None of us ever got to drive it.
Brenda was a retired second-grade teacher who loved the outdoors, loved kids, and loved running camp, which she had been doing for the last thirteen years. She always wore her hair pulled back in a tight bun, and the pale blond showed more streaks of gray now than I remembered from last summer. She was talking about the special blueberry pancakes we were about to enjoy at our first breakfast of the season and how the blueberries were grown right on Meadow Wood property. Then she went on to explain the farm-to-table program the camp was embracing this year, but I zoned out. It was too early and I was still half-asleep.
At the end of flag, Brenda counted to three and we all shouted, “Meadow Wood!” as loud as we could. After that, we were dismissed to the dining hall.
It probably wasn’t the worst way in the world to start a summer day, but it definitely wasn’t the best way, either.
The dining hall was like a giant wood cave—high ceilings with wooden beams running the width of the place, wood floors, wood walls made up of horizontally hung planks, windows with wood trim, so warped they were nearly impossible to slide up or pull down.
They mostly always stayed up.
The tables were heavy and older than dirt, with previous campers’ names and years carved into the surfaces, like Gayle Robin ’87 and Janel B 1992. We knew exactly which table was ours—it was where Yarrow sat year after year after year. At camp, things like that didn’t change. If Yarrow was the table in the right back corner, Yarrow would always be the table in the right back corner.
Our table fit the six of us easily. But only five of us were there.
“Uh, we’re missing a counselor,” Jaida C noted.
“She should be here by now,” Jaida A said. “I thought she was just skipping flag.”
“We are not properly supervised!” Jordana exclaimed. Then she yawned again and grimaced. “Where is the coffee? How are we supposed to function at this hour without coffee?”
“You drink coffee?” Jaida A asked.
“You’re only thirteen,” Jaida C reminded her.
“How did you get up for school every day?” Carly challenged. “I bet it was earlier than this.”
“Yes, it was,” Jordana conceded, “but I had COFFEE!”
Brenda appeared suddenly. She was a large woman—tall and thick and solid muscle—but she somehow still managed to not be there and then be there in a flash, without any warning.
“It’s a bit early for hysteria, Miss Jordana. What seems to be the problem?” Brenda smiled at Jordana from her towering height of six feet two inches.
And that was when Chieko showed up. She stumbled to our table with her eyes half-closed, pulled out a chair, plopped herself down into it, and said in her scratchy morning voice, “What do you have to do around here to get a cup of coffee?”
We held our breath.
Literally.
Like if you were a scientist trying to measure inhales and exhales of oxygen and carbon dioxide in our exact table space, you would have come up with nothing.
Nada.
Zilch.
“Water, Chieko. Proper hydration is the best stimulant,” Brenda answered. She leaned over the table, poured a tall glass of water from the metal pitcher, and placed it in front of Chieko. “We don’t provide coffee at camp, as you know from counselor orientation. The sun and sky and spring water are stimulants enough.”
Chieko stared at the glass of water as if she were trying to cast a spell on it and magically turn it into coffee.
Brenda switched topics to say, “You seem to be just catching up with Yarrow. You are required to attend flag and escort your cabin here every morning.”
“There was a problem. With the sink. In the cabin.” Chieko sat up a little straighter in her chair, but her eyes were still puffy and half-closed. “I fixed it.”
“Completely? Do you need Earl to take a look?” Brenda offered.
“No, it’s all good,” Chieko answered. “But thanks anyway.”
Brenda put her hands on her hips and took a good long look at the six of us. It seemed like she was trying to figure out if we were going to be the pain-in-the-butt cabin this year. There was always one, and it was almost always a cabin in senior camp.
“Enjoy your pancakes,” Brenda said, distracted now by a table where napkins were being scrunched up and thrown like balls. “Earl grew those blueberries himself.” She said this with pride, then marched off.
“Was there really something wrong with the sink?” Jaida C asked the moment Brenda was out of earshot.
“As far as you know,” Chieko answered. Then she picked up a different glass, filled it with orange juice from the clear plastic pitcher, and chugged every drop. She slammed the empty cup down on the table, let out a giant breath, and announced, “Like drinking the sun.”
Carly and I exchanged smiles while Jaida C passed napkins around the table.
And then the two Clover tables burst into cheer: “We’ve got spirit, yes we do! We’ve got spirit, how ’bout you?” And they all stood on the last word and pointed to the two Dandelion tables next to them.
All the Dandelion girls hopped onto their feet and cheered, “We’ve got spirit, yes we do! We’ve got spirit, how ’bout you?”
The Clover girls immediately shouted back, “We’ve got more! We’ve got more! We’ve got more! We’ve got more!”
Then Dandelion cheered, even louder, “No you don’t! No you don’t! No you don’t! No you don’t!”
Clover answered, at full volume now and with stamping feet, “Yes we do! Yes we do! Yes we do! Yes we do!”
“What in God’s good name is happening?” Chieko asked me, a look of horror on her face.
“Cheering,” I said, pouring my own glass of orange juice and spilling a little on the table.
“But it’s barely eight o’clock in the morning,” Chieko protested. “Is it even eight o’clock in the morning?”
“This is normal,” Jaida C assured her.
“This is at every meal,” Jaida A added.
“This is barbaric,” Chieko said, covering her ears with both hands and slumping down in her chair.
At that point, junior camp caught on and all the Daisy campers started their own challenge by jabbing their fingers at the table of Violets next to them and cheering, “We’ve got spirit, yes we do! We’ve got spirit, how ’bout you?”
The Violets popped up out of their seats and answered, “We’ve got more! We’ve got more! We’ve got more! We’ve got more!”
As the Daisies yelled back their No you don’ts, Chieko leaned in to me to ask, “Why does one want to have more spirit anyway? Can’t we just share the spirit evenly? And quietly?”
“Uh-uh.” I shook my head at her. “We can’t. Welcome to camp, Chieko.”
When the Violets screamed their round of Yes we dos, you could already hear voices cracking. There was always a fair amount of laryngitis by the second week of camp.
“At least the lyrics were thoughtfully composed,” Chieko said to me, sarcasm heavy as a canoe.
It was the first time I had really listened to the words in the cheer. When you were screaming them, you were caught up in the moment so the words didn’t register, but when you were just listening, well, it was easier to notice how dumb it all sounded.
Chieko shook her head like she was trying to get water out of her ear. Then she pulled out that same red book she’d shown us the night before and disappeared into it. I saw that the cover had a drawing of a woman’s face on it, and underneath were the words: You Learn by Living, Eleanor Roosevelt.
The cheering only stopped when the pancakes were served. The Aster girls were the waitresses.
Chieko drank more orange juice and read while we slurped up way more syrup than our pancakes called for and did our best to keep it out of our hair.
I had to admit that the blueberries Earl grew were so sweet and juicy that they were almost worth getting up early for.
Almost.
&
nbsp; Day 3—Monday
It was rest hour, which was exactly what it sounded like: one hour of quiet cabin time after lunch to rest, write letters, play cards or jacks, or do some other non-noisy activity with your counselors and bunkmates.
Carly was reading on her bed, which was the top bunk directly above mine, and Jaida A and Jaida C got permission to visit their camp sisters in Daisy. Their camp sisters were identical twins, so the Jaidas were competing to see who could master telling them apart first. Jordana was busy applying a cleansing charcoal face mask in the bathroom, and Chieko was on her bed in the counselor room, also reading.
I was about to write my first letter of the summer to Jamie when Carly popped her head down over the side of her bunk.
“Wanna make a bed tent?”
“Do you even need to ask?” I jumped off my cot to stuff my stationery back into my cubby as Carly climbed down from her bunk. We pulled out the extra-long sheet and blanket from her bed so they hung down like walls around my bottom bunk, and then we tucked them under my mattress to hold them in place. We crawled in through the short end where my pillow went, then propped my pillow and hers in that space to make another wall.
“Perfect!” Carly decided.
“Super cozy,” I agreed, looking at the walls of white sheet and blue blanket wrapped around us like a hug.
“Do you remember our first bed tent?” Carly asked, her eyes twinkling the way they did that day we met four years ago in Violet.
“Dori called us out for ‘excluding others,’” I mimicked our old counselor.
“But then everyone copied, so every bunk bed in the cabin turned into a bed tent!”
“It was pretty awesome,” I admitted. “How did we even think of it? Was it my genius mind at work?”
Carly rolled her eyes and explained, “I was telling you about that book I loved, The Maggie B., about the girl and her little brother alone on a boat at sea, and you said you could turn our bunk bed into a boat.”
“Yep, I was a nine-year-old genius,” I bragged.
“Yeah,” Carly agreed, then crinkled her eyes at me. “What happened?”
I shoved her and she fell into the sheet, knocking it out of place.
“Hey, you butt-butt!” Carly righted herself and shoved me back.
“Oh my God—butt-butt! Who could forget Mean Melanie?”
Melanie was a counselor for one of the intermediate cabins, but she was also a swim instructor, so we saw her every day that first summer. We had third-period swim. The early morning cold was usually gone by then, but there was one random day in the first week of July when the bite in the air made it impossible for Carly and me to drop our towels and plunk ourselves into the lake with everyone else.
“Let’s go, girls. You’re holding us up,” Melanie scolded us. She turned to the rest of our Violet bunkmates, all ten girls frantically bobbing up and down in the water to warm up, and ordered, “Everyone grab a kickboard.”
Carly and I shuffled closer to the edge of the dock. I dipped my toe in and shuddered at the icy spark it sent up my leg. Carly hadn’t even touched the water but was already shivering in her bathing suit.
“I can’t,” she whispered to me. “It’s so cold. I just can’t.”
“It’s too cold to swim,” I declared, speaking up for both of us.
“It’s not too cold for them.” Melanie pointed at the girls in the water.
“Jaida C’s lips are blue,” I said.
“Which one is Jaida C?” Melanie asked, scanning the group.
“The one with the blue lips,” I answered. I never would have answered a teacher at school like that, but this wasn’t school. This was camp. The counselors were technically adults, but they were young adults. They were all college students. Only Brenda and Earl and Steven, the head chef in the dining hall, were real adults.
“Don’t be sassy,” Melanie snapped at me.
“But I am sassy,” I replied immediately, feeling less cold the bolder I got. “I’ve always been sassy. Are you telling me not to be myself?”
“That’s enough out of you,” Melanie barked at me. “Get in the water like everyone else. Now!” She turned away from us and blew her whistle at my shivering bunkmates in the lake.
“But . . . but,” Carly stammered, panic clouding her eyes.
Melanie swung back around. “Did you just call me a butt-butt?”
“No!” Carly shook her head with all the energy her small body could muster. Melanie glared like she didn’t believe her, so I came to Carly’s defense again.
“She didn’t. I don’t think anyone has ever called anyone a butt-butt in the whole history of the world.”
“Get into the water or go to Brenda’s office. Those are your choices,” Melanie practically spit at us.
“Can I go to Brenda’s office?” Jordana pleaded from the lake.
“Me too?” Jaida A echoed. “Can I go?”
Jaida C just hugged herself, her blue lips clamped together, the tops of her shoulders shaking violently above the gray-blue water.
Melanie ignored them, blew her whistle again, and instructed, “Pick a lane and line up for backstroke.”
Jordana crossed her arms over her chest and pouted.
“So . . . office?” I asked Carly.
“Will we get in trouble?” she asked back.
“I don’t know. Maybe. But we’ll be warm. And dry.” I raised my eyebrows at her.
Carly smiled, then nodded. “Okay. Office.”
We linked arms and marched in sync the whole way there.
“She really was mean,” Carly remembered.
“Not counselor material at all,” I said. “I know for a fact Brenda didn’t invite her back.”
“But the whole camp schedule changed because of her,” Carly declared.
“It changed because of us,” I corrected her. “You and me.”
Carly smiled wide. “And we didn’t even get in trouble.”
Since junior campers were the youngest and smallest, Brenda decided they should only have to face the lake during the warmest part of the day, which was the afternoon. It fixed the rest of that summer for us.
But it was killing us now that we were in senior camp. There were three periods each morning between breakfast and lunch, and Brenda thought senior campers were the ones hardy enough to handle water activities in the morning. So our schedule as Yarrows this year was:
First period: swim
Second period: boating (canoe, kayak, sail, paddleboard)
Third period: tennis
Every single day.
The afternoons had three periods also, filling the time between rest hour and dinner, but those periods changed daily. Fourth, fifth, and sixth period were a random mix of arts and crafts, nature hut, water-ski, soccer, archery, volleyball, basketball, bocce, canoe, dance/aerobics, and drama. As senior campers, we could sign up for electives for fifth period on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays each week, but that hardly made up for first-period swim.
Brenda was right, though—you sure didn’t need coffee to wake up in the morning when you had the brisk lake water of New Hampshire waiting for you. One dunk and every cell in your body jumped to attention.
“Our morning schedule this summer is the worst,” Carly complained.
“It’s the spirit of Mean Melanie getting us back,” I said.
“Go away, Mean Melanie!” Carly yelled, and she pounded her fist into my mattress. “Ouch,” she said, pulling her fist back up and cradling it in her other hand. Our mattresses were so thin that she pretty much just punched a metal coil.
“Well, we do have Mean Melanie to thank for your personal swear word,” I said. And then in unison we cried, “Long live butt-butt!”
“You guys are so weird,” Jordana’s voice answered us.
We peeled back one of our sheet walls to find her standing there looking at our tent. She had just come out of the bathroom, her face covered in a dark gray paste, thin lines cracking around her eyes and mouth
like tiny roads on a map.
“Would you like to enter our bed tent?” Carly invited her.
“Nah,” Jordana answered, then changed her mind and said, “Sure,” as she sprinted at us at full speed. She dove onto my cot in one swift motion, ripping the sheet down with her by accident.
“Hey!” Carly yelled.
“What a delicate flower you are, Jordana,” I said as we all climbed out together to reassemble the sheet wall.
“A delicate butt-butt,” Carly mouthed at me with a smile.
Day 5—Wednesday
By the time Wednesday rolled around, we all needed rest hour for actual rest. Four mornings in a row of ripping ourselves out of bed to run from flag to breakfast to bunk cleaning to swim to boating to the cabin to change out of wet clothes to tennis and to the cabin again to clean up for lunch really wiped us out, even though Brenda built in a lot of time between periods to get where we needed to go. It definitely wasn’t like school, where you had to plot the shortest possible route and then race like a maniac to get to your next class before the bell rang, or face an after-school detention if you didn’t make it. We never got in trouble at camp if we were late. That was the cool thing about Brenda—she was totally on our side. I wished my middle school had more teachers like her.
Carly was half reading, half napping on her bed, and Jaida A was writing letters of protest to SeaWorld while Jaida C practiced French-braiding her own hair. Jaida C was amazing at hair, which made sense since her mom owned a salon in New York City, where they lived. Jordana was painting her toenails while wearing earbuds that plugged into nothing, the cord hanging like a long loose thread. Her device had been confiscated that morning when Brenda showed up unexpectedly for inspection. Fortunately, all our beds were made and the bathroom wasn’t a complete disaster, so we got a good cabin score, but Jordana hadn’t hidden her iPod well and it took just one quick glance inside her cubby for Brenda to spot it. Jordana was now singing every song from the Hamilton soundtrack from memory.
Summer at Meadow Wood Page 3
