“What’s a desperado?” I asked Joplin.
“And why’s the West woolly?”
She shrugged.
“Most of the songs here make no sense,” she said.
That stupid woolly song was catchy.
I couldn’t get it out of my head.
Even after those other girls stopped singing,
and Hope hurried us across camp for lunch.
We waited in a long line at the dining hall.
That line took forever.
I felt faint
from hunger
before I got to the food.
I longed for a juicy burger,
with ketchup only,
on a bun.
Just like my dad makes me, at home.
But when I finally got to the front of the line,
the teenager behind the counter said,
“Tuna?
Or meat loaf?”
I hate tuna and meat loaf.
I looked at both dishes.
One swimming in mayonnaise.
The other: hunks of gray meat.
“Do you have anything else?”
I asked the teenager.
“Salad,” she said.
She pointed at a bin of lettuce
and tomatoes.
“And rolls.”
I hate tomatoes, too.
But I said,
“I’ll try a little salad.
And a lot of rolls.”
“Two’s the limit,” she said,
dropping two rolls on my plate.
“Even if that’s all I’m eating?”
I asked.
“Yep,” she said.
She scooped me out some salad.
Then she looked at the person behind me
and said,
“Next.”
My plate felt too light
as I walked to the Gypsy Moth table.
Joplin was already sitting there,
eating a huge tuna sandwich.
She stopped when she saw my plate.
“Aren’t you hungrier than that?” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
I sat down next to her.
“Would you please pass the bug juice?” she said.
I looked at her, confused.
She pointed to the jar beside me.
“That’s bug juice?” I said.
“It’s really just fruit punch,” she said.
“Camp calls it bug juice.”
I got an image in my head
of the blood and guts that gush out
when some bugs are squished.
“That’s disgusting,” I said,
handing her the jar.
She shrugged and said,
“It tastes fine.”
But I was still disgusted.
I looked down at my plate.
Nothing looked good.
“When’s snack?” I asked Joplin.
“I’ll be so ready for M&M’s.”
“M&M’s?”
She looked at me funny.
“There are no M&M’s.
Wallumwahpuck is candy-free.
Always has been. It’s a tradition.”
“Candy-free?” I said.
It couldn’t be.
I couldn’t believe
I wasn’t going to get
a single M&M.
My friend Katie’s camp had given her millions!
“So what’s for snack?” I asked.
“Frozen fruit bars,” she said.
“And gluten-free cookies.”
I dropped my fork on my plate.
This was even worse than my flying fall.
I’ve got to get out of here, I thought.
I really do.
After lunch and a camp tour
we all stood on the dock,
barefoot and in our swimsuits,
waiting for the swim test.
The wood was rough beneath my feet,
and the sun beat on my shoulders.
Straight through my sunscreen.
My stomach hurt, too.
And not just from hunger.
I’d never had a swim test before.
I didn’t even swim very often.
My parents had made me take lessons,
and we’d gone together to the pool on weekends.
But it was always very crowded
with bigger, rougher kids
jumping and throwing things.
So we’d never stayed long.
Now,
as my face soaked up sun,
I worried.
“What if I fail the test?” I asked Joplin.
“Nobody fails,” Joplin said.
“You get put in a baby group,” Dylan said.
“Not a baby group,” Joplin said.
“Just a group for beginners.”
“Same thing,” Dylan said.
What a meanie! I thought.
I wanted Joplin to lift one foot
and squash her.
A lifeguard in a red bikini blew her whistle then.
“Here’s how the test goes,” she said.
“Swim to the other dock and back
three times
without stopping.
Show me three different strokes.”
She broke us into groups of two.
I swam last, with curly-haired Kylie.
We jumped into the deep lake together.
I kicked my way up for air, fast,
and gasped.
That water was freezing!
So much colder than the pool.
I could feel my lips turn blue.
The water was muddy, too,
which felt gross against my skin.
And I couldn’t see a thing as I swam.
Plus, Kylie kicked me hard
when we were getting started.
I knew it was an accident.
But still.
It hurt.
Then,
doing the back crawl,
I bumped my head on the dock.
And,
doing the front crawl,
I forgot how to breathe.
Finally, I pulled myself out of the freezing lake
and back onto the dock.
I stood there shivering and dripping
as the lifeguard told us how we’d done.
Then it was official.
I was the worst swimmer in Gypsy Moth.
“You’ll be in the Guppies swim class,”
she told me.
And only me.
Guppies were the second-lowest class,
next to Tadpoles.
A baby class.
Everyone else in my cabin was an Angel Fish
or a Shark
or a Great White Whale.
“She can’t do breaststroke at all,”
I heard Dylan whisper to Kylie.
“She practically can’t swim at all,”
Kylie whispered back.
I wanted to sneeze on their arms.
But I didn’t have a sneeze in me.
I stepped away from them instead
and tried to hide in Joplin’s long shadow.
The lifeguard still saw me, though.
“If Guppies want to go on the
floating trampoline,”
she told me,
“they need to wear a life jacket.”
A life jacket! I thought.
That’s like wearing a diaper!
Joplin turned to me.
“Life jackets aren’t bad,” she said.
“They’re puffy.”
I tried to smile a little,
because I knew she was being nice.
But it was hard to do.
We walked together off the dock.
Dirt stuck to the bottoms of my wet feet.
And,
when I reached for my towel,
I saw a mosquito on my arm,
sucking my blood.
I sl
apped it,
to kill it,
and it smushed into my skin.
I had to wipe the dead parts off with my hand
because I didn’t have a tissue.
My poor hand.
Still scraped up at the bottom
and now smeared with bug parts
at the top.
Hope gave each of us paper and pencil
that night at dinner.
“What’s this for?” Joplin asked.
“A special project,”
Hope said.
“We have a baby goat in the barn.
We just adopted him from a local farm.
He needs a name.
So every camper gets to submit three choices.
The farm staff will vote for their favorite.
That’ll be the name of the goat.”
“Forever?” curly-haired Kylie said.
“Forever,” Hope said.
We all sat down then.
The other girls started tapping their pencils
on the table.
Thinking.
Not me.
I knew the pet names I loved.
On my sheet of paper, I wrote:
Then I folded that paper up.
Dylan was sitting next to me.
I sneaked a peek at her paper.
She wrote:
1. Bleat
2. Goatie
3. Spot
Good grief! I thought.
She can’t name a goat at all!
Then I told myself
it was better to name goats well
than swim well.
I didn’t really believe that.
But still.
I felt better.
After we’d all handed our lists to Hope,
we stood in the long line for food.
I had to eat salad and rolls again.
Because chili
is disgusting.
And the lasagna had spinach inside.
I asked for more salad this time
and forced myself to eat tomatoes.
Because I was starving.
Hours and hours later,
we were all wearing pajamas
and sitting in a circle on the cabin floor.
We all held our flashlights
shining up at the ceiling.
Hope set a candle in a dish
on the floor in front of her.
“Okay, Gypsy Moths,” she said.
“As soon as I’ve lit this candle,
we’ll all turn off our flashlights.”
She lit the candle with a match,
and we all turned off our flashlights.
Now the flickering of one flame
was our only light.
It felt spooky.
But peaceful, too.
And I was so tired.
“We’ll have candle lighting every night,”
Hope said.
“And we’ll always start with a question.
Answer only if you want to.”
She waited a moment.
Crickets chirped outside.
Then she said,
“Tonight’s question is:
What was the highlight of your day?
Mine was meeting all of you.”
We had a moment of quiet again.
Then Joplin said,
“Mine was the lemon-lime fruit bar.”
And Dylan said,
“Mine was seeing Kylie.”
And Montana said,
“Hello?
What about me?”
“You, too,” Dylan said.
“And Amelia and Gwen.”
Each of those girls then
talked about seeing the others.
I sat there, very quiet.
Thinking about my whole day.
I couldn’t think of a single highlight.
After everyone else had finished,
Hope paused for a long moment.
Probably wishing I’d say something.
But I didn’t.
So she stopped waiting
and taught us a song.
A much slower song
than the one about the desperado.
When we’d all sung together,
Hope blew out her candle.
As we switched on our flashlights, she said,
“One more reminder before bed.
You must never bring food into the cabin.
It attracts animals.”
“Like rats!” Amelia said.
“Rats?” I said.
“That’s right!” Kylie said.
“We had one in our cabin last year.
Because of Dylan.”
I had to shake my foot then.
I could practically feel a rat on it.
“My mom sent cake,” Dylan said.
“It was delicious.”
“That rat thought so, too!” Kylie said.
“Okay,” Hope said.
“If she sends cake this year,
we’ll store it safely in the dining hall.
Now, everyone into bed.”
So I climbed into bed.
It was strange, being so high.
And the mattress was lumpy,
and my sleeping bag was thinner and more slippery
than the quilt I used at home.
And my parents weren’t there
to tuck me in
and kiss me good-night.
But I barely thought about any of that.
Because before most of the girls had turned off
their flashlights,
I had fallen asleep.
In the middle of the night, I had a nightmare.
About a rat
hanging on to the leg of my jeans,
tight,
with its pointy teeth.
I shook
and shook
my leg,
trying to fling it off.
I tried so hard,
I woke myself up.
Then I sat up,
confused.
I was relieved
there was no rat.
But I didn’t know where I was.
Just that I wasn’t home.
Nothing felt like home.
Not even the air.
When I heard the crickets outside,
I remembered.
And I lay back down.
I wanted to call out for my mom.
She’d bring me a glass of water
and rub my back
and say, “It was just a dream.
Don’t worry.
It was just a dream.”
I couldn’t believe
I hadn’t made it through a single night yet.
I couldn’t believe
I had nine more to go.
I remembered my whole rotten day.
My flying fall.
My stinging hands
and knees
and chin.
This stupid, lumpy bed,
which I couldn’t even make.
The swim test.
The mosquitoes.
The no-candy rule.
The rat.
The spiders spinning in the bathrooms
every time I went to pee.
Changing my clothes
in front of girls I barely knew
before swimming
and after swimming
and again before bed.
I don’t want to be here,
I thought.
I hate camp.
I just hate it.
I made an important decision then.
I fumbled in the dark for my flashlight
hanging on the wooden frame of my bed.
Then,
very quietly,
I climbed down my bunk ladder.
Gwen was breathing
a slow, whistly kind of breathing
in the bunk below mine.
I tiptoed past her
and got stationery and a p
en from my cubby,
then climbed back up the ladder
and started writing a letter.
I wrote:
Dear Mom and Dad,
I have met Esmeralda.
Remember, Mom?
I have met Esmeralda.
I can’t wait to see you both.
This is how much I miss you:
You are still the best parents in the world.
And there’s no better grandma than Grandma Sadie,
who was trying to give me a present.
I still love you from the tips of my toes
to the top of my head
and out into the sky.
Even though you sent me here
with no warning at all
about the candy
or the bug juice
or the spiders
or the life jackets.
All my love,
Eleanor
I sealed that letter in an envelope
and addressed it.
As I was pressing on the stamp,
I heard a noise behind me.
I turned quickly,
scared.
But it was just Hope.
She stood at the foot of my bed and
rubbed her eyes.
“Everything okay?” she asked me.
“Yes,” I said. “Thanks.”
Then I handed her my letter.
“Would you mail this for me?
In the morning?”
I asked.
“Of course,” she said. “First thing.”
My whole body felt lighter then.
I knew I’d be going home soon.
I switched off my flashlight
and fell right back to sleep.
We chose our own activities the next morning.
Joplin chose tetherball.
So I chose tetherball, too.
Even though I’d never heard of it.
And I decided to try to have fun.
Since this would be one of my last days at camp.
We walked together to a field
with poles scattered around it.
Each pole had a ball attached,
hanging from a rope.
When activity time started,
a counselor explained the game.
“Each pole will have two of you,”
she said.
“You are opponents.
If your opponent hits the ball one way,
you hit it back, in the opposite direction.
Don’t let her hit the ball so many times that
the rope wraps all the way around the pole.
Whoever wraps the rope all the way around
wins.
Got it?”
She waited, to see if there were questions.
There weren’t.
It didn’t seem too hard.
“Let’s give it a shot,” the counselor said.
So Joplin and I walked to a pole,
Like Bug Juice on a Burger Page 3