“That’s exciting,” Mercedes said. “College life is amazing. And we’re getting a taste of it this weekend.”
“It’s nice to meet you all,” Camille said.
“Tell us something about you,” Brittney probed.
“Well.” Camille hesitated. “I’m ... glad to be here?”
Brittney smiled. “No. Important stuff. You married?”
These girls don’t waste any time. “No.”
“You got a boyfriend?” Shaki asked.
“No.”
“Why not? You’re pretty,” from Chrisandrea.
“Thank you. I’ve been too busy, I guess,” Camille replied.
“You got any kids?” Michaela wanted to know.
“No.”
“I’m gonna be like you when I get older,” Sierra said. “No kids, no husband, just me and my job and my friends.”
“Same here,” Brittney echoed. “I’m going to live my life before I get married.”
“Where do you work?” Mackenzie asked.
“A company called Aquapoint Systems.”
Michaela asked, “You go to clubs?”
Camille glanced at Mercedes for guidance. Mercedes shrugged like “I can’t answer for you.”
“I have,” Camille admitted.
“For real? I can’t wait to get out of my parents’ house and go to college so I can do what I want to do. I’m going to go club-bin’ every night,” Sierra declared, eyes glowing with veneration.
Camille backpedaled, “I don’t go out a lot, though. Clubbing gets old after a while. Keep seeing the same tired people over and over again, just like school.”
The girls moaned sadly, as though Camille had let the air out of their pre-clubbing bubble.
Mercedes checked her watch. “We’ve got about thirty minutes until lunch. Let’s make our beds, freshen up.”
As they took a moment to get settled in, Camille suddenly felt the weight of the girls’ admiration on her shoulders. Clearly, they looked up to her. She understood exactly where they were coming from, too. Having grown up in a church full of holy women who acted like they’d never done anything wrong always made youth events boring and unrealistic. All they ever said was “don’t do this,” “don’t go there,” and “stay away from these kinds of people.” Easy for them—they dressed so ugly no one would ever invite them anywhere to do anything half fun anyway. Really, how could they talk about how to say no to a boy’s advances when they looked like they’d never been asked in the first place?
This was her chance to keep it real, to let the girls know that there was life outside of church. Yet, their innocence would require a bit of censorship. The twins were freshmen. Even the older girls had been sheltered enough to believe that clubs were the epitome of adult freedom.
Camille smoothed the blanket in place. She lifted her gym bag up onto the foot of her bed so that she could retrieve a face towel. As she raised the pink handles, a spider stealthily descended from her bag.
“Woop!” Camille scrambled across the room and hopped on Mercedes’s bed. The entire cabin erupted in shrieks as the girls leapt on Mercedes’s bed as well, huddled together in fear.
“What?” Mercedes, the only one still on the floor, asked.
“Girl, there was a spider on my bag! It crawled under my bed.”
Mercedes took off her flip-flop, hoisted up the edge of Camille’s comforter, and took a few quick swats. “Dead.” She slid the shoe back onto her foot. “Let’s go eat.”
“Uh-uh,” Shaki disagreed. “We will not have bugs in our cabin. Anybody got an extra towel or something they know they’re probably not gonna wear?”
Brittney volunteered, “My dad packed an extra blanket for me.”
“Okay, we need that blanket so we can stuff it under the door, ’cause if a spider crawls up in my bed tonight, I will walk back to Dallas.”
Camille couldn’t have said it better herself. Despite Mercedes’s teasing, the girls managed to secure the blanket under the door from the outside of the cabin when they left for lunch. Just seeing that little inch of fabric plugging up the insect thoroughfare brought some relief.
The camp cafeteria reminded Camille of the original Parent Trap movie. Log walls, long tables, lots of open space. She could only hope that none of the kids got the bright idea to have a food fight.
After selecting a cheeseburger and fries in the line, Camille and Mercedes sat at the corner end of a table already filled with loud-talking, boisterous adolescents. They’d lost track of their cabinmates altogether in this mixture of hormones and minimally supervised youth interaction. As much as she still wondered how she’d ended up in this position, Camille had to admit to herself that the sheer electricity of being around adolescents was contagious. Their lives, so full of possibility and potential, brought back fond memories.
When she was their age, she’d experienced one of the worst things that could happen: losing a parent. Only a few years later, she was sitting on top of the world. As she looked around the dining hall now, Camille wondered if the youngsters in the room realized how critical these next few years could be. People make some serious fork-in-the-road decisions that set them on vastly different courses for the rest of their lives at their age. College, marriage, career field. Some of them would even have children before they knew it. Didn’t seem fair to push them so quickly so soon, knowing how little information they had to go on.
“What you thinking about?” Mercedes queried loud enough to be heard over the bustle of kids.
Camille swallowed a fry. “Life. I mean, their lives. They’re so young. Babies.”
“I know, right?”
“They have so many options open to them, and they don’t even know it.” Camille shook her head, looking around the room. Shaki approached by one boy after another, Michaela and Mackenzie laughing with their mouths full. Brittney and Sierra sitting listening to two boys in a rap duel, and Chrisandrea sneaking to send a forbidden text message.
“I think they know they have a lot of opportunities open to them,” Mercedes disagreed. “The youth program keeps them pretty active and aware of scholarships, auditions, cultural events.”
“Yeah, but ...” Camille daydreamed aloud, “it just seems like when you’re a teenager, you have all this wild optimism. This sense that anything could happen. Hope, you know.”
Mercedes tilted her head down as she eyed Camille. “Okay, you’re acting like you’re ninety years old. You’ve probably got many more years ahead of you, too.”
“Well, I made a lot of mistakes in the past. Mistakes that cost me everything.”
“Whatever you did, I’m sure it didn’t cost you everything. You’re still here,” Mercedes said.
Spoken like a true middle-class American citizen. Most of them had never walked into a Beverly Hills store and bought something without even looking at the price tag. Never heard a knock in their engine and thought, “Let me go straight to the Lexus dealership,” without first thinking about how much money they had in the checking account. Being rich wasn’t just about money, it was about living a worry-free lifestyle. No matter what happened, she had it covered. No stress, no second-guessing, no rigging until the next paycheck. Completely liberating.
Only a small percentage of people actually got to a position where what they had to do and what they wanted to do were the same thing, day in and day out. Completely purposeful.
Maybe if she’d never experienced these things, Camille could sit back and live an at-least-I’m-here type existence. But not now. She had to get back on top.
And maybe, while she was here at the camp, she could say something to keep these girls from going up and down that same roller coaster. They needed to know how to get to the top and stay there forever, because the ride back down was enough to make anyone throw up.
CHAPTER 15
After lunch, the camp directors gave each cabin a letter. Camille’s cabin was Team F, which they unanimously decided stood for “Fly Girls.” Thirty minutes later, the Fly tea
m faced off with the Beautifuls in the first round of a volleyball tournament. Turned out, Shaki was nearly an all-American player. Chrisandrea set Shaki up for hit after hit, leading the Fly Girls to hands-down victory over every team except the Divas, who gave them a run for their money. The Divas had a big, strong girl on their team who almost broke Michaela’s glasses with a spike so fast Camille heard the wind part. That was okay, though. Brittney came through with five unpredictable serves that no one on their team could return.
The Fly Girls sang “We Are the Champions” as they escorted their small trophy back to the cabin. The girls played a few rounds of Uno and Speed, then later changed into bathing suits and met up with about half of their youth group at the pool. Camille and Mercedes dipped up to their waists to cool off, then covered up in sarongs and joined the other adult chaperones observing from surrounding shaded tables.
Some of the men had gotten caught up in a spirited game of dominoes, talking trash and scoring on each other.
“You’d think they’ve got money on these games, as serious as they are,” Camille commented under her breath.
Mercedes replied, “Knowing Brother Gibbles, they might.”
Both women giggled at the thought. Mercedes took Camille up on an offer to buy sodas from the vending machine near the restrooms. Then they sipped and watched the kids frolic in the water, laughing at Sierra, who nearly had a heart attack every time someone came close to getting water on her hair.
Sierra screamed, “Don’t make me set it off in here!”
“Why are you in the pool if you don’t want to get wet?” Mercedes called her out.
“It don’t matter! They see me standing over here!”
Thankfully, the last meal neared before Sierra’s do melted. Camp goers showered in the unattached, communal restroom and met up again in the cafeteria for hot dogs and chips.
Truth be told: Camille was pooped. All she wanted to see was her bed when she got back to the cabin, but Mercedes pulled out a folder containing an outline for Bible study.
Bible study? Now?
The girls pushed three other beds up to Mercedes’s bed and laid across the large platform, Bibles in hand. Camille decided she’d better sit upright against the wall if she planned on setting a good example, otherwise, she’d be asleep in no time.
Mercedes led a brief prayer, then began, “Tonight, we’re focusing on loyalty.”
Instantly, Camille’s stomach turned. Why is everyone harping on stuff like loyalty, integrity, and honesty? Weren’t there other sins, too? Murder. Adultery.
“Our scripture for tonight is Proverbs eleven and three. Shaki, could you please read the verse out loud?”
Shaki flipped through her book, then read, “The integrity of the upright guides them, but the unfaithful are destroyed by their duplicity.”
“Thank you. The first thing I want everyone to do is close your eyes and think about a time when someone betrayed you.”
That was easy for Camille. Eighth grade. Her best friend, Leah, walked to Tyson Park with Bennie Wright, then lied to Camille about the whole thing. Were it not for Keisha Armstrong, Leah might have gotten away with it. Keisha, however, stayed right across the street from the park. She put out the equivalent to a current-day Emergency Alert that Bennie pushed Leah on the swings, and they disappeared in the big, plastic pipe for anywhere from five to fifteen minutes, depending on whoever retold the story.
Although Bennie didn’t know Camille existed, Leah knew that Camille had a huge crush on Bennie.
Camille had cornered Leah in the restroom, a crowd of girls piling in to witness the action. “But you knew I liked him!”
“You never said you liked him,” Leah got technical.
“I wrote his name three hundred and twelve times on my math binder! Haven’t you seen this?” Camille held up the binder. Who could argue against this evidence?
Leah relented, “Okay, but he doesn’t like you!”
“Oooh,” from the instigators.
“Even if he doesn’t like me, you’re my friend. You’re not supposed to go after him if I like him. Those are the rules, Leah!”
Several of the girls nodded as the mob continued to grow. “I’d kick her butt if I was you.”
“Uh-uh,” someone disagreed. “If he don’t like her, he don’t like her. Why shouldn’t Leah be happy with him instead?”
“Shut up. Wasn’t nobody even talking to you.”
“Come make me shut up.”
The crowd shifted its attention. Next thing Camille knew, the two onlookers were going at it, pulling hair, swinging wildly. Teachers busted up in the bathroom, kicked everyone out, and lead the secondary attraction to the office.
Camille and Leah never spoke again. They rolled plenty of eyes, spread plenty of rumors about each other, but that was all. Two years of friendship flushed down the drain.
For a Bible study, this prompt had certainly generated some deep thought. Camille could definitely relate.
“Okay,” Mercedes called them back to the present. “I’m going to start by sharing my memory. Then, if anyone else would like to share, you’re welcome to do so.
“I was betrayed once by my aunt. She was selling her car for fifteen hundred dollars. I gave her seven hundred and fifty dollars and told her I would give her the other half when I got paid at the end of the month. She agreed, said she would hold the car for me. Well, when I went back with the rest of the money to get the car, she didn’t have the car anymore. She said she had sold it to someone else who had all the money upfront.”
“That’s wrong,” Mackenzie remarked.
“The worst part,” Mercedes said, “was when she didn’t want to give me back the money I did give her.”
Hostile comments flew across the room.
“Aw, naw. Me and old girl woulda had a serious problem,” Shaki joked.
“For real,” Chrisandrea concurred. “How she just gon’ keep your money?”
“She said she didn’t have it anymore. She’d already spent it.” Mercedes shrugged.
Camille wasn’t sure if it was in line with the goal of Bible study to ask, but she had to know. “So, what did you do?”
“Nothing, really. I mean, I told my mother. My mother told my grandmother. My grandmother paid me back the seven hundred fifty dollars on my aunt’s behalf. She said something like my aunt was going through a really rough time or whatever. My grandmother told me to think of it as a lesson not to mix business and family anymore.”
“Mmm-mmm,” Sierra moaned. “I would have took that seven hundred dollars out of her behind.”
Mercedes asked, “Does anyone else have an instance of betrayal to share with the group?”
“I do,” Brittney offered. “When my mom died two years ago, everybody came to her funeral and said all these wonderful things about her. But after we buried her, it seemed like people just left me and my dad alone. All those people who said they would check on me and bring meals by sometimes never did what they said they would do. I felt betrayed. Sometimes I still do because people carry on like nothing happened.”
“I know exactly how you feel,” Camille spoke from the heart. “My mother died when I was seventeen. The week after she passed, I went back to school, went back to church. People just didn’t bring up her name anymore.”
Mackenzie said, “Maybe they didn’t say anything because they didn’t want to remind you that your mom was dead.”
Camille chuckled. “It’s not like I could forget.”
“I know, right?” Brittney understood completely. She raised up and sat next to Camille.
“So, how did you get past that sense of betrayal?” Mercedes asked her fellow leader.
“For one thing, I learned how to cook.” Camille smiled at Brittney. “Secondly, I got busy doing other things with my life. Concentrated on school, got a boyfriend—which is not the answer to life’s problems, mind you. Basically, what I’m saying is that I had to move on. My mother wouldn’t have wanted me to stop livi
ng because she died. I figured if my own mother wanted me to move on, then I couldn’t get mad at the people around me for doing the same.”
“That’s right,” Shaki agreed. “My momma tells me that all the time. If something happens to her, she wants me to keep going.”
Mercedes prodded Camille. “What part did your relationship with Christ play in helping you get past the betrayal?”
Camille cocked her head to the left. She felt the girls staring at her, felt Mercedes hoping the “right” answer would come out of Camille’s mouth, but since she always told the truth where her mother was concerned, there was no way around her real answer. “Honestly, I can’t say I prayed or anything. I was too numb to pray at the time.”
Mercedes nodded. “Sounds like one of those times when Christ just took over.”
“Yeah,” Chrisandrea illustrated, “like that footprints poem. When you look back over, like, the sands of your life and see only one set of footprints, that’s not when God left you. That’s when God was carrying you through the tough times because you were too weak to walk.”
An almost tangible tugging in Camille’s chest caught her off guard. Pulled and pulled until she thought her heart might bust wide open. Why am I acting like this? She’d read the footprints poem a long time ago. Never thought it meant anything. But is it true? Can’t be true. It was only literature.
The study continued with a visit to God’s promise in Hebrews 13:5 that He would never leave nor forsake His people. “Often, even when we are not loyal to God, He is loyal to us. The Bible says He is not a man that He should lie. If God says He’s going to be there, He’ll be there.”
“That’s money in the bank, baby,” Sierra preached.
“Exactly,” Mercedes concurred. “You can count on Him being there for you no matter what. I know you’ve heard this all your life, but one day you’re going to need help like you’ve never needed it before. Whether it’s comfort, guidance, mercy, love, or just a reason to keep on living. I want you ladies to know where to turn. Amen?”
Automatically, Camille replied, “Amen,” with the group. Mercedes asked Mackenzie to end with a prayer. Again, Camille prayed on autopilot. She hadn’t heard anything else since Chrisandrea mentioned the footprints. And though her mind scrambled for ways to quiet the inner Witness, her heart couldn’t deny the ringing inside. If God had been there for her like Chrisandrea said, Camille owed Him everything. Everything.
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