Camp So-And-So

by Mary McCoy

  The lights went down, and Kadie took center stage alongside Tania and Ron in front of the closed velvet curtain. Every seat in the theater was filled, a sea of perfect, cruel faces staring up at them. Halfway back, Kadie saw Vivian whisper something to Kimber, and the two of them snickered behind their hands. However, when the spotlight fell on Tania, everyone in the room fell silent and applauded their leader dutifully.

  “Thank you, thank you,” she said with a demure bow. “Welcome to the song-and-dance portion of the All-Camp Sport & Follies. And welcome to our judges, though they need no introduction.”

  The audience applauded again as the Inge F. Yancey Young Executives Leadership Camp Board of Directors shuffled onto the stage: the woman in the veiled hat and gloves who seemed to be transported from another time, the woman in the floral-print dress whose age was impossible to tell, and the lumpen creature in the purple suitcoat, his, her, or its face hidden beneath a thicket of black hair. After they were introduced, the three judges filed into the front-row seats that had been reserved for them.

  Tania’s smile turned venomous as she shifted her gaze from the judges to Kadie.

  “As winners of the steeplechase, you’ll have the opportunity to choose whether you’ll perform first or second.”

  “We’ll go second,” Kadie said.

  “Very good,” Tania said in a way that suggested she was prepared to defeat them soundly either way.

  “Then without further ado, let the Follies begin!”

  Kadie and Tania shook hands and exited to opposite sides of the stage as the curtains opened.

  The sets had been transformed into something marvelous, a canopy of artificial trees and twinkling lights against a backdrop painted to look like the forest at night. A group of Inge F. Yancey campers stood in a ring around a maypole, each one of them holding a long silk ribbon. From the orchestra pit, a flutter of woodwind notes rose, and they began to dance. Their skirts and hair flowed behind them as they glided around the maypole, tying their ribbons into a pastel braid.

  Then they dropped the ends of their ribbons all at once and completed a series of perfectly executed grand jetés before floating offstage. The maypole was lifted out on wires, and the lights dimmed so it looked like the stage was bathed in moonlight.

  Three more performers danced onstage to a lively fiddle tune. One wore a donkey mask over his head, while the other two wore wreaths of flowers in their hair. Then a fourth camper came out wearing a sandwich board that had been carved out of Styrofoam and painted gray to resemble a stone wall. The audience all laughed and applauded wildly, these apparently being familiar and much-loved characters from some fairy story or another. After they had frolicked and kissed and chased one another around the stage for a few minutes, they bowed.

  The curtain fell, and the audience erupted in applause so raucous that after a few minutes, the curtain was lifted once again and the cast stepped forward and took another bow. The audience came to its feet, and no less than ten bouquets of flowers flew up onto the stage. The cast bowed again, then left, then were called back for yet another bow before they finally exited the stage for good and the curtains closed.

  Two days ago, Kadie would have been seething with frustration and rage, but as she stepped into the spotlight, all she could do was hope.

  “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” she said with a smile that she hoped looked more natural than it felt. “We are Cabin 1 from Camp So-and-So, and we are here tonight to dazzle you with our feats of daring, to woo you with song, and to move you to tears with our camp spirit. Without further ado, I give you—Dora!”

  When the curtains reopened, the backdrop painted to look like the forest at night was gone. The trees, the twinkling lights, even the musicians in the pit orchestra had vanished in a matter of seconds. Dora stood in the center of the bare stage, beaming like a goon.

  They had the whole costume room at their disposal, and unable to decide between frocks, Dora had chosen all of them. She twirled across the stage in a flurry of feathers and sequins and rainbow-striped tights and launched into a series of cartwheels before lunging into a split she was unable to get out of for some moments. At least she did manage to keep from braining herself on her last tumbling pass.

  Next, Kadie juggled a set of clubs which she dropped only twice, and Cressida surprised them all with a competent tap dance number.

  Then all three of them stepped to the center of the stage, pulling with them an artificial campfire they’d made using cellophane and gold foil and a battery-operated fan.

  Dora stepped forward and sang:

  On top of spaghetti all covered in cheese

  I lost my poor meatball when somebody sneezed.

  Then Cressida joined in:

  Little Bunny Foo Foo hopping through the forest,

  scooping up the field mice and bopping them on the head.

  And finally Kadie’s song blended in with the rest, her voice a clear, unadorned alto:

  Make new friends, but keep the old.

  One is silver and the other’s gold.

  The audience, which had ranged from politely scornful to actively hostile throughout their performances, went completely silent as the girls from Cabin 1 sang in a round. Alone, none of their voices was anything special and none of the songs was anything they hadn’t heard a hundred times, but together, they somehow blended into a magical thing.

  This number had been Kadie’s idea. It was camp, after all. Camp was supposed to be hot dogs and sleeping bags and horseback rides and singing little-kid songs at the top of your lungs. It was not about steeplechase and gazpacho. It was not qiviut sleeping bags and bad dinner theater.

  They linked arms and sang in unison:

  Make new friends, but keep the old.

  One is silver and the other’s gold.

  That was when one of the lobby doors at the rear of the theater opened and light poured in. Kadie, Cressida, and Dora paused and looked up to see who had passed through them.

  Neither Kadie nor Dora recognized the group of girls, but Cressida squinted, sure that her eyes were mistaken, that it was a trick of the light.

  They were only through the first third of their plan, and the look on Kadie’s face said that she was about to move into the next phase. Cressida stopped singing for a moment, caught Kadie’s eye, and mouthed the word, “Wait.”

  If Kadie had been nervous before, now her heart raced. The heat from the stage lights made her dizzy, and she willed herself to stay on her feet.

  From the back of the theater, a girl’s voice rang out, filling the entire room. She called Cressida’s name.

  And Cressida knew that whatever their plan had been, they were going to have to improvise now.

  CABIN 4

  SOUL MATES

  [SCENE: Six girls interrupt Cabin 1’s performance in the All-Camp Sport & Follies: ERIN, VERITY, ANNIKA, ALIX, AMBER, and one of the two ADDISONs.]

  Erin opened the theater doors quietly and just a crack, but the moment she passed through them and looked down the aisle to the front of the theater and saw who was standing there, she forgot all about being stealthy.

  She ran down the center aisle, screaming at the top of her lungs, “CRESSIDA!”

  A murmur rose up all through the theater. Heads turned and the audience got up from their seats to get a better look at what was happening. No one was sure if it was part of the act.

  Erin vaulted onto the stage and tackled Cressida in a hug that nearly knocked them both off their feet.

  “Are you trying to kill me?” Cressida rasped, but tears streamed down her cheeks as she spoke, and a smile that no one at Camp So-and-So had ever seen lit up her face.

  “You magnificent bastard! You got my letter,” Erin said, eyes wide in disbelief. “You came for me. You believed me.”

  “Of course I believed you, idiot face,” Cressida said. Her voice shook as she threw her arms around Erin again and bear-hugged her. “You’re my best friend.”

  The entire a
udience had fallen silent and hung on every word the two girls exchanged. Meanwhile, the rest of Cabin 4 threaded through the aisles, looking for their soul mates. It didn’t take them long. Alix recognized the skateboarder from across the room and made a beeline for him. Amber waved to the soul mate with the guitar, and Annika introduced herself to the one with the pompadour and well-defined biceps.

  It was just Verity and Addison now—one of the Addisons. Across the room, Verity could see the other one laughing with Tad, her soul mate with the firewood-carrying arms, but mostly, Verity’s eyes were glued to the stage, where Erin was hugging a girl with translucent skin and hair like dandelion fluff, tears streaming down both of their faces. It was the girl from the photograph in Erin’s room. Verity wished Erin were holding her like that, and tried to brush away an ugly prickle of jealousy.

  Before Verity’s brain could stir up any more trouble, though, Erin found her in the crowd and motioned for her to come up onstage. Guiltily, Verity made her way down the aisle and climbed up the stairs, joining the two girls.

  Erin beamed and said, “Verity, this is my best friend, Cressida. Cressida, this is Verity.”

  They shook hands and smiled, then Erin gave Verity a strange look.

  “Can I talk to you for a second?” she asked, taking Verity by the hand and pulling her to the side of the stage. “Are you okay?”

  It took Verity a while to answer. After all, it was a complicated question, given the circumstances.

  At last, she said, “You do seem different.”

  “I’m me again,” Erin said. “I was trying to explain it before when your friends showed up. You brought me back, Verity. When you kissed me.”

  Of course, that was what Erin had been getting at with all the talk about olives and Isis Archimedes, and Verity saw that now, but she was still skeptical.

  “How do you know it was the kiss that did it?”

  Erin gave her a scornful look. “Oh, does golden light usually pour into your mouth when you kiss someone?”

  “I don’t know,” Verity said truthfully. “I’ve never kissed anyone like that before.”

  “Me neither,” Erin said, taking her hand.

  Two by two, the rest of Cabin 4 joined them onstage, hand in hand with their soul mates, each one of them brimming with happiness and talking like they’d known one another their whole lives.

  “I almost hate to tell them,” Erin said.

  “I feel badly for them,” Verity said. “They don’t know what’s going to happen.”

  Erin touched Verity’s face gently with her fingertips and kissed her on the cheek.

  “Nobody does,” she whispered in Verity’s ear. “Nobody ever does.”

  Then Alix kissed the skateboarder.

  Amber kissed the guitar player.

  Annika kissed the boy with the pompadour.

  Addison kissed Tad.

  Out in the audience, Verity saw the second Addison flicker, then fade, then disappear altogether.

  “Do you want to kiss me again?” Verity asked. “I mean, even though . . .”

  Erin laughed. “Of course I want to kiss you again. It’s not like I changed that much.”

  A helix of sparks encircled each pair of faces, and light flowed from the stage, bathing the upturned faces in the audience. Not everyone was enchanted—not Tania, certainly—but more than a few found themselves swept up in the passion. The creatures in the audience might have been vicious, they might have been cruel, but they knew a good story when they saw it.

  Verity stood on her tiptoes and cupped Erin’s face in her hands, and they kissed. It was different this time. This time, there was no shower of sparks, no ray of light emanating from their faces. They weren’t outside on a warm summer evening at sunset, crickets chirping as the breeze licked at their hair and tickled them behind the knees. They weren’t alone.

  And they weren’t the same people they had been.

  None of this was bad, but none of it was the same either.

  As the other soul mates kissed the girls from Cabin 4, one by one each one of them felt himself wake up and, upon waking, discovered he felt like himself—his true and whole self—for the first time in a very long time.

  Verity felt Erin’s fingers in her hair. She touched her neck. Somewhere, Verity was sure she heard singing.

  CABIN 1

  THE ALL-CAMP SPORT & FOLLIES

  [SCENE: While everyone is distracted by romance, Cabin 1 resumes their plan with CRESSIDA taking center stage.]

  Cressida was surprised to see her best friend kissing the girl from Cabin 4 onstage, but only a bit. Erin had come out to her last summer, right before she left for Camp So-and-So, right before Cressida had broken her arm—the very night, in fact, that Cressida had broken her arm.

  At the time, Cressida had done her best to be supportive. She could tell how terrified Erin was to tell her, never mind that they were best friends and had always told each other everything.

  “How long have you known?” Cressida had asked as the two of them sat on top of the monkey bars at the playground behind the elementary school, their preferred venue for serious talks.

  “Awhile,” Erin said, dropping down through the bars to hang by her knees. “Deep down, probably a long time. I knew something was different. I just didn’t know exactly what it was. It’s harder to figure out than you’d think it would be. Which is not fair, by the way.”

  “I’m happy for you,” Cressida had said.

  “Why?” Erin asked. “It’s not like I won something.”

  They both laughed at this as they got down from the bars and got on their bikes.

  “I’m happy because you know,” Cressida said. “And because you told me.”

  “I hope this doesn’t make things awkward between us,” Erin said, her voice sounding strangely formal and nervous.

  “Don’t be stupid,” Cressida said, pedaling out of the grass and into the teachers’ parking lot. “Why would it?”

  “Because that’s what scares me the most,” Erin said. “That you’re going to get all weird around me.”

  “I promise I won’t get weird,” Cressida said.

  That was when she’d hit a patch of loose gravel with her front tire and gone spilling onto the ground, cracking her elbow on the pavement. Erin had ridden home as fast as she could and gotten her dad to pick Cressida up and take her to the emergency room. That was the last time they’d talked about any of it because the next day, Erin left for camp and Cressida stayed on the couch trying not to scratch underneath her cast, and when Erin came home a week later, Cressida wasn’t the one who’d gotten weird.

  Erin had been distant the rest of the summer, hadn’t returned most of Cressida’s texts, and the few times they did see each other, Erin had acted like a different person, like Cressida was a casual acquaintance.

  The first two months of the school year had been a misery for Cressida without her best friend by her side. And then the letter had come with its postmark from that obscure Appalachian town and the handwriting that she knew so well she could practically forge it, and Cressida’s heart had flooded with hope.

  And now after a whole year, she was back, she was here, and she was the old Erin. That she was kissing the girl from Cabin 4 was the least astonishing thing about any of it.

  There wasn’t time to muse further about any of it, and she certainly wasn’t about to interrupt Erin so they could compare notes. Cabin 1 had a plan, and now there was more reason than ever to move forward with it. Kadie and Dora had already taken advantage of the chaos and the kissing to creep offstage. That left Cressida to pick up the plan where they’d left off.

  She wished she had Kadie’s boldness and leadership skills, as they would have come in handy for this part of the plan, but Cressida was determined to do her best. She only wished there were some way to let Erin and the others know what was about to happen.

  While the soul mates kissed and the sparks swirled around their faces, Cressida picked up the musical cue a
nd resumed Kadie’s song:

  Make new friends, but keep the old.

  One is silver and the other’s gold.

  She wished the song were longer so she could buy Kadie and Dora more time, but since it wasn’t, she gestured to the audience. They were slow to join in, but soon, the Inge F. Yancey campers and the judges and everybody in the entire theater except Tania was singing along.

  Cressida led a sing-off between the left and right sides of the theater, between the front and the back, between the guys and the girls. She made up new verses on the fly and taught them those:

  Win or lose, it matters not,

  Brave we stood, and hard we fought.

  Shoot and knit and ride and row,

  All-Camp Sport & Follies, what a show!

  She led them in song until finally it could go on no longer. Exhausted, her throat ragged, Cressida threw her arms into the air and called out, “Tonight, we are all friends! We are all friends here!”

  She fell to her knees in a deep bow, her forehead nearly touching the stage. At first, the theater was so quiet that Cressida was afraid to look up. Then the clapping started. Cressida lifted her eyes from the floor and was surprised to see more than a few damp eyes in the crowd, not least of them belonging to the judge in the floral-print dress.

  “Encore!” someone shouted.

  “Bravo!” came another cry from the audience.

  Cressida smiled and lifted her arms and bowed again at the waist.

  “Bring them out! Bring out the others!”

  The spotlight shifted over toward the wings of the stage, ready to light the paths of Cabin 1’s other stars.

  Cressida hoped they were ready. She hoped they’d be able to convince Vivian and Kimber to let themselves be rescued. She hoped every single Inge F. Yancey Young Executives Leadership camper—or whatever they really were—was sitting right here in this room. She hoped that Kadie had had time to bar the exits. She hoped that if this didn’t work, nothing very bad would happen to them.

  She hoped with all of her heart, but had to admit, there were a lot of things that could go wrong.