Summer at Meadow Wood

by Amy Rebecca Tan

  Chieko was that good.

  The Chieko with a bow and arrow in her hands at the range was nothing like the cranky, sarcastic Chieko we lived with in the cabin. She seemed like a different person when she was shooting, as if the archery range were the only place she could let her guard down and really be herself.

  We lined up across from our targets and began to shoot our ten arrows each. When Chieko got to me, she lifted my right arm and pulled my elbow out to the side, then helped me reposition my feet. I aimed and let go. The thwack sound the arrow made as it pierced the straw tire was strong and satisfying. Suddenly, all I cared about was hearing that thwack.

  I shot again and missed.

  “Slow your breathing. Don’t rush,” Chieko told me.

  I took a deep breath and tried to slow myself down. I felt my chest rise and fall. I heard a breeze whisper through the leaves in the treetops. I focused on the ring inside the ring inside the ring on the target. I made myself as still as I could.

  I took aim and held it, then let go.

  Thwack.

  My new favorite sound in the world.

  I did it again, but only got a half thwack. The arrow was hanging off the edge of the target like a downed power line.

  The next one missed completely.

  Instead of loading up my next arrow, I turned and asked Chieko, “How are you so good at archery?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I just am.”

  “That’s helpful,” I replied. “Thanks so much, counselor.”

  “I have a steady arm,” Chieko explained. “And good aim. And I know how to be still. And think still. Plus I practice a lot, or I used to. I competed my freshman and sophomore year on the team.”

  “At college?”

  She nodded yes.

  “But not anymore?”

  “Nah. I’m not going back on the team this fall.” She took my bow from me then, set an arrow, got in her stance, pulled back her right arm, and released.

  Thwack, right in the center circle.

  “Why not?”

  She dropped her stance and handed the bow back to me. “Because of Randy.”

  “Oh.” I had no idea what that meant. “Who’s Randy?”

  Chieko took a deep breath and let it out hard and fast, then quickly said, “Randy was my girlfriend. Randy was the love of my life, who stomped on my heart like bubble wrap until it was deader than dead.”

  “Oh,” I said again.

  “Whatever.”

  “Sorry I asked,” I said. “Really.”

  She shrugged. “That’s why I’m here. I needed to get away, go somewhere new and do something different.”

  “And you chose camp? ’Cause, no offense, but you really don’t seem like a camp person.”

  “No kidding. That’s why. Remember what Eleanor said? ‘You must do the thing you think you cannot do.’”

  “Oh. Right.” I threaded an arrow, aimed, shot, and missed. “But couldn’t you have just gone home for the summer? To be with your high school friends and your family, instead of coming here?”

  “Living at home is not an enticing option,” Chieko answered without a pause.

  “How come?”

  “Because my mom . . .” She paused a moment before continuing, “My mom is not particularly pleased with who I am. And I don’t enjoy being reminded of that on a daily basis.”

  “Has your mom seen you shoot? Who wouldn’t be pleased with that?”

  Chieko let out a quick huff. “Let’s just say I’m not the kind of daughter she dreamed she would have and leave it at that.”

  She called over to Jaida C to point her front foot more to the right, then turned back to me to add, “That’s one of the ways I’m like Eleanor. She got flak from her mom, too. Eleanor and me—we’re soul sisters.”

  “Oh,” I said, suddenly wishing I had a soul sister of my own, even though I wasn’t sure what a soul sister was. Or how you got one. Jamie and I were really close and liked to pretend we were sisters. Was that the same thing?

  I loaded an arrow and shot before I was ready, my mind too busy with this new information. My arrow disappeared into the grass with a quiet hush a few feet in front of the target.

  I dropped my bow and asked, “But wait. Won’t Randy be at school when you go back in the fall?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Will you be okay by then?”

  She shrugged and took my bow again. She loaded another arrow, pulled back, held her position gracefully like a dancer en pointe, then released.

  Thwack.

  Bull’s-eye.

  “You have to stay on the archery team, Chieko. You’re too good to quit.”

  “Can’t. Don’t want to see Randy.”

  “‘You must do the thing you think you cannot do.’” I threw her quote right back at her.

  Chieko glared at me.

  Then she shouted to the group, “Equipment down.” She eyeballed each shooting station, then looked dead at me when she ordered, “Go fetch, little doggies.”

  She walked over to a shady area under the trees and took a long drink from her water bottle while we shuffled around the range, collecting our old cruddy arrows and comparing the holes we’d made in the targets.

  As I pulled my two best hits out of the target, I thought about Chieko and how she suddenly seemed a lot like an archery arrow—tough as the steel point on one end and fragile as the crimped feathers on the other.

  Once we were all back in the safe zone, Chieko put her water down and went to help Carly, who was proving to be hopeless with archery so far. She hadn’t hit the target once.

  “You are going to be my success story this summer, Carly,” Chieko told her as she stepped beside her and nudged her front foot into a better shooting position. “Just you wait.”

  Day 12—Wednesday

  At the beginning of rest hour I told Chieko my stomach hurt and asked if I could go to clinic.

  “Your stomach is rock solid and you’re totally fine, but please, go wherever it is you are really sneaking off to.” Chieko said all this without pulling her eyes away from her book. Maybe she was still a little mad at me from archery.

  “You don’t know if my stomach hurts or not.” I was offended that she assumed I was lying.

  Even though I was totally lying.

  She lowered her book, which was another one about Eleanor Roosevelt, and stared straight at me. “You are holding stationery and a pen and a clipboard. A stomach-sick person would be holding tissues or a bucket, and their hair would already be back in a knot to keep it clear of any impending streams of barf.”

  “Jeez, detective, you really figured me out.”

  “It wasn’t hard.”

  “I’m not going to barf. I just feel queasy.” I was sticking with my story. “Clinic has medicine for that. I’ve had it before.”

  “Does clinic have medicine for bad lying?”

  “If you let me go, I can find out,” I answered.

  “Whatever. Go to ‘clinic.’” Chieko gave me an exaggerated wink. “I will not stand in your way, for, as my soul sister Eleanor Roosevelt once said”—and she read directly from her book—“‘Life was meant to be lived and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.’ So go. Be free. Escape rest hour. Face your life and keep your curiosity alive.”

  “You’re a little nuts, you know that, Chieko?” I said, realizing how happy I was that she was my counselor.

  “Nuts are good for you. High in protein. And fats—the good kind.” Then she sighed loudly and announced, “Great—now I’m craving nuts. Thank you oh so very much.”

  “They have almonds sometimes at canteen,” I told her.

  Chieko clutched her stomach with one hand and draped the other across her brow. “Why must Thursday fall but once a week?”

  She wasn’t mad at me anymore.

  “I’ll be back soon,” I said with a smile, and slipped out the screen door.

  I crossed the fie
lds, walked past clinic and past the flagpole, pausing a moment to notice the four flags hanging, one above the other, like limp dish towels on a loose clothesline. It was probably the most pathetic flagpole display in the entire state.

  I moved swiftly through junior camp, past Violet, Daisy, and Chicory, and was relieved to see the grounds around them deserted. I looked over my shoulder and then slunk into the woods, stepping carefully over roots and twigs until I reached my rock. I climbed on top, my back to camp, and looked at the tiny bits of lake I could see to the left through the tree trunks and branches around me.

  I had stationery because I planned to write a letter.

  To my mom.

  I needed to tell her that she was the worst mom on the face of the planet.

  That she’d ruined our family.

  That I would never forgive her.

  I needed to write out everything I was feeling so it would stop weighing me down like a bag of wet sand strapped to my back.

  But I couldn’t even write Dear Mom.

  Instead, my grip loosened and I watched the pen fall to the rock, then roll, slowly, off the side to the dirt below.

  And that’s when I felt it seize my heart and squeeze: fear.

  More than angry or betrayed or surprised beyond belief, I was scared. At the end of August, camp would be over and I would be going home.

  But what was home now?

  Before the email I was never supposed to see, home meant my mom and dad and Freddy and me in a yellow house on a dead-end street in central Pennsylvania.

  Home meant the uneven stone path to our front door that we had to line with orange cones every year at Halloween so trick-or-treaters wouldn’t trip.

  Home meant endless bags of pretzels in the kitchen snack drawer, and the fuzzy green carpet in the den that was thick enough to hide your toes in.

  Home meant pancakes on weekends, and a street party every Labor Day, and raking leaves for our neighbor who was too old to do it herself.

  But then my brain switched tracks, and other thoughts flooded in.

  Home also meant dinners in front of the television, just the three of us, because Dad was working late again.

  Home meant last-minute phone calls from my dad at some hotel, explaining he’d have to stay another day. Or two.

  Home meant Mom watching soap operas like they were breaking news reports, and Mom shopping for things that she never even bothered to unpack out of the bags, and Mom staring out the window at nothing.

  The more I thought about home, the more memories came flooding back to me, like scenes in a movie.

  Scene: Mom’s and Dad’s muffled voices behind the bedroom door, growing louder and angrier until they sounded like two claps of thunder crashing into each other.

  Scene: Freddy and me gnawing frozen waffles on the bus ride to school because Mom was stuck in bed with another migraine.

  Scene: Mom and Dad showing up separately, and sitting separately, at the seventh-grade Welcome Back to School night.

  It was suddenly so clear: They were in lousy shape. They had been in lousy shape for a long time, with or without Darrin.

  And I had never noticed, not really, until the email.

  We’ll be together, just wait.

  Was Mom planning to leave but Dad beat her to it?

  Would Dad come back?

  Would we have to move?

  Who would I live with?

  In August, camp would end and Freddy and I would travel hours by bus to get back home, but what were we going back to?

  For the first time, I felt thankful that I was at Meadow Wood and that Freddy was safe and happy at Forest Lake. I didn’t want to be anywhere near my mom or my dad.

  I grabbed my clipboard, scrabbled off the rock, and picked up my pen from the weeds on the ground. I eased my way through the dim, shadowed woods and stepped into the bright junior camp area.

  I had to make it back to Yarrow in time to sign up for canoe elective with Carly this week, and I had to pretend my stomach was better from my pretend visit to clinic. Ironically, my stomach actually hurt now. A lot. Like I was having one of my mom’s migraines but in my gut.

  It was the pain of knowing there was no way I could undo what had already happened at home.

  And I knew clinic didn’t have medicine for that kind of hurt.

  Day 13—Thursday Evening

  “I’ll start,” Carly offered, “and then as soon as we’re done, I’m getting in the shower.”

  The horse smell on her was pretty strong. No one was going to stop her from showering.

  “My rose is that I did my first jump on Rowdy today,” Carly announced. “I was terrified but I did it.” She seemed to have a new obsession. She talked about riding now more than she talked about reading. She had even started referring to Rowdy as “her” horse.

  “My rose is about the horses, too,” Jaida A jumped in. “I talked to Brenda, and from now on they’re going to pull all the fruit scraps from the kitchen so I can take them to the stables every day. For the horses.”

  “I didn’t know you were doing that!” Carly was so happy she looked like she had just walked into her own surprise party.

  “They weren’t even composting the scraps. They were just trashing them!” Jaida A said, completely exasperated. “And my thorn is that by the time I got my turn at canteen today, there were no Kit Kat bars left. And I had been dreaming of a Kit Kat for a whole entire week!”

  I immediately felt guilty for the Kit Kat Brenda had slipped me last week, the one I had dropped to the ground in the woods. I could still picture the ants attacking it and wondered if the wrapper was still there, buried under dirt and leaves, or if they would have devoured that, too. All I knew for sure was that I wouldn’t be able to eat a Kit Kat again for a very long time.

  “You never said your thorn, Carly,” Jaida C pointed out.

  “My thorn is that my mom’s letter said Lola, at home, got a new babysitter and it might be hard for me to get my job back in the fall.”

  “Ouch. You’ve been replaced,” Chieko said.

  Carly scrunched her eyebrows at that. “I might be able to get it back.”

  “No, you’re out. Trust me,” Chieko said. “Once someone new comes along, forget it. It’s done.”

  Carly looked like she’d been punched in the gut. I couldn’t help but wonder if that was what happened with Randy—if Chieko had been replaced by someone else. But there was no way on earth I was going to ask her.

  And then I thought of my dad, of him being replaced by Darrin. Did my dad have someone hidden away, too, that I didn’t know about because he was more careful with his emails? And did Darrin and my dad’s maybe-lady have kids of their own? Would they replace Freddy and me? My stomach started to feel wobbly and I hugged myself around the middle, as if I could squeeze all the bad thoughts out of me.

  “Why don’t you go, Chieko?” Jaida C said, steering us to a new topic. “Tell us your rose.”

  “My rose is nuts. I craved nuts. I pined for nuts. And at canteen, I got nuts. California almonds. My nut quest has been fulfilled.”

  “All hail the almond,” Jordana called out, and performed a seated bow.

  “My thorn”—Chieko really emphasized the word—“is that we are all required to refer to the bad event of the day as a thorn. I find this ill-conceived. Thorns are honest. Thorns don’t deceive. If you touch a thorn, it’s going to hurt. If you squeeze it, you’re going to bleed. A thorn doesn’t lie. A thorn is true. So a thorn is not a bad thing.”

  Everyone was quiet after her speech. Even Jordana, who had been braiding and unbraiding her hair the whole time, dropped her hands to her lap and considered Chieko’s words, her hair unfurling.

  “I never thought about it like that,” Jaida A admitted. “That’s a really good point.”

  “But thorns make you bleed. You said it yourself,” Carly argued. “And most people would consider that a bad thing. So it makes sense that we use thorns for the negative part of our day.�
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  A debate followed, but I didn’t join it. What Chieko said made perfect sense to me. The moment you saw a thorn, you knew exactly what you were in for. You knew it could hurt you, so there was no terrible surprise when it did. Getting hurt by something unexpected—like a lying mom or a disappearing dad or, for Chieko, maybe, a cheating girlfriend—was a whole lot harder to deal with.

  Jaida C called us all back to order by yelling, “People, we have to finish. Carly needs a shower, for Jake’s sake.”

  “Oh, my hot Jakey!” Jordana folded her hands over her heart and swooned.

  “Vic, you go,” Jaida C ordered, and gave my knee a squeeze. It reminded me of the way my mom used to hold my hand when I was little and squeeze it three times to say I love you. I would squeeze three times back and smile up at her, thinking we had a special secret code, just the two of us. Later I learned Jamie did the same exact thing with her mom and also with her aunt Julie. And so did Carly with her parents. It turned out there was nothing special about it at all.

  “My rose is canteen, definitely. I got a root beer and an ice cream sandwich, and I surprised Vera with M&M’s, so now she thinks I’m the best camp sister in the whole entire world,” I bragged.

  “Better than Jennifer Maskers?” Jordana asked, tapping her front top tooth.

  “Oh my God, everyone is better than Jennifer Maskers,” Carly answered.

  “Don’t remind me,” I said, my tongue moving immediately to the tooth that broke on that ridiculous lollipop. “And my thorn that shouldn’t be called a thorn because I totally agree with Chieko”—I looked at her and she gave a firm nod—“is that tomorrow I’m going to smell like horse because I’m allowed to skip tennis so I can watch Carly ride third period.”

  Carly shouted, “You’ll be equestrian-smelly like me! We can be the stink sisters!”

  I wanted a soul sister, like Chieko had with Eleanor Roosevelt, but maybe I would have to settle for a stink sister instead. “My dream come true.”

  “The more stink, the merrier,” Carly said, and hugged me tight with both arms.

  “The more stink, the stinkier,” Jordana corrected.

  “How intensely lovely for the rest of us,” Chieko noted. “At next canteen maybe someone should purchase more soap.”