Mother-Daughter Book Camp

by Heather Vogel Frederick

  My eyes slide over to Emma. She’s been subdued ever since Parents’ Weekend, and I don’t think it’s because of Felicia. I know she was disappointed that Stewart didn’t come. Emma has a hard time hiding her emotions. Plus, knowing her, she’s probably been writing all sorts of sad, tortured poetry. I wish I could tell her that my brother isn’t worth all the angst. I mean, he’s a great guy and I love him to pieces, but at the end of the day he’s still, well, just Stewart.

  I reach for a present to wrap. Each camper is getting a Camp Lovejoy baseball cap and matching key ring. Wouldn’t exactly top my list of coveted birthday presents, but it’s the thought that counts, right?

  “So, for our state fair trip tomorrow, here are the logistics,” says Gwen, consulting her clipboard again. “I want you and your campers to be at the grove, dressed and ready to go, by nine a.m. sharp. That means hustling everyone through breakfast and cabin cleanup. Make sure your campers bring sunscreen and a hoodie, please. Lower Camp will be on Bus Number One; the Hill on Bus Number Two. Camp will cover the entrance fee for everyone, and the kitchen will pack us up bag lunches, but you may want to have your campers bring a little spending money for extras. Got it?”

  On the sofa beside me, Megan does a happy little shimmy when she hears the magic words “spending money.” Shopping is one of our favorite activities, and even though the state fair is not exactly a prime prospect in the retail arena, still, it’s better than the offerings here at camp—which are zilch—or even Pumpkin Falls, which aren’t much better unless you really like general stores.

  “Becca! You got mail!” whispers Harper as I slip back into our cabin a few minutes later. I give Sarah, the CIT who’s been watching over Balsam for Megan and me, a thumbs-up. She nods and heads out to return to her own cabin.

  “Thanks, Harper,” I whisper back, my stomach giving a joyful flutter when I see the return address. It’s from Theo. Opening the envelope, I settle in to read it in the few minutes we have left of rest hour.

  Dear Becca,

  You’ll never guess what happened. Arthur escaped!

  Theo has a pet king snake. Of course he named it Arthur.

  I must have left the clamp on the lid of his cage loose. Anyway, my mother is not happy in a Very Big Way. Arthur got loose once a few years ago, and I ended up finding him a week later in my dirty laundry hamper. He’ll show up eventually. I’m not too concerned, but the rest of the family is kind of on edge. I keep telling them they don’t have to worry—Arthur is harmless.

  Grandma was supposed to come to dinner this weekend, but she took us out to a restaurant instead.

  “I’ll be back over once Theo’s slithery friend reappears,” she told us, and offered to let my mother come stay with her until he does. Isn’t that crazy?

  I smile. It’s so Theo. He can be a little clueless sometimes. If I were his mother, I’d have taken his grandmother up on her offer in a hot second.

  The boy definitely has snakes-on-the-brain. Me? Not even a wiggle. But when you’re crazy about a guy who’s crazy about snakes the way Theo is, you have to at least try to like them a little bit.

  And actually, they’re way more interesting than I ever would have imagined. Not as interesting as, say, our dog YoYo, or something you’d actually want to play with or cuddle, but still, interesting.

  I went to Minnesota again this past spring break and spent a lot of time with Theo. We visited snakes at the zoo, the pet store, and the zoology department at the university, where we’ll both be freshmen soon. Theo is already a fixture in the zoology department. He’s been hanging around there since he was in middle school. The zoo knows him too—he volunteered there through high school, and this summer they actually started paying him. He’s cleaning cages, mostly, but like me, he’s got to help pay for college somehow.

  Which reminds me, I need to contact the Student Employment office soon and let them know I’ll be looking for a part-time job this fall. Between what my parents and grandparents can contribute, my tuition is covered, but I need to help pay for room and board plus any extras, including gas for my car. If the university doesn’t have any job possibilities, I’m hoping I can find work waitressing. It pays really well, especially with tips. Theo said he could try to get me a job at the zoo, but cleaning cages is not my style.

  The bell rings, signaling the end of rest hour, and as our campers scatter to their afternoon activities, I head up to the Art Studio with Megan.

  It’s hot this afternoon, with very little breeze, so we move third- and fourth-period crafts outside onto the shady part of the deck. This week we’re teaching the girls how to make button bracelets. At Megan’s request, Gigi brought us two plastic tubs full of buttons over Parents’ Weekend. It’s proving to be another popular project, and both sessions are completely full.

  I’m making a bracelet for my mother using buttons with an animal theme, since she still has a thing for animal prints, and another one for my grandmother. For her, I’ve chosen brightly colored buttons with interesting patterns on them. That was as close as I could get to a quilt.

  Between working on my own bracelets and helping our campers with theirs, the afternoon passes quickly. Before I know it, it’s time for free period, and my quilters.

  By now I have a pretty regular following. There are three serious quilters from the Hill, high school girls who are each working on twin-size quilts for their beds at home, plus Pippa Lovejoy’s sister Lauren from Meadow and my own Amy Osborne.

  It’s funny, I’m the last person I ever would have expected to get hooked on quilting, but this last spring break, while Theo was at school—our breaks were different weeks, unfortunately, so he could only hang out after school and in the evenings—my grandmother got me started piecing quilt squares together for one of her projects. Within a day, I was smitten.

  “There’s something, I don’t know, soothing about it,” I explained to Theo. “But I feel prematurely elderly. All I’ve done all week is sit around quilting and talking to my grandmother and her friends.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” he replied, looking perplexed. “It’s a cool art form, Becca. Have you see some of the quilts they hang in art galleries? They’re phenomenal!”

  This is one of the things I really appreciate about Theo. His perspective is so different from most guys I know, who would have just poked fun at quilting. Maybe there’s something to be said for spending all your time with snakes.

  “Come sit by me, Amy,” I say, patting the bench. She’s working on a pattern that I got for her from my Wyoming friend Summer Williams. When I e-mailed Summer to tell her I needed something simple and easy, something that an eight-year-old who had never quilted before in her life could do, she wanted to know what Amy’s interests were.

  “Um, music—she plays the violin—and chipmunks . . .” I hesitated, trying to think what else. “Her favorite color is blue.”

  “Let’s go with music,” Summer said. “I’ve got just the thing.”

  Sure enough, a few days later a package arrived. Inside were all the ingredients for a really cute wall hanging. On the center square, which is white, there’s an appliqué of a violin, and surrounding it is a framework of bright blue squares. Around the edge, Summer added a strip of white fabric dotted with a pattern of musical notes. Amy was thrilled.

  “It’s looking good,” I tell her. “Try to keep those stitches as small and even as possible.”

  “Hey, Amy,” says Anna, one of the high school quilters, “I’ve been meaning to tell you, your violin solo at Parents’ Weekend was awesome.”

  Amy looks up, her dark eyes shining, clearly thrilled at the teenager’s praise. I could hug Anna—this is just the kind of thing my camper needs to hear to boost her confidence.

  At dinner, the surprise all-camp birthday party goes off without a hitch. The campers seem really tickled with their presents, and the counselors are surprised with gifts as well. If I’m not all that excited about the special staff baseball cap, at least the fleece b
lanket with the camp logo on it will be great for my dorm room.

  As Cassidy predicted, there are more songs. It’s actually really fun, and we end by forming a procession line, all holding up cupcakes lit with single candles as we circle the Dining Hall, singing “Happy birthday to me.”

  “Make a wish, girls!” calls Gwen when we’re done. “Close your eyes and count to three!”

  Can a person wish for a snake to find his way home? I wonder as I blow my candle out.

  The games afterward are great, too. There’s pin-the-tail-on-the-counselor (with duct tape, thank goodness), a piñata that’s supposed to be a giant canoe (Cassidy thinks it’s actually a banana turned sideways), and for the grand finale, musical kayaks in the inner H dock, which ends up with most of us getting drenched.

  And there’s one more surprise in store tonight.

  “What are you guys doing?” Jess demands, letting out a yelp as Megan and Cassidy and Emma and I all barge into her cubie while she’s getting ready for bed.

  “You don’t think we’d let your birthday go by unnoticed, do you?” Emma asks her.

  “It’s not my birthday.”

  Cassidy grins. “Close enough, right?”

  Jess’s birthday is tomorrow.

  “We figured there’d be too much going on tomorrow, what with the trip to the fair,” I explain, and we launch into another rousing chorus of “Happy Birthday.”

  We’re just singing the last line—“Happy birthday, dear Jessica Joy! Happy birthday to you!”—when Felicia pokes her head in.

  “What’s going on?” she asks.

  “Uh, nothing,” Emma replies sheepishly. “Just a sort of miniparty for Jess.”

  “Oh.” Felicia tries to hide it, but I can tell she’s hurt that we didn’t invite her.

  “Come on in,” says Jess, but her cousin shakes her head.

  “That’s okay. I need to round up our campers anyway.”

  “Oh dear,” whispers Emma after she leaves. “I never even thought to invite her.”

  “Never mind,” says Jess. “I’ll make it up to her later.”

  We pass around a tin of homemade fudge—Gigi and Sophie’s contribution to the party—along with a few gifts that Emma collected from friends and family.

  “My parents sent me socks? Socks?” Jess stares at the contents of their package in disbelief.

  “I think there’s something inside,” I tell her, and sure enough, there’s a gift certificate to the mall tucked into one of them. “You’re never too old to shop for school clothes” is written on the card that accompanies it.

  “Nice!” Jess is pleased. “I need some new stuff for college.”

  “Maybe we can go on a group shopping trip when we get back to Concord,” Megan suggests. “You know, help each other pick out some outfits?”

  Cassidy snorts. “As if.” She hates to shop.

  “You could use a few things,” I tell her. “Those jeans of yours are looking pretty ratty.”

  She lifts a shoulder. “Maybe.”

  Jess gets another gift certificate from the rest of the book club moms—they must have discussed this and coordinated with Mrs. Delaney—and a really nice messenger bag from all of us.

  “A messenger bag is a step up from a backpack,” Megan tells her.

  “We thought black would look sophisticated,” Emma adds. “It’ll be helpful for carrying books and music and stuff back and forth to class.” She points to the initials “JJD” embroidered on the front. “We even had it monogrammed for you.

  “Thanks, you guys,” says Jess. “I love it.”

  The final present is from Darcy. We crowd around as Jess unwraps the tiny box.

  “Good things come in small packages,” Emma tells her, and Jess turns pink again.

  We ooh and aah as she lifts the lid. A small gold heart necklace is nestled inside.

  “Is that a diamond on it?” I gasp, catching the reflection of a tiny sparkle.

  Jess nods, then tries it on. “How does it look?” she asks, angling to see herself in the teeny mirror over her dressing table.

  “Beautiful,” Emma tells her. “Just like you.”

  I can’t even imagine Theo ever giving me something like that. Unless maybe it had a snake on it.

  Jess is so happy, though, that it’s impossible to be envious.

  “You’ll definitely have sweet dreams tonight!” I tell her.

  It’s been a long day, and I’d give anything to be able to take a leisurely bubble bath, but I have to settle for just falling into bed. I crinkle my nose at the faint smell of skunk outside our cabin, but I’m too tired for it to really bother me. I’m actually kind of hoping it rains tomorrow so we can stick around camp, have an extended rest hour, and maybe just do some quiet stuff. An all-afternoon quilting session would be fantastic.

  The next morning, though, there’s no sign of rain. Just more hot sun. We lather up our girls and ourselves with sunscreen, make sure everyone has their matching Camp Lovejoy baseball caps, and pile onto the buses.

  As we’re boarding, I notice Artie unloading a wire cage of some sort from the back of his truck.

  “It’s probably a trap for the skunk, or whatever’s crawling around under the cubies,” says Jess. “It looks like one Walter Mueller uses.”

  Mr. Mueller is the animal rehabilitator she works with back in Concord.

  As we watch Artie carry the trap down the path toward Lower Camp, the buses begin to lurch out of the parking area. We bounce and rattle our way up the Hill and onto the winding back roads leading to the fair.

  “This will be good practice for you for living in the Midwest,” Cassidy teases me. “They’re big on state fairs there, from what I hear.”

  “Shut up,” I tell her.

  “I went to hockey camp in Wisconsin one summer, and we stopped at the state fair. I’ve never seen so much cheese in my life.”

  “Shut up,” I tell her again.

  “Maybe you can be the Butter Queen,” she muses. “They really have those, you know.”

  “Cassidy!”

  “Becca Chadwick, Minnesota’s Butter Queen,” she crows in a fake radio announcer voice, and this time I have to laugh. “It has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”

  Actually, I love state fairs. Not that I’ve been to that many, but my grandparents used to take me and Stewart to the one in Minnesota when we were little. I still have happy memories of seeing all the animals and going on the rides and eating fried dough and stuff.

  It takes us nearly an hour to get to the fairgrounds, and we’re all thoroughly sick of sitting on the hot buses by the time we arrive.

  “Remember to stay with your counselors!” Sergeant Marge bellows as we spill out onto the parking lot. “And remember we’re meeting for lunch at high noon in the picnic area!”

  “What do you girls want to do first?” Megan asks our campers.

  “See the quilts,” says Amy, and the other girls all groan.

  “No way—roller coaster!” cries Grace.

  “Bumper cars!” adds Mia, jumping up and down.

  “Ball toss!” says Kate. “I want to win a stuffed animal.”

  In the end, we agree to split up. Megan will take Grace, Mia, and Kate on a couple of rides while Amy and Harper and I check out the quilts.

  “Meet us by the Thunderchicken in an hour,” Megan tells us. “We can do the ball toss together before lunch.”

  We counselors have been given our cell phones back, just in case somebody gets lost or there’s an emergency and we have to reach Marge or Gwen. The camera on mine is working overtime as I try to capture all the gorgeous quilt designs. The exhibit is pretty phenomenal.

  I’m snapping away when I feel a tug on the hem of my T-shirt. It’s Harper.

  “What’s up?”

  “Can Amy and I go on the Ferris wheel?” she asks.

  I look over at Amy, surprised. “Really? You want to go for a ride?”

  She hesitates, glancing over at Harper, then nods.


  Broadening horizons for over a hundred years! The camp motto comes floating into mind and I smile at my campers. “Well, okay then, let’s go.”

  The cars are just two-seaters, so I put Amy and Harper together into one of them, making sure the seat belts are secure and the safety bar fastened. “I’ll be on the one right behind you,” I assure them, but my phone rings just as they’re whisked away. It’s my mother.

  “Hey, Mom!” I say, deciding to answer it. I motion to the next person in line to take my spot. “What’s up?”

  “Wow, you actually answered! I was just going to leave you a voice mail. You know, something about how much I miss my favorite daughter, that sort of thing.”

  I laugh. “I’m your only daughter, Mom. And I’m kind of busy right now.” I glance up at the wheel, which is revolving slowly. Another car is approaching—I should get on.

  Amy and Harper wave at me in excitement. I wave back. There’s really no need for me to go on the ride, I decide. I’ll be able to keep an eye on them from down here.

  “I guess I can talk for a couple of minutes, though,” I tell my mother, stepping out of line.

  She fills me in on life back in Concord, and then I tell her about the quilts, and about my latest letter from Theo.

  “His snake went missing?” she squeals with an audible shudder. “His poor mother!”

  Eventually, we get around to college.

  “Your course catalog arrived today,” my mother says. “I had a poke through it. Wow—there’s so much to choose from! I don’t know how you’re ever going to decide what classes to take, or what to major in.”

  My heart sinks at this. She knows I’ve been struggling, trying to figure out what I might want to focus on. “Not helpful, Mom.”

  She laughs. “Oh honey, it’s a good problem to have! So many avenues are open to you right now. You have a rich four years ahead!”

  “You think so?”

  “I know so.”

  I wave to Amy and Harper again. The cars are all full now, and the Ferris wheel is starting to pick up speed.