Summer at Meadow Wood

by Amy Rebecca Tan

  Carly won the bet. I hadn’t thought Jordana would make it past the first day.

  I looked at the stationery in my lap, lemon-yellow lined paper with gold and silver stars in three of the four corners. Just as I was about to write Dear Jamie, the loudspeaker turned on with a high-pitched squeal and Brenda’s voice announced, “Vic Brown, please report to Chicory. Vic to Chicory.”

  Carly lifted her head off her pillow long enough to say, “Camp sister alert,” and then rolled over on her side and shut her eyes, her book cradled to her chest like a favorite stuffed animal.

  The moment I stepped outside Yarrow, a familiar stillness washed over me. Earl’s golf cart was parked in front of his cabin in its usual spot, reliable as a compass pointing north, and the air held the lingering smell of the yeasty baked rolls and chicken noodle soup served at lunch. Everyone was tucked away in their cabins—even Brenda and Earl were out of sight, probably working in the office. It was easy to feel like I had the whole place to myself. I crossed the soccer field and headed up the hill to junior camp.

  As I walked, the ground evolved from lush grass to packed-down dirt to old tree roots bumping out of the ground like a nature-made obstacle course. Birds flapped from branch to branch high in the trees and chipmunks scrambled around tree stumps, stopping to chew furiously before scurrying off again. The sun was high and the sky was blue, and I started to wonder why I hadn’t wanted to spend my summer in such a perfect place.

  But then I remembered why I was here.

  The laptop on my mom’s desk, the email she was writing, the words on the screen carved into my memory like a scar that wouldn’t fade.

  I shook my head side to side to knock it away, at least for now. Vera needed me, and I was on my way.

  I stepped into Chicory’s camper room to find Vera sitting on her cot, her blanket smoothed pancake-flat and tucked in tight enough to bounce a dime on. The other cots in the room had blankets with images of Disney characters or big-eyed kittens or butterflies swirling over rainbows, but Vera’s blanket had a picture of a large frog and the words Museum of Science printed smack in the middle of it.

  “Vic, you’re here! Thank you for coming.” Her braids were lopsided and there were small tufts of blond hair sticking out of them, as if she had slept on them overnight.

  “I’ll always come when you need me, Vera. How’s everything going?”

  “Fine, and also not so great.”

  Eleven pairs of six- and seven-year-old eyes looked at Vera and then landed on me.

  Vera barreled ahead. “I like my cabin and I like my bunkmates and I like my bed even though it’s not very comfortable, but I’m still feeling homesick. Sometimes I want to cry, but I’m trying not to because I haven’t seen anyone else cry yet and I don’t want anyone to think I’m a baby. Because I’m not a baby. I’m just experiencing feelings of nostalgia in the amygdala part of my brain, which is the area responsible for strong emotions.” She lowered her voice and finished, “Which can lead to crying.”

  “Umm, do you want to go outside, Vera?” I asked. “To talk? Privately?”

  “All right,” she agreed, but then continued, “I also think I have a dermatitis starting on my ankles, and I forgot to pack a pencil sharpener, which is a problem because I also forgot to pack my mechanical pencils. I just have the regular kind, and I write a lot.”

  “Of course you do.” I took a deep breath and smiled at the other campers. “Come on, Vera.”

  Vera got off her bed, walked past me out of the camper room, through the counselor room, and out the screen door without looking back.

  I followed her.

  We sat side by side on the bottom step of her cabin, our legs stretched out in front of us on a patch of worn earth. Vera’s ankles had a weird pink color crawling up both of them.

  “So, which thing do you want to address first?” Vera asked.

  “Well, for starters, I wouldn’t announce all your problems right in front of the other kids,” I began.

  “Why not?”

  “Why would you?” I answered back.

  “To fix a problem, you have to name it. That’s a fact.” Vera sounded so sure of herself that I couldn’t think of any way to argue it.

  An image flashed in my mind then of my mom sitting at our kitchen table, her hands cupped around a mug of tea, steam floating up in a misty cloud in front of her face. Her tea bags had small square labels attached to the strings with sayings printed on them, like fortune cookies. I could imagine one saying this: To fix a problem, you have to name it.

  Vera was seven and had no trouble naming her problems in front of a whole room of strangers. I was thirteen and I hadn’t named my problem to anyone, not to Jamie at home, not to Carly here, and certainly not to my mom, even though it was all her fault and I should have confronted her the moment I saw her email.

  I bet Vera would have.

  But I didn’t.

  “Hello, Vic! Earth to Vic!” Vera waved her hands in front of my face.

  “Sorry.” I gathered myself. “First of all, there’s no way you’re the only kid in there who’s homesick. I can guarantee you that. And I get why you might not want to cry in front of the other girls, but trust me, it’s really okay if you do. You definitely won’t be the only one to cry this summer—I can guarantee that, too.”

  Vera’s face relaxed immediately.

  “Now, to deal with the homesick bit, it helps a lot if you stay busy. And it’s great if you can find a good friend, like a best friend. Start by finding someone you have something in common with. Like, if you love arts and crafts, find out who else loves arts and crafts, or if you love canoeing, find out who else loves canoeing. And then try to do that thing with them. You have to go out in pairs in the canoes anyway, so that would be a good time to talk and get to know each other.”

  “But I don’t love canoeing.”

  “That was just an example.” I sighed.

  “Okay.” She nodded.

  “Okay. So what do you love to do?”

  “I love to research.”

  “Research?” I expected a teasing grin on Vera’s face. But no—her face was serious. “For real?”

  “For real.”

  “What kind of research? Because I think that might be hard to do at an outdoorsy camp with no computers.”

  “Any kind. If I don’t know something, I like to research it. For example, did you know chicory is a perennial wildflower with blue or purple flowers, and that you can eat the leaves and the root and the flowers?”

  “No, Vera, that’s all news to me,” I admitted.

  “The leaves are very bitter, so people blanch them first in boiling water. And the flowers only open on sunny days. When it’s cloudy out, they don’t open at all, which is kind of symbolic for human behavior, like not wanting to get out of bed on a rainy day but popping right up when the sun is out and the sky is bright and shiny.”

  “That might not be symbolic, Vera,” I said. “That might just be science.”

  “And did you know you can dry chicory roots, grind them up, and then roast them to make coffee?” Vera shook her head in total exasperation at this fact. “Coffee is an adult drink, so I don’t understand why they would give a coffee plant name to the youngest bunk in junior camp. We are the last people who would drink coffee.”

  “I don’t know, Vera.” I sighed heavily. “I just know the youngest cabin has always been Chicory because that’s the name the owner gave it a gazillion years ago when she opened this place. Every cabin is some kind of wildflower that grows around here, and that’s all there is to it.”

  “You’re in Yarrow.”

  “I know I’m in Yarrow.”

  “Did you know yarrow is one of the most medicinal wildflowers known? It can heal wounds and relieve pain. It’s good for treating fever, the common cold, hay fever, and diarrhea. It’s especially powerful as an herb for menstrual cycles and cramping. But it’s full of contradictions, too, because yarrow can cure nosebleeds but it can als
o cause nosebleeds.”

  “Where do you get all this, Vera?”

  “I told you—research. I tapped resources before camp started,” she said in a very matter-of-fact way. “It’s very important to have resources. It makes all the difference.”

  “In what?” I asked.

  “In life,” she answered slowly, somewhat irritated that she had to explain it to me.

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Plus, my mom’s a shrink, so I know a lot about psychology and human development.”

  “Which is why you can name the emotional center of the brain?” I asked.

  “Yep,” she conceded, and she kicked at the ground until a puff of dust rose, then landed back on her shoe like a fine brown powder. “I sound like a know-it-all sometimes. I’m aware of that.”

  “I think it’s cool that you know so much. School must be a breeze for you.” She started nodding before I even finished the sentence. “But I also think you need to get in a canoe with someone and spend some time listening.”

  Vera took a deep breath and let it out slowly, doubt on her face.

  “Just try it,” I urged.

  “Okay,” she gave in. “I’ll try it. I’ll canoe.”

  “And after dinner tonight you should go to clinic and get your ankles looked at. They can give you a cream for that.”

  “Okay.”

  “And did you mention the pencil thing to Brenda? I know she has a sharpener in her office, and I bet she’ll let you use it whenever you want. Or maybe she’ll even let your mom mail up your mechanical pencils.”

  “Duh. I forgot about the office,” Vera said, rolling her eyes at herself.

  “Wait—so you just used the words ‘amygdala’ and ‘duh’ in the same ten minutes,” I observed.

  “What? Lots of kids say ‘duh.’ I’m only seven, you know.”

  “Exactly, Miss Amygdala. You’re only seven.”

  “Oh. Ha.” Vera smiled, then leaned into me and rested her head against my arm. “You said I can see you, right, whenever I want?”

  I thought of my little brother, Freddy, then, new at Forest Lake, maybe sitting alone on his own junky cot this very minute, wishing for the friends he had back home. I hoped he had nice counselors, someone he could go to who would help brush the loneliness away.

  “Yeah, Vera. I’m here for you. Whenever you want.”

  And then the bugle rang again, announcing the end of rest hour like a kick to the head.

  “You missed elective sign-up!” Jordana shouted gleefully at me the moment I walked through the door.

  “Where’s the board?” I asked, panic filling my chest.

  “It’s by the door—you just walked past it,” Jaida A said.

  Only senior campers had the privilege of signing up for a fifth-period activity on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. There was a short list of choices and a number limit for each, and it was a first-come, first-serve system.

  A system that was about to bite me in the butt.

  I scanned down the list to find my name.

  “Who put me in farm?” I read out loud. “And what the heck is farm?”

  “Sorry, Vic.” Carly walked over to explain. “I tried to sign you up for volleyball with me, but Brenda was here and she said we could only sign ourselves up. And Aster and Marigold got to pick before us, so there were hardly any spots left.”

  “Am I the only one who got farm?” I asked, skimming over the chart.

  “My first choice was riding, but that was full, so I didn’t get what I wanted, either.” Carly tried to make me feel better.

  “But you already rode this morning. First period. You missed swim to ride.”

  “Well, I wanted to ride again,” she explained, “and I won’t get to.”

  “But I got farm!” I couldn’t process. “We don’t even have a farm.”

  “I think it’s new,” Carly said.

  “It’s part of that farm-to-table thingie they’re starting,” Jaida C explained. “I asked Brenda.”

  “Switch to farm with me,” I begged Carly.

  “I can’t. Brenda said we can’t. The numbers are all worked out the way it is.”

  “Brenda is displaying dictator tendencies,” Chieko said as she strolled past us to the bathroom.

  Carly shrugged and squeezed my arm in sympathy.

  “Thanks,” I told her, “for trying.”

  “And it’s for three days in a row,” Carly said, regret in her voice.

  “Are you kidding me? Since when do we sign up in bulk?” It was getting worse by the second.

  “Since today,” Jaida A said.

  “That’s not how it worked last year! It’s supposed to be three days, three different choices.”

  “It’s been streamlined, baby,” Chieko called from a bathroom stall. “Now it’s three days, one choice. Love it or leave it.”

  “Can I leave it? Please?” I asked.

  “Not a chance.” Chieko let out an evil cackle and followed it with the sound of a toilet flushing.

  Jordana slid a pair of mirrored sunglasses onto her face and announced, “I’ll be thinking of you all later when I’m at water-ski, suckers!” She threw a towel over her shoulders and sauntered out the door.

  I saw my reflection in her glasses as she passed—dark brown hair frizzing out of my ponytail, sad brown eyes, cheeks and forehead tinted pink, a shade that would soon turn tan. But mostly the reflection I saw was the face of someone who had to spend fifth-period elective without a friend at farm.

  “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out,” I called after Jordana, a sneer in my voice. But I doubt she heard.

  Day 5—Wednesday

  I had to ask three different counselors to find out where I was supposed to go for farm, so I was five minutes late by the time I arrived at the yard behind Brenda and Earl’s cabin.

  I never even knew there was a yard back there.

  And “yard” probably wasn’t the right word to describe it. It was more like a small field closed in with chicken-wire fencing, part of it covered with raised planting beds and the other part with long parallel rows of small hills, green stalks and leaves fanning out of them.

  Everything was green.

  Taller bushes lined the back of the fenced-in area, and a long hose stretched between two rows of plants like an extra-long snakeskin drying in the sun. The sun was still high and bright, but a breeze kept it from feeling too hot. There wasn’t a counselor or any other campers in sight. The hum of insects buzzing and flitting around was the only sound I could hear.

  “Hello?” I called. “Anyone here?”

  A head of gray hair, thinner on top than it was on the sides, rose up slowly from behind a raised plant bed. Earl was wearing the white T-shirt and denim jeans he wore every day of the summer, his braided cloth belt strapped so loose around his waist it was hard to understand why he bothered to put it on in the first place. He was only a few inches taller than me and resembled the robot Freddy drew for me on my birthday card in April, all boxy chest and torso, with stick-thin arms and legs poking out on the sides.

  “You signed up, or got stuck with it?” Those were the first words out of his mouth.

  I just stared at him, shocked by the question.

  “Tell me the truth,” he directed, his voice easing up as if he were talking to a stray animal.

  “Got stuck with it,” I admitted.

  Then he surprised me. He laughed, just once, quickly and quietly, but it left a grin on his face when he was done.

  “I never knew this was back here,” I told him.

  “Didn’t look like this last summer. Only had a bit growing before.” He looked around him as if taking it all in for the first time, like I was. “I started in early spring, got a lot going on now.”

  “Well, I don’t know anything about farming.”

  “It’s not a farm. Brenda wanted to call it farm, but it’s not a farm.” Earl shook his head. “Just growing some plants, that’s all.”


  “Why?” I asked.

  He fixed his eyes on me like he was trying to figure out if my question was serious or not.

  “For food,” he finally answered. He picked up the hose and coiled it around his arm as he walked toward me, then rested it on a metal bar attached to the back of his cabin. “Most of this goes right to our dining hall for Steven to serve up. Farm”—he used both arms to motion at the plants growing around him—“to table.” He pointed in the direction of the dining hall. “Get it?”

  “Ah.” I raised my eyebrows as I looked around, pretending to be interested.

  “I’ll start you on the blueberries.”

  “I don’t know anything about blueberries, except how to eat them.”

  Earl just said, “You couldn’t mess this up if you tried.”

  “I found it! Finally!” came a voice from behind us.

  Earl and I turned at the same time to see Bella, an Aster, walking quickly toward us, her flip-flops smacking with each step.

  “Hello there,” Earl greeted her. “You’re here for the farm elective?”

  “Unfortunately, yes,” she answered, not even trying to be polite about it. “I’m late because I had to change.”

  She was wearing denim short overalls on top of a white ribbed tank top. She had only hooked one of the two suspenders, so the bib of the overalls flapped open on one side of her chest. Her hair was parted down the middle, and she wore two long braids with red ribbon threaded through them. A gold ankle bracelet glittered in the sun at the bottom of her left leg above toenails that were painted the same candy-apple red as her hair ribbons.

  Bella didn’t look like she had dressed for farmwork. She looked like she had dressed for a photo shoot next to other people doing farmwork. If she put this much effort into dressing for one lousy elective at camp, I couldn’t begin to imagine how much went into her primping for school each day.

  “Thank God I packed these overalls at the last minute,” Bella said, looking down at herself and smoothing out the denim cloth against her stomach.