The nausea that rose up her throat wasn’t from car sickness. It was an echo of anxiety and excitement that used to grip her whenever her parents dropped her off here in early July. In the sweaty humidity—or in the pouring rain—there had always been a confusion of cars and luggage and green-shirted Master Rangers with clipboards doing their smiling best to herd her away from her parents and through the office door. She’d be worrying that her campmates from Canada hadn’t signed up again; she’d be wondering if any of the new girls in her bunkhouse would be mean; she’d be anxious at being forced to play the first-evening icebreaking games that required tying her wrists up to strangers or accepting random hugs.
With all its forced communal activities, all signs indicated that as a child, she would hate this camp. But at the mess hall, she never ate alone. At the lake, she never lacked a swimming partner. And the cabins proved to be potent incubators hatching the kind of instant friendships that could be stretched for a month and then linger for years of pen-pal closeness.
Jenna rolled down the window and filled her lungs with the scent of green growing things and sticky sap. It was a singular source of joy that Zoe loved this place, too. Over the years, Zoe had zoomed her way through Fox Circle to Wolf Pack Den to Brown Bear Lair to Moose Marsh to Hawk Heights. Maybe, if Zoe set her mind to it, she’d make it to Apprentice Forest Ranger this year, as every Hogan had done for the past three generations. The blood-sister secrets of this camp had been one of the few things Jenna could share with Zoe alone, impishly holding them back from Nate, who would just shake his head and smile.
As Nicole pulled to a stop, Jenna clicked a leash on Lucky and shoved the door open so he could tumble outside to do his business. Cicadas screamed in the trees. The sun baked the russet needle carpet of the clearing. The trunks of the white pines, arrow straight, formed a formidable fence beyond the camp office.
She tightened her grip on the leash as her mind raced. Even if she could finagle her way past that front desk—an unlikely process—there was a good chance that Zoe wouldn’t even want to talk to her. Zoe probably treated this place as the perfect one-month retreat from the trouble at home.
And here Jenna was, dragging that trouble right to Zoe’s cabin door.
“So,” Claire mused, “this is the famous Camp Paskagamak.”
Claire stood arms akimbo, eyeballing the main office cabin and beyond to the emerald shadows of the woods. Jenna forgot that Claire hadn’t attended the summer camp. Most of the kids who grew up in Pine Lake attended, but Claire was considered a come-away because she’d only moved to town in middle school when her father got a job as a park ranger.
“I expected sniper’s towers and barbed wire.” Claire pulled her braid through the back of her Iowa seed-cap hat. “I’m terribly disappointed.”
“They’re hidden in the trees.” Nicole rounded the car to join them. Her hair was still damp from her swim at Bay Roberts. “Jenna, are you sure you want to play this straight?”
Jenna nodded as a sudden pressure squeezed her chest.
“As far as I know,” Nicole continued, “no excuse less than a death in the family will allow a camper to see her parents before End-of-Days.”
Jenna raised a two-finger salute. “Camp Rangers don’t lie.”
“For the love of Buddha,” Claire said, “I knew this place was a cult.”
Nicole glanced warily toward the office. “Okay, here’s my advice. Don’t let Mrs. Garfunkle frazzle you. You know the rules, you respect the rules, you understand the rules. But you’ve driven clear across this great big country to see your daughter. Look Godzilla in the eye. Be assertive. Be reasonable. Be unafraid.”
Jenna nodded her head so hard that the clip in her hair wobbled.
“And if that doesn’t work”—Nicole slapped the hood of the Lumina—“we’ve got flashlights, water bottles, good walking shoes, and a map of the camp. My phone has a compass if we get lost. We’ll head around to the main electric shed on the northwest side and hike a mile to the wigwams.”
Claire said, “Wow. Next time I plan to rob a convenience store, Nic, I’m calling you.”
Jenna tugged Lucky into action and headed toward the porch. The screen door squealed open to the chemical smell of mosquito repellent and coconut sunscreen. It slammed shut behind them as Jenna’s eyes adjusted to the dim interior. On the wall hung a large map of the camp complex, pinhole-studded and curling at the corners. Around it were scattered framed photos of campers past, from the grainy black-and-white shots of solemn children in woolen bathing suits from the 1920s to the mud-smeared and chalk-tattooed urchins of the more recent crop. Behind the battered counter, an older woman sat in front of a computer monitor, her head tilted up so she could see through the narrow reading glasses perched on the tip of her nose.
“Welcome to Camp Paskagamak,” she sang, raising a hand. “I’ll be right with you.”
Mrs. Garfunkle had been at least sixty when Jenna had been a camper. At least that was what she and the girls had estimated back when Jenna was thirteen and sixty years old seemed just one bout of poison ivy short of the grave. Now the camp director stretched up to her full four feet seven inches, all dentured smiles and snow-angel white hair.
Claire leaned in and whispered, “Godzilla?”
“Another group of lost sheep, I see.” Mrs. Garfunkle planted her hands on her square-bodied hips. “You ladies must really be lost if you found your way all the way out here.”
“We’re not lost,” Jenna said. “We’ve come to see you.”
“Ah, well, we don’t do tours during the season.” She reached for a map and a booklet entitled Historic Camp Paskagamak. She pulled a pencil from behind her ear. “Touring interferes with the disciplined schedule we set up for the young men and women, so today I’m afraid you’ll be confined to what you can see of the place from the back of this cabin. You are welcome to come back in a week when we’ve—wait.” Mrs. Garfunkle squinted at her. “I know you.”
Jenna swore she could smell it: that strange mix of onion and lavender that billowed off the camp director, as if the woman bathed in bath salts in the morning then ate a burrito for breakfast.
Mrs. Garfunkle seemed to be laboring, so Jenna decided to help her along. “Master Forest Ranger Jen Hogan, here,” she said, cutting herself off before adding reporting for duty.
“My faith, it is you, Jenna.” Mrs. Garfunkle’s blue eyes were swallowed by a bed of happy folds. “Between the dog and the fancy hair you fooled me for a minute. But there’s no hiding the straight posture of a girl who in her sixth year made Ranger of the Year.”
Claire exploded in a coughing fit.
Jenna tried very hard not to flush. “I’m sure there have been many since.”
“Oh, no, only a few sixth-years ever made that distinction, and all in better days. Still, I try to remember every last brave, every last squaw, even if it is politically incorrect to call the girls that these days.” She glanced behind Jenna, to Claire swallowing her humor and Nicole standing by the door. Her gaze hesitated on Nicole’s face before giving her a nod and returning her attention to Jenna. “It’s a pleasure to see you, Ranger Hogan, but certainly you didn’t come all the way up here to see the camp?”
“That would be against regulations,” Jenna said. “Ordinance number three section D, expressly prohibiting any individual or individuals not previously sanctioned by the Council of Elders to stray into Paskagamak hunting lands during the season of the Long Days.”
Mrs. Garfunkle pulled off her reading glasses to look at Jenna more closely, ignoring Claire’s next coughing fit. It occurred to Jenna that her first introduction to a foreign culture was here at camp, with all its protocol and particular rules and muddled Indian culture references and language. She’d thrived under the strictures. Unlike the fluid social soup of high school, here she understood the rules. Here, she felt like she was home.
“Well.” Mrs. Garfunkle took great care cleaning her glasses with the hem of her camp polo shi
rt. “I must say, most campers forget the rules from one year to another.”
“I wouldn’t dare. I have a daughter in her fifth year.”
“Do you?” She tugged at the whistle hanging from her neck, puzzling. “I would think I would have remembered you had I seen you at the Opening or at the End-of-Days.”
“My husband or my parents usually take care of the drop-off and pickup.”
“Oh?”
The camp director’s response was distracted. Jenna could tell she was mentally flipping through her memory of current campers in an effort to identify her daughter. Then the director waved a hand in the air. “Well, End-of-Days is this coming Sunday, so I suppose I’ll be seeing you then—”
“Actually, I’d like to see my daughter now.”
Jenna watched as Mrs. Garfunkle’s smile hardened and cracked like clay left too long in the sun. Those blue eyes narrowed. The director’s shoulders slid back and her spine straightened and her lungs expanded so she seemed to grow and lengthen like some cartoon superhero. Here was the sachem with the jaw of iron. This was the woman with a set of lungs that could blow a whistle until Canadian wolves howled over the border. Here was the Godzilla stare that could make a teenager blurt all the camp-bed secrets she’d drawn blood and pinkie-sworn never to tell.
“Ranger Hogan, you know perfectly well there’s a strict prohibition on family visits except on the two prescheduled End-of Days.”
“I realize that my request violates protocol.”
“Rules, not protocol. Rules are the very pillar—”
“—of civilization. I’m willing to abide by the rules, Master Ranger Garfunkle. I came today to ask for sanction by the Council of Elders.”
“A situation covered by regulation seventeen part B.” Mrs. Garfunkle’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Has there been a sudden major illness or a death in the family?”
Only a death of the family.
Jenna bit back the words. She couldn’t mention the divorce. A divorce meant a conflict between parents. Mrs. Garfunkle would defy taking a side in any domestic dispute, and Jenna didn’t want to give the camp director any reason to have her escorted off the campgrounds.
She said, “No, not a death.”
“Well, that settles it then.” The director slipped on her glasses. “You know that we here at Camp Paskagamak take special pride in nurturing in our young rangers the importance of personal responsibility and growing independence, and these rules serve to foster those qualities that are ever more important in today’s society.” Mrs. Garfunkle strode to her desk and splayed her fingertips over the surface. “Ranger, I must admit I’m disappointed.”
Jenna felt the little muscles at the base of her neck contract. She wasn’t a thirteen-year-old girl anymore. For all the camp’s rules, she knew very well that there was no legal way Mrs. Garfunkle or anyone else could keep her away from her daughter. So, as Claire had taught her while meditating at Niagara Falls, she mindfully noticed her body’s physical reaction to the stress. She noted it, sensed it, admitted it, and dismissed it. Then she pressed her sneakered feet flat on the pine-knotted wood of the floors.
“The Council must reconsider.” Jenna heard Claire and Nicole shuffle close behind her. “There are extenuating circumstances of a personal nature that will have a direct effect on Zoe’s sense of self-worth—”
“Zoe?” Mrs. Garfunkle froze as she tugged her glasses off her face. “Do you mean Zoe Elliott?”
Jenna realized she’d neglected to mention her married last name, a lapse that caused so much confusion among teachers, doctors, and coaches at home that she just let them all call her Mrs. Elliott.
Mrs. Garfunkle’s liver-spotted hand fluttered to her chest, where it lay, patting, patting, patting. The older woman opened her mouth and then just as quickly shut it. She pressed her mouth so tight that her lips went white. Then Mrs. Garfunkle dropped into the desk chair and attacked the keyboard.
Jenna pressed against the counter, trying to see what the camp director was typing. A terrible foreboding gripped her. Zoe was okay, she told herself. Zoe couldn’t be hurt. The camp would have contacted her parents. Her parents would have contacted her. She had a new phone but the same cell phone number. If they contacted Nate, then he would have called her from Seattle if something was wrong.
Another thought arose, an ugly thought, like a troll waddling from under a dank bridge. Nate knew she was coming to Pine Lake. Maybe Nate flew in and took Zoe away before she could have a chance to talk to Zoe alone.
Mrs. Garfunkle said, “You’re in luck. Zoe is just about to start archery.”
Jenna collapsed against the counter so hard that the edge dug into her solar plexus.
Mrs. Garfunkle reached for the corded phone. “I’ll have your daughter report to Wawobi Point. I assume you remember the way?”
*
Zoe had dyed her hair purple.
Sitting on a fallen weathered log at Wawobi Point, Jenna watched that bobbing purple head as Zoe wound her way through the pine woods. Jenna wondered where on earth Zoe had bought the dyeing kit. They certainly didn’t sell things like that at the camp Trading Post. The closest general store to the camp was a tiny grocery in a one-crossroads town six miles away, an escape-and-return that no girl had ever accomplished without being caught. Zoe must have bought the kit in Seattle and smuggled it in. Jenna imagined she’d done the dye job in the communal bathroom sometime in the middle of the night.
Jenna understood the act of defiance. Zoe had a reason to be suspicious of authority figures she’d once trusted. She watched Zoe approach while her heart stumbled through a three-step shuffle in her chest. Her daughter dug her high-top sneakers deep in pine litter and dragged the rubberized toe through. Her shocking magenta hair lay over her brow in choppy pieces. As she came closer, Jenna realized it wasn’t just the bangs that had been cut short. All that lovely, light blonde hair that once fell to the middle of her back…Zoe had taken scissors to that, too.
Look what you’ve done to our strong young fledgling, Nate.
Zoe shuffled to a stop on the other side of the log. “I guess this means the bitch is finally expelling me.”
The expletive exploded between them. Jenna lost the power to speak while she waited for the shock wave to pass. She’d never before heard such a word in her daughter’s little-girl voice. She tangled with the competing urges to reprimand her or ignore her.
When unsure, Nicole had advised, speak the facts in a nonjudgmental voice. “Master Ranger Garfunkle is not expelling you, Zoe.”
“Man, what do I have to do to break out of this place?” Zoe kicked over some reedy wild mustard. “She’s been riding my ass all summer about my hair, about my eyeliner, about my piercing, about my ‘attitude.’”
Zoe turned her head just far enough so Jenna could see a flash of silver hanging from her ear. Right next to the little silver stud from Zoe’s first piercing, Jenna caught sight of a paper clip holding up a long chain of other paper clips.
Neutral voice. “I hope you iced that ear good before you put the needle in.”
“I didn’t even feel it.”
“I’m glad it’s not your eyebrow.” She glanced at the hem of Zoe’s T-shirt. “Or your navel.”
“I’ll be getting a navel piercing on my fourteenth birthday.” She crossed her arms. “Dad promised.”
Jenna absorbed that little tidbit thinking it sounded like a pie-crust promise, thinking it sounded like a bribe.
“Look,” Zoe said, “if I’m not being expelled, then who died?”
“Nobody died.”
“It has to be something real bad for Godzilla to break, like, a thousand regulations.”
Jenna forced her voice calm. “I’m here because I need to talk to you about what’s going on between your father and me.”
Zoe’s face went still. It was a cold, swift tensing of muscle that looked so strange on a face still round with baby fat.
Jenna knotted her fingers together and then braced t
hem against her knees. “It’s about nine months too late, but your father finally told me about Siss—Mrs. Leclaire.”
“Well, it’s about fucking time.”
“That wouldn’t be Algonquin for ‘finally,’ would it?”
Zoe twisted and sat down with a huff on the log. “How did you figure it out? Did you catch him sneaking out her back door at night when he was supposedly working in the garage? Or did you catch them doing it on the living room couch? Or did you find her tent-size cotton underwear under that chair in Dad’s workshop?”
Jenna felt like she’d been struck in the back of the head. She unlocked her fingers and flattened them on the gnarly bark of the log. “That was a multiple-choice question, and you didn’t offer me a ‘none of the above.’”
“Gawd, Mom.”
“It’s actually a virtue to have absolute faith in someone’s loyalty.”
Zoe’s whole body heaved as she made a huff of such cynicism that Jenna winced.
“I only found out after we put you on the plane,” she explained. “That’s when your father handed me the petition for divorce.”
Zoe’s head swiveled. One incredulous blue eye peeped out from a rim of black eyeliner. “Divorce?”
“Alas.”
“Wow,” Zoe said, blinking. “He’s really doing it.”
“I’m afraid so—”
“After all that,” Zoe barked, her voice rising. “After all that, he just went ahead and did it anyway.”
The words rang in Jenna’s head. He did it anyway. As if Nate had discussed the possibility of divorce with his thirteen-year-old daughter before he’d talked about it with his own wife. He did it anyway. Her mind tumbled, struggling to think up a different scenario—any scenario—that would prompt Zoe to say such a thing.
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