Day 14—Friday
The path to the stables wasn’t far from our cabin. It took just a few minutes to walk the narrow trail that cut through some woods until it opened up to a large round fenced area with an old tack and stable house on the side. The trail was shady and dark and the mosquitoes were out of control. Carly didn’t seem to notice, probably because she was dressed from head to toe in riding gear: denim jeans tucked into leather boots, long-sleeved shirt buttoned up to her chin, riding gloves, and a black helmet. Aside from her face, there was nowhere to bite.
I was another story, however. I was in my usual T-shirt, shorts, and sneakers outfit, with my hair stuffed into a high ponytail so even the back of my neck was on the menu for the blood-hungry insects. I slapped and swatted at them the entire walk. When I looked at Carly to complain, I saw that she was drenched in a slick layer of sweat. It was hot and humid, and she was dressed for a fall harvest hayride. For a moment I couldn’t decide which was worse, the sweat or the bites.
Carly smacked me on the elbow, hard.
“Oww! What was that for?”
“Mosquito,” she answered. “You’re welcome.”
The bites were worse.
The horse smell became noticeably stronger as we reached the end of the trail. Carly’s pace picked up and her lips spread into a smile, but mine went the opposite direction. I wasn’t used to the smell of so much horse, or manure.
“There’s Holly,” Carly gushed. “She’s my favorite instructor. And look, there’s Eliza! She’s riding Festival.”
A girl trotted around the ring on a white horse with a tan mane and tail. She was also completely covered in clothing with a dark helmet on her head. It was pretty impressive that Carly could identify anyone in all those clothes.
“I think Brenda’s been scheduling Eliza and me together, even though she’s way better than me,” Carly explained.
I leaned on the fence while Carly went into the stable to get Rowdy. Holly gave me a welcome wave from the other side of the ring, where she was boosting a junior camper into a saddle.
Carly came out of the stable sitting straight and tall on Rowdy, one hand holding the reins while the other stroked his mane. I watched as she walked Rowdy around the ring a few times, then gave a little kick and took him up to a trot. She popped up and down in the saddle like a jack-in-the-box that couldn’t decide if it wanted to spring up or stay down. Her face became more serious as she took him up a notch again and began to canter.
Every time a hoof hit the ground, a puff of dirt rose up like magic dust. Holly called out an instruction, and I saw Carly change her position slightly in response. My eyes started to glaze over as the steady drumbeat rhythm of the canter lulled me into a trance.
But then my trance was broken by the sound of Earl’s golf cart chugging up the narrow trail behind me.
“Fancy meeting you here,” he said as he pulled up beside me, his walkie-talkie spitting static from his hip.
“I’m watching Carly ride. She’s getting good.”
He followed Carly for one full pass around the ring. “She must be,” he said, “’cause Rowdy is not the most cooperative horse.”
“He cooperates for Carly,” I said. “She loves him.”
Earl turned off the cart, left the keys in the ignition, and walked around the ring to a damaged area of fencing. He inspected the failing wood, tapping and prodding in different spots, and then took a bunch of measurements. The bottom of his jeans collected more brown dust every time a rider trotted by, but he didn’t seem to care.
Tomorrow was Saturday, and he would be up before the sun, picking greens from his garden and driving them over to the market way before the bugle rang. As far as I knew, he would be going alone. I knew how much work it was, so I couldn’t help feeling a tiny bit guilty about it.
But then I talked myself out of that. It wasn’t my fault Meadow Wood grew more food than it could use in the dining hall. I had made enough money in one Saturday to fill both my and Freddy’s accounts for the next few weeks, and who in their right mind would wake up that early on a Saturday if they didn’t have to?
Earl said he liked all that farming work, anyway, that it gave him peace. I was going to find my own peace by staying in bed until the last possible second before dragging myself to flag.
And that would definitely be after the sun came up.
Day 16—Sunday
Jordana was the first one out of bed when the bugle blared, which was a sure sign that something was up. She also skipped her usual stream of early-morning cursing. Instead, she bounced around the cabin while getting dressed and was the first one out the door for flag, which was as unbelievable as anything you might read in the Guinness World Records.
Once the whole camp was assembled, Brenda said her good mornings and was reminding us of the July Fourth firework plans when she was interrupted by the sound of Earl’s cart churning toward the flagpole. The Marigold girls stepped aside to let him through, and he drove into the middle of the circle to park beside Brenda. As soon as I spotted the bouquet of flowers on the passenger seat in place of his overflowing tool kit, I knew what was going on.
It happened every July.
A chorus of “Awww” filled the air, and Brenda started shaking her head at her husband, even though she was grinning with every inch of her face at the same time.
Earl climbed out of the cart and nodded at one of the drama counselors, who took the cue and started a round of “Happy Birthday.” The whole camp joined in, singing with an energy not usually available at this hour. Earl hoisted the bouquet out of the cart and presented it to his wife. I wondered if he’d bought it yesterday at the farmers’ market.
Jordana sang along—she couldn’t resist an opportunity to sing, ever—but she looked like she was bursting out of her skin with impatience while she was doing it.
“What’s your deal, Jordana?” I asked her. “You in some kind of race to get to your bagel and cream cheese?”
She shook her head at me and didn’t answer.
When the “Happy Birthday” song was done, a bunch of junior campers broke into, “Are you one? Are you two? Are you three? Are you four? Are you—”
Earl waved his hands to stop them while Brenda laughed and shook her head some more.
“Your breakfast’ll be stone cold if you count to the right number,” Earl ribbed.
“It’s true,” Brenda agreed. “I’m blessed and grateful to turn sixty-four today.” Then she turned to Earl and said, “I’m catching up to you, mister. In just three years I’ll be all caught up!”
Brenda made this joke every summer.
Earl hopped into his cart and drove away while Brenda got us back on track, calling two girls from Goldenrod to assist with the flag raising. One girl held the stack of folded-up flags while the other attached them to the rope in the usual order. Then they hoisted them up to the top of the pole, tied off the rope, and returned to their bunkmates.
And that’s when we saw it.
As if on cue, a gust of wind whipped through the sky and the flags flapped out to their full rectangular shapes.
The last flag, the Nature Nurtures Life flag, had been swapped out. In its place was another burlap flag with the words CANTEEN Nurtures Life printed on it, surrounded by drawings of candy bar wrappers and soda cans.
Laughter broke out like the July Fourth fireworks Brenda had tried to tell us about. I’m pretty sure I even saw her crack a smile before she righted herself and forced a stern director-like look onto her face.
Jordana was laughing more enthusiastically than everyone else. She was also staring straight at a group of Aster girls. I followed her gaze and saw Bella, Simone, and a few others from that cabin high-fiving. Bella looked over at Jordana, gave her a thumbs-up, and mouthed, “Awesome!”
Jordana beamed from ear to ear and returned the thumbs-up sign. I guessed Bella and her friends had included Jordana in their prank.
Brenda started to lower the flags, then changed her
mind and retied the rope back in place. She probably decided it would be better to remove the CANTEEN flag later in the day without a crowd watching.
“You did not.” Carly smacked Jordana on the arm in admiration.
Jordana pursed her lips together and didn’t say a word. Which was really impressive for Jordana.
“You know what? Canteen really does nurture life,” Jaida C said. “At least at Meadow Wood.”
“I wish today was Thursday,” Jaida A said, staring at the flag, the Twix and Sprite pictures flapping firmly against the soft blue sky.
“Canteen,” Carly agreed, her voice going soft and dreamy. “Every day should be canteen day.”
Day 16—Sunday
Freddy and I sat by the water and threw pebbles into the lake while we talked. It was sibling visitation at his camp again, and we had fifteen minutes left together. Freddy’s only problem that week had been running out of soap. Except he didn’t exactly run out of it—he lost it.
At Forest Lake, the boys bathed in the lake. They stripped down to nothing and jumped in with special environmentally safe bars of soap and bottles of shampoo and scrubbed themselves right there in the water, dunking under to rinse off. Freddy had been having trouble holding on to his slippery bar of soap while also cleaning himself. Every attempt to grab it from where it was floating in the water made it slink even farther away. He had lost three bars of soap in the last week.
“Can’t you buy more at canteen?” I asked him.
“I don’t like their soap. It smells weird,” Freddy complained.
“All right, I’ll get you soap from my canteen and bring it to you next Sunday, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Will someone share with you till then?”
“Yeah. But not many of us have any soap left. We all keep losing it. It’s harder than it looks, you know, to hold it in the lake.”
“It must be,” I said, and ran my hand through his uncombed hair. He had lots of new highlights from the sun that never showed up in my dark hair no matter how much time I spent outside.
“Are you homesick at all?” I wanted to know.
Freddy was quiet for a minute, rolling a stone back and forth across his palm. Then he said, “I miss the big pillows on the floor by the TV, and I miss TV. And I miss my video games. But that’s it.”
“That’s it?”
“I thought I would miss the pool at home, but the lake is better.”
“The lake is colder,” I pointed out.
“I like it. Camp is fun. I thought it would just be okay here, but it’s better than okay.” He flopped onto his back and gazed up at the blue sky.
I stared at the speckles of sunlight glittering across the lake and repeated Freddy’s answer in my head: better than okay. It seemed like a goal, like something to shoot for. Earl was better than okay when he was working in his garden. Chieko was better than okay when she was shooting at the archery range. Carly was better than okay when she was riding Rowdy. Freddy was better than okay at Forest Lake.
But Freddy didn’t know what I knew. Freddy didn’t know that his dad was gone and his mom was with some guy named Darrin.
And I did.
How was I supposed to be okay with that?
Day 17—Monday Night
“This camp has reached an all-time low,” Jordana complained.
“You guys cheer about bananas. I think you hit your low a long time ago,” Chieko countered.
Tonight’s Evening activity was s’mores over a bonfire and the July Fourth fireworks over the lake.
Except it was July 10.
Apparently, professionally run July Fourth firecracker shows were available well after July Fourth.
We didn’t know if Brenda had waited too long to schedule it, or if it was the Lake Forest director’s job to schedule and he forgot, or if the firecracker company was short on staff and couldn’t fit us in until now. We all just knew it was tough to argue that Meadow Wood hadn’t reached an all-time low if the best we could do was have Independence Day fireworks a week after Independence Day.
We all changed into long pants and drenched ourselves in bug spray. It was late, already eight thirty, and dark enough for us to head to the waterfront and start on the snacks.
The night air was cool and crisp and the campfire was roaring, kicking up smoke and that incredible wood-burning smell. If you ever wanted to bottle the smell of summer camp, that would be it.
Carly linked arms with me and announced, “Happy birthday, America!”
“You mean happy belated birthday, America,” I corrected her.
“Belated is better than not at all,” Jordana chimed in. “I remember the year my mom forgot my birthday. It was awful.”
“Your mom forgot?” Carly asked, her voice rising in shock.
Jordana’s face crumpled into the beginning of a cry, and Carly reached out to rub her shoulder. Then Jordana perked back up with a huge grin. “Nah, I just made that up. But if you ever are starving for attention, tell people that. They’ll feel so bad, they’ll slobber sympathy all over you.”
Carly smacked Jordana on the back. “You are such a butt-butt! I believed you.”
“That’s because I’m such a talented actress.” Jordana held her head high and posed like a diva.
“Then you should have no problem acting like it’s really the Fourth of July,” Chieko said, nudging her toward the s’mores station. “Move it or there’ll be no marshmallows left.”
After I made two s’mores for Vera and left her happy with her bunkmates, I found Chieko sitting on the rock wall that separated the beach from the grass. She was staring up at the sky impatiently.
“This isn’t an exercise in imagination, is it?” Chieko asked. “I mean, there really will be actual fireworks in the actual sky?”
“That’s how it usually works,” I answered.
“Well, what in God’s good name are they waiting for? We’ve been down here for hours.”
“I think it’s been like twenty minutes.”
“Whatever.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
She answered with a shrug.
“What can I do to help you feel the spirit of this historic day?”
“Nothing historic went down on July tenth,” she snapped back.
“But we’re pretending it’s July Fourth, remember?”
“Jordana’s pretending. I can’t pretend. See?” And she looked me square in the eye then, her complete lack of enthusiasm smeared over her face.
“Okay. You’re miserable. I give up.” I decided to stop talking.
Chieko sighed heavily, then pulled up one of her pant legs to reveal a swollen pink bump on her ankle.
“A stupid flesh-crazed mosquito bit me on the ankle right in the middle of my stupid tattoo. It’s itching so badly I’m ready to eat my own leg to make it stop.”
Her tattoo was a capital R painted in a fancy calligraphy style. And there was a swollen, ugly bug bite smack in the middle of it.
“First of all,” I said with a cringe, “eating your own leg is extremely gross. And second, clinic has stuff that could fix that in half of half of a second.”
“So, a quarter of a second?” Chieko simplified.
“It’s summer. No math, please,” I said.
“You started it.”
“Whatever,” I replied.
“Don’t take my word. Whatever is my word. You have to get your own word.”
“I like whatever. I’ve been using it,” I confessed. “And I used inane.”
“Then I have had great impact on you, young one,” Chieko said, nodding slowly.
I pointed at her leg. “Is the R for Randy?”
Chieko looked back at her ankle. “Yeah. Pretty symbolic, don’t you think? A mosquito bit me right on the Randy? Like a message from a higher power.”
“No. Mosquitoes just go for the ankle a lot. Easy access.”
“Uh-uh. It’s symbolic,” Chieko insisted. “My advice to you—don’t
get a tattoo for another person. Don’t be an idiot, like me.”
“You’re not an idiot.”
“Promise me,” she demanded.
“Okay, I promise.” Then I asked, “Did she get one for you, too?”
Chieko looked at me, her face a blank sheet.
And then an explosive BOOM rang out so loud that even the sand on the beach seemed to jump in surprise. A field of color burst over our heads and the air filled with sudden squeals and shouts. Next came the noise of bodies scrambling to get to their place for the show, and then came quiet, like a blanket of hush draped across the entire waterfront.
Brenda was seated a few rocks down with a junior camper on either side. I spotted Earl resting in his golf cart at the other end of the beach. Vera was sitting next to a bunkmate who already had her hands over her ears and wore a look of terror on her face. Vera would explain the science of chemical reactions to talk her down, I was sure.
Chieko and I both leaned back on our rocks and let the night sky take over. The steady rhythm of pops and cracks and the flashes of light were hypnotic. Blue, red, purple, and white lights climbed and twisted together as they shot up, then exploded, sparkling and glowing on the way down. The surface of the lake reflected the shimmering light like a mirror. I loved knowing that Freddy was watching the same show from his side of the lake.
My eyes started to tear from so much staring and not enough blinking. Clouds of smoke began to collect in the sky, changing the black backdrop to a hazy gray.
“See that one?” Chieko whispered, pointing at a single streak of light zooming straight up into the sky. “That was me and Randy.”
The streak of light reached its full height, hung in the air silently for a split second, and then exploded, light shooting off in every direction with a fierceness that made me squint.
“And that’s me and Randy now,” Chieko continued in a whisper. “Broken into a gazillion tiny pieces of fire and ash.”
Summer at Meadow Wood Page 10
