Spells & Sleeping Bags

by Sarah Mlynowski

  I zone out for a few names before I hear “and Miri Weinstein.”

  Miri squeezes my hand.

  “Hey, look, there's Natalie!” Trishelle announces. “The Canada bus must be here already.”

  “Cana-bus?” Miri whispers to me. “What kind of place is this?”

  “Canada bus, you dork,” I whisper-enunciate back.

  Janice continues listing. “And in bunk fourteen,” she says five minutes later, “we have Morgan Sweeney, Jan Winters, Carly Engels, Rachel Weinstein, and Alison Blaichman.”

  Yes! Alison is in my bunk! I turn back to her and wave.

  After listing the names of the girls in bunk fifteen, Janice says, “If you have your sun hats or baseball caps with you, please put them on before leaving the bus.”

  I hate hats. I don't mind them on other people, but they always make me feel like I'm wearing a cardboard box. My baseball hats are all stiff. I'll just pretend my mother didn't force one into my backpack.

  Miri pulls hers out and slaps it on. “Aren't you going to put your sun hat on?” she says rather loudly.

  “Shhh! Come on, let's go.” Since we're at the front of the bus, we're the first ones off, and since we have no idea where we're going, we huddle together to wait for instructions. Janice said she would show us the way, but she is deep in conversation with some of the counselors. Great. Now what? Wander around until the summer ends and we're buried in snow?

  “Bunk two sounds awfully far away from bunk fourteen,” Miri says, her voice all shaky.

  “Come on, it can't be that far.”

  “Hi again,” says a voice behind me. Hurrah, it's Alison, my new BFF.

  “Hi,” I say with relief.

  “Lost?”

  “Just a little.”

  “Follow me.” Alison is much taller than I am and therefore takes bigger steps.

  “Did you meet my sister, Miri?” I ask while practically running to keep up.

  “You guys look alike,” Alison says as we follow the trail over the bridge and onto a narrow gravel road lined with tall green pine trees.

  “Is that a bunk?” Miri asks, pointing to a small white building peeking out on our left.

  “No, it's the camp office. Colton! Hey!” she squeals, waving at a guy up the road.

  “Howdy, Al-ison!” he hollers back in a thick Southern drawl. “How was your year?”

  “Not bad!” she yells, and then says to me, “Colton's our age, too.”

  “He's cute.” He has dimples and a buzz cut. “Where's he from?”

  “Houston, I think.”

  Funny, I feel like I'm in Texas. The sky above us is still overwhelmingly bright and blue even though by now it must be at least four. I take a deep breath. It smells dewy and clean. Kind of like the air freshener in our bathroom back home. But, um, real.

  As we continue along the road, the trees clear and we pass through a shopping center–sized massive field, behind which are postcard-perfect lush green mountains. Grass! Trees! Hills! Sky! I have never seen so much nature in one place.

  There'd better not be bears here. Or any wild animals, for that matter. After six hours of online searching (fine, procrastinating studying for finals), I learned all about how bats, raccoons, and foxes carry scary diseases like rabies, Lyme disease, and plague. I didn't know plague still existed, but apparently lots of rodents up here are teeming with it.

  And let's not forget mosquitoes. Those little monsters are bursting with West Nile virus. But they're not getting me. No way, no how. I packed about ten gallons of mosquito repellant.

  “This is Upper Field,” Alison says. “There're the baseball field, the kitchen staff housing, the soccer field, the Upper Field showers, and back there are bunks sixteen and seventeen, where Colton and some of the other Lion guys live.”

  “What does Lion mean exactly?”

  “The oldest unit at camp. People finishing grades seven, eight, and nine. Koalas are the youngest and Monkeys are in the middle.”

  Ah. I scan Upper Field, wondering if that's where Raf sleeps. My heart makes like a deer and gallops. (Deer do gallop, right? Hopefully, I will never have the occasion to meet one to find out.)

  “Here we are,” Alison announces, pointing with a flourish to a large green and white cabin on our right. “Bunks fourteen and fifteen are in this cabin.”

  Phewf. At least it's a cabin. A tiny part of me was concerned that I would be spending the summer in a tent. That would be way too much nature for City Rachel.

  Two girls, a blonde and a redhead, are standing on the long porch, and when they spot us, they begin waving madly.

  “Poodles! Morgan!” Alison shrieks. “You're here!” She scurries up the hill and the cabin's steps and throws her arms around the girls.

  Poodles? People bring their dogs to camp?

  “Check it out, Alison,” the redhead squeals. “Poodles got a butterfly tattoo on her ankle and I finally got tits!”

  Did she just say the T word? I hate that word. It's so vulgar.

  “You're blocking the way,” someone says. I turn around to see a thin, glossy girl glaring at me. She looks me up and down and flips her black hair. Then, without a word, she pushes past me, nearly knocking me over. Her hair storms behind her, and without so much as an “excuse me,” she heads up the hill to the cabin.

  How rude. I hope she's in bunk fifteen. But I know better than to whine about someone on my first day at camp. I wouldn't want to end up the picked-on girl. There's always one in every crowd, the girl nobody likes. It's terrible the way some kids gang up like that on one specific person, but I have to admit, I'm terrified of becoming that person myself.

  I find my balance and say to Miri, “Do you want me to walk with you to your cabin?”

  She looks nervously up the road and then back at me. “Nah, go ahead. I'll find it.”

  “Rachel, come meet everyone!” Alison calls from the porch. “Miri, just walk down the road to Lower Field, then take the path up the hill between bunks one and three, and your bunk will be on the right.”

  “You sure you can make it on your own?” I ask my pale-looking sister.

  She gives me a brave smile. “I'll be fine. How lost can I get?”

  I decide not to remind her about the time she got lost in the basement of our apartment building. Anyway, if she gets lost, she can always zap herself back to her cabin, can't she? “Good luck,” I say, and squeeze her arm. “See you at dinner.” As I make my way up the hill, I feel butterflies (not tattooed ones) going haywire in my stomach.

  There are already towels and a few pieces of clothing hanging over the porch railing, giving the place a homey feel. A few empty duffel bags are piled in the corner. Alison has resumed her group hug with the two other girls, and I can't help feeling left out. What if I'm always the outsider? What if they think I'm just the weird new girl?

  I feel a tingling in my fingers. Then in my elbows, then in my head, then—

  The towels and clothing that were carefully hung over the railing all go skyrocketing into the air like kites. But unlike kites, they have nothing anchoring them to the ground and continue to soar higher and higher and higher and . . .

  Gone.

  Hah! I totally did that! I didn't mean to, but still! I just made towels disappear! I am the queen of magic! I might have to make myself a tiara in arts and crafts.

  I wonder where they went?

  Oh, there they are, caught in the branches. Hope someone has a ladder.

  Like me, the three girls are staring at the towel-covered trees. Unlike me, they have perplexed expressions on their faces.

  I might have to try to control my magic just a teeny bit. If towels shoot up into the sky every time I get freaked out, people are bound to notice, and then they're going to start wondering about me, and the next thing I know, they'll be tying me to a three-legged stool and dropping me into the lake like they used to do to witches in the Middle Ages.

  Or maybe I'll get my own talk show. One of those psychic shows wh
ere they make people talk to the dead!

  Wow, can I really talk to the dead? “Hey, dead, are you there?” No response. “Granny Esther, can you hear me?”

  “Rachel, who are you talking to?” Alison asks.

  I feel my face redden. “Um, I thought I saw an old friend, Esther. We call her Granny because she's so old. At least seventeen.”

  Oh God. They think I'm a moron.

  To my relief, Alison laughs. “You are so hilarious!” She grabs my hand and leads me up the steps. “Come meet the girls.”

  “Hi,” I say shyly.

  “This is Morgan. She's been coming to camp as long as I have.”

  Morgan has short, curly red hair and a spatter of freckles across her nose. If I were a director, I would so cast her as Annie.

  “Where are you from?” she asks as we check each other out. If only I weren't wearing the most ridiculous outfit in the world.

  The redhead is adorable. She's already changed out of the camp clothing and is now wearing a tight black T-shirt, gold-heeled flip-flops, and a short jean skirt that exposes her pale, freckled legs. I bet she has to wear a lot of sunscreen.

  “Manhattan,” I answer. Maybe she'll think my tie-dye is some sort of New Yorker fashion statement. We are normally ahead of the curve, even when we do retro. “You?”

  “I live right outside Chicago. What camp did you go to before?”

  “I didn't,” I reply. “I mean, I went to day camp, but never sleepaway.”

  “Hope you don't get homesick,” she says.

  Puh-lease. I've been counting the days until I could venture out on my own. I'm practically ready for college.

  “She won't,” Alison says. “She's going to love it. This place is the best camp.”

  “How would you know?” asks Morgan. “You've never been to another camp.”

  “Neither have you!”

  The blond girl—the gorgeous blond girl, I should add—pats my arm. “I'm Poodles.”

  “She's our California chick,” Alison says. “She's been coming here forever too.”

  “Poodles?” I can't help asking. Is that some sort of California name? I knew they were New Agey, but being named after an animal?

  “My unit head nicknamed me on the first day of camp back when I was a Koala.”

  “She used to wear her hair all poufy,” Morgan says, and fluffs up her friend's hair.

  “Cool shirt,” Poodles says to me. “Did you get it specially made?”

  Yes! “Oh, definitely,” I say, and turn around. “The shorts too.”

  Poodles smiles. “Funky.”

  “So what's your real name?” I ask, turning back.

  “Jan, but nobody here calls me that. Even my friends in Cali call me Poodles.”

  Poodles definitely looks like she's from Cali. (Hmm, can I call it Cali if I'm not from Cali? Cali sounds so cool. I wish I were from Cali. Maybe I can move to Cali?) First of all, she's tall, towering over even Alison. Also, her hair is naturally blond (I think). And she has big blue eyes and perfectly tanned arms and legs, which her short pink shorts and white tank top show off. Surely her mother is a famous movie star.

  “We saved you a bed,” she says to Alison.

  What if there's no bed left for me? No, that's stupid; they must have one for everybody, right? And anyway, I can just zap myself up a new one. Of course, that might cause a little confusion.

  There are two green wooden doors on the porch, one that says “14” and one that says “15.” I follow the other girls through the one on the left, which says “14” in black paint, and immediately enter a smallish square room.

  “Here we are,” Alison says. “Bunk fourteen, home sweet home.”

  I look around my new (jury's-still-out-on-sweet) home. The walls of the bunk are paneled with beige faux wood that have names and years scribbled in black and red all over them. Michael Solinger was here '95–06!, Farrah and Carrie BFF! Lynda D. loves Jon C.

  Sunlight streams through the large screened windows that overlook the porch, making the room feel superbright. The two lightbulbs hanging from the white ceiling aren't even on. Directly opposite the door we just came through is an opening to what looks like a huge closet, but my feet are too glued to the dark gray floor to explore.

  Glued because I'm terrified.

  On both sides of the entranceway to the closet are metal bunk beds, pressed against the back wall.

  No one said anything about bunk beds. Bunk beds were not in the brochure. I cannot sleep on a top bunk. It's way too far off the ground.

  Next to where I'm standing, sandwiched between the two windows overlooking the porch, is a lone single bed that (surprise, surprise) has already been claimed with a pink comforter and ruffled pillows. A small silver fan is attached to the metal railing on the bed, blowing air onto the marked territory, so to speak.

  “Carly, what are you doing?” Alison asks a dark-haired girl, who appears to be doing sit-ups on a beach towel in the middle of the room.

  “Forty-one, forty-two . . . ,” says the girl. “I'm doing my stomach crunches . . . forty-four . . . hold on, I'll be done when I get to fifty . . . forty-seven, forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty.” She rolls back onto the towel. “Done. I have a new plan. If I do fifty sit-ups every day, my stomach will be flat by the end of the summer.”

  Alison squats down to hug Carly. “Still a nut job, I see.”

  “Am not,” she says, and then stands. “I'm just fat.”

  “You are not fat! Nut job, meet Rachel. Rachel, Carly.”

  “Hi,” I say. How am I going to remember all these new names? Maybe I need tricks. For example, Carly is lying on the floor doing sit-ups on the first day of camp. Alison thinks she's nuts, so I'll call her Crazy, which starts with the same letter as Carly, which is making me . . . Confused.

  Think I'll skip that idea.

  “Hey,” Carly says, shaking out her towel. She hangs it over the railing of one of the top bunks. Then she heaves herself onto the bed and pushes aside at least ten teddy bears to find a clear spot.

  “Rachel, looks like you're on the top bunk above me, since it's all that's left,” Alison says, depositing her knapsack on the bottom bunk right where we're standing. “Unless you want my bottom bed?”

  Of course I want her bottom bed. But I probably shouldn't ask for it. “No, I'm fine on top,” I lie. Hurrah to sharing with Alison, boo to the top bunk. What are the chances I won't roll off in the middle of the night and break my head? Maybe I can zap up an invisible net.

  Morgan has set up her bed under Carly's. She has a Betty Boop comforter, and a matching calendar on her wall. I wish I brought something more fun than a boring old gray blanket and drab white sheets.

  The pink and frilly single seems to belong to Poodles. She is kneeling on her bed, taping photos of hot guys to her wall.

  I look around for that rude black-haired girl who nearly knocked me over and am glad that she's not here. “Are there five girls in every bunk?” I ask. Five beds equals five girls, right?

  “No, fifteen has six,” Alison says. “They set up the beds and the bunks based on how many people are coming to camp. Last year all the girls in our age group were together in bunk four because we were eight, but this year we're eleven, so they divided us into bunks fourteen and fifteen, which are connected back there through the cubby room.” She points to the opening between the bunk beds.

  “We were supposed to be six,” Poodles says. “I convinced my friend Wendy to come, but she got a small role in an NBC pilot and decided to stay in Cali and take it.”

  “Lucky,” Carly says.

  “As is Poodles,” Morgan says, “since she now gets a single.”

  Alison sits down on said single and leans her back against the wall.

  I'm not sure exactly what to do with myself, so I pick up the communal Lysol can that's sitting on one of the empty shelves, climb up the brown, not-so-sturdy ladder, spray and spray and spray some more, and then deposit my knapsack on the saggy, stained mattress.
Okay. I've claimed a bed. I will not be sleeping on the floor (unless I fall out, that is). Now what? I sit down on the edge of the bed, try to ignore the loud creak, and let my legs dangle off the edge of my dirty-looking mattress.

  This. Is. Terrifying.

  I'm going to have to zap the bunk bed into two singles. Sure, it'll be tight in here, but if I can squeeze the extra bed into the corner, I can make it all fit. Of course, I'll have to wait until no one is here before I attempt any Sabrina-style interior decoration.

  “Hello, missy,” chimes a new girl from the room's back entrance.

  Alison jumps off the bed. “Cece!”

  The two girls throw their arms around each other.

  “You got braces!” Alison screams.

  Cece clamps her mouth shut and mutters, “I hate them.”

  “They look cute.”

  “How can braces look cute? A railroad is running across my face. I'm hideous. I don't want to talk about it. I'm not smiling all summer.”

  “Come on!”

  “It's true,” Cece says. “Anyway, I'm sad that I'm not in the same bunk as you this summer.”

  “We're practically in the same bunk. We're connected.”

  “Not the same and you know it. We're not going to be at the same mess hall table or have all our activities together.”

  “Cece!” screams a voice from the other side of the wall.

  “See you later,” she says, then disappears back through the opening, bumping into an older teen along the way.

  “Hello, my chickadees,” sings the older teen, sauntering into the room and clapping. “Welcome back! Ready to part-ay?”

  My bunkmates hoot and holler. “Deb!” they scream.

  “We missed you,” says Poodles, jumping up to give the counselor a hug.

  After saying hi to all the girls, Deb walks over to my bed. “Hiyee! Welcome to camp.” Her hair is dirty blond and tied back with a red and black checkered bandana, do-rag-style. Up close I notice that she has big eyes, big white teeth, and a big smile. “You lucked out,” she says. “This side of the cabin is way better than the other.”

  More hoots and hollers from the girls.

  “I bet Penelope is saying the same thing to the new girls in bunk fifteen,” Morgan says.