What It Was Like

by Peter Seth

  “I can’t believe my parents actually forced me to come back here again,” she said. “I was supposed to go on a teen tour this summer. To Europe! After they promised I could! But because they’re going through this divorce I had to be nearby. I am once and for all finished with the Moon-shak. I feel so trapped! You cannot believe how I’m just bursting to get out of here.”

  “Well, I’m glad you came back,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said, looking away from me into space, then looking down. “Well . . . you never know what’s going to happen.”

  I took her hand, making her look at me, and said, “I know one thing that’s going to happen.”

  She drew a slight breath.

  “Don’t you feel it?” I continued. “That you and I are –”

  She put her finger up to my lips to sssshh me. “Don’t let’s get ahead of ourselves,” she said softly.

  I took her hand away from my lips and held onto it. “That’s OK,” I said, agreeing with her. “I’m not worried.” I don’t know why I was saying such things to her. Looking back, I guess I said them because I was able to . . . because I felt them. Before my brain intervened with its usual doubts and second thoughts, I just said what I felt.

  The outside world had pretty much disappeared. We had moved into what we later came to call The Zone: everything except the two of us faded away into some kind of out-of-focus, irrelevant unreality. The only real thing was Rachel-and-me, together-as-one, in The Zone.

  “You’re not like most of the guys that Stanley hires,” she said. “You’re not –”

  “A dumb jock?” I finished her sentence.

  “I wasn’t going to say that,” she said, pushing her arm against mine. “I was going to say that you were different, but there’s also something very familiar about you.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” I said.

  It seemed like the most natural thing in the world, to open up to each other.

  “Some people say that I’m spoiled,” she said, looking down, playing with one of her fingernails. “And they’re probably right, to some extent. But I don’t really care. They don’t have to live my life: I do. Everyone expects me to be one way, this perfect princess way, but I’m not that way at all. I just want to live the way I want to live. Is there something wrong with that?”

  “No,” I said. “Not at all,” encouraging her to continue.

  “I am a very good daughter,” she insisted. “At least I try to be. But my parents expect me to go to college and marry some nice, rich doctor and live in the suburbs and have babies and join a country club, and I’m just not going to do it. Does everybody have to be the same? I mean, is that some kind of rule?”

  “Not if you don’t want it to be,” I said. “If that’s what you want.”

  ”Finally, what other people say really doesn’t matter all that much,” she said, carefully brushing an ant off the bench. “People will say just about anything, so you have to be ready to ignore everybody and just listen to yourself.”

  Our conversation opened up, just like a flower in one of those time-sped-up films.

  “Go on,” I urged her.

  “People expect you to be one way when you’re really another way inside,” she said.

  “Some people have to put up fronts,” I agreed. “To hide what’s really inside.”

  “Because they’re secretly ashamed of who they really are, and that no one would ever fall in love with them, or care about them.”

  “So everyone is, on some level, pretending to be someone they’re really not,” I added, following her train of thought.

  “The potential for misunderstanding is incredible, isn’t it?”

  “It’s a miracle any two people get together at all!”

  “Yes,” she smiled bitter-sweetly. “An absolute miracle.”

  She was so lovely and fragile even as she was trying to seem strong and self-assured. She was certainly beautiful and confident, but I couldn’t help but see something wounded, something secret inside her, deep inside her. Something a little dark and vulnerable that I thought I could reach. I wanted to say the right thing and keep her interest.

  “My parents fight some,” I said, trying to sympathize with her. “But I don’t think they’d ever divorce each other.” I didn’t say: Who would ever want either of them if they left each other? But that’s what I was thinking.

  “And,” she said. “It’s a bigger deal, kind of, because I’m an only child –”

  “Me too!” I practically shouted.

  That was a very big moment of connection for us.

  “So you understand,” she said, clutching my arm.

  “The tug-of-war?” I said. Which made her nod her head vigorously.

  “It’s hard to think that they were once in love,” she said. “The way they treat each other.”

  “People do stupid things all the time,” I said. “I want no part of it. I believe in negative learning.”

  “‘Negative learning’?” she repeated.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Learning what you don’t want in life is as important as learning what you do want.”

  “And what don’t you want?” she asked me.

  “Right now? Anything that keeps me from getting closer to you,” I said. With no fear or embarrassment. I just said it. And she looked back at me, dreamily, in The Zone. I don’t know why I was so relaxed with her. Speaking to a girl this pretty, normally I would have frozen up or tried to be too clever. Instead, I was just myself, my ordinary self, but that seemed to be enough for her.

  The bugle call ending Free Play sounded from the P.A. system, startling us back to reality.

  “So,” she said, “I’ll see you later tonight, and we can –”

  Her words instantly pleased me until I remembered something.

  “No!” I interrupted her. “Dammit! My kids have something tonight with these Eagle Scouts from town, knot-tying or something, and then I have O.D. right after that.” (“O.D.” was short for being “on duty” which meant that a counselor had to stay on duty outside the bunks in Inter Circle, or wherever they put me, and make sure that the kids were all safe and sound until midnight when their actual counselors came back for curfew – 1:00 AM on Fridays and Saturdays. The average counselor had O.D. every three or four days, and we were always trading O.D.s, depending what you had going on any particular night.)

  “You’re right,” she said. “I forgot. We’re doing this pajama party with the Lassies. Estelle had us doing party favors all afternoon. And you’re really on O.D. tonight? That means I won’t see you until tomorrow.”

  The thought really seemed to displease her; I liked that.

  “That’s OK,” I said. “We have tomorrow.”

  “But I want to talk to you more now!” she said.

  I liked that she had that slightly unreasonable streak in her. Rachel wanted what she wanted more than most people did. Some people might call it being willful, or self-indulgent. But in this case, since what she seemed to want was me, it was perfectly fine.

  But before we could say or do anything else, Harriet was right there, at the edge of the courts, ordering everyone back to their bunks.

  “Let’s go, campers!” she shouted in a husky voice. “Back to your bunks!” She clapped her hands and looked straight at me.

  “Boys!” she narrowed her gaze and ordered. “Let’s take it back to your side!”

  Just then the Fat Doggy grabbed the duffel bag of volleyballs and ran away with it, only to be chased by the Doggy With Braces and a couple of Rachel’s girls.

  “Hey! Wait!” I yelled at them, torn between having to go after my kids and wanting to stay with Rachel.

  “Uh, Rachel,” rasped Harriet. “Wanna collect your girls?”

  “Time to go,” Rachel said softly and got up from the bench.


  She took a couple of steps away and turned back to me.

  “Why didn’t you kiss me?” she asked, making slits of those blue-blue eyes.

  Before I could answer, she quickly turned and was gone with her girls.

  She left me speechless – which is very hard to do – and falling in love too. Which had never happened before.

  Record of Events #5 - entered Thursday, 9:01 P.M.

  ≁

  The Evening Activity that night with the local Eagle Scouts from Boonesville was, on the one hand, very easy. We counselors just basically sat there and let these Eagle Scouts, who were almost my age but seemed more like goony teenagers, entertain the Inter boys, going on about knots and scouting and what they did for their merit badges. Dale helped guide the session; Stewie helped demonstrate the knots by letting himself be tied up; Marcus made sarcastic comments to me about the Boonie Scout leaders under his breath virtually without pause; and I spent the whole time frustrated, thinking constantly about Rachel. Why was I wasting my time in here when there was this fantastic, exciting girl out there?

  I thought about what I had learned during our talk at the volleyball courts. I already knew that she was pretty and clever, but there was definitely something complex and maybe a little dangerous about her. I knew that I would have to “handle” her carefully if I was going to get anywhere with her.

  Also, she was rich. I could have known that just because she had been going to Mooncliff all these years: all these kids were basically from rich families. Two of the Doggies’ parents were doctors. But from the town Rachel lived in and the way she talked about her parents’ fight over their divorce – how much alimony Mrs. Prince was entitled to, who was going to get the new Cadillac, and who was going to get the condominium in Fort Lauderdale – and the casual way she talked about money, made me think that she might be rich rich. That thought both excited and worried me.

  I wound up having to get the Doggies into bed by myself that night. Stewie had a “very sure thing” set up with Marcy, this bouncy semi-blonde from the Midwest, who was in the bunk next to Rachel’s. He was going to meet Marcy at the Main Office, where you had to sign out anytime you left the camp, and take her to Bailey’s, the best bar in Boonesville. I told him to go, no problem. Just after he left, a nasty fight between the Redheaded Doggy and the Very Fat Doggy broke out over the order of possession of this much-passed-around Classics Illustrated Count of Monte Cristo comic book, and I had to break it up, yell a lot, and punish both of them. I dumped both their beds over onto the floor – the frames, the mattresses, everything: a traditional Mooncliff punishment. Then, they had to pick up their beds and make them themselves, in silence. This was after repeated warnings. I hated getting that angry at the kids. First of all, I am not, by nature, a violent person. (I know that may seem like a ridiculous thing to say, writing this from a jail cell, but it is the absolute truth.) It just seemed like a lot of wasted energy.

  When things quieted down, Doggy tears all dried, I turned out the bunk light and went out with my book, blanket, and flashlight into the cold night to take up my O.D. post on the bench in the middle of Inter Circle until midnight. I also borrowed a bag of Doritos from the Fat Doggy, which I told him I would replace. I set myself up on the bench, putting out my stuff for the couple of hours in the cold. Occasionally, there would be something to do on O.D. Sometimes, a kid would get sick, or some kids would start a ruckus (say, a “raid” on another bunk, using wet toilet paper or water balloons or squirt guns as the weapon of choice). Then you’d have to get off your butt and go deal with the situation. But mostly, it was quiet.

  All the counselors who weren’t on O.D. were usually hanging out in the bottom of the Rec Hall at the Snack Shak, or were at the Main Office, making calls on the pay phone outside, or had gone into town like Stewie in his Super-Coupe with his Very Sure Thing, to Bailey’s or, if they really got lucky, the Quarry, the old abandoned stone quarry that served as the local lovers’ lane. But for me, there was nothing to do but stay at my post in the middle of Inter Circle, reading my book by flashlight until midnight.

  I had brought some Hemingway stories with me, figuring that they would be easy to read and the print was big. But I just couldn’t concentrate. There I was, alone in the night, wrapped in a blanket on a hard bench, wasting time. Right then, Rachel was probably hanging out at the Snack Shak (as a C.I.T., she wasn’t allowed off campus), so some guys were probably talking to her, trying to get somewhere with her while I wasn’t around. Obviously, she knew how to handle guys; all pretty girls learn how to do that. But still, I didn’t like the thought of guys – Marcus, for instance – talking to her and looking at her, ogling her body and all. I know what guys think about when it comes to girls, and it’s not pretty.

  I heard a coyote howling – crying, actually – in the distance, and it sent a shiver through my shoulder blades. Surrounded by forest, there was life all around me in the dark, and I was really defenseless. I hadn’t seen any coyotes, but other people had. And there had been bears until a few years ago when they found a better way to secure all the kitchen garbage. But here, at night, with everything so dark and exposed to nature, all I had was my flashlight.

  Just then, something rustled and screeched in the woods, right in the bushes at the edge of the Circle: some animal, or something. I jumped about a mile off the bench, throwing off the blanket, the book, and the bag of Doritos, which went everywhere. I shined my flashlight into the bushes and yelled out –

  “Who goes there?”

  Instantly I felt silly for using such a movie-type cliché, but that’s what I said. My heart was pounding, remembering the warning during Counselor Orientation about the bears, knowing that I had Dorito-scented bear bait all over my hands. But I felt even sillier when I saw that it was Rachel peeking out from behind one of the thick bushes, with a big smile on her face.

  “Hi!” she shout-whispered, waving at me. When she saw that I recognized her, she ducked back down behind the bushes. I don’t have to tell you that girls were strictly forbidden on Boys’ Campus, and at night, after “Taps,” it was an even worse infraction. In fact, it was just the kind of thing that I, as an O.D., was there to prevent. And, of course, I was absolutely, blindly thrilled to see her.

  Checking to make absolutely certain that no one was around, I fast-walked toward where she was hiding, keeping my flashlight beam on the ground in front of me.

  “What the hell are you doing here??” I whispered.

  “Aren’t you glad to see me?” she said.

  “Of course, I am,” I said, trying to keep my voice down. “But you’ll get us both into trouble!”

  “So?” she smiled, pulling me down behind the thick hedge. “We weren’t finished before. I didn’t get my kiss.”

  There was a little bit of light, thrown by a flood lamp on a big pole between Inter and Junior Circles, and I could just see Rachel’s face. She was dressed in all dark clothes, with the hood of a sweatshirt drawn tightly, framing her almost-perfect features.

  “You’re right,” I whispered, surprised in two ways. Not only was she here to see me, but she had come for a kiss.

  “I’m really not usually this forward with boys,” she said.

  “That’s OK,” I said, gently loosening and moving the hood of the sweatshirt back from her head, letting her long hair free. She might have been lying a little, but I didn’t care. “You can be any way you want to be.”

  That seemed to be the right thing to say because she closed her eyes dreamily and tilted her head back just so, and I moved in for that kiss. That perfect first kiss. Not too soft, just warm and close and deep and long and –

  “What are you doing?” she said when I stopped for a moment.

  “Letting you breathe,” I said softly. “But I don’t have to.”

  She giggled sweetly.

  “I can’t believe you actually came here to see me.”
r />   “I have this habit of getting what I want.”

  “I believe you,” I said. I mean, who would deny her anything, especially a kiss? “Wait a second,” I whispered.

  I turned away from her, sprinted to the bench in the middle of the circle and, making sure that nobody saw me, picked up the blanket and ran back to her.

  “Good idea!” she whispered, rubbing her hands together. The grass was already soaked with dew, and the ground was cold.

  “This is really dangerous,” I said as I spread the blanket out. “We could get thrown out of here.”

  “Oh, that’s impossible,” she said. “They can’t throw me out of here: I’m related. My Aunt Penny is married to Bernie Marshak.”

  “But what about me?” I said. I was the one on duty, and technically not doing my job. “I’m the counselor. I’m supposed to control things and make sure the rules are obeyed. This is in direct violation of Mooncliff rules and regulations. They could fire me at any –”

  She laughed, putting her hand gently over my mouth, and said, “Oh, I wouldn’t let them do anything to you! You’re completely innocent.”

  Which made me laugh. Me, in the dark, on O.D., with an illegal girl.

  “I can’t help it, Rachel,” I said. “I have a terrible tendency to overthink things.”

  “Well . . .” she said in a plain, sweet whisper, “Stop it.”

  That was when our gazes locked; I took her hand and guided her down to the blanket. And we kissed again, much more deeply. It was cold on the blanket on the ground – cold and dangerous and fairly uncomfortable and foolhardy. It was wild and rushed and unforgettable, and we didn’t even nearly finish.

  Right in the middle of things, there was a loud cracking noise from Inter Circle. We stopped instantly, not breathing. I peeked out from behind the bush. I recognized a couple of Senior counselors walking through the Circle on their way back to their bunks. It looked like they had gone to Bailey’s like Stewie, and gotten drunk because of how loudly they were talking and trudging. They didn’t even notice that no one was sitting O.D. on the bench in the middle of the Circle as they walked past. Barely twenty yards away from them, Rachel hid behind me as I hid behind the bush. She pulled the blanket up around us and we huddled there, not making any noise and trying not to move.