“What are you doing?” the guy asks.
“Writing all this down,” I say. “What’s your name?”
“Elliot,” he says. I write down ELLIOT.
“I’m Eva.”
We’re not facing each other, we’re facing forward, out at the horizon and the distant palm trees. Suddenly I feel like I’m about to lose it, have a Tiffany Lee crying fit, because here I am on my graduation night with a total stranger (who didn’t even graduate today, who never even went to my school), instead of with my friends or with people who at least could have been my friends if I hadn’t been so judge-y. The palm trees seem so beautiful rustling in the night, which I know is an LA cliché, but what about when it’s just true? And what about when they seem extra beautiful because you know you have to leave them for college in Boston in less than three months?
Then Elliot takes my hand, holds it. “Want to go hang out somewhere?”
“Can a person leave their own high school graduation party without saying good-bye?”
“Duh they can,” he says.
Then we’re at his car and he’s opening my door, and once we’re driving away Elliot turns the radio to K-Earth 101, the oldies station, and they’re playing “Strawberry Letter 23,” a song I used to sing along to with my mother in the car when I was younger. It occurs to me this would be a really perfect song for me and Elliot to have as “our song,” if something like “our song” ever became necessary.
I write STRAWBERRY LETTER 23 in my notebook as Elliot pulls into the In-N-Out drive-through, the singer singing, “I am free, flying in her arms, over the sea.” And while I don’t normally respond to any of these themes—not freedom or flying, and not the sea especially—the manufactured nostalgia of a classic LA burger “joint” actually washes over me. I order a bun with only lettuce, tomato, and grilled onions, and Elliot gets a chocolate milk shake with fries and that’s it. We eat quickly and then I’m dying to kiss Elliot and see where that leads but remember I have my camp interview in the morning and it’s late anyway, especially for a school night, even though technically it’s not one.
5.
GREAT
STEVEN THE CAMP director shows me around the Sunny Skies grounds, his hands in his cargo pocket shorts, fidgeting with his keys. I’m wearing a dress because I thought it’d be smart to try and look nice and responsible and clean for an interview, but I realize now this position is more about being outdoorsy and into sports and having a good spirit and a positive attitude. For some reason on this particular day there isn’t a single kid anywhere, so the camp is oddly peaceful, almost idyllic, which makes me know for sure: I want this job.
“We loved having Courtney here,” Steven says.
“Oh, thanks.”
“Have you ever babysat?” Steven asks.
“Sure. For one of my neighbor’s daughters, a bunch of times.”
“How’d that go?”
“Okay,” I say. “Though maybe not great. But it wasn’t my fault. The girl was really . . . antagonistic.”
“At this camp we as counselors have to have realistic expectations,” Steven says.
“Like how?”
“Well, we want the kids to like us, that’s fantastic, but even when they don’t, we’re still here to do a job. And that job is to give them an incredible camp experience.”
“Even if they don’t want one, you mean,” I say.
“Every kid wants it to be incredible,” Steven tells me. “Kids love camp.”
We pass by an archery field, two pools, some volleyball courts, and a muddy lake with canoes docked against a pier. He shows me the nurse’s station and the amphitheater and the kitchen, which has a walk-in refrigerator stacked with thousands of school-size paper milk cartons. There’s a bead-and-feather closet in the craft lodge and a stable with two old Clydesdales and maybe a half mile of grass so green it looks neon, where the kids play capture the flag and freeze tag.
That’s when I come up with an idea for a story: a girl who has the power to actually freeze someone during freeze tag, which makes her the most popular and feared girl in camp. It’s kind of like that Stephen King book Firestarter mixed with that part in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe where the Queen freezes Mr. Tumnus and the other animals of Narnia. It’s kind of sci-fi, but maybe with sci-fi Mr. Roush would agree that you don’t have to live it first, or really know it.
“What would you say you’re best at?” Steven asks.
“Um, in what sense?”
“At Sunny Skies, where do you think you’d shine brightest?”
“Maybe arts and crafts? Or I could be a song leader at assemblies,” I suggest. “Or maybe even just a floater who roams around helping wherever needed?”
“I don’t think you’re giving yourself enough credit,” Steven says. “Foster Hoyt told me you’re funny and smart and very dependable.”
“Thanks, Foster.”
“Well, it seems like you’d fit in great here. I’d like to give you a group. They’re the nine-year-old girls,” Steven says. “They’re nine really great girls.”
“Nine,” I say. “That sounds like a lot.”
“You’ll have Alyssa for help. She’s your very own CIT—counselor-in-training,” Steven says. “The CITs are a great group of thirteen-year-olds.”
“So I have to watch a thirteen-year-old too.”
Steven laughs. “That’s funny,” he says.
Back in the office, Steven puts together a massive packet of papers for me, running down the basic info. There’s so many rules and guidelines and suggestions I can tell I won’t be able to read them all. It’s not that I think the job is a sleepwalk, but I feel like in each day’s schedule I’d prefer to try and spend as little time as possible managing the girls so I can focus on just absorbing the overall experience, gathering writerly research.
Steven hands me a clipboard with a Sunny Skies pen in the clip (perfect for jotting notes on plot ideas and character stuff). Then he hands me two Sunny Skies Counselor shirts, both size XL, a hat, and my camp songbook, which is also so XL that it comes housed in a fat three-ring binder. I’m so loaded up with booklets and info and embroidered baseball caps I can’t even shake Steven’s hand when I get up to go.
“We had our Counselor Kickoff last weekend,” Steven says. “Just a chance to get to know each other a little better before the kids arrive in two weeks.”
“Trust falls, right? Role-playing,” I say.
Steven laughs.
“I’m sure it’s all here in the Trust Fall and Role-Playing packet,” I say.
“The girls are going to like you,” Steven says, still laughing.
Then Steven tells me I have spunk, whatever that is, and then he gets serious and reminds me it’s always okay to ask for help. He doesn’t seem to be referring to anything specifically, so he must just mean in general. I ask him to help with the door to make sure he knows I get it, but as Steven’s walking me to my car I worry that even though I’ve already been given the job, maybe I haven’t impressed him enough, haven’t fully won him over with my spirit and enthusiasm.
“We can do one of those role-playing exercises right now if you want,” I say.
I throw the camp stuff in my backseat and stand up straight and squint my eyes, and not just because I’m not wearing my glasses, but also because it’s my concentrating face.
“I’m ready,” I tell Steven.
“Okay,” he says. “Okay, pretend I’m a girl who wants to play prisoner ball when everyone else in the group has decided on TV tag.”
“Does it matter that I don’t know what either of those things are?”
“No,” Steven says, and laughs.
“Listen,” I say, “think about all the times in your life that you’ll be able to play prisoner ball. It’s a long, long life. Think about all the times you’ll be able to play TV tag. Hundreds of times, I bet. Aren’t the differences between them so tiny that in the end it’s more about just playing and having fun and being out
in the sunshine and bonding with your friends? So why even attach yourself to any one game?”
“But I love prisoner ball, it’s my favorite game,” Steven says.
“Do you know what the word ‘open-minded’ means? You have to be open-minded. Like, what if you play TV tag and then it becomes your favorite game of all time and you forget all about prisoner ball?”
“But can’t the other girls just try prisoner ball for a minute?”
“It’s kind of like mob mentality—have you ever heard of that?”
“No.”
“It’s like how maybe TV tag isn’t what all the girls want to play. Maybe it’s only what one girl wants to play, but she convinced another girl and then another and by then you have three girls who all want to play TV tag, which makes the other less-sure girls feel nervous because they want to be liked and they want to belong. Does that make sense?”
“Not really.”
“What I’m saying is, good for you for standing out and being super opinionated even if it means you’re an outcast for a minute. Good for you! And you know what, you don’t have to play TV tag if you don’t want to. You can just keep score on my cool clipboard.”
“But the girl wants to play, Eva.”
“Great,” I say. “Problem solved then.”
6.
AUSTEN’S DARCY, MILNE’S POOH
I CAN TELL Elliot’s not going to ask me out on a real date, which is fine, because honestly that’s never how the Classic books about romance, love, etc., start off anyway. No stuffy, priggish nineteenth-century novels begin with the sentence, “First he asked her out on a date,” because obviously Darcy or Heathcliff have to be super cagey and repressed about everything. Asking someone out shows vulnerability, and apparently a thousand years ago it was considered totally unsexy for a guy to be vulnerable.
But we’re in the future now, and in my opinion inviting a girl on a real date displays a lot of confidence and strength.
Still, that’s just not Elliot’s style. He’s part of that long, dumb lineage of guys who have to maintain a cool distance about everything. It’s a clichéd convention stretching back into ancient history, which would usually bore me, but in this particular instance I’m choosing to be intrigued by it.
“The Black Lips are playing at the Echo tonight,” Elliot tells me when he calls. “It’s all ages. Only eight bucks.”
“Uh-huh,” I say.
“I’ll probably get there at like ten, and stay till last call.”
“When’s last call?”
“Two—don’t you know that?”
“Okay, so you’ll be there from ten to two,” I say. “Four hours.”
“Or maybe longer,” Elliot says, mentally calculating, “’cause I’m driving myself.”
“You’re going alone?”
“Yeah. So I’ll probably bump into you there,” he says, and hangs up.
That’s as official an invite as I get.
But later, once I drive there and park and walk inside, Elliot’s the first person I see, loitering by the girl at the ticket counter stamping people’s wrists. It’s obvious he was waiting for me, and I can’t fake not being turned on by that.
Inside the lights aren’t that low or smoky and it’s not even very loud, both of which I associate with live music venues. Usually watching bands play twenty feet in front of my face isn’t something I find too thrilling—I guess it just doesn’t feel that Classic to me—but being here now I’m realizing there’s an aspect to the performance that’s a lot like a play. It lives and breathes right there on the stage, and you have to truly be in the moment to understand and appreciate it. One of the quotes Mr. Roush kept up on the board for the first half of senior year was this Emily Dickinson one: “Forever—is composed of Nows.”
“Didn’t she only leave her bedroom, like, once in her whole life?” Elliot asks. We’re outside the club now, standing in the back area with the grungy, smelly smokers.
“That might be true, but what reason did she have to leave?” I say. “The outside world was so antique and cruel, and inside was probably mellow and comforting.”
“What’s comforting about being alone?” Elliot asks. He shoves his hands into his jean pockets and leans against a graffitied wall, pulling a James Dean. And the thing about James Dean is that he wasn’t just cute, he was symbolic, and I’ll never get enough of that.
“You’re not alone if you have your books and your pen and your ideas,” I say.
Elliot crinkles his forehead at that.
“Aaaannnd,” I continue, “the awareness that you’re like a poet VIP, and people will be studying and worshipping you forever.”
“What’s the quote again?”
“‘Forever—is composed of Nows.’”
“I’ve got a better one,” Elliot says, then interrupts himself. “Wait, hang on.” Then he goes back inside, the heavy door sealing behind him.
I wave away the cigarette smoke, give a small fake cough. It’s not cold out, but I hold my arms around my body anyway, shifting from foot to foot. I resist the impulse to mess with my phone because I don’t want Elliot to come back and find me that way. I pride myself on having a very long attention span, so I’m not afraid to just stand here alone, touching nothing and looking at nothing, just thinking—which makes me a true original. Maybe not compared to Emily Dickinson, but at least to people who’re still alive.
When Elliot returns he’s holding two sodas, sucking on an ice cube, and smiling.
“You bought me a soda?” I say.
“I know the bartender,” Elliot says. “It was free.”
“I only want it if you bought it,” I joke. “If it took some effort.”
“Well, I tried pretty hard not to spill,” he says, and sticks out his tongue. The cold of the ice has turned his tongue hot pink.
“Do you want to go and actually watch the band?” I say. “You know, see the music play?”
“You can’t see music,” Elliot says, like it’s his deep personal philosophy.
“What was the better one then?” I ask. “You were saying you had a better one. . . .”
“Oh yeah. It’s by A. A. Milne—know him?”
“The guy who wrote Pooh,” I say.
“C’mon, it wasn’t that bad,” Elliot says.
“Okay, what’s the quote?”
“So Christopher Robin asks what day it is and Piglet says, ‘It’s today,’ and then Pooh says”—here Elliot leans down, his face close to mine—“Pooh says, ‘Today. My favorite day.’”
“Is this a real date?” I ask, my eyes right beneath his, my nose just below his nose.
“It’s a little date,” he says. He chomps on another cube of ice. “A half date.”
“Still half to ask me,” I say, pretty pleased I left my bedroom for once in my whole life.
7.
CHINESE BOMBS
I MEET MICHELLE and Steph at the Thousand Oaks Mall on the Friday before our last weekend as do-nothing ex-seniors. Michelle’s been hired as a personal assistant by some rich woman who makes jewelry in Santa Monica, and Steph got a job folding at the Gap. What I like about Michelle is that she’s tough and never moody, and what I like about Steph is that she’s sensitive and really pays attention. I guess I round out the group by being some mixture of both. I like to think of myself as the glue that holds us together, and I also like to think that if I wasn’t around, maybe Michelle and Steph would never really see each other, that’s how much I connect us all.
Michelle’s trying on a fitted blazer that feels very East Coast, very Boston, so I try one on too. Someone makes a Sisterhood of the Traveling Blazers joke, and it kind of makes me feel old, like I wish it was the summer before senior year and not the summer after. I don’t want to get a job, or rather, I don’t want to have a job, but I do, and can’t stop complaining about it. What I don’t like about Steph is that she lets everyone complain, on and on, because she thinks it’s therapeutic to just get everything out, even though so
metimes it isn’t.
The three of us are definitely cliquish, though, which has been getting a bad rap lately in movies and books and overall culture. There’s this backlash against people “wanting to belong,” but the truth is I don’t want to belong in general—I want to belong to these two, and I want them to belong to me. Courtney says that being too close to people can become toxic, and that you have to watch out for that, especially with high school friends. She also says I shouldn’t forget to “spread my wings,” because in a year I might not even know Michelle and Steph—maybe in less than a year. Which makes this blazer, this iced coffee with soy milk, these receipts for candles and hoop earrings, all feel like ticking bombs, and that gives me an idea for a story: a seventeen-year-old girl is visited by two forty-seven-year-old women claiming to be the future versions of her two best friends from high school come back to make sure the girl keeps up their friendships so as to change the course of all three of their lives. This is a good one; Mr. Roush might like it. I scribble it down on something.
“Anyway,” I say, “Foster will be at camp with me. So that’s something.”
“Foster, huh,” Michelle says.
“Don’t say his name like that.”
“I like Foster,” Steph says. “We all think he’s cute.”
“We don’t all think that,” I say.
“What about that guy Elliot?” Michelle says.
“Has he called?” Steph asks.
“He texted.”
“That’s better,” Michelle says. “It’s like, ‘Hey, boys, text me, don’t call me, okay?’”
“Calling is committing,” Steph says.
“And Eva doesn’t want to commit.”
“You’re leaving for Boston in, like, two months anyway.”
“And he’s leaving for tour. . . .”
“There’s also Foster. . . .”
“Guys,” I say, interrupting. “I’m not the protagonist in some rom-com, and you aren’t my pushy, sentimental sidekicks.”
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