Freefall

by Stacy Davidowitz

  “So this was taken at Christmastime?” Slimey asked.

  “On Christmas,” Missi said. “That’s when she came home.”

  “Like, for good?” Jamie asked.

  “Well—”

  “Is she coming up for Visiting Day?” Jenny asked. “Omigod, do we get to meet her?!”

  The pricks behind Missi’s eyes turned into stabs, and before she could will herself to keep it together, she became a puddle of tears. Her nose got stuffed up, and her eyes began to burn, and she’d never felt so self-conscious in her life. “I—I’m—sorry,” she sobbed, wiping her soggy eyes with the back of her hand.

  “Stop saying sorry,” Slimey said. “Cry it out!”

  Missi sputtered a laugh. “Thanks, you guys. I’m fine.” She expected her friends to go back to their own beds. But Jamie rubbed her back. Jenny smoothed her frizz. Slimey held her hand. She was smothered in forehead and shoulder kisses. For some silly reason, that made her cry even more.

  “It’s going to be okay,” said Jamie.

  “We love you, carrot top,” said Jenny.

  “There, there, thou princess of cats,” said Sophie.

  Finally, Missi sniffled and the waterfall of tears came to a halt. She unzipped the Hello Kitty pillowcase of her pillow and pulled out her mom’s letter. “I got this from her yesterday.” She unfolded it onto her lap, and all the girls’ heads leaned in at once to read it. Missi’s eyes were too wet and blurry to follow along, but she’d read the letter so many times, and had thought about it so much, by now she knew it by heart. Sophie and Jenny whispered the last line: “‘Dream big. Make mistakes. Never lose yourself along the way.’”

  Missi felt a wave of fresh pain. She’d really wanted to introduce Rebecca Joy to her cabinmates. To show her around camp’s new facilities. To have her see her daughter in her element. “So, yeah,” Missi said, trying not to drown in her disappointment. “You won’t be meeting her anytime soon.”

  “Well, if we can’t meet your mom in person,” Slimey said, “then maybe we can meet her through your stories.”

  Missi looked at her curiously. “What do you mean?”

  “She means tell us everything,” Jenny said.

  “Oh.” Missi wasn’t sure that was a good idea. Certainly her cabinmates felt claustrophobic on her single bed. Surely they wanted to get back to the fun confessionals. Tonight wasn’t meant to be a breaking-news special of The Missi Show. “It’s okay,” she said. “I don’t want to be a wet blanket.”

  “Then be a dry one,” Jenny said. “Can you pretty please tell us about your mom?”

  “Yeah, tell us,” Jamie said. “If you want to talk, then we want to hear!”

  Jamie, Jenny, Slimey, Melman, and Sophie cuddled in tight, bracing themselves for story-time. “Sure,” Missi said as her heart grew a size. “That would be really nice.”

  “So, like, where was she before Christmas?” Jenny asked. “What made her come home? Was it weird at first? What did you guys do together these last six months? Leave no juicy details out.”

  Missi nestled herself against her jean pillow and tried to fall back into her favorite memories with her mom—baking bean brownies, learning reflexology, strawberry picking at Battleview Orchards, and stargazing at Double Trouble State Park. But Rebecca Joy’s letter was stuck in her head, and those once-sweet memories, just like the one of the Palisades Park trip, had turned sour. Missi explained how angry and hurt she was. How it wasn’t fair that her mom had come back into her life just to abandon her all over again. How it made her feel like she wasn’t a good-enough daughter. Like everything her mom had promised her was a lie, and how could she trust her ever again?

  It was weirdly healing to be honest with her best friends. They listened and rubbed her back and squeezed her hand through the hardest parts.

  Cookie tiptoed inside at 1:03 a.m., her romance novel pressed against her chest. “Are you all up?” she whispered.

  “No,” Sophie said. It was followed by muffled giggles.

  “I’m the worst counselor.” Cookie sighed. “Seriously, ladies. Bedtime. Please no one tell the Captain I neglected you.”

  “Wait, wait!” Jenny cried. “Can we sleep all together?”

  “Like how?” Cookie asked, looking skeptically at her tangle of campers, their limbs dangling off of Missi’s mattress.

  “Like this.” Jenny waved everyone off the bed. “Jamie and Melman, push with me.” The three girls pushed Missi’s single bed all the way over to Jenny’s bottom bunk, while Slimey and Melman collected fallen pillows. Sophie dragged blankets over from her bed. “See? A sleepover party!” Jenny squealed. “Who’s in?”

  They all shot up their hands. Missi’s heart had an even bigger growth spurt. She was in. Obviously. SooperDooperLooper in.

  “This work for you?” Jenny asked Cookie.

  Cookie shrugged. “We already sleep in tight quarters. Do you girls have so much love that you need to go to bed on top of each other?”

  “YES!” the Notting Hillers shouted in unison. Missi and the J-squad carried on: “Jinx! Double jinx! Triple jinx! Quadruple jinx!” Melman smacked the three of them with a pillow before they could say “Quintuple jinx!” Feathers exploded. Missi began laughing so hard that her front teeth whistled like a harmonica. The six of them were a contagious heap of giggles.

  Twenty minutes later, once the giggles settled and their eyelids were all like, Nope, we are closed for business, Missi whispered: “G’night munchkins!”

  Jamie nuzzled her nose in Missi’s back. Sophie wiggled her butt into Missi’s stomach. “G’night, Missi-face,” Jenny said. Then, just like that, they fell asleep—a six-person cuddle-spoon.

  “Left, straight, straight, keep going, STOP—THAT’S A FLAGPOLE!”

  A blindfolded Wiener stopped short. “Tell me again why you pulled me from stained glass?” he asked Dover. “I was almost done with my kaleidoscope.”

  “A little birdie in a tree said something very true to me.”

  “Birds don’t talk.”

  “Fine,” Dover said. “I was in the office, browsing their DVD library, when I overheard something in Spanish. I looked up, and there was Chico, talking smack on the landline.”

  “Really? What did he say?”

  “Actually he was pretty polite,” Dover said. “But I don’t want to say too much. You should hear it from the source himself.”

  “Can you at least tell me why I’m blindfolded?” Wiener asked. “I know we’re going to Wawel Hill. I can smell our dirty laundry from here.”

  “Oh. I dunno. I thought it would make walking more fun.”

  “For you.”

  “Yes, for me.”

  Wiener tore off the blindfold, and he and Dover began jogging. Well, more precisely, Dover began speed walking at Wiener’s jogging pace because leg-length differences. Wiener couldn’t wait to hear what was up. Maybe Chico had scored a Spanish indie film for them to screen. Maybe he’d asked his parents to send up supplies for a cabin Carnaval, Barcelona-style! Or maybe it was Chico’s birthday? The guys had never asked him his birthday. That had to be it! One whipped-cream sundae with rainbow sprinkles, please! “I bet I know what it is,” Wiener said.

  “I bet you don’t,” Dover replied.

  Now they were both running. The day after the Square Dancing fiasco, things had cooled down. Chico had apologized for his stretch of discourtesy, dishonesty, and thievery, and Play Dough had promised to never again chant Man up or STARFISH at him until he buckled. The guys had learned a lot more about Chico, and he had learned a lot more about the guys. For instance, Wiener now knew that Chico preferred paprika on everything from tuna fish to iceberg lettuce. Chico now knew that campers spread superbugs called lice. Things didn’t get perfect overnight, but Chico did give the cabin a group singing lesson and only charged a half can of EZ Cheez.

  Wiener and Dover arrived at last, sticky with sweat, at the foot of Wawel Hill Cabin. Wiener bounded up three, four, five porch steps and then stoppe
d cold. In front of him was a tightly packed camouflage duffel. On its side, in chalk: Ramos. “Chico’s leaving?”

  “Yup,” Dover said.

  “C’mon, I thought you were dragging me here for sauce news!”

  “Nope. Sour-sauce news.”

  Wiener anxiously climbed the last porch step and opened the cabin door. There was Chico, hovering over Wiener’s bed, arranging his denim Ray-Ban sunglasses on his pillow. “Whatcha doing?”

  Chico jumped backward, startled. “I, uh.”

  “Did they break?” Wiener asked.

  Chico’s lips turned up. “No, my Wiener. I feel bad for—how do you say—throwing you shade?”

  “That’s how you say it.”

  “So I’m throwing you my shades as a parting gift.”

  “Ha! What? Me?” Wiener got instantly giddy. He couldn’t believe he’d get to sport Chico’s Ray-Bans. They were the saucest accessory in town! Could he pull them off? Probably! Not as well as Chico, but he’d look cooler in them than he did in the pink plastic ones he’d won at Play Dough’s bar mitzvah. “Thanks, man!” Wiener said. “This means a lot.”

  “I’m glad,” Chico said, smiling.

  Just as Wiener went to slip the Ray-Bans from the pillow to his eyes, the words “parting gift” sunk in, and his excitement got smothered in sadness. “Wait, so why do you have to leave?”

  “I have my aunt Gabriella’s wedding. She’s my mom’s sister. She does crazy stuff, like me. She’s my favorite. The guy she’s marrying is a racecar driver with a scar from his lip to his eyebrow.”

  “Oh,” Wiener said, relieved and worried all at once. He hoped the dude was good to Gabriella. And a more cautious driver now. “But then you’ll come back after the wedding?”

  “I don’t think so,” Chico said somberly. “It’s a big trip. Expensive, too.”

  Wiener had very little idea how much a round-trip flight from New York to Barcelona was, but one thing he did know: Camp was priceless. “Is there anything I can do to change your mind?”

  “It’s not up to me. But even if it were, it would be hard to see Missi every day and not be allowed to date her.”

  “What do you mean ‘not allowed’?”

  Chico sat on the edge of Wiener’s bed. “Before camp, my parents told me I couldn’t have a girlfriend here.”

  “But Missi’s not just any girlfriend,” Wiener protested. “It’s not like she’s a racecar driver with a scar on her face. She’s the opposite! She’s the best influence!”

  “Well, I did steal stuff for her.”

  “That she didn’t ask you to steal!”

  Chico shuffled his feet. “I don’t want to fight about it, my Wiener. I had to stop seeing Missi. Before we found out about my aunt Gabriella’s engagement, my parents told me that if I follow their rules and get through the summer without any more trouble, I could go back to my old school in Barcelona. I could sleep in my own bed. I could go to Carnaval with my dad. I could be back home with my friends where I belong. That’s a really big deal for me.”

  Wiener tried to imagine how he’d feel if his parents forced him to go to a boarding school in Sweden. He’d miss Max a lot, and his parents, but other than that it sounded sweet—mountainous backdrops, Ikea furniture, gender equality!

  Chico was back at his bed now, packing up last-minute stuff like his hair gel and argyle socks. Maybe I’m thinking about it all backward, Wiener thought. Maybe Chico felt the way he would if his parents didn’t let him return to Rolling Hills. A summer without camp would be miserable! He’d spend his days mowing his parents’ lawn, avoiding slugs in the driveway, and watching Netflix all alone.

  “So, wait,” Wiener said, walking over to Chico. He helped him fold his underwear, which was also argyle. “When your parents told you that they might let you stay in Barcelona, did they know about what went down in Hersheypark?”

  “No.”

  “Do they know about it now?”

  “Yeah. I told them myself.”

  Wiener did a double take. Actually, it was a triple take. Which was appropriately dramatic for this sort of news.

  “It’s fine,” Chico said, laying a hand on Wiener’s shoulder. “It was time I owned up. It’s the only way I’ll stop doing dumb stuff. I don’t want to end up in jail. Or hurting more hearts.”

  “Wow,” Wiener said. “That’s really mature of you.”

  Chico nodded in agreement.

  “So, what did your parents say when you told them?”

  “Well.” Chico sighed. “They weren’t happy about what I did, but they were proud I’d come to them first. As far as my future—Sweden or Barcelona—I’ll have to see.”

  “That’s great news!” Wiener jumped a little. “It’s a win-win!” “Maybe,” Chico said with a smile. “You always see the best in things, my Wiener.” He squatted to the floor and dug under his bed, pulling out a glass Hershey’s Kiss filled with brown liquid.

  Chocolate milk? “Aw,” Wiener said to be polite. “You didn’t have to.”

  “It’s for Missi. To apologize,” Chico said. “It’s Hershey’s perfume, and no, I didn’t steal it. I had a friend buy it online and ship it to me. With my own money. If that’s what you were thinking.”

  That wasn’t what he was thinking. “May I?” Wiener asked.

  Chico cocked his chin and spritzed Wiener’s neck. “I forgot you like to smell like a lady.”

  “Like a lady?!” Wiener scoffed. “If milk chocolate and nostalgia is the smell of a lady, then I’ll happily smell like one for the rest of my life.”

  Suddenly Dover was beside them. “Yo, Wiener. Do me.” Wiener had completely forgotten Dover was in the cabin. These last five minutes, he’d felt like it was just him and Chico and no one else—the definition of true bromance. Dover locked his fingers behind his head and spun. Wiener sprayed him six times. “Mmmmmmm, yum!” he cried, opening his mouth as wide as a softball. “Spritz my tongue!”

  Chico stepped in with urgency. “It’s not for your mouth.” He worked the perfume out from Wiener’s furled fingers and slipped it into its original packaging.

  Just then, Arman popped his head into the cabin. “Hey, buddy, you ready?”

  “You’re leaving now?” Wiener asked Chico in a panic. “Like, as in this second?”

  “Yes, my Wiener.”

  Wiener’s heart began to beat wildly and sadly all at once. Arman grabbed Chico’s carry-on bag from his bed and headed back toward the porch. “Quick goodbyes, yeah? Eddie, the groundskeeper, is waiting for you in his car. You’ve gotta make your flight.”

  “Thanks, Arman. I’ll be right there.” Chico looked Wiener in the eyes. “Can you deliver the gift to Missi? I have a note.” He rotated the Hershey’s Kiss perfume package to reveal a sealed baby blue envelope taped to its side.

  “Of course,” Wiener said.

  Dover offered Chico a handshake, which turned into a manhug.

  Wiener felt a pinch of heartbreak. He wished he could keep hanging out with the new man Chico was just starting to become. “Guys?” he said. Dover and Chico opened up their hug and put their arms around each other’s shoulders. “How do you say ‘New Man’ in Spanish?”

  “Hombre nuevo,” Chico and Dover said together, then broke into matching grins.

  Wiener got struck with a plan. He communicated it through rapid blinking to Dover, who blinked back. “You ready for this?” he asked him.

  Dover rubbed his eyes. “If we were just playing the staring game, you lost first.”

  “Nope, we’re sending Chico off the right way.” Wiener grabbed a broom and cleared his throat. “Now are you with me?”

  “Ohhhhh!” Dover slow-clapped with approval. “With you all the way.”

  “Good.” Wiener turned to Chico. “Kneel, Paolo of Barcelona . . .” He pushed him down by his head. He tapped him on his right shoulder, then swept the broom over his head to the left one.

  Dover whispered a blessing in Spanish. “Que tengas un viaje seguro, amigo.
Translation: ‘Safe travels, friend.’”

  Wiener nodded to him and continued. “Arise, Hombre Nuevo!”

  “Guys, I really don’t—”

  “Hombre!!!” they cheered over him.

  Then Wiener slipped on the Ray-Bans and went in for a man-hug of his own.

  “H-E-X-A, HEX-A-GON!” the Wawel and Notting Hillers cheered. Missi’s stomach was doing somersaults—she was about to coach her team through a grueling competition of weaving, skipping, do-si-doing and more.

  “It’s time to get started!” Stu announced from a makeshift platform in front of the basketball hoop. The creamsicle sun was setting so perfectly behind him, it looked like he was being filmed for a Western and not the new camper recruitment video. He fanned himself with his cowboy hat and addressed the bleachers of lower-camp spectators. “Oo-wee, we’ve got some fierce competition tonight, don’t you think?”

  Led by the lower-camp counselors, the spectators agreed with a cheer: “H-O-E-DOWN!” It was followed by five claps. “H-O-E-DOWN!”

  Fufu joined Stu on the stage. “Let’s break this down,” she said, nearly kissing the mic. “We’ve got fifteen upper-camp squares, including our ambitious group of twelve. I’m watching y’all with hawk eyes. All it takes is one dancer in a square to Grand Right to the left, or turn to his partner instead of his corner, or sashay instead of do-si-do, and I sit the whole team down for good. You think you can survive?”

  Missi grinned at her eleven hexagonmates, who were giddy with anticipation. They looked perfect for tonight’s evening activity, clad in overalls, flannel shirts, and red polka-dot bandanas—courtesy of Play Dough’s legendary grandpa. To take the country look to the extreme, Jenny had drawn freckles on each of their cheeks—well, except for Missi’s, since hers were naturally sun-kissed with them. Like her grandma loved to say, she was born to boogie.