Suddenly Last Summer #20

by Melissa J Morgan

  “Hey,” Jenna said to Priya, trying to lighten the mood. “So are you going to ask Johnny Swimcap to the social or what?”

  Priya looked up and shrugged. “Why bother?” she asked. “If I thought I might be coming to camp next year, then maybe. But since this is all going to be over in a couple weeks, it seems silly. I should just hang out with you guys and enjoy the time we have.”

  Jenna sighed. “Priya,” she scolded. “You sound like you’re going to die in two weeks, not leave camp.”

  “Leave camp for good,” Candace broke in. “There’s a difference, you know.”

  Jenna couldn’t help it. She rolled her eyes. “So let me get this straight,” she announced, looking around to address the whole bunk. “Camp is closing in a few weeks, so we’re going to spend the last time we have crying and huddling and acting like we’re at a funeral.”

  Brynn looked upset. “It is a funeral, Jenna!” she cried dramatically. “Camp Lakeview is closing. It’s dying. And this is our last chance to say good-bye.”

  Chelsea looked sideways at Jenna. “Aren’t you even a little bit sad?”

  Jenna opened her mouth to answer, not sure what she was going to say. But before she could get any words out, a hand grabbed her arm.

  She turned around and grinned. “David!” she cried, facing her boyfriend.

  David’s always-messy brown hair looked messier than normal, like he’d just gotten out of bed after a night spent tossing and turning. But his green eyes looked happy to see Jenna. “Hey,” he said, unusually softly. “Wanna talk for a sec?”

  He looked serious. Jenna nodded. “Sure.” She glanced back at her bunkmates, still looking like they’d come from a screening of Schindler’s List. “Um, I’ll catch up with you inside, guys.”

  They shuffled past, and Jenna turned to David with a smile. “You’re not going to try to trash-talk me about our soccer game later, are you?” she asked. She and David were both in the sports activity after breakfast and were usually friendly rivals. “Because I don’t think you should be one to talk. I saw you kicking the ball in the wrong direction the other day. You’re not exactly—”

  “Jenna.” David cut her off. Jenna was surprised; David was always jovial and happy to joke around. In fact, most of their conversations could probably be qualified as “joking around.” It was part of what she liked so much about him.

  Now he looked serious.

  “What’s up?” Jenna asked, concerned.

  David sighed. “Are you okay?” he asked somberly, looking carefully into her eyes. “We haven’t had a chance to talk since, you know, since—”

  “Since the big announcement last night?” Jenna asked, her heart sinking as she realized that this was going to be yet another “Oh, no, Camp Lakeview is closing” conversation. Et tu, David?

  David nodded. “Yeah.” He gave her that serious look again. “I just wanted to talk to you, you know, and tell you that just because . . . I mean . . . it’s going to be hard, but—”

  Suddenly it hit Jenna. “David,” she interrupted him, giving him an incredulous look. “You don’t really think I was worried we’d break up because camp is closing, do you?”

  David looked at her, confusion playing in his eyes. “Okay . . . no?”

  Jenna nodded. “Good. I mean, I like being at camp with you and getting to goof around and play sports with you and everything. But I’m not with you just because of camp and I wouldn’t break up with you just because of camp, okay?”

  David nodded, still looking confused. “Okay. But . . .”

  “But what?” Jenna sighed and looked over toward the dining hall. Boy, she was hungry this morning.

  “But . . . it’s going to be hard, Jenna. We won’t see each other as much. And I’m going to miss all my camp friends, and I’m sure you’ll miss yours.”

  Jenna shrugged. “Sure. But we’ll keep in touch.”

  David looked at her, stunned. It was like she was telling him she planned to build a spaceship and erect a new Camp Lakeview on the moon. The idea of Not crying her eyes out over Camp Lakeview being no more seemed just that surprising to him.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Aren’t you even a little upset?” he asked. “Isn’t there anything you want to talk about, that you have on your mind?”

  Jenna sighed again. If this was how the next two weeks were going to go, she might as well just go home now. Hadn’t they already talked about it? How was talking about it more going to change anything? She shook her head in an exaggerated way. “No, David. Oh, wait. I take that back.”

  David looked a little hopeful. “What, then?”

  Jenna grinned. “Pancakes,” she said, backing away toward the dining hall. “I am starving. And I have to admit—I have pancakes on my mind, big-time.”

  Still, David didn’t laugh. He didn’t even smile. He just looked stunned.

  He Needs time, Jenna told herself. Not everyone can deal with this stuff so quickly. He’ll get to where I am. Leaning in quickly, Jenna pecked David on the cheek and smoothed his hair. As soon as she moved her hand, his hair bounced back into position, which made her smile. “See you later, okay?” Not pausing for an answer, she started running into the dining hall. “In soccer practice! You’d better work on your sense of direction!”

  She opened the double doors to the dining hall and slid inside, leaving him standing where she left him.

  Jenna smiled as she sat down just as Dahlia was placing a plate of three gorgeous, golden brown pancakes in front of her. “Mmm-mmmm,” she murmured, inhaling deeply. “I’m starving this morning. Aren’t you guys?”

  She looked around the table. Everyone was still looking depressed, but they mustered shrugs or little “yeahs” or “nos.”

  “You must be,” Jenna went on, carefully spreading butter over the top so it all melted evenly. “It’s a scientific fact, you know. Crying makes you starving.”

  A sharp laugh seemed to leak out of Val before she could stop it. “That’s true, actually,” she agreed, smiling a little. “It must burn a lot of calories or something.”

  “Great,” Tori snorted, leaning in to butter her own pancakes. “We’ll all be ten pounds thinner by noon.”

  A few people chuckled at that. Jenna smiled cautiously. See? They’re coming around. “So who has exciting plans today?” she asked, taking a big bite of breakfast and chewing.

  People glanced around at one another and shrugged.

  “I have exciting plans,” Sloan piped up, smiling as she sipped her juice.

  “What are they?” Jenna asked. It better be something good, she thought. Something to perk everyone Up.

  Sloan shrugged, a mischievous glint in her eye. “Well, there’s a lot to do,” she said, “now that they announced camp is closing.”

  Jenna’s heart sank. No. We were finally talking about something else, and then Sloan has to bring Up the closing again. It wasn’t fair.

  “Come on, guys!” she cried. “Okay, it sucks that camp is closing, but I’m not about to spend the next two weeks talking about it nonstop, losing out on the great time we could be having!” She paused. “Don’t you guys get it? Whether we cry and mope the next two weeks or whether we have the time of our lives, camp is still going to close. So let’s have the same fun we’ve always had!”

  She looked around at her friends, who were now looking sheepish and confused. “I wasn’t going to mope for two weeks,” Gaby insisted, rubbing her red-rimmed eyes. “Maybe another couple hours, but that’s my business.”

  Sloan was looking back and forth from Gaby to Jenna. “Hey, wait!” she cried. “You didn’t let me finish.”

  Jenna turned to her. “Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Before camp closes, you want to cry by the lake one last time? Cry on a night hike one last time?”

  Sloan shook her head. “There won’t be any need for that.”

  Jenna nodded. “You got that right,” she agreed. “As for me, I’m going to spend each moment having the kind of fun I w
ant to remember.”

  Sloan sighed. “Jenna. Everyone. Will you let me finish? There won’t be any need to remember anything.”

  Nat looked over, frowning. “What does that mean?” she asked. “We all have memories we love. Memories we’re going to want to keep forever.”

  Jenna wasn’t totally sure, but she thought she might have heard Nat’s voice crack when she said “forever.”

  Sloan shook her head again. “There won’t be any need to remember,” she said slowly, “because we’ll still be making memories. Camp Lakeview isn’t going to close, guys. Because I’ve come up with an awesome plan!”

  chapter FOUR

  Tori frowned, pausing skeptically over her pancakes. “What kind of plan?” she asked. “I mean, Dr. Steve made it sound pretty clear-cut. The government wants the land. They give them the land. Period.”

  Sloan smiled. “But that’s just it, Tori. The government is for the people, by the people, just like the Constitution says. We don’t have to just sit here and take something we think is horrible! We should do like our parents’ generation did when they thought the government was wrong— protest!”

  A ribbon of chatter wove through the group as everyone reacted in different ways.

  “Protest?”

  “That’s a great idea!”

  “I think it’s a pretty stupid idea.”

  “But it might work . . .”

  Tori was quiet, biting her lip as she thought this over. Of course she’d seen footage of kids in the sixties and seventies, protesting the Vietnam War, the treatment of prisoners, all kinds of things. When her father watched certain movies or heard certain songs, he would get all nostalgic and start complaining to Tori that her generation was “too complacent—you have to get out there and fight for what’s right! Don’t you watch the news?”

  Tori usually responded with a “Whatever, Dad.” Her teachers and parents and all kinds of older people were always trying to teach her about the power of the people, how it was the responsibility of the population to police the politicians, etc. But she’d never been so personally affected by a government action. So if they did protest—could it really work?

  “Look,” Sloan was saying, “the state congress represents the people of Pennsylvania. The congressmen and congresswomen are people just like us! No more important and no less. Don’t you think they’d want to know if we thought this decision was totally wrong?”

  “Um,” Nat inserted. “I’m not even a resident of Pennsylvania. Most of us aren’t, actually. We couldn’t vote in Pennsylvania elections even if we were old enough. So why should they care what a bunch of ninth-grade out-of-staters think?”

  Sloan looked stunned. “Why wouldn’t they?” she asked, shaking her head. “Look, you make it sound like they’re kings and queens, people to be afraid of. But they’re just people! Under democracy we’re all equal! And if you want to know what’s in it for them—if we told them how great Camp Lakeview is, wouldn’t they want to preserve it? Maybe they’d like to send their own kids here.”

  Tori chewed thoughtfully. She makes a good point, she thought. Somehow she’d never pictured the people who’d voted to close Camp Lakeview as mothers or fathers; she’d pictured them as being kind of scary, like Sloan had just said.

  Alex spoke up. “That’s all great, Sloan, but you’re forgetting something pretty important.”

  Sloan looked surprised. “What?”

  “What do we do to get their attention?” Alex asked, leaning in and looking around at her bunkmates. “Write letters? Call them at home?”

  Sloan shook her head. “No, no, no. We stage a protest, guys! We go to the statehouse and stand outside with signs, chanting and telling everybody who passes by us what’s going on! Haven’t you guys ever been involved in a protest before?”

  Everyone looked around at one another; almost everyone was shaking her head and shrugging.

  “Jeez,” murmured Sloan, taking a sip of her juice. “Well, it’s about time you learn!”

  Becky, who’d been watching all of this with a perplexed expression, looked even more concerned as she spoke up. “Guys,” she said. “Um, this is a great idea, but I don’t know how practical it is.”

  “Practical schmactical!” Sloan cried, waving her fork in the air. “Becky, we would work so hard on this! It’ll be great. We could get a whole group together, not just us. We’ll make signs and come up with chants; it will be an awesome learning experience! And maybe Dr. Steve would give us permission to use the camp buses to get there.” She paused, taking a last bite of pancake. “You think?”

  Becky sighed, still looking conflicted. She glanced over at Dahlia, who just shrugged with a “don’t ask me” expression.

  “It would be great,” Tori spoke up, realizing as she said it that she really believed it. “We’d all work so hard, Becky. And I think—I think it would be therapeutic for all the campers to have a chance to at least try to save Camp Lakeview. Don’t you think?”

  “I totally think so,” Val spoke up, nodding. “Becky, it’s really hard to say good-bye to a place when you feel like you never had a chance to try to save it. This would be our chance!”

  “Yeah.” Gaby was nodding slowly. “And we would learn from it, too—about government and citizenship and how things work. Right?” She glanced at Chelsea.

  “Right.” Chelsea nodded. “Seriously, Becky, please. Please let us do this. Please?”

  Soon everyone was chiming in. Girls who had looked skeptical before were now throwing themselves full-steam into pleading with Becky. Tori joined in, too.

  “Please,” she said, knowing that her words were probably tough to make out over the begging of every single one of her bunkmates. “I need to know we’ve done something. I need to at least try . . .”

  Becky looked around at all the pleading faces and sighed, finally shouting, “Enough!” She held up her hands in a T shape and shook her head. “Truce, guys. All right, I get your point. Why don’t you all think about this some more and then come back to me when you have a better idea how it’s going to work. If it all makes sense, I’ll help you make your case to Dr. Steve. Deal?”

  Everyone’s face broke into a smile. “Deal!” they all cried, looking around at one another in victory.

  “Awesome,” Sloan breathed to Tori. “I’m so glad she said yes. Now we have our work cut out for us!”

  “Definitely,” Tori agreed with a nod. Just then, she shot a look at Nat. To her surprise, Nat was the only girl not smiling—in fact, she looked like she’d just seen a ghost. She poked at her pancakes with her fork for a few seconds before sighing and pushing them away.

  What’s Up with her? Tori wondered.

  “Okay,” Sloan began, settling back on a bottom bunk with a pen and a big pad of paper. “I hereby call to order the first meeting of Camp Lakeview Citizens for Change! Who wants to be first?”

  “Citizens for Change?” Jenna asked.

  Sloan nodded. “One very specific change, but change nonetheless.”

  “I like it,” Brynn spoke up. “It’s very . . . dramatic. It makes a statement.”

  “But what is that statement?” Jenna asked, twirling a finger around her ear, the universal signal for “crazy!”

  “Jenna, hush,” Alex admonished her friend, leaning forward into the circle of campers. “Let Sloan talk. The name of our group is kind of a moot point right now, at least until we get the okay to make our protest.”

  “Hear, hear!” Sloan agreed, pumping her fist in the air. “But that’s permission that we’re sure to get. I just know this bunk is full of amazing ideas for our protest. So let’s hear them!”

  The girls all looked around at one another. Tori was holding her notebook, in which she’d doodled a couple ideas for signs, but she didn’t want to be the first to speak. The truth was, she wasn’t all that sure what a “protest” consisted of, anyway, besides lots of marching and shouting.

  “I have an idea,” Alyssa said quietly, holding up a sketchboo
k. “For me, Camp Lakeview has been all about artistic expression—it’s really freed me up to be creative and make some beautiful pieces. And judging from my art classes, I think it’s done that for a lot of other people, too.”

  “And?” Chelsea asked impatiently, but Sloan held up her hand.

  “Let her finish.”

  Alyssa smiled shyly. “I thought we should incorporate art into the protest. Instead of just bringing signs, we can create new paintings to show how beautiful the grounds are and how they mean different things to different people. We can even bring some of the best pieces from the art classes this year to show the politicians what amazing things are being made here.”

  Sloan was nodding now and lots of the other girls were, too, smiling and glancing at one another. “That’s awesome,” said Sloan. “It gives the people passing by something concrete to look at, something that shows how much the camp means to us in a totally different way than our signs will. Great idea, Alyssa.”

  Alyssa blushed and smiled.

  “Who else has an idea?” asked Sloan.

  Brynn confidently raised her hand.

  “Yes, Brynn?”

  Brynn stood up and smiled. “I think it would be great if we could entertain the people who watch us,” she said, looking around at each girl. “Instead of just waving our signs and chanting, we can show the congresspeople what we’re talking about by performing a funny skit.” She paused. “Humor is a really powerful thing. So I could write a skit about how coming to Camp Lakeview changes one girl’s life. Like, she suddenly has all these friends, plus she learns how to swim and draw and use a compass . . .”

  “I’ve been coming here three years now,” Val said with a laugh. “I still don’t know how to use a compass.”

  “That’s because you have no sense of direction,” Gaby admonished her.

  “All the more reason I need to know how to use a compass!” Val giggled.

  Jenna grinned and put her hand on Val’s shoulder. “Well, you’ve got two more weeks,” she offered. “Let’s make this a priority.”

  “A-hem.” Brynn rolled her eyes, but she was smiling.