Yours Till Niagara Falls, Abby

by Jane O'Connor

  “Brush those teeth and then get undressed—on the double!” Marty ordered now. “Everybody else is all ready for lights out.” Lisa, Bonnie, and Phyllis all smiled self-righteously from their beds.

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Abby muttered under her breath. Then she and Eileen hustled into the bathroom, toothbrushes in hand, smiling at each other in a conspiratorial way.

  “Hurry it up,” Marty called in to them. “I’m turning out the lights.” Then Abby heard the door slam and the sound of footsteps crunching away.

  “Brother, I sure am beat,” she said as she and Eileen felt their way in the darkness to their beds. “I can’t wait to hit the sack.”

  Bonnie, who had been strangely quiet until now, let out a little whoop and suddenly she and Phyllis broke up laughing.

  Abby stopped at the foot of Bonnie’s bed. “Did I miss something hysterical that I said?”

  “Ooooh, noo,” Bonnie said. “Sweet dreams.”

  Abby flopped gratefully into bed. The crisp sheets felt wonderful. Then she felt a creak, heard a squeak, and—CRASH—suddenly her bed collapsed on the floor, banging the back of her neck on the iron headbar.

  “Abby! Are you okay?” Eileen asked while Bonnie and Phyllis clutched each other, doubled over with laughter.

  “Some joke!” Abby exploded, rubbing her neck. “I could’ve really hurt myself.”

  “Don’t look at us,” Bonnie choked out between fits of giggling. “These cots are old. Maybe the hinges are weak. ”

  “Or the screws could be loose, ” Phyllis chimed in.

  “You—You—” Abby sputtered. “You just better cut this stuff out or—”

  “Or what?” Bonnie had stopped laughing and there was a mean edge to her voice.

  “Will you all kindly shut up,” Lisa hissed. “Before some counselor comes in here and docks the whole bunk.”

  Fuming, Abby managed to get her bed back up, with Eileen’s help. Then she got back into it, clamping her pillow over her head to block out the sound of Bonnie and Phyllis giggling.

  July 2

  Dear Merle,

  I’m going to be in big trouble if the counselor on patrol catches me now. It’ s way after lights out and I’m writing under the covers with a flashlight. But I just had to write.

  Tonight Bonnie and Phyllis collapsed my bed. Then when I was asleep they stuck my hand in a glass of water. It’s supposed to make you pee but it didn’t. When I yelled at them, the counselor on patrol told me to shut up or else I’d get docked (that means you have to miss evening activity and go straight to bed after dinner).

  Daddy always says to keep a sense of humor. Maybe if I laughed it off, they’d quit bugging me. But I can’t. I hate being picked on. If you were here, then it wouldn’t be two against one.

  I better sign off.

  Love n mush,

  Abby

  P.S. Whatever you do, don’t dare tell your parents a thing about me hating it here. I’m scared if Ma and Daddy find out the truth, they’ll have a cow. They’d never listen to anything I wanted to do ever again. What a mess!

  July 3

  Dear Ma and Daddy,

  Thanks for your letter. I’m fine. Really. The reason my letters are short is because they don’t give us much time to write, but I promise I’ll try to do better. Don’t worry, Ma. I won’t forget to write Grandma.

  Lots of love,

  Me

  July 3

  Dear Merle,

  Camp’s still bad. The only good thing is that I passed my first swim test. Now I’m what they call a goldfish. It was pretty cinchy stuff that I had learned at the Y ages ago but Eileen didn’t pass so she’s still a guppy and has to stay in the very shallowest water. Here is how the dock looks. Where the goldfish and guppies stay is called the Fish Bowl.

  So far Bonnie is the only one in our group who’s a mackerel. I’ll probably get to be a mackerel pretty soon, but I can forget about becoming a dolphin. You have to dive off the diving board to be a dolphin. Do you remember how I almost killed myself that time at the Y when I tried it? No way am I doing that.

  Thanks for filling me in on “Live for Today.” I think Owen must be a moron not to realize Ben is his brother after all this time.

  Write me the absolute first second you get to Cape Cod. Maybe you’ll meet some stars and get your cast autographed! I miss you tons. Tomorrow we go to the beach for a July 4th picnic if it’s nice.

  Yours till Porky Pig turns Kosher,

  Me

  P.S. The last kid in our bunk, Roberta, still isn’t here. Lisa told me last summer Bonnie and Phyllis did all these really mean things to Roberta—they even tried tying her to the flagpole one night. I guess it’s cruddy of me, but I can’t help feeling glad someone else will be around for them to bug.

  6

  A YELLOW BUS was waiting in front of the Rec Hall to pick up the girls from Buttercup and Bluebell. Laurel, the swimming counselor stood by the open door, clipboard in hand, busily checking off names as the girls climbed aboard.

  “How’s my new goldfish?” Laurel asked as Abby started to step inside.

  Abby paused on the steps and smiled. “Glad to have the day off.” She liked Laurel who always wore a white sailor cap and had lots of sun cream smeared on her peeling nose. Laurel had been the one to pass Abby on her swimming tests.

  “Out of my way!” Bonnie shoved past her onto the bus and hurried to a seat that Phyllis was saving for her.

  “Just watch the merchandise.” Abby pretended to dust herself off as she climbed aboard the bus. Then she slid into the seat behind Bonnie and Phyllis, next to Lisa and Eileen.

  “It looks like everybody is present and accounted for,” Laurel announced a minute later. “So, we’re off!”

  The bus jounced out the entrance to camp and onto a dirt road with everybody singing “Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer On the Wall” at the top of their lungs. Abby saw Bonnie dig out a six-pack of Pepsi from her knapsack, pull off two cans, and pass one to Phyllis.

  “Hey! You can’t do that,” Lisa protested, poking Bonnie in the back. “Those are supposed to be for lunch.”

  Abby rolled her eyes at Eileen. Lisa practically went into cardiac arrest if she saw somebody breaking a rule.

  Bonnie turned and glared at Lisa. “What’s it to you if I drink it now or later?”

  “It’s not fair,” insisted Lisa, her cheeks reddening righteously. “The rest of us can’t drink ours now. Why should you get to?” She started to squeeze out of her seat. “I’m telling Laurel.”

  “Okay, Lisa. Have it your way. I won’t drink any.” Bonnie said obligingly and she calmly proceeded to tip her can over Lisa.

  “No, Bonnie, don’t!” Abby cried out. She grabbed Bonnie’s hand. Too late!

  Bonnie and Phyllis clutched each other. Phyllis’ braids bobbed up and down, she was laughing so hard.

  “Yuck, yuck,” Abby said sourly. A puddle of Pepsi was in her lap. Her T-shirt was sopping wet and soda was trickling down her legs.

  “Come alive!” sang Phyllis. “You’re in the Pepsi generation.” And they both cracked up again.

  “What is going on here?” Laurel sounded angry as she made her way to their seats.

  “It was all Bonnie’s fault,” Lisa volunteered. “She started the whole thing.”

  Over loud protests, Laurel marched Bonnie to the front of the bus. She returned with a Wash’n Dri for Abby. “When we get to the beach, you can really clean up in the restroom.” Abby nodded miserably.

  “Hey, watch it,” Lisa whined. “You’re dripping all over me.”

  Abby sat stewing, glaring at the back of Phyllis’ head, wishing she had a pair of scissors to snip off those shiny braids. If only she didn’t always let Bonnie and Phyllis get her! Eileen patted her consolingly, but Lisa didn’t say another word. Talk about gratitude!

  When only seven bottles of beer were left on the wall, the bus finally screeched to a stop and everybody clambered off. Abby saw a sign for the bathrooms, and she hurried t
hrough some bushes and thick tangly ivy until she reached the johns. She washed off as much of the stickiness as she could and then ran back to the group of girls who were all busy unpacking knapsacks on the beach.

  “Now look, you guys,” Laurel was saying. “I want everybody to put the food you’ve got in your knapsacks in here. ” She pointed to a Styrofoam cooler lying in the sand. “And the last person be sure and strap it up tightly. ”

  That was Abby. She stripped down to her bathing suit, found her knapsack, then tossed in the bags of apples she’d been carrying, and joined everybody by the shore. Laurel was leading them out to the end of a long jetty. “This is called the ‘easy chair’,” she said, pointing to two massive flat-topped rocks, surrounded by railing, which led into the water like stone steps. “This beach is famous for it.”

  Overhead shrieking seagulls were patrolling the water and all around them the ocean churned furiously. Whenever a wave rolled in, it smacked and sprayed against the rocks. “So? Who’s going to be first to sit back and relax?” Laurel surveyed the group. “Come on, don’t be chicken. It looks scary but it isn’t. ” There were still no volunteers. “All right then. I choose Eileen and ....... Abby. ”

  “Thanks a heap, Laurel,” Abby groaned but deep down she hoped Laurel had picked her because she liked her.

  Almost as soon as she squeezed in next to Eileen, the first wave crashed against her. “Wow! What hit me!” Abby spluttered. Eileen was coughing too and trying to rub salt water out of her eyes.

  “Surprise!” Laurel laughed back behind them, where everyone else was standing safely. “The trick is to duck down. ”

  “Now she tells me,” retorted Abby, and as she watched the next big wave building, she clutched Eileen. They started shrieking and covering their eyes.

  “Goodbye, cruel world!” Abby screamed. Then the wave loomed over them and down they ducked, letting the water thunder over their backs.

  “Now you’ve got the hang of it,” Laurel called.

  “Don’t look now,” Abby yelled to Eileen. “Here comes another one!”

  By the time she and Eileen got out of the “easy chair,” dripping and shivering, everyone was shouting “Me next!” Laurel made sure everybody got two turns getting pulverized by the waves, then she ushered her wet, blue-lipped troop back to the beach for lunch.

  “Lunch! You just said the magic word,” Abby said, suddenly famished. Her teeth were chattering and she was practically numb with cold but it struck her that for the first time since she got to camp she was actually having fun.

  “The salt air really works up your appetite,” Laurel explained. Then she stopped dead in her tracks. “Oh, no!”

  A crowd of shrieking seagulls were staging a riot around the Styrofoam chest, now open and dumped over on its side. Food was strewn everywhere—hot dogs, buns, tomatoes—all bitten into and coated with sand.

  “Shoo!” Laurel shouted, running up and swatting at the birds with a towel. “Caw! Caw!” they cackled back, hopping up and down, flapping their wings.

  “Hey, look over there,” Abby poked Eileen. One seagull had a hot dog stuck like a cigar in its beak. “It looks like Groucho Marx!”

  Abby grabbed for her towel to help fight off the birds but “Forget it,” Laurel told the girls. “It’s no use. All the food’s ruined anyway. We might as well let them finish it. Then they’ll go and we can get the cooler.” Laurel glanced at her watch. “Shoot! We still have over an hour before the bus is supposed to pick us up.”

  “Oh cute,” said Bonnie, plopping down in the sand. “So we have to sit here and starve until then?”

  Laurel had Lisa call camp to send the bus for them right away. “What I can’t figure out,” Laurel said while they all sat up by the dunes, “is how those gulls got to the food.” Her sun-creamed nose wrinkled in puzzlement. “They shouldn’t have been able to. Not if the chest was properly closed.”

  Uh-oh, thought Abby, prickling with uneasiness. Laurel looked around the group. “Who did close it anyway ?”

  “I did,” Abby said, nervously sifting sand through her fingers. “At least I think I did.” She looked up warily. All of a sudden several pairs of hostile eyes were focused on her.

  “Abby, don’t you remember shutting it? Buckling the straps?” Laurel asked.

  “Weeellll ... actually no,” confessed Abby, wishing the sand would just swallow her up. “Hey, lookit, Laurel and everybody. I’m really sorry. I just wasn’t thinking. I always seem to do dumb stuff like this.” Abby smiled sheepishly at the group, put a finger to her temple and pretended to pull the trigger. “Hey, come on. Please don’t look that way. It’s only lunch.”

  “Tell that to my stomach,” said a girl from Bluebell.

  “Well, I guess there’s nothing we can do but wait till the bus comes,” Laurel said flatly. She lay back and pulled her sailor cap over her eyes.

  “You’ll probably get docked for this,” Lisa informed Abby.

  Big deal, thought Abby glumly. What was getting docked compare with being hated by everybody? The first good time. And now it was spoiled... because of me, she couldn’t help adding.

  “Don’t feel too bad,” Eileen whispered softly. “I wouldn’t have eaten most of the stuff anyway, being a vegetarian. ”

  Abby smiled gratefully. If only everybody else would stop shooting her such dirty looks. Already Bonnie and Phyllis had their heads together whispering. Of course they couldn’t do anything now with Laurel around but later they’d pull something to get back at her. Abby propped her chin on her hand and was miserably pondering her fate when suddenly there was a loud TOOT and everybody jumped up and started racing towards the yellow bus.

  7

  THE NEXT MORNING before reveille, Abby woke up with her face on fire. “What’d you do to me?” she screamed at Bonnie whose carrot top was buried under the covers.

  “What?” Bonnie muttered groggily. She sat up and took a closer look at Abby. “Wow, it’s the creeping crud!”

  Abby bolted for the bathroom. She stared, horrified, into the mirror: only her blue-striped pajamas and nest of frizzy hair told her that the hideous reflection was her own. Her face was a swollen mass of tiny red bumps. Her eyes were no longer eyes, just puffy slits. And she itched. Oh, how she itched.

  “What’s wrong with me?” she wailed.

  The camp nurse knew right away.

  July 5

  Dear Merle,

  Guess who’s in the infirmary with poison ivy? Yours truly got it yesterday taking a shortcut to the bathroom at the beach. I walked through a nice big clump of poison ivy. It sure wasn’t my day. I also forgot to lock up the picnic food and a bunch of seagulls came and ate it all up. Now everybody in my group is ready to kill me. Nobody except Eileen is even speaking to me.

  Be sure and keep those cards and letters coming. I can’t wait to hear what Cape Cod is like. It’s sure to be better than here. Boy, would I give anything to be with you. In fact I’d give anything not to be here.

  Yours till Niagara Falls,

  Abby

  P.S. If you could see me, you’d scream. With all this Calamine plastered all over me, I look like the mummy in Curse of the Pharoahs.

  P.P.S. Only 51 more days till I come home.

  That afternoon Abby had company in the infirmary. Katy, the nurse, led in a sobbing girl with a mouth full of braces and deposited her on the bed next to Abby’s. “You just rest a while, Gwendolyn,” Katy said, “and you’ll feel better.” Gwendolyn was crying so hard it actually sounded like boo-hoo.

  “What’s wrong?” Abby whispered to Katy.

  “Homesick.” Katy mouthed the word as she swatted Abby’s hand to keep her from scratching her poison ivy.

  Abby looked over at the sodden heap on the bed bside hers. Poor kid, she thought. Gwendolyn probably hated camp as much as she did. Abby felt a sudden, fierce bond of kinship. “Gwendolyn, don’t feel so bad,” she said softly. “Join the club—I hate camp too. And I really thought it was going to be terrific.
”

  “I don’t want to talk,” Gwendolyn said stiffly through her sobs. She turned away facing the wall.

  “Okay, if that’s the way you feel.” Abby shrugged and picked up a comic book. “I was only trying to be friendly.”

  “Nobody’s suppose to talk to you anyway,” Gwendolyn added. “Bonnie spread it around.”

  “Oh, swell! Do you have to listen to everything that moron says?” She glared at Gwendolyn’s back. “Forget it. I don’t feel like talking to you anyway.”

  Goodbye and good riddance, Abby muttered when Gwendolyn, still a sniffling, red-eyed mess, was let out before dinner. At least I’m not such a crybaby, for God’s sake. And then seeing Katy wasn’t around, Abby got in a few minutes of feverish scratching.

  When she woke up the next morning Abby felt a little less itchy, a little less swollen, a little more cheerful. Hopping out of bed, she went to get her brush and the extra pajamas that Marty had sent down. She opened the bureau drawer, then let out a loud yelp.

  “There’s something in here,” she screamed as Katy came rushing in, still in her bathrobe. “It looks like a hand ... and it’s moving.”

  “What in heaven’s name are you talking about?” Katy proceeded carefully to the bureau and peered inside. She let out a low whistle, then yanked Abby by the arm and made her look too. “Honestly, Abby. I think you’ve seen too many horror movies.”

  “Wow!” was all Abby said. Nestled against her red polkadot pajamas was a small mouse about the size of her fist, surrounded by four—or was it five?—tiny pink babies, all squirming and wriggling and making soft chirping sounds.

  “You know, they do sort of look like little wrinkly fingers,” Katy chuckled. “I guess the mother wanted to find a nice, warm place to have her babies and decided your pajamas were just the spot.”