holding the trunk with one hand
and me with the other.
But still,
he held my hand tight
until the very last second.
Then both my parents
hugged me
and kissed me
and reminded me to wear sunscreen and bug spray.
“Don’t forget to reapply!” my mom said,
with her hands on my shoulders.
“It wears off!”
“I promise,” I told her.
Suddenly, the head of the junior unit was shouting,
“All aboard!”
And Joplin was waiting beside me.
My mom kissed my head
one last time
before letting me go.
Then,
feeling very small,
I followed tall Joplin
onto the humongous bus.
Joplin let me sit by the window.
“Thanks,” I said.
She shrugged.
“I like to stick my feet out in the aisle,” she said.
She stuck them right out there, too,
as soon as she could.
Other girls settled in around us.
The driver swished the door shut.
I looked out the window
and saw my parents.
They were standing beside each other,
shading their eyes with their hands,
searching the bus windows for me.
I waved and waved.
Finally, they saw me
and waved back.
Then the bus rolled past,
and they disappeared.
I turned—I didn’t want to lose them.
But they were gone.
My body slid low in my seat.
And I thought,
Why am I going to this stupid camp?
Why did Grandma Sadie send me?
Why didn’t I just say no?
“Are you going to vomit?” Joplin asked.
I thought for a second she could see inside me.
I thought she knew exactly how I was feeling.
But when I turned to her,
surprised,
I realized she wasn’t talking to me at all.
She was looking at the girl across the aisle.
“Me?” that girl said, pointing at herself.
She had braces and two braids.
“Yes,” Joplin said. “You.”
“Why would I vomit?”
the braces girl said.
Joplin shrugged.
“Last year a girl got carsick
and vomited in the aisle.
I don’t want vomit on my ankles.”
Braces Girl made a face.
“That is disgusting,” she said.
“I’m not going to vomit on your ankles.”
“That’s good,” Joplin said.
Braces Girl turned away from us then
and said something to the girl sitting beside her,
and they both laughed.
I felt bad for Joplin.
Because they must have been laughing about her.
But Joplin didn’t seem to care.
She just yawned.
And yawned again.
“My baby brother,” she said to me.
“He has an ear infection.
He screamed all night.
I couldn’t sleep.”
“Oh,” I said.
She closed her eyes and tilted her head.
“I need to rest for a second,” she said.
And just like that,
she fell asleep.
I watched out my window for a while.
Rows of brownstones changed
to bigger buildings
with signs painted on their sides.
Like BEST HOT CHICKEN IN BROOKLYN.
We s-l-o-w-l-y crossed a long bridge
crowded with cars.
Then we inched through even more traffic until,
finally,
we were zooming up an open highway.
Buildings started disappearing
and trees started appearing
everywhere.
At some point,
Joplin’s head fell on my shoulder
and stayed there,
bouncing a little with the bus.
No one had ever slept on my shoulder before.
Not even Pearl.
I thought about writing Pearl a letter,
telling her that my strange new friend
was bruising my shoulder.
But I couldn’t get my stationery out of my backpack
without waking Joplin.
I kept watching out the window instead,
as the world outside
got greener and greener.
Watching out that window
got boring.
So I slept, too.
Eventually, Joplin shook me awake.
“Look!” she said
when I’d opened my eyes.
She pointed out the window.
A sign there read:
WELCOME TO CAMP WALLUMWAHPUCK,
A HAVEN FOR GIRLS SINCE 1958.
The bus was bumping
down a gravel road
with bushes and trees and weeds all around.
This isn’t beautiful,
I thought.
This is creepy.
I missed sidewalks full of people
checking their phones
and walking their cute dogs.
I missed paved roads, too,
filled with taxis and bike riders.
Finally, the bus turned
and stopped in a dirt lot.
“All right, girls!” the head of the junior unit shouted,
walking down the aisle.
“Step outside and find your counselors!”
“But we don’t know who our counselors are,”
I said to Joplin.
“They’ll be holding signs,” she told me.
Sure enough,
when I stepped off the bus,
I saw teenagers holding signs:
GYPSY MOTH, DRAGONFLY, HONEYBEE, CICADA,
DOODLEBUG, MONARCH, PRAYING MANTIS,
HISSING COCKROACH.
“I’m glad we’re not in Hissing Cockroach!”
I told Joplin.
“That one’s fake,”
she said.
“The counselors make up a cabin name every year.
Last year it was Seed Head Weevil.
I still think they should use Seed Head Weevil
instead of Doodlebug.
Doodlebug is stupid.”
I thought about that.
Doodlebug was babyish.
But still.
I wouldn’t ever want to be
in Seed Head Weevil.
“Come on,” Joplin said.
She started walking toward the Gypsy Moth sign.
I followed her.
We kicked up dust with every step.
And flattened weeds, too.
It seemed too quiet on that lot,
even with the sound of girls talking and laughing.
After a second,
I realized why:
no cars honking,
no sirens wailing,
no truck brakes squealing.
Just girls.
And a whole lot of birds,
chirping.
I didn’t like it.
The Gypsy Moth counselor started waving
as soon as she realized we were walking toward her.
“Hello!”
she called.
“I’m Hope!”
She was wearing sunglasses
and red sneakers.
“I don’t remember her from last year,”
Joplin muttered.
“She must be new.”
“You’re the Gypsy Moths
from Brooklyn!” Hope said
when we stood in
front of her.
“So, one of you is Joplin,
and one is Eleanor.”
We told her who was who.
“I am so excited to be
your counselor!”
she said, grinning.
She had a swinging ponytail
and freckles
and a pretty smile.
“I love Wallumwahpuck,”
she said.
“I was a camper here for seven years!
Then I spent a summer in Vietnam,
and last summer I went to Thailand.
Now I’m back!”
I looked around that dirty, weedy, too-quiet lot
and figured there must be a different,
more spectacular part of camp.
The part Hope and Mom both loved so much.
“Come on!” Hope said, smiling her pretty smile.
“Don’t worry about your trunks;
someone will drive them over soon.
Let’s get you both settled!”
The walk
to our cabin
was horrible.
Hope,
very bouncy and happy,
led us down a steep path
through tall trees
that let in small patches of light.
“We’ll see the lake in a minute!” she said.
She moved fast down that path.
It was hard to keep up.
I had to wave swarms and swarms of gnats away, too.
They hovered in groups on the path,
not scared of me at all.
Like pigeons.
One even got on my tongue.
I was trying to pick it off
while I was hurrying to keep up with Hope,
so I wasn’t paying attention
and I didn’t see a tree root
that popped up out of the ground.
I tripped on it
and
flew.
When I finally landed,
skin had scraped off my hands
and my knees
and the bottom of my chin.
I just lay there,
sprawled on the ground
like dirty underwear.
And stinging all over.
“Eleanor!” Joplin shouted from behind me.
In a flash, Hope ran back up that steep path
and kneeled beside me.
“I’m so sorry!” she said.
“I was moving too fast!
I’m used to the roots now.
They’re tricky, aren’t they?
Everybody trips;
I don’t want you to be embarrassed.
Come on up—
we’ll take you right to the infirmary.”
“No!” I said
as she helped me up.
I looked at my dirty red scrapes.
I didn’t want to go the infirmary.
I wanted to go home.
I wanted my mom to sit me down in my bathroom
and wet one of our washcloths
with cold water
and dab it gently on my knees
and hands
and chin
until they were cool and clean.
Thinking about her—
I couldn’t help it—
I started to cry.
“I’m fine,” I said,
turning away from Joplin and Hope.
But I sniffled when I said it.
Hope reached to take my hands,
carefully,
and inspected the scrapes.
“It could’ve been worse,”
Joplin said.
“Last summer a Cicada fell out of a tree
and broke her leg.
She had to go home.”
“Oh,” I said,
still sniffling a little.
I didn’t think I’d broken anything,
which was good.
But—to get to go home! How lucky!
“Can you walk?” Hope asked me.
“Yes,” I said, wiping my face on my sleeve.
“There’s a bathroom nearby,”
Hope said,
“with a first-aid kit.
Let’s go clean you up.
Then, if we need to,
we’ll take you to the nurse.”
“OK,” I said.
“We’ll move very slowly,” Hope said.
“Sounds good to me,” Joplin said.
They both stayed beside me
as I limped down the path
ignoring the gnats
and avoiding the roots.
At the bottom
I saw a big, sparkling lake with wooden docks.
And,
off the end of one of the docks,
a floating trampoline.
I tried to imagine jumping
high and happy
on that trampoline.
But my knees screamed
when I thought about the landings.
So I ignored the trampoline, too.
And focused on the path beneath my feet.
After cleaning me up
and covering me in Band-Aids
and telling me not to worry about
the three scary spiders I saw
dangling and crawling around me,
Hope took us to our cabin.
It was small and painted white on the outside.
Just like my mom’s, in her camp picture.
Do not think about that picture,
I told myself
very seriously.
Because it was too sad
to think about my happy mom.
I focused on Hope’s red sneakers instead
as I followed her up the cabin steps.
Those red sneakers saved me
from crying again.
The screen door creaked when we opened it
and banged behind us when we got inside.
“Home sweet home!” Hope said.
It didn’t look like home.
No rugs, no curtains, no lamps.
No couches, no armchairs, no tables.
No television, no stereo, no computer.
No colors on the walls.
Just brown wood, from floor to ceiling.
And four bunk beds, one in each corner.
And a few shelves and cubbies along the walls
under the windows.
Only my trunk was familiar.
It sat next to Joplin’s, in the middle of the floor.
I wanted to curl up inside it.
“You both have top bunks!”
Hope said.
“Eleanor, you’re there.”
She pointed to a bunk bed on the left.
“And Joplin, that one’s yours.”
She pointed to the right.
Then she said,
“I have to meet our other campers.
Can you start unpacking without me?”
Joplin and I nodded,
and the screen door banged shut again
behind Hope.
Great,
I thought,
looking up at my bed.
Another way to fall.
My hands started burning again
just thinking about it.
Meanwhile,
Joplin had opened her trunk.
She was shoving clothes and towels
into the cubby by her bed.
I did the same thing.
Then she took out her sheets and sleeping bag
and stood on the edge of the bunk below hers
and started making her bed.
I tried to, too.
But I’d never made a top bunk before.
It was impossible.
Whenever I got one corner of the sheet
around that thin mattress,
the other corner popped off.
And I couldn’t even reach the far side.
Finally, I climbed up on top
and crawled around
Then I climbed back down
and checked my bed
and saw
a disaster.
“Have bears been fighting up there?”
Joplin asked me.
I looked over at her bed.
It was beautiful,
smooth and tight.
Just like my mom’s, at home.
“Don’t worry about it,” Joplin said.
“I got good at it last year.
Besides, it gets messed up anyway.”
I knew that.
But still.
That bed was my only space in the whole cabin.
In the whole world,
until I got home.
I wanted to like it.
Joplin looked at my face.
“Hold on a sec,” she said.
Then she stood on the bunk beneath mine
and, with her long arms,
pulled and reached and tucked
until my bed was beautiful, too.
My heart felt funny,
watching her be so nice.
“Thank you,” I said
when she was done.
She shrugged.
“Don’t tell anybody,” she said.
Very serious.
“I don’t want to be making everyone’s bed.”
“I won’t,” I said.
“I promise.”
I pulled the Band-Aid off my chin
as soon as I heard the other girls
coming up the steps of our cabin.
Because that Band-Aid looked ridiculous.
It turned out all those other girls
were friends from the summer before.
Dylan, Montana, Kylie, Amelia, and Gwen.
“Look!” one of them said,
pointing out the window
as the rest were walking in.
“You can see our cabin from last year!”
“Where?” the others said.
They all leaned over my cubby
and knocked over my bottles of
sunscreen.
And talked over one another:
“Yes! I see it! There!”
“That was the best cabin.”
“Didn’t you love that cabin?”
I wanted to make them pick up my sunscreen.
Because that sunscreen
was important to my mom.
But I’d only just met them.
I didn’t want to be bossy.
They probably wouldn’t have heard me anyway.
They were still talking.
“Remember,”
one of them said,
“when Dylan was standing on that rock?”
And then
for some reason
they all started singing.
Something about a desperado
from the wild and woolly West.
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