Don't Ever Change

by M. Beth Bloom

  We play Super Mario Kart and I win, and then we watch the news, which is something Elliot does every night at eleven because his mom’s a senator’s aide and these are more stats for my file. We kiss every once in a while, nothing long and wet, just like open-mouth and soft. We even kiss during the news, during some story about a missing ten-year-old girl. My mind wanders from thinking about Elliot’s lips to thinking about how scary it’d be if I lost a girl. Elliot says the news is sexy when he’s with me, and then I tell him I do wish he’d brought his guitar because no one’s ever played to me before and now I’ll have to wait all summer for a serenade. Elliot says it’s okay, he’ll just play me something over the phone.

  By the time Elliot and I go downstairs, the whole house is dark and Courtney’s and my parents’ doors are both shut. I walk Elliot to his car. I don’t know quite what to do because this is already another good-bye; there’ll be a ton more coming so soon.

  “Don’t go on tour,” Elliot jokes.

  “But my band needs me,” I say, playing along.

  “I’ll think of you when I’m wiping up snot and skinned knees,” he says.

  “And I’ll think of you when I’m . . . shredding.”

  We hug and kiss some more, so much that Elliot eventually opens the door to his backseat, and without stopping, we maneuver our way in. Now I know I full-on like him, that I’m seriously going to miss him, and his fingers are so strong and calloused from playing guitar that when he kneads them up and down my back, it feels like he needs me. Just as we’re starting to fog up the car, the McNutt family’s dog across the street launches into a frenzy of barking, followed by our porch light flashing on in three short flickers, which is Courtney’s signal for warning me when Mom and Dad are up.

  Elliot and I separate. We catch our breaths.

  “Are you a good writer?” he asks.

  “I’m trying to be,” I say.

  “I bet you are,” Elliot says. “You should write about me.”

  “I should,” I say.

  Then Elliot drives off and it’s sad, but what’s the point of crying when I guess I barely even know him, and other than the fact that I’m a writer, he maybe barely even knows me?

  11.

  GO AHEAD, CHECK

  WHEN I WAKE up on the first day of camp my first thought is: I hate camp. And my second thought is: I’ll just quit. I go downstairs and try to convince my mother to call in sick for me, but not just sick for today, sick for the whole summer—sick for life. She won’t do it, though. I ask my dad next, but he just says, “Work shall set you free,” and then Courtney reminds him that’s something the Nazis used to say, and then everyone goes silent. I beg Courtney to call for me, and she says she’ll do it but she wants a hundred bucks, like, right now, so I give up.

  She agrees to help cut my jeans into shorts, though, since it’s scorching outside, while I put on Johnson & Johnson’s SPF 45 and what feels like ten pounds of Sunny Skies apparel. I also pack a lunch, because who knows what they’re going to try to feed me there. I grab my clipboard and pen on the way out and drive to camp so distracted I can barely pay attention to the road. Jessica Avery. Alexis Powell. Lila Kissling. Jenna Litvak. Zoe Weisberg. Maggie Lamar. Renee Sprout. Rebecca Lovey. Billie Westerman. Right now they’re just names on a roster, but those are my girls, with Alyssa Barber as my CIT. What do they look like, what do they sound like, what do they want? My brain goes blank.

  When I get to camp, it’s like a crazy carnival shit show, with kids running everywhere. I assume I’m going to get some alone time with my group at some point, but the first day is all games and getting-to-know-yous, and suddenly we’re mixed up and separated.

  “Where am I supposed to go?” I ask a girl counselor, and all she does is point and walk away.

  “What are we supposed to be doing?” I ask a boy counselor.

  “What do you mean?” he says. “You’re doing it.”

  I grab another counselor by the arm. “Can I just follow you?”

  “You’re lost,” he says, turning his Dodgers hat around backward so he can squint at me better.

  “So lost.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Eva.” I watch him flip through pages on his clipboard. “Kramer.”

  “Foster’s friend,” he says without looking up.

  “Yes!” I say. “Exactly.”

  “I’m Booth.”

  “Help me, Booth. I’m not afraid to ask for help.”

  “It’s the first day,” he says, showing me how on the monthly schedule, today’s block simply reads FIRST DAY. “No big deal, always a little hecky.”

  “Hecky,” I repeat. Everyone gets it but me, and I’m not into conspiracy theories, but it feels like they want to keep it that way. It’s annoying.

  “Upup,” he says, pointing behind me, “there’s an easy one.”

  Upup?

  I turn around and see a huddle of five campers struggling over a knotted jumble of jump ropes. Each one yanks in an opposite direction, groaning, to pry theirs loose from the pile.

  “See ya,” Booth says before strolling away, leaving me to spend the next ten minutes helping kids loop and unloop tangled ropes. At least it’s ten minutes gone.

  I want to just be with my girls, but they’re all spread out in different clusters, and I keep getting stuck with various rotating groups of interlopers who I’m hesitant to bond with, because what if there’s only so much bondage this summer and what if it’s wasted on them? So instead of participating in the team-building exercises, I pass most of the day playing the game I often play in classes I don’t really care about, and that game is Minimum Effort.

  The only goal’s to test the limit of how much you can get away with not doing and, if possible, find a good hiding place. From ten to eleven thirty I dodge dodgeball, sit out soccer, and avoid the deep end, the shallow end, and the poolside changing room altogether. I help push the canoe out, but I don’t get in. As a concession I organize the lanyard string in neat rows on the table and sit at the head, scissors in hand, Eva Scissorhands, helping boys and girls cut pieces.

  At noon there’s a camp sing-along, but I only mouth the words because I never finished reading the camp packet, so I don’t know the lyrics. I make sure I’m peeing during the ropes course, peeing during lice check, even during most of lunch. If I can’t pee I at least pretend to, sitting on the toilet, reading graffiti. I don’t go anywhere near the horses, and I don’t pet the bunnies. I linger at the lost and found station, even though it’s the first day and nothing’s been lost yet. I sign a list volunteering to stay at camp with future sick kids on future field trip days.

  I let the littler ones from the younger groups climb on me, pull my arms, braid my hair, and assault me with questions:

  “Do you have a boyfriend?”

  “Are you going to college? To be a doctor, a teacher, an actress?”

  “Do you know any famous people?”

  “Are you a camp counselor all year long?”

  “Will you be a camp counselor forever?”

  I tell them I have zero boyfriends, that I’m going to write novels and a bunch of other things, that I know one girl on a Nickelodeon show because we had the same geometry tutor, and that I’m not really a camp counselor. That I must be magical like Mary Poppins because I was never even here today.

  “Go ahead,” I tell them, “check. There’s no evidence of me anywhere.”

  No one knows who Mary Poppins is.

  I barely get ten minutes alone with my girls.

  I never see Foster once. I even try looking through my glasses for a change, sneaking peeks when a Foster-shaped polo shirt or pair of cargo shorts jogs by.

  At three as I’m heading home, I call Michelle and then Steph, but neither of them is off work yet. I call Elliot, but he’s on his way to Tempe and doesn’t pick up. I squeeze the steering wheel a little tighter as I dial Courtney’s number, and when she finally answers, I vent to her how I screwed up majorly, that I
can basically never go back. She reminds me about Roush.

  “What about the open door and the walking through it?” she asks. “What about an open mind at least?”

  I try to visualize what the worst camp counselor looks like, but all I can picture is me. Then I try to visualize what the best camp counselor must look like and nothing materializes—I don’t even have a reference point.

  I drive the rest of the way home in a daze, rolling through who knows how many stop signs while trying to picture this ideal dream counselor, who doesn’t even exist. Courtney’s waiting for me when I walk in. All she does is hand me a photo of myself—eleven years old, smiling, my arms linked with some girls I used to be best friends with at Camp Hollywoodland—and I’m, like, completely comatose.

  I go upstairs and collapse in my room, wondering how to bounce back. I may have never been Teacher’s Pet, but I’m still a Star Student. I don’t have to necessarily ace this summer, but I absolutely have to pass it. Tomorrow it’ll just be me and my group. Jessica, Alexis, Lila, Jenna, Zoe, Maggie, Renee, Rebecca, Billie, Alyssa—I repeat the names a dozen times, like I’m cramming for a Civil War exam.

  Later I check my email. Lindsay’s written.

  Hey gurl, sweet 2 meet. Wanna chat? Roomies, yay.

  I forward it to Michelle and Steph for deeper analysis and then keep studying my names.

  12.

  TWO VERY IMPORTANT CONVERSATIONS IN BETWEEN TWO VERY DISAPPOINTING TEXTS

  AFTER I’VE MEMORIZED all the names and feel confident I know them, something else starts to stress me out, and that something is: What Next? Just knowing their names isn’t anything. I’m sure Foster knows the names of all the campers in the entire camp—and I bet they know his name too, first and last.

  I’m lying on my bed, rolling from side to side, sighing, restless. I text Elliot something vague like where do we go from here? and he texts me back Albuquerque. I’m still staring at my phone, my eyes itchy from not blinking, when Michelle calls.

  “What’s wrong?” Michelle says, right away.

  “I’m angsty,” I tell her.

  “You’re angsty?”

  “Antsy. I said antsy.”

  “No,” Michelle says. “You said angsty. That’s amazing, Eva. What a hilarious Freudian slip.”

  “It’d only be a Freudian slip if I actually was angsty. Which I’m not.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Anyway—I’m antsy.”

  “Remember when Steph and I used to call you Shakes?”

  “Yeah, but that was for Shakespeare.”

  “And for other reasons,” Michelle says.

  “My eyes are itchy,” I say. “Camp is making me itchy. I can’t stop rubbing my eyes.”

  “It’s been one day.”

  “Tell me about your day,” I say.

  “Well, there are about fifteen different closures for a necklace,” Michelle says. “I also learned that only a few of them are technically called ‘clasps.’”

  “It’s the summer before leaving for college and you’re learning about closures?”

  “I knew you’d like that,” Michelle says.

  “I’m writing it down.”

  “Have you talked to Elliot?”

  “Talked or . . . communicated?”

  “What about Foster?” Michelle asks.

  “What about Foster?”

  “You’re not in the mood to talk,” Michelle says. “Obviously.”

  “Noooo, we have to talk,” I whine.

  But Michelle doesn’t say anything else, and I can’t think of anything to say either. The nerves around my eyes twitch, like they always do when I’m stressed, so I press against the lids until I can feel my heartbeat in my eyelashes and see a thousand stars.

  “My eyes,” I say, and that’s it. Then I hear a beep and it’s Steph on the other line. “Steph’s calling.”

  “Tell Steph about your eyes.”

  “They really hurt,” I say.

  “You could start wearing your glasses again.”

  “Eh.”

  The other line beeps a second beep.

  “What did Shakespeare say?” Michelle says. “Eye, there’s the rub.”

  “I’m writing that down too.”

  “Take it, it’s yours.”

  I click over to Steph.

  “I was just telling Michelle that my eyes hurt,” I tell Steph.

  “You’re just stressed,” Steph says. “How was the first day of camp?”

  “There have been times in history when the word ‘camp’ has been used to describe a very, very bad place.”

  “Does a place called the Gap sound any better?”

  “I’m warning you,” I say, “I’ve been whining.”

  “Eva, I’m sure you’ll start to like the girls.”

  “But will they start to love me?”

  “Try harder,” Steph says.

  “I know, I know.”

  “I called to tell you that Lindsay seems nice.”

  “Does she seem illiterate?” I ask. “She seems sort of illiterate to me.”

  “You’re being a snob.”

  “And you’re living off campus, in a studio apartment, less than a mile from the beach.”

  “You hate the beach,” Steph reminds me.

  “I hate the ocean,” I remind her.

  “And you’re going to Boston,” Steph says. “That’s awesome.”

  “Maybe we should trade colleges. Like, have you ever thought about swapping futures with someone? Maybe you’d have more fun in my future than I would. Maybe you’d make the best of it and we’d both learn more if it wasn’t our own lives we had to learn from.”

  “You’re just stressed,” Steph says again.

  “I need a writing assignment,” I say, rubbing my eyes more. “I suck at being a counselor, and I can’t write unless someone tells me what to write about.”

  “Okay, here’s something: write like you’re me,” Steph says. “Write something I’d write, or write me as your main character.”

  “I’m too jealous of you,” I say. “Why are we always so jealous of each other?”

  “Because we’re girls.”

  “Don’t admit that.”

  “I love you, Eva,” Steph says. “And you’re not jealous of me. I’m going to a state school for hippies and you’re going to a private school for geniuses. Tomorrow I fall back into the Gap, but you get a second chance at being Camp Champ.”

  “Did you just say Camp Tramp? Because that’s not nice.”

  “Champ, not tramp. But how is Foster?” Steph asks.

  “My eye’s twitching, that’s how Foster is.”

  “Don’t you feel better now, though?”

  “So-so,” I say. “Hey, why’d you and Michelle used to call me Shakes? Because I’m a writer, right? Because I’m an awesome writer and you think of me as, like, the Shakespeare of the group?”

  “That—and other reasons,” Steph says, laughing, and then we say good-bye.

  Later I text Elliot something cute like the best friends are breast friends and he texts me back curl powder and whirled peas, which I assume means he tried to type girl power and world peace some wacky way but his autocorrect changed them.

  I write it all down.

  13.

  WE’RE GOING TO HAVE A MOTTO

  EACH MORNING WE have what’s called Morning Ceremonies, where all 179 campers and counselors and staff gather in the outdoor amphitheater to sit on stiff seats and listen to various announcements. Today there’s a badly sung sing-along about friendship and letting your light shine, and then Steven introduces the new lifeguard, Marta, and calls an eight-year-old up to the front because it’s his birthday. We tunelessly sing the “Happy Birthday” song and all shout “Hi, Marta!” like a day-care center full of reformed, upbeat addicts.

  Foster’s sitting with his group of nine nine-year-old boys (who Steven swears are a “really great group”) just off to our left, and they keep swiveling their heads around to s
ideways-scope my girls—maybe because we’re huddled around Alyssa poring over our schedule for the day, not really paying attention and talking too loud. Underneath MORNING CEREMONIES it says FREE PLAY. My girls can’t shut up about it because they’re too excited, even me, I’m dying to play free, but then we look up and I guess we’ve missed some dismissal, because everybody’s up and leaving, even Foster.

  I lead my group out to an empty patch of grass not far from the archery field and climb onto a nice big rock, gesturing for the girls to gather close. Alyssa lies down on her stomach, her head on her elbows, and then all the other girls want to lie the same way, so for a few minutes there’s a steady chatter of who’s going to lie where and who gets to be closest to Alyssa. I try to give Alyssa a coded look, psychically instructing her to lead by example, but it doesn’t work because Alyssa’s totally oblivious, and why wouldn’t she be, she’s thirteen and not at all intimidated. None of my girls are intimidated by me, actually, which is the exact opposite of how I thought it’d be when I took this job.

  When everyone’s finally quiet, I get a chance to do what I really wanted to do yesterday: take a good long look at each of them, at their faces and their whole presented selves. Then, without making a big deal of it, I start taking notes.

  Jessica is small; she’s the redhead dressed all in pink. Lila and Renee are best friends, I assume, because they’re wearing matching best friend necklaces and bracelets and rings, and they’ve braided their hair the same way in a high fishtail with matching scrunchies. Jenna is mean; she has a mean face with a hoodie pulled tightly around it. Zoe must be into sports, because she’s dressed like a mini-Olympian: Nike everything and a backward visor. Maggie’s generic, instantly forgettable; I can’t think of anything to write about her. Rebecca wants to be called Becks and tries to give everyone a similarly nickish-name, which is sort of overbearing. Billie’s bright, a smarty, so I like her right away—she’s an early favorite. Alexis is very, very chubby. And Alyssa’s obviously the coolie; she’s got bangs and high-top purple Converses and her ears pierced four times. I write down Don’t be competitive with your CIT because she’s thirteen and who cares, but it’s already being hard because Alyssa’s brought her makeup and also because she is my competition. The girls can’t grow to love me if they’re too busy obsessing over her.