The Last July: A New Adult Romance

by Breanna Mounce

  If it wasn’t dark, I’d say both girls would be blushing and avoiding eye contact with me. They both apologize, to me and to each other, and then we start to walk again, heading for the center of camp.

  The intramural field is only hit by a few lights, none that will prevent us from seeing the stars, but enough so Winnie and I can light the lanterns. I lay the blankets out for the girls to lay down on, their heads meeting in a circle. Winnie and I pull out some lanterns and start assembling them.

  “Alright, I’ll call you up one at a time, and you can come up and make a wish, then we’ll send your lantern off into the sky,” I say.

  “Do we have to say the wish out loud?” Daisy asks, sitting up from the circle to look at me.

  “Nope, you can keep it to yourself or tell us,” I say. “Do you want to go first?”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah!” she shouts, getting up from the group and coming over to me. I hold the lantern and Winnie prepares the match. Daisy closes her eyes tightly and whispers a wish to the lantern as Winnie uses the flame to light it.

  Instead of the lantern being carried up into the air like it’s supposed to, the flame quickly goes out and it falls back to the ground.

  “Well that didn’t quite work how it was supposed to,” I say, bending down to find some instructions for them, but the box doesn’t contain anything helpful.

  “Maybe it’s not windy enough,” Winnie suggests.

  I shake my head. “No, I don’t think it has anything to do with wind.”

  “Does this mean my wish isn’t going to come true?” Daisy says, anxiety in her voice.

  “No, let’s just try another one,” I say. “That one might just be defective.”

  We do the process all over again and Daisy makes her wish, but the lantern just sinks.

  “Maybe it’s her wish,” Brittney suggests and the other girls giggle. “She’s probably wishing for something impossible.”

  “Am not!” Daisy protests.

  “Why don’t you go lay down with the rest of the girls,” Winnie says to Daisy. “Penelope and I will try to get these working.”

  Daisy reluctantly goes over and lays down, staring up at the stars. The girls talk and giggle amongst themselves as Winnie and I try lantern after lantern, but none of them float into the air like they’re supposed to.

  Finally on the last one, as we’re about to give up, it goes into the air with ease. The girls all clap and cheer and I tell them all to make a quick wish, as cheesy as it is.

  Winnie and I go to join the girls, and they make room for us to squish between them and watch the lantern venture away into the night.

  “Alright, ladies,” I say. “How about we go around in a circle and say what our favorite thing we did at camp this year was? I’ll go first. Mine was watching all of you come out of your shells this year. Kelsey?”

  “I liked going on the hike we did with some of the guys,” Kelsey says. “That was a ton of fun.”

  “Doing the ropes course was my favorite thing,” Chelle says. “This was the first year I actually did all of the course. I usually chicken out.”

  “I liked the food!” Daisy says. “Mom hardly ever lets me eat chicken nuggets and tater tots. She says processed foods are bad for your figure.”

  I, along with all the other girls, laugh, my pudgy belly shaking. Clearly, I’ve had too many chicken nuggets myself. I probably should have paid more attention to my campers’ dietary restrictions, but what Daisy’s mom doesn’t know won’t hurt her. It’s not like she had an allergy.

  The girls continue sharing their favorite things about camp and talking about all their inside jokes. I stare up at the stars, watching as a plane way above us moves gently across the sky, it’s blinking lights showing the way.

  “How about you, Pen,” Kelsey says, bumping my shoulder. “What was really your favorite part about this summer?”

  I think for a moment, listening to the crickets chirp. “Right now,” I say simply, “I want to remember camp at this moment—this moment is one of the best I’ve had, not just this summer, but probably every summer I’ve been here.”

  And it is. This summer wasn’t ideal at all with all the drama that has occurred. Looking back though, I’m glad I worked here instead of sitting at home for three months waiting for school to begin. I did meet some nice people, Dora, Ben, Sampson, Kenny and Winnie.

  I wouldn’t want to relive this summer, but I would never wish it didn’t happen. This summer was one of those times that shapes you and makes you who you’re supposed to be.

  AUGUST

  “Can you believe it’s the last day?” Dora asks me, our feet swishing back and forth in the pool water. The campers are all splashing about, enjoying one final day in the sun. There’s a large group under the gigantic mushroom fountain hiding from the sun, giggling as they push each other under the falling water.

  I shake my head. “I honestly can’t. I kind of wish we had at least another month.”

  “Another month with all the rugrats?” Ben asks as he sits down between me and Dora. I notice Dora blush when Ben looks at her and then at me.

  “Okay,” I confess. “Another month with half of them, the other half has me ready to lose my mind.”

  “There ya go,” Ben says smiling. “What about you, Dora? Are you glad camp’s done?”

  “Well, it’s not done. We still have a week of clean up.”

  Ben drops his head back to look at the sky. “Don’t remind me! I hate clean up week. Why does it last a week?”

  “Hmm,” I say. “Probably because this place has been inhabited by hundreds of people all summer who haven’t been the best neat freaks and have made a ton of messes.”

  “Don’t be logical,” Ben says looking at me from the corner of his eye. “No one likes logical.”

  He smiles though and slides himself into the pool, shivering a little as he goes.

  “Cold?” Dora asks him.

  His teeth chatter. “Not at all, why don’t you join me, Dora?”

  “No thanks,” she says. “I’d rather not freeze my buns off.”

  “What if I want to freeze your buns off?”

  Dora’s blush deepens, and I smile, wondering what took Ben so long to show interest in Dora. Could it possibly be the fact he did it the right way, became friends with her all summer, and waited until his job was almost finished in order to start things?

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asks, but Ben doesn’t respond. “Why are you looking at me like that? Don’t you dare… Benjamin… stop…”

  Before Dora can get up and walk away, Ben has one hand around each of her calves and pulls her into the pool. I’m glad she doesn’t resist him, because if she were to fall on the concrete and scrape her skin, that would be a mess. The hard cement scraping across her body, I shudder at the thought as Dora flops into the pool, not graceful at all. She chokes on some water and rubs some water out of her eyes.

  “You’re such a jerk,” she says, but her voice doesn’t appear to actually mean it. “What if I didn’t know how to swim?”

  “I’ve seen you swim all summer,” Ben says with a laugh. “I knew you could swim.”

  “That’s beside the point,” she says.

  Standing up, I smile and shake my head, leaving them to their first lover’s quarrel. I go over to one of the lawn chairs where my backpack is and lay down. Instead of pulling a book out like I would normally do, I just enjoy the sights and sounds of pool time. Kelsey, to my surprise, is actually hanging out with some of the girls in our cabin instead of Lain. Daisy is holding onto Sampson’s back in the water, refusing to let go. She sees me and waves, which causes Sampson to also look in my direction.

  I smile and wave back to them, relaxing into my chair more, leaning back and closing my eyes. If the sun wasn’t so bright, I could fall asleep to the sounds of Camp Arthur.

  “Hey,” says a soft voice.

  I squint one eye open and look up to see Sampson, water dripping down his skin. I used t
o feel nervous and ashamed when I looked at him, but now I feel fine, like any girl would feel looking at someone they like, even just as a friend, giddy but trying to stay cool.

  “Hey stranger,” I say, patting the chair next to me for him to sit down. We haven’t talked since Viv has been gone. I’ve been keeping busy with my cabin girls and enjoying the final days with them. Sampson has also seemed to avoid me at all costs. The one time I tried to talk to him, he looked at me and walked away before I could approach him.

  “Hey you,” he says. “What’s up?”

  “Not much,” I say as I rest my head against the lawn chair again. “Just hanging in there.”

  “Everything okay?” he asks. “Are you excited that the summer’s almost over?”

  “Nah, I’m not ready to go home.”

  “You only have a week or two back home, right?”

  I nod my head. “Right, but I don’t want to go back at all.”

  “Your parents?”

  I breath in. I’ve only spoken to my parents a few times this summer because I’ve been so busy. Every time I’ve managed to call them, they’re never together. I’m thinking they’re not going to work it out. “Things aren’t looking good.”

  “Sorry,” Sampson says. “It’ll get better.”

  I smile, but shake my head. “I don’t think it will. I kind of wish they’d just go ahead and file for divorce, rip off that metaphorical bandage so we can move on. At least I’d have a week to get over it before I start school.”

  When I look at Sampson he’s nodding, but not meeting my gaze. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that, but I don’t have anyone else to discuss this kind of stuff with. Things with Janine had never been fixed, Kelsey is my camper, and I don’t know Winnie well. Sampson has been my friend this summer, my go-to person.

  “Sampson,” I say, not looking at him. “If you could do this summer over, would you change anything?”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see him look at me and then look out at the pool. “I don’t know, would you?”

  I look at him and nod my head. “Yeah, I’d change a lot.”

  He returns my gaze and nods. “If there was something I could do to fix that, you’d tell me, right?”

  “You can’t fix something that’s already happened,” I say. “It’s all done. I guess that’s where the expression ‘I’ve made my bed and now I have to sleep in it’ comes from. I can’t change this summer.”

  He nods. “I’m sorry you were brought into this mess.”

  I chuckle. “Which one? My parents, or you and Viv?”

  “Both?” he suggests. “I can’t fix your parents, but I’ll find a way to make things better with us, I promise.”

  I pull my knees up to my chest and rest my head on them, looking at Sampson. “You can’t make those types of promises, besides, there is no ‘us’.”

  “But Viv’s not…”

  I shake my head in protest. “You just broke up with your girlfriend, Sampson. I will not be a rebound. I need you to take some time on your own. The worst thing someone can do after a breakup is jump into another relationship.”

  Sampson’s shoulders fall and he turns away from me. “There’s nothing I can do to change your mind, is there?”

  “What I need right now is a friend. If you can be my friend, that’s all I need right now.”

  He breathes deeply and his muscles relax. “I can do that. I can be your friend.”

  “Shall we start over then?” I suggest.

  He smiles and reaches his hand over to me. “Hi, I’m Sampson. You are?”

  “Penelope,” I say, shaking his hand and holding onto it for a little too long. “Nice to meet you.”

  The second our hands part, I feel a piece of myself go missing, and I desperately want to hold his again, but I keep my composure. This might not be as easy as I wanted it to be, and I urge my heart to calm down as it speeds up its beat.

  “Alright girls,” I say clapping my hands and sitting down on the cold cement floor of the cabin, crisscross-applesauce style. “Come join me.”

  “What about feet off the floor time?” Daisy asks, pulling her blanket with her and sitting next to me.

  “We’re going to do a little cabin activity today since you guys leave tomorrow,” I explain.

  Winnie comes in with a few sheets of paper and some markers, sitting them in the middle of the circle that all the girls are forming as they join us.

  “Once, when I was a camper,” I begin to say to the girls once everyone is sitting down, “I had a counselor who came up with this idea, and I wanted to share it with you. What we do is, everyone grabs a piece of paper and writes their name in the center, and then we’ll pass to the person on our right and they’ll write down something they love about you.

  “My counselor called these ‘warm and fuzzies’ because they’re used to make you feel happy. You can save your paper and hang it in your room or your locker and when you’re feeling down, you can look at it and remember all the amazing friends you have here at Camp Arthur.”

  I look over at Kelsey and she smiles. This was one of our favorite things a counselor ever did with us when we were younger, and I always wished more counselors would do them.

  Winnie passes around the paper for the girls and they all dive into the box of markers, looking for their favorite color. I write my name on my paper in loopy script and then we begin passing the papers around the circle. The girls take their time thinking of nice things to say to each other, and this is the quietest I’ve ever heard the cabin. The only thing I can hear is the telltale gliding of markers across paper.

  Before I know it, my page reaches me again, and it’s covered in the sweetest words I’ve read, though some of them are hard to make out. All the girls gush over what their fellow cabin mates have written about them. I’m sort of surprised they all seem to enjoy this as much as I did.

  “Penelope, can you read mine?” Daisy asks, crawling into my lap. “I don’t understand some of the words.”

  “Sure can,” I say as I take her page in my hand. “Here, Kelsey says that she loves your spunk, kid. Then here, Winnie says she hopes you come back next year because she loves how sweet you are…”

  I finish reading her page and then the girls start dispersing, the older girls trying to figure out what they’re going to wear to their final dinner and camp fire while the younger girls are struggling to find one more clean pair of socks. Daisy takes her page and runs to put it in her suitcase for safe keeping. I stand and take my own to the storage room, laying it on top of the dresser, next to a picture of Janine and I from senior prom. Huge smiles on our faces, ignoring our dates, hugging each other tightly.

  I turn the frame on its face so I don’t have to look at it for the rest of camp. It’s time to start closing some of the chapters in my life aren’t bringing me any happiness. Once I get back home, I will do just that. I will not let other people’s opinions control my happiness. For once, I finally feel like I’m growing up.

  “Alright campers,” Mr. Garreth says as the bonfire burns in front of the stage he is on. “How was your summer?”

  The campers all cheer for a good moment, all of them wired from the ice cream social we had after dinner. Now I know why we weren’t allowed to give them sugar unless we’re given permission, they turn into Gremlins and you can’t calm them down from their sugar high.

  Once the campers settle down a little, Mr. Garreth continues. “I’m so glad everyone could join us this summer! I know I had a great time getting to know everyone. I hope you guys come back next summer, we already started working on plans for the upcoming year. Raise your hand if you want to come back next year!”

  A ton of campers’ hands shoot up, along with some of my fellow counselors and CIT’s, Kenny, Dora, and Sampson’s hands among them. I don’t raise my hand and when my eyes meet with Sampson’s, his smile falls a little bit.

  It’s not that I don’t want to come back next year, I just don’t know where I’m going to be
in ten months. For all I know, I could have a better part time job in college, and I feel like it’s too early to decide on anything.

  “I’m glad to see so many of you had a great time,” Mr. Garreth says. “Now, counselors, the campers and I have a little surprise for you. You may or may not remember that day when you had some free time last week, but the campers have put together a little goodbye skit for you.”

  Mr. Garreth exits stage left and a few of the campers run behind stage to get ready. Four campers come out in Camp Arthur Staff t-shirts and baseball caps on backwards and start a rap about the summer they had and all their favorite activities, mentioning at one point all the ‘cute hunnies in their hot swim sunnies’. Once their rap is complete, they exit the stage for a few more campers to come up and perform a skit about what they think counselors do in their spare time.

  The other counselors and I burst into a fit of laughter when one of the younger boys pretends to be Sampson with his deep voice and talking about making flower headbands to wear. Sampson blushes and shakes his head. I smile and go back to watching the kids do their songs and skits.

  They end it with all the campers gathered on the stage or around it, singing Camp Arthur’s main camp song we drill into their heads all summer long.

  We join in with them, wrapping our arms around each other and swaying back and forth. Everyone slowly goes back to their seats as we break into Kumbaya My Lord to soften the mood. Daisy comes over and sits in my lap, and I rest my chin on her head as we finish the song. I’m pretty sure she’s fallen asleep against me by time the singing ends.

  Mr. Garreth quietly dismisses us and I can’t move. I don’t want to wake Daisy up. Winnie gathers up the rest of the girls and Sampson walks by me and leans in.

  “I can carry her for you,” he whispers.

  “You sure?” I ask. “I can wake her up.”

  He shakes his head and takes her from me. She wraps her legs around his torso and holds tight to his neck, not as asleep as she seemed to be. I follow behind Sampson and see Daisy smiling against his shirt collar.