by Una LaMarche
Emma was so wrapped up in her thoughts that she almost missed the exit, and as she veered sharply off onto the ramp, causing the driver behind her to lean on his horn, she realized that her heart was racing. She pulled up to a stoplight and took a series of deep breaths.
Reunion was going to be awesome, she told herself. Skylar, Maddie, and Jo had been such a huge part of her life for so long, and their history ran so deep, there was no way they wouldn’t be able to pick up more or less where they’d left off. And Camp Nedoba had always felt like a haven—a place she could go to just be herself, where she wasn’t defined by her grades or her letters of recommendation, and where people cared more if she could climb a tree than if she could score an 800 on her SAT verbal. That was why, even after three years, she felt like her camp friends knew her better than anyone.
Emma texted Skylar and waited for the light to turn green. She didn’t know what the weekend had in store, but she couldn’t wait to find out.
Skylar
Reunion: Day 1
SKYLAR SQUINTED INTO THE LATE MORNING SUN and examined her handiwork. She’d painted the reunion welcome banner with the help of her campers (she had the eleven-year-olds that session, in Missiquoi Cabin) the previous weekend, and with the exception of a bright purple E that had dripped down to the bottom of the paper, obscuring part of her painstakingly rendered panoramic sunset, she decided it looked pretty good.
“Right there!” she called to Jo, who was standing on a rickety ladder in order to hang it over the entrance to the whitewashed gazebo that separated the camp offices from the infirmary and counselors’ lounge. Jo tacked up the last corner and vaulted down, stepping back and craning her neck to look.
“Is that supposed to be me?” Jo asked, pointing to the bottom left corner of the banner. Skylar replaced her pink Ray-Bans and smiled. She couldn’t resist putting in a nod to the JEMS, and had painted four girls standing hand in hand like paper dolls: a blonde, a redhead, a brunette, and one on the end with a black ponytail who was yelling into a tiny megaphone.
But Jo didn’t have her ever-present ponytail anymore. At the beginning of the summer she’d finally let Skylar lop it off—which had been on Skylar’s to-do list, along with “Meet Lou Reed” and “Have a show at MoMA”—since she was twelve. The pixie cut Jo sported now (not half bad, Skylar thought, especially since she’d used nail scissors) brought Jo’s delicate features into stunning relief, even if from the neck down she still wore her usual “You’ve got a ‘friend’ in Camp Nedoba!” T-shirt and beige cargo shorts. Jo had gotten so tall and gorgeous, Skylar sometimes got jealous. But it wasn’t like they were competing over guys; Jo still used them for soccer practice, and Skylar used them for . . . a different kind of practice. Her hand fluttered up to her neck self-consciously, and she wondered if the hickey from last week was still there, hiding beneath the strands of her messy chignon. She’d had to tell her campers it was a bruise from getting smacked with an oar.
“No, it’s just an impression of you,” Skylar said, taking a sip from her water bottle. “I tried to use small brush strokes to really capture the changing quality of light glinting off your bullhorn.”
“Mmmm hmmm,” Jo murmured with a smirk. She grabbed the water and took a long gulp. “Come on, Monet, we’ve got work to do.”
Reunion weekend was always a mixed blessing. It took place every year between sessions, after the first four-weekers left and the next set arrived. (The stalwart eight-weekers over the age of twelve had a choice of going home for the changeover days or going on an intense camping trip known as a WOW, or “weekend out in the wilderness.”) Skylar was grateful not to have a bunch of ’tweens harassing her every second of the day for a brief period, but dealing with reunion campers could be even more draining. They were older, rowdier, and much more likely to break the rules. Mack had a strict no-alcohol policy (that admittedly his counselors, Skylar included, sometimes violated), but without fail there was always an incident during reunions, like on one memorable occasion when Gus, the camp handyman, had to clear fifty crushed beer cans out of the old well in the north field. But Skylar knew this reunion would be different. Because it was her reunion. And they were all coming back.
Mack popped his head out of the screen door of his office.
“Are you two setting up the food?” he called.
“Yes, Dad,” Jo replied in the globally recognized sing-song of the Annoyed Teenager.
“Good,” he said with a smile. “In my experience, nerves make people hungry.”
Skylar’s stomach rumbled. She’d been so distracted, she’d forgotten to eat breakfast. She was debating whether or not to forage in the cafeteria for a granola bar when her phone buzzed against her hip.
5 mins away. Try not to be jealous of my wheels. XO
Emma was probably winding her way up Granger Hill Road at that very moment, Skylar thought, which meant she was just over four miles away. But somehow, the distance between them felt much farther.
Skylar had been mentally preparing to see Emma again for approximately two years and eleven months, ever since she’d watched her ride away in the Zenewiczes’ pumpkin-colored Prius on the last day of their fifth and final summer. That morning had been one of the worst of Skylar’s entire life.
She’d imagined a few different scenarios for their inevitable reunion. The best option would have been visiting Emma in Boston to spend some time together, just the two of them, but she always talked herself out of actually making the plans. Emma’s parents were super nice (if a little dorky), and Skylar knew they would welcome her like a second daughter, but what if things didn’t go smoothly? Then she’d be stuck, an unaccompanied minor with no driver’s license six hours from home. As year after year passed, even though she missed Emma like crazy, Skylar realized that she was purposefully dragging her feet and that the camp reunion was the only thing that was going to bring them face to face again. On one level it was poignant and fitting—long-lost friends coming back together in the place they first met—but on another, it felt weird, and maybe even a little wrong. So much had happened there. So much Emma didn’t know.
Skylar had been avoiding thinking about what would happen when she finally saw Emma’s face again in three dimensions. Would she cry? Plaster on a fake smile and act like everything was normal? With the uneasiness that had been building steadily since she woke up that morning, Skylar worried that she might actually puke. But to her relief, as soon as the peacock green station wagon turned into the parking lot, her nausea transformed into near-hysterical excitement. She broke into a run, jumping up and down in front of the car until Jo finally had to pull her out of the middle of the lot so Emma wouldn’t run her over.
Just like she had the last time she’d seen Emma, Skylar caught a glimpse of her through the windshield glass. Her hair was sleeker, and her smile, which had always been warm and easy, had reached Julia Roberts proportions, but otherwise Skylar was relieved. It was still Emma. Her Emma.
After some wrestling with her seat belt, Emma threw open the door and grinned.
“Hello, strangers,” she said. Skylar had forgotten how far down she had to bend to hug Emma, and how her hair always smelled sweet and familiar, like some childhood candy Skylar couldn’t quite place.
“Jo, look at your hair!” Emma exclaimed, trying to take everything in.
“Look familiar?” Jo asked with a wink.
“Don’t remind me,” Emma laughed. “And Sky, you look . . .” Skylar glanced down at her slept-in tunic, cutoffs, and fair-trade canvas shoes. She hoped she didn’t look quite as disheveled as she felt. “Amazing,” Emma finished. She stared out at the postcard-perfect scenery, which was framed under the wooden welcome arch with its sun-bleached, twig-lettered sign, and which led from the parking lot to the expanse of rolling lawn everyone at Nedoba called the Green. “I can’t believe I’m here,” Emma finally said. She looked genuinely awestruck.
“I can’t believe you’re driving this car,” Skylar laughed. She traced a finger along the fake wood paneling. “I’m guessing it’s not yours?”
“My aunt’s,” Emma said. “She’s in Spain interviewing flamenco guitarists for her ethnomusicology dissertation, so I’m staying at her place on the Upper West Side.”
“Fancy!” Jo said.
“Well, not really. It’s rent-controlled. She doesn’t have A/C. And I have to share a room with my brother . . .”
“And tell everyone on I-93 that you believe ‘Jesus was a liberal,’” Skylar added, examining the sticker on the rear bumper with a raised eyebrow. She silently vowed never to feel embarrassed by the camp van again.
“Right,” Emma smiled. “But otherwise, yes, my life is impossibly glamorous.” She gestured down at her navy blue tank dress and sandals, which actually did look pretty fancy for the setting.
Skylar tried to remember what Emma was doing in New York. It had been so long since they’d really caught up—before she’d gone to Italy and everything had started to unravel. “Well, you look great,” she hedged, hugging her again. “And you have a job that doesn’t involve picking ticks off children. So you win.”
“Hey!” Jo elbowed Skylar, laughing. “That is a very important job.”
Emma burst out laughing. “I just remembered that time when Nate got a tick on his . . . um . . .”
“Balls?” Skylar finished.
“Yes, balls!” Emma cried. Mack looked over quizzically from the gazebo, where he had started hanging streamers. The girls cracked up. “And your dad had to use a magnifying mirror to burn it off!” Now Emma was almost crying, and the trademark red flush on her cheeks gave Skylar a rush of nostalgia. She threw her arms around Emma again.
“Can we go back in time, please, and can you just stay here like we planned and squat in the barn?”
“We can definitely go back in time,” Emma said. “In fact, look what I brought.” She reached across the front seat, almost dislodging a Frida Kahlo bobble-head doll on the dashboard, and pulled out her old watermelon backpack. “It’s still got all our notebooks,” she added.
“Our six hundred MASH games!” Jo said fondly.
“Yes, where you marry Gus and live in a shack with six children,” Emma said. “Any progress on that?”
“Broken dreams,” Jo sighed.
“Ah, well. There’s still time.” Emma shut the car door and looked at them eagerly. “Speaking of which, I know I’m late, but can we go somewhere and catch up before everyone gets here? I’m dying to hear everything that’s been going on.”
“I would love that,” Skylar said, “but we’re supposed to set up the gazebo for the impending vultures.” In fact, she was grateful for the opportunity to stall the truth-telling portion of the weekend. Now that Emma was actually there, it was real. She would have to tell her. And she had no idea when, or how, to do it.
“You can help, though!” Jo chimed in. “How does arranging butter cookies into concentric circles sound?”
“It sounds fabulous,” Emma said. “As long as we can gossip while we work.”
When they got back to the gazebo, Skylar saw that Mack had completely ignored her instructions to braid and gently drape the streamers along the beams, choosing instead to hang individual pieces from the ceiling like strips of flypaper.
“How do they look?” he asked proudly.
“Like a car wash tunnel,” Skylar whispered to Emma. Emma punched her lightly in the arm.
“They look great, Mack,” Emma said.
“Emma Zenewicz!” Mack boomed, setting down his Scotch Tape and giving her a warm hug. He stepped back and looked at the girls, beaming. “It’s so good to see you girls together again. This is what I wanted; I wanted the children at my camp to become a family.” His mustache, now streaked with gray but just as resplendent as always, started to twitch.
“Dad, don’t cry,” Jo warned sharply, and Mack laughed his big, deep cackle that always sounded to Skylar like firewood crackling.
“Where’s Maddie?” he asked when it had died down.
“Stuck at thirty-five thousand feet,” Jo said. “Or, at least, I think she’s still in the air. She said she’d text when she landed at Portsmouth.”
“Okay,” Mack said, patting Jo’s shoulder as he turned to head back to the office. “I won’t cry until she gets here.”
Skylar smiled. Jo hated it when Mack got sentimental, but Skylar thought it was sweet. Her dad was never sentimental. He was whatever the opposite of sentimental was. When she’d unpacked her trunk back in June, she’d found a community college brochure slipped in between the pages of her sketchbook, along with a note that read, in his rigid block print, We all have dreams. This is for when you wake up.
“Sky, help me with this?” Jo was struggling to stabilize a folding table. Skylar grabbed one end, relieved to have busywork to focus on, as Emma started opening the plastic sleeves of dollar-store shortbread Mack kept stockpiled in the kitchen pantry for all celebratory occasions.
“So . . .” Emma said expectantly, arranging the crumbly squares on a plastic tray, “tell me everything.”
Skylar wondered what Emma would most like to hear. That she’d been desperately missed? That was true. That there was a new foosball table in the game room, one with controls that didn’t stick? Or did she want more salacious gossip, like the fact that, over the course of three summers, Skylar had managed to hook up in one way or another with half the male counselors? Skylar and Jo looked at each other, unsure of who should start. There was so much ground to cover.
“Well, my dad’s gone totally soft, as you just saw,” Jo laughed.
“I love it,” Emma said. “What else?”
“Gus finally fixed that rotten board on the dock,” Skylar said. “No more butt splinters.”
“Come on, I want real dirt,” Emma smiled. “You know: hookups, fights, boyfriends, frenemies.” Skylar concentrated on unfolding a checkered tablecloth. She had naively hoped they could skip over those topics, like fast-forwarding through commercials on DVR.
“No, no, no, and sometimes her,” Jo said, pointing at Skylar with a smirk.
“Hey!” Skylar cried. She knew Jo was kidding, but it still hit close to home. Since she’d started high school, she’d indulged a little bit too much in all those things.
“How’s school stuff?” Emma asked Jo. “Are you still thinking of going into sports medicine?”
“Maybe,” Jo said quickly. “I’m busy, though. Especially with camp all summer. This year I did lifeguard training and archery certification. Plus volleyball in the spring and track in the fall. So I haven’t had a lot of time to think about college.”
“Or boys, I take it,” Emma said with a wink. Skylar smiled and shook her head. After three summers, she knew better than to ask Jo about guys.
“What, the ones here?” Jo asked incredulously. “Um, no thank you.”
“Wait till you see Nate, though,” Skylar whispered. “He got so cute. And he likes Jo.”
“Shut up,” Jo laughed.
“He does.”
“Whatever.” Jo pretended to focus on stacking plastic cups, but she was blushing.
“There must be more than that,” Emma said, ripping open another sleeve of cookies and looking pleadingly at Skylar. “I spend my days sorting mail under fluorescent lights. I need to live vicariously.” She took a bite out of a discount chocolate sandwich cookie made to look like an Oreo. “Are you still dating Carlo?”
“No,” Skylar said slowly. “That whole thing turned out to be kind of a bad idea.” She wished she had just called Emma and gotten this conversation out of the way over the phone. It was humiliating to have to repeat it in front of Jo.
“Why?” Emma asked.
“Don’t ask,” Jo sighed. Skylar ignored her.
“Long st
ory short,” Skylar said, “I stopped going to some of my classes, and since my dad pulled some strings to get me into the program, he got notified and was not too happy about it.” She laughed, but it wasn’t funny, and Skylar knew it. Emma knew it, too, from the look on her face.
“What did he do?”
“He made me come home.”
“Yikes, will you still have enough credits to apply to RISD?” Leave it to Emma to worry about her college applications.
“We’ll see,” Skylar said quietly. “My dad is advising me.”
“That’s great!” Emma finished with the cookies and dusted the crumbs off her hands. “Having another artist in the family must be so helpful. You’re so lucky!” Skylar nodded mutely. Her dad had been anything but helpful. In fact, after she’d gotten home from Italy, dutifully humble but eager to show him her sketches of the Duomo and Michelangelo’s David, and all the other sights that had so inspired her, he had bluntly told her to do something else for a living. Jason MacAlister was one of Philadelphia’s most respected gallery owners and had a reputation as a tough critic. But his legion of fans probably didn’t know that he had been rejecting his only daughter’s refrigerator art for years.
“And are you seeing anybody else since your gondolier?” Emma raised her eyebrows suggestively as she ripped open a bag of balloons with her teeth. Skylar shrugged and self-consciously covered her neck with one hand. It was a question she didn’t really know how to answer.
“Nah,” she said dismissively. “Nothing serious.”
It was, at face value at least, the truth.
Once the other graduates started showing up, giving Jo people to aggressively nametag and Emma people to talk to, Skylar excused herself for a minute to run over to the counselor’s porch and text Adam. Emma hadn’t asked about him yet, but she knew it was only a matter of time. And she needed to know when he was showing up so that she could run damage control.
