Summer at Meadow Wood

by Amy Rebecca Tan

  “Dungeons and Dragons?”

  “Yeah. After camp, when you’re home. We could FaceTime or Skype or something. It’s a complicated game and it goes on forever, so we’d need a lot of time.”

  I smiled hard. I could already picture myself at my desk or stretched out on my floor, taking marathon phone calls from Angel while he talked me through his game world.

  “Okay. So . . . do you want my cell number?”

  “I was afraid if I asked for it you’d laugh in my face again.”

  “I promise the next time I laugh in your face it will be about something totally different.”

  “Wow. I’m really looking forward to that. Thanks for the heads-up, Vic.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said, and gave him my number. “I better get back to the dining hall.”

  “Okay. Don’t get caught. And I’m going to name a rogue character in my campaign after you now.”

  “How flattering.”

  “You don’t know D&D, so you have no idea what a huge compliment that is.”

  “If you say so. Bye, Angel.”

  I hung up and hurried back to my table in the dining hall. Dessert on Sunday nights was always chocolate pumpkin brownies, and I didn’t want to miss them. Steven had to use canned pumpkin to make them, because you can’t harvest pumpkins in the summer in New Hampshire. They were a fall crop. Thanks to farm, I knew facts like that now.

  Day 46—Tuesday

  “I’m doing a good deed so you’ll let me skip tomorrow’s social,” I announced, bursting my way through the half-open door of the archery shack.

  Chieko wasn’t expecting me, or the box of archery supplies I was carrying, so she jumped when I came in. Something fell from her hands and clattered against the cement floor.

  “Jeez, Vic, you scared the poop out of me!”

  “Sorry.” I peered around her and said, “But no, I didn’t. There’s no poop.”

  “Gross.” Chieko sneered at me.

  “You’re the one who brought it up,” I defended myself. “What were you doing in here anyway?”

  And then I saw it. I saw what had flown out of her hands and hit the floor when I surprised her.

  It was a cell phone.

  Chieko saw me see it.

  “Well, now I’ll have to kill you,” she said.

  “But I brought you a package. Not flat.” I held the box out to her and gave her my best angel face.

  She took the box, set it on the one table in the cramped hut, and read the return address to herself. “I ordered these weeks ago. Great service, Arrowback Incorporated.”

  “So this is how you’ve been getting your technology fix all summer,” I said, picking up her phone and looking for any damage. “No cracks.”

  “Hardly,” she downplayed it. “There’s no Wi-Fi here, just an outlet for charging. I use the phone and camera, and I can watch stuff I’d already downloaded. That’s it.”

  “Pretty slick, counselor,” I said, opening her Photo Gallery. “I won’t tell.”

  The most recent photos on the scroll were of the archery range: pictures of the supply hut looking eerie in shadow, a close-up of a blade of grass glistening with morning dew, a purple finch resting on top of a target, which I could identify because it was New Hampshire’s state bird and we learned all about them in the nature hut back in junior camp. Before that were photos of a bus depot and an airport, signs that said things like Pickup Lane Only and Do Not Leave Bags Unattended.

  I kept scrolling backward in time through her picture collection while Chieko worked at unpeeling the packing tape on the box I’d given her.

  I got to a picture of Chieko holding an orange-and-white cat in her arms, her face half-buried in the soft fluff of its fur. “You have a cat?” I asked, turning the phone so she could see the picture.

  “No, that’s Ramone. He lives in this bookstore I always go to.”

  “He’s cute.”

  “He’s fierce. He only lets, like, three people in the whole world touch him.”

  “And you’re one of them, of course,” I finished for her.

  “Of course,” she repeated.

  I scrolled backward more.

  “And who’s this?” I asked, showing another photo. It was of Chieko and a girl with long brown hair, their arms around each other, smiling broadly in front of a wall of hay bales. They wore matching red team jerseys and had medals hanging from ribbons around their necks.

  Chieko looked at the picture and quickly looked away. “That’s Randy.”

  “Oh.” I looked back at the photo. They were at an archery competition and they both had placed, their medals reflecting glints of sun.

  Chieko and her girlfriend. The girlfriend who broke her heart.

  “She’s pretty.”

  “I know,” Chieko said. “And it’s not especially helpful to point that out, thank you very much.”

  “And she’s good at archery, like you?”

  “Yeah, she’s good.” Chieko stopped working on the box to say, “But not as good as me.”

  I smiled at that. “Good. I like knowing you’re the best.”

  “And I like knowing what’s going on with my campers. You’re different.”

  “I am?”

  “You were all mopey at the beginning of camp, and now you’re all . . . not-mopey,” Chieko said.

  “‘Not-mopey’ is the best you can do? Your vocabulary has failed you! This is insane.”

  “Inane,” Chieko admitted.

  “Well, I can be mopey again, if you want,” I offered.

  “No, you can’t. You’re not a performer. Only Jordana can pull that off.”

  “You’re right.” I handed her phone back to her. “I just had a lot of home stuff to deal with.”

  “So you dealt with it? It’s done?” Chieko asked.

  “No, it’s not done,” I admitted. “I’m just not afraid of it anymore.”

  “Nice. It’s good to hear you’re okay.”

  “I’m better than okay.”

  “Well, that’s just braggy.” Chieko plugged her phone back into the wall outlet and returned to her package.

  “But I’m sorry for being mopey, you know, before,” I added.

  “No apology necessary. At least not to me. I’m the queen of mope.” Chieko ripped the rest of the tape off the delivery box with the ferocity of a wild animal and opened the flaps. She dove both arms into the box, shuffled them around, and finally whipped out a long, narrow black case. She held it over her head in the air and declared, “Victory!”

  She lowered the case, unclasped the end, and looked inside. “Are you kidding me?”

  “What?” I asked.

  “After all that? There aren’t even a dozen arrows in here! Did I order from the most incompetent company in existence?” She pulled a few arrows out of the case.

  I couldn’t help it. I laughed.

  “Good God, they don’t even look new!” Chieko added, completely horrified.

  I laughed harder.

  “Ucchh,” she groaned, and threw the case of defective arrows back into the box. “What. Ever.”

  Chieko collapsed into the wobbly plastic lawn chair that made up the only other piece of furniture in the hut. It squeaked under her weight, even though she couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds. I noticed three paperback books stacked on the floor under the chair, two of them with Eleanor Roosevelt in the title.

  “You know, you’re the best counselor I’ve ever had,” I confided.

  “You know, that almost makes up for my defective arrows,” she said back, a sweet grin blooming across her face.

  Day 46—Tuesday

  Cheers of “We’ve got spirit, yes we do” rang out behind me as I walked down the hill from the dining hall to Yarrow. Brenda and Earl were passing a tray of Steven’s homemade pizza around their table when I slipped out of dinner, complaining again of an emergency bathroom issue.

  Jordana was definitely suspicious.

  “Maybe I shou
ld go with you,” she said, “in case you’re sick or something. Maybe you shouldn’t be alone.”

  “You’re staying here,” Chieko ordered. “And you”—she looked dead at me—“this is the last time.”

  I clutched my stomach, pushed in my chair, and ducked out. I knew Jordana would be able to see me if she looked out the windows on the back wall of the dining hall, so I had to pretend I really was going to the bathroom. I walked through the front door of Yarrow and then straight out the back so I could loop around behind senior camp and get back to the main office without being seen. I knew there was a back-door entrance to the office because I had seen Earl use it plenty of times when we were gardening.

  I recited Angel’s phone number in my head as I stepped over roots and rocks and moved quickly through any shadows I could find. I wasn’t nervous at all this time. I almost felt like the stealthy rogue Angel had described.

  By the time I reached Brenda and Earl’s cabin, the only sounds in the air were the distant murmurs of campers talking and laughing in the dining hall. I walked by the garden and opened the cabin door to the office so I could surprise Angel with another phone call.

  But the phone was gone.

  The clunky old black phone wasn’t sitting on the desk where it usually was. I scanned the shelves and looked high and low in the room but couldn’t find it anywhere.

  “Looking for something?”

  I jumped at the sound of Earl’s voice.

  He stepped into the office from the short hallway beyond, his arms crossed over his white T-shirt, his blue bandanna hanging out of his front pocket.

  My eyes shot right back to the empty space on the desk at his question.

  “Aha,” he said, then disappeared into the hallway and came back a second later with the phone in his arms. “That’s what I thought.”

  There was no way out of this. I was definitely not a stealthy rogue.

  I swallowed the lump that had formed in my throat and found my voice.

  “How did you know?”

  “I was born on a Sunday, but it wasn’t last Sunday,” Earl answered.

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “It means I’ve got eyes, Vic. And I was young once, hard as that might be to believe. I know what’s going on.”

  I stared at him and said nothing.

  “You were gonna call Angel.”

  I didn’t even blink.

  “Again.” He tilted his chin down and raised his eyebrows at me.

  “Fine,” I admitted. “Maybe. Yes.”

  Earl walked the phone back to the desk and plugged in the cord. He lifted the receiver to his ear to make sure it was working. We both heard the dial tone fill the room. Then he hung up and said, “Angel’s a good kid, comes from a nice family.”

  “You know his family?”

  “’Course I do, known them for years. Think I’d let you go off with a stranger all these Saturdays? I’m responsible for you at the market. And where do you think Brenda’s birthday flowers come from every July?”

  My mouth dropped open.

  “I wish I had a mirror—you should see the look on your face right now.” Earl laughed to himself. He was truly enjoying this moment.

  “All right. I’m busted. You busted me.” Then I asked, “Any chance you’ll still let me use the phone? Just for a few minutes?”

  “Can’t, you know that,” he answered right away. “You’ll make it till Saturday, Vic. I know you don’t think you will, but you will. Trust me.”

  I sighed and accepted defeat.

  Then I said, “I do trust you, Earl. Like, I trust that you won’t tell anyone about me sneaking in here?” I crossed my fingers and held them up so he could see.

  “I don’t keep secrets from Brenda. But I won’t tell anyone else. Just don’t give me anything else to hide this summer. Deal?”

  That seemed more than fair to me.

  “Deal,” I said.

  Day 47—Wednesday

  I picked Vera up from Chicory just as the rec hall’s sound system began pumping out the first dance song of the evening. I was skipping the last social of the summer. Without Carly, socials were no fun for me. The Jaidas always spent the entire time dancing, and I don’t dance. Jordana always spent the entire time flirting shamelessly with guys, and I don’t do that, either. Tonight would be worse than usual with Jordana, since she knew her brother from Forest Lake would not be a chaperone.

  So instead, Vera held my hand as we snuck into the woods. She held a bucket of chalk in her other hand and had a big manila envelope wedged between her arm and torso.

  Once we got to the rock, she set her bin of chalk on the ground and held the flat package out to me like it was a tray of goodies. “For the Rocky project,” she announced. “My research results.”

  “What Rocky project? And what research? There is literally no way to do research at camp.”

  “I have my ways,” Vera said, raising both eyebrows. “I told you it’s important to have resources.”

  I climbed up the rock and Vera climbed up next to me, scraping her knee on the way and muttering something about igneous rock texture as she rubbed the bump. Then she opened the envelope and pulled out a thick stack of paper.

  “I wanted to know about the common varieties of chicory and yarrow and what they look like.” She pointed at one large photo. “These ones are chicory.”

  A field of pale blue and lavender flowers stared back at me from the page. Each chicory flower had two layers of petals that spiraled around a small center, the stamens in the middle standing up straight like little yellow minions saluting the sun. They were plain but pretty, and according to the information on the sheet, they grew very quickly.

  “I get it now, why they assigned Chicory to the youngest campers,” Vera said. “Because we’re the smallest, but we grow so fast.”

  “Could be,” I acknowledged. “How did you get all this information?”

  “My mom. I asked her in a letter,” Vera explained. “I told her what to search and what to print. And she did it and mailed it all back to me. In this.” She held out the now empty envelope to show me. “It’s a flat package.”

  She really killed me. She couldn’t climb a three-foot rock without hurting herself, but she could manage to make a thick packet of botanical information appear out of thin air. It was seriously possible that I was learning more from Vera than she was from me.

  “Here’s you,” she said, thrusting a pile of papers at me. “These are all yarrow.”

  From the photos I saw that yarrow grew in shades of red, yellow, pink, lavender, white, and even orange. Individual yarrow flowers were tiny, but they grew in tight clusters. A cluster could be as small as a quarter or as large as a dinner plate. They were so beautiful that just looking at pictures of them made me appreciate the name of my bunk for the very first time.

  “So how does this fit in with your project?” The light was slowly dimming. I had lost track of time and didn’t know how much longer we could count on it.

  “We’re going to draw chicory and yarrow around the bottom of Rocky. On the side facing away from camp. The side facing camp should keep its natural camouflage.”

  I was touched by her plan to mark Rocky as ours, but there was a major flaw. “Vera, the first time it rains, our drawings will be washed away.”

  “Nuh-uh!” Vera grabbed her chalk bucket and lifted the plastic lid off the top.

  I looked inside. “Permanent markers?”

  “They were in the arts-and-crafts shack. It’s the end of the summer already, and no one was using them. They’re practically brand-new,” Vera claimed.

  We worked side by side, using a marker until the tip dried out and then recapping it and continuing with another. Looking at all the flower photos and drawing my own versions of them onto the grainy rock made me think of Angel and all the flowers he and his dad displayed each week at the market. This Saturday would be my last market day of the summer, which meant it would be the last time
I saw Angel until—until when? The thought dropped a weight in my stomach.

  Vera started to hum as she drew, and I let her song pull me away from my thoughts about Angel and saying goodbye.

  Once the sun decided to set, it went from dim to dark in the woods like the flick of a switch. We both knew we had to stop. Vera sealed all the markers in the watertight bucket. She wanted to store it under Rocky for our next visit.

  “And we can leave it here until next summer even,” she said, eyes wide with possibility. “And maybe other people will find it over the winter or spring, and they’ll write on Rocky, too, and then we’ll come back in June and find notes and pictures,” she kept going.

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “I want that to happen! We could meet uniquely interesting people!” she said, bouncing on her toes and clasping my hand again as we picked our way through the trees back to junior camp.

  “That does seem to happen here,” I had to admit.

  Vera squeezed my hand. I squeezed back before letting go so she could run up the steps into Chicory.

  I was halfway down the dirt path between flag and the dining hall when I noticed a shift in the air. It was like a buzz you could feel instead of hear. The rec hall stood in the distance, Meadow Wood girls and Forest Lake boys streaming out, standing in clumps outside the sliding doors. Counselors stood with arms stretched out like barricades, holding them in place.

  What was going on?

  I scanned the crowd for the Jaidas and Jordana, or Chieko, who was a social chaperone, a job she described as the true definition of cruel and unusual punishment.

  I couldn’t spot any of them.

  As I got closer, I realized they were all looking toward the waterfront. I turned that way, too, and squinted to see.

  A large mass of something stuck out of the water, leaning against the dock like a beached whale. It was too dark to see exactly what it was. Shadows of people huddled nearby.

  I squinted harder.

  As I got closer, I recognized Bella, Gabbi, two boys, and Simone, who was bent over, her hands on her knees.