lets me go. “Breakfast before we leave.”

  Chapter 2 — Shania Reynolds

  Saturday, June 29th – Suckage Day 1 – The Summer that Never Happened

  I hate my life.

  What a fitting way to start this stupid journal I’m being forced against my will to write—It’s part of the program, Shania. Mandatory. You have to keep a journal and you have to write in it every day of the trip—What a bunch of crap.

  In the beginning, Shania declared her profound angsty disgust for the entirety of the universe and everything in it… including the journal in which she writes.

  They can force me into this nightmare program, but they can’t make me like it. I still think I should have been able to pick my punishment myself. Dad left no room for discussion on that one. My choice? I’ll take Juvenile Detention for two hundred, Alex.

  But no. Steal one car and suddenly I find myself in this program from hell with Captain Dweebhat running the show. Please, oh great Captain Dweebhat… please save me from a life of crimes and misdemeanors.

  Gawd!

  I hate my life.

  I close my journal and squeeze it into the side pocket on my backpack. I’m so ready to blow this popstand.

  So, yeah. Bye, Mom. Bye, Dad. Thanks for not being here to see me off. I know you’re sad I’m leaving, even though you’re not even here on the day I leave the continent for a whole week and a half. That’s if I don’t contract a deadly disease or have a tragic unavoidable accident with a bull or a mountaintop. I love you too.

  I hope this Gilbert guy isn’t a perv or something. Don’t they have to at least screen people who work with kids? Even the bad kids? Sorry, troubled youth.

  And I better not get blisters. Who thinks walking across an entire country is a good idea, anyway? What a bunch of granola-eating, soy milk-sipping freaks. I so entirely hate this.

  “You almost ready?” Dillon asks from my bedroom doorway. “Bus leaves in five.”

  “You know, Dill, you don’t have to drive me to the airport.”

  “Oh, so how you g
etting there? Gonna hotwire the Wilsons’ car?”

  “Very funny,” I say. “I can just take off and spend the time around here. You can tell the parentals you did your duty. I can stay at Veronica’s place. Nobody needs to know.”

  “Come on, Shania,” Dillon says. “Don’t be stupid. Of course they’ll know. You don’t think this program is monitored like Fort Knox? Hello. Delinquent much?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I say. I flip him the bird as he heads downstairs. “Whatever.”

  I put my backpack over my shoulder. I can’t believe I’m going to carry this for a thousand million miles up a frigging mountain. I’m crazy. Gilbert’s crazy. This program is crazy. And Mom and Dad are crazy.

  I will puke daisies if I get one single solitary blister. Everyone will pay. They will know my outrage. Anarchy will occur.

  I walk downstairs and already I can feel how impossibly heavy this bag is. Unfriggingbelievable!

  “Say goodbye, Flibber. You might not see me ever again.” I shed my backpack and curl up on the floor with my Newfoundland. He licks me all over my face like he usually does, but this time I don’t yell at him or call him gross. This time, I like it. For real, I’ll miss him. He’s the only one here most of the time. Mom and Dad are always out there living their über-important lives, and Dillon is so whipped by Hattie he might as well be enslaved to her. Pathetic boyfriend extraordinaire.

  “I love you, boy,” I whisper into Flibber’s ear. I look around to make sure Dillon has already left the house before I kiss Flibber on that amazingly soft spot between his eyes.

  Flibber gives a little whine. He knows.

  At the door, I turn back and look at the house as though I will never see the living room again or the umbrella stand in the corner of the front foyer or the stain on the carpet across the third step where Dillon spilled a slushy and almost died trying to get the blue out before Mom came home or the gorgeous Newfoundland looking back at me with drool hanging halfway to the floor. I am having all the feels.

  “Bye, boy.” I shut the door and turn to walk to the car. Great. Speaking of Hattie, there she is. Again. Shotgun. Can’t he do anything without her by his side? His chain is so tight, I bet she holds it for him when he pees.