by Tilda Shalof
The light in the Carsons’ bedroom burned all night.
By morning, the boys were still missing.
To avoid hysteria, no one else at camp was told about the crisis. Camp continued as usual. The few of us who knew did our best to contain our worry.
At the same time this crisis was happening, the counsellors were busy with their own secret. For the past few days, they had been staying up later than usual, preparing something big, but no one would tell me what it was. In their free time, groups of them gathered in excited huddles, busy with piles of art supplies. They were painting huge signs, drawing charts and maps, choosing captains and mascots, making costumes, writing songs, and practising special cheers.
“What’s going on?” I asked one counsellor.
“I can’t tell you.”
“As the nurse, I need to know.” I didn’t, really, but I was curious.
She shook her head and pretended to lock her lips, throw away the key.
I glared back at her and stood my ground.
“Well, okay, I’ll tell you, but you can’t tell any kids. It’s Colour Wars.”
“What’s that?”
“Get out!” she gasped. “I don’t believe you.”
Now, I have heard it said that many young people these days are unable to name their nation’s capital city or leader and I guess I find that as appalling as this counsellor found my ignorance of her world. However, after recovering from her shock, she explained to me that Colour Wars was a huge deal, the highlight of the summer. The camp would be divided into four teams to play all-day games. If you were on the winning team, well, it totally rocked, she said in summary.
“What’s the prize for the winning team?”
“Candy and a sleep-in!”
“When is this event taking place?”
“I definitely can’t tell you that. It’s top secret.”
This girl had potential as an intelligence operative, but she’d met her match: I was a counter-intelligence agent. I gave her a menacing look.
She caved and threw me a bone. “All you need to know is when the obstacle course race happens. That’s when everyone gets injured.”
Thanks for the heads-up.
As I walked away, her friend went over. “You didn’t tell her, did you?”
“Yeah, she made me.”
“We’re going to have to kill her now.”
Almost a full two days after the boys had gone missing, the police called with good news. They’d been found! Sunburned, covered in insect bites, scared to death, hungry, thirsty, and in shock, but alive! After a check-up at the local hospital, they’d been discharged. They had suffered no injury from exposure. They said they had gone to gather firewood and decided to take out a canoe on their own, but on their way back they couldn’t find the campsite.
Coach Carson approached one pair of now-relieved parents. “I want you to know that at no time was your son in any danger whatsoever.”
“Don’t bullshit us, Carson!” the father snapped. “What kind of training do these trippers have? How could they lose our child?”
“I’m sorry, what I mean is that your son wasn’t lost. The trippers mixed up the names. It was another boy also named Brandon, not your Brandon.”
They were stunned, unsure how to react. They hung between relief and anger. I thought about the parents whose son had been lost, who were still at home, blissfully oblivious to their possible tragedy.
After ensuring their children were all right, both groups of parents left to return home, but not before Coach Carson offered to waive all camp fees for their kids for the following summer to compensate for their emotional distress.
“I’ve lost ten years off my life.” Coach Carson dropped down onto the couch in his office, utterly exhausted.
Wendy sighed. “At least it all ended well,” she said.
Camp had been in swing for three weeks. Tomorrow was Visitor’s Day, and a few days after that, my kids and I would be leaving. My days were pleasant and I was enjoying myself immensely, confidently and competently treating the daily flow of blisters, splinters, sore throats, headaches, and stomach aches.
The counsellors were still busy with their surreptitious late-night activities, but meanwhile, a daytime flurry of hustle and bustle had kicked up around camp, this one in preparation for Visitor’s Day. Extra gardeners were brought in to pick up litter, mow lawns, and clip hedges. Maintenance crews spruced up the outside of the buildings. Campers and counsellors did a massive clean-up inside their cabins, followed by inspection by the unit heads. The kitchen staff was getting ready for the special lunch for the parents, and as a result breakfast was even more rushed than usual. Amid all of these distractions, Caitlin and I suddenly became aware that the picnic basket of meds, always kept on the bench with one of us, was missing. That basket held amphetamines, antidepressants, sedatives, and antibiotics. Wendy was furious at us and told us what we already knew.
“If a child gets into those meds it could be disastrous! This can’t end well.”
She called a camp-wide roll call and gave a stern warning to whoever had pulled this dangerous prank to come forward immediately. I noticed Hailey was missing. I ran off with a good hunch where she might be.
I had been spending a lot of time with Hailey. Almost every day, she would duck and dive when she saw me, but end up agreeing to take a walk with me. We went on the path I hiked with Caitlin in the mornings. The trail led into the woods and then out onto a quiet country road that ran alongside camp. During those walks, I gave Hailey full rein to express her unhappiness. She was still angry and defiant, more determined than ever to leave on Visitor’s Day when her parents arrived. She even had her bags packed. Yet her parents had signed her up for the entire summer. I wondered who would win.
“If she comes home, she wins,” her mother had explained to me on the phone.
“That girl is not coming home,” her father told me in a separate conversation. “We paid for this camp. She’s staying. End of discussion.”
“I’m at war with my parents,” Hailey said, looking resolute.
I knew I couldn’t fix anything, but I also knew, from so many years of being a nurse, the value in simply listening and being open to another person’s pain. Hailey had to go through it alone, but if it helped knowing there was a caring and understanding adult, I would be that.
I ran through the woods to the private spot where she and I usually sat. The moment I came upon her in the clearing, I could tell she was glad to be found, even though she scowled when she saw me. The picnic basket with the meds was at her side. I joined her on a slab of granite rock for a few minutes, talked quietly, and then we headed back to camp.
“You’re the reason I’ve made it at camp this long. I hope you’re not leaving,” she said.
“Yes, after Visitor’s Day. I have to get back to my job in the hospital.”
“I’m going home, too. I’ll do what it takes to get out of here. I warned you, I’m relentless.”
After dinner that night, they held the long-standing tradition of the hilarious “Lost and Found Fashion Show,” where counsellors paraded around the dining hall wearing items of unclaimed clothing and sports equipment, calling out the camper’s name on the label. It was amusing to see the counsellors sporting the kids’ clothes and acting silly, but there was also a sense of urgency to the game – Coach Carson and Wendy presided over it from the sidelines – of uniting those clothes and expensive items to the owners before the parents arrived the next day.
“V-Day” dawned bright and sunny. Camp Carson was abuzz with excitement. By mid morning, cars were lined up outside the gate. By noon, they were bumper to bumper in four converging rows, ready for the moment when Coach Carson opened the gate, which he did, precisely at noon. The trippers, now subdued and compliant after the disastrous trip, were very industrious. They had turned the soccer field and baseball diamond into parking lots and were directing traffic, acting as parking valets, and helping parents meet up
with their children.
Caitlin ran over to tell me that a plane had landed and docked at the waterfront and someone’s parents climbed out. “It’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen!”
Everywhere you turned, heartwarming greetings were ringing out across the Land of Camp!
“Mom!”
“Dad!”
Kids ran to their parents – and to step-parents, a slew of siblings and step-siblings, grandparents and step-grandparents. The parents looked refreshed and eager to see their kids. The time apart had been good for everyone, but how strange to see the place suddenly flooded with adults. Grown-ups were invading the kids’ world!
The visitors came laden with provisions: picnic hampers and voluminous hockey bags stuffed with giant-sized bags of potato chips, boxes of party sandwiches, hamburgers (still warm from the local town’s drive-thru), fried chicken, barbequed spare ribs, chocolate cakes, lemon meringue and apple pies, and cartons of lemonade and iced tea, cases of Coke, Styrofoam cups of dried noodle soups, huge slabs of chocolate, and party-sized bags of candy to replenish their tool boxes. They brought teen magazines, clothes, sports equipment, toys, games, and gadgets. Some of the things they brought the kids hadn’t even been missing.
Other noteworthy visitors were the many family dogs, all well-behaved and on leashes. There were even a few purse pooches, their beribboned heads sticking out the top of their owners’ handbags. I saw kids run with outstretched arms right past their parents to embrace their beloved pets. In some cases it was hard to tell if the children were happier to see their parents or their dogs, but in the end all were lavished with lots of affection.
I wondered how Alexa Rose was dealing with this canine onslaught, but Caitlin told me her parents had whisked her and T.C. out of camp for an afternoon of pampering in the local town. “She told me she was going to max out her parents’ credit cards,” Caitlin said. “It was the first time I’ve actually seen her smile.”
Well, I couldn’t hang around ogling and petting the beautiful dogs. I was expected to meet parents and answer any questions they had about their children’s health. As I worked the crowd, I found the parents were as generous to staff as they were to their children. They tipped the counsellors – which was against camp policy but not actually enforced – and spoiled Caitlin and me with boxes of chocolates, bubble bath, gift certificates, even a voucher for a day at a spa.
The kids gave their parents the clay pots, vases, necklaces, and bracelets they’d made, showed them all around camp, and recounted their many achievements.
“I learned how to swallow pills!” said one girl as she saw me walk by. I’d obviously given her some sort of tablet. “The nurse taught me.” I waved at them.
“They make us wake up at the crack of dawn,” one boy said, but he didn’t seem too upset about it. “We walk outside to check out the weather, ’cause there’s no weather channel!” He told his parents about his canoe trip. “We didn’t even take an alarm clock. We used the sun to wake us up!”
Another child was also excited about outdoor discoveries.
“Our cabin went stargazing! I saw a shooting star. It was way cool. Then we went out again and we saw the exact same stars in the sky. I thought every night would be different stars.”
“Hey, Dad, listen to this,” a kid yelled as he strummed a guitar. “I wrote a song!”
I noticed one girl who had no visitors, but it didn’t seem to bother her. “At first, I thought my mom was coming and I was jiggy with that, but she nixed the idea when she thought for some reason that my dad was coming. But she should know he would never come here. His idea of nature is driving his convertible with the top down.” She happily spent the day with a cabin mate and her parents.
Parents gathered around Coach Carson, bombarding him with their concerns, queries about their child’s activities, requests to change cabins or counsellors, or to voice indignant complaints.
“My son had no pillowcase. Why didn’t the counsellor see that?”
The counsellor probably didn’t have one on his own pillow, I thought. I admired Carson’s tactful restraint. He listened quietly even when a parent angrily cornered him. “There was a disgusting four-letter word on the wall of my kid’s cabin. Is there no cleanup crew?”
Many parents also stopped by to tell Coach Carson and Wendy what a wonderful time their kid was having and what a great operation they were running. Perhaps it all evened out, complaints versus compliments.
“I love it when they’re at camp,” I overheard one mother say about her teenagers. “I don’t have to worry about them. I know they’re safe. My boys are telling me they don’t want to come back next summer, but I told them I’d pay them – as well as the camp fees – if they’ll just keep coming.”
“I wish my son would do school as well as he does camp,” a father said.
“Don’t worry,” Coach Carson said. “Camp is more important than school.”
It was time for lunch. A sumptuous buffet was laid out. There were salads, sushi, and multigrain wraps filled with grilled veggies or smoked salmon and goat cheese. For dessert there were pastries and strawberries dipped in chocolate.
But outside the dining hall, on the front lawn, missing out on this feast, were Hailey and her parents, engaged in a furious stand-off. There were two separate combat zones: Hailey versus her mother on one side, and Hailey versus her father on the other. I went over to introduce myself, but Hailey was in the midst of arguing with her father, whom, when she addressed him at all, she called by his name, Douglas. Her mother, Eileen, whispered to me, “Hailey and I used to be so close, but she completely changed in the past few months. The boyfriend turned her against me. She’s become cold and distant, like her father.”
Douglas turned to me. “I don’t know what she” – he pointed at Eileen – “has told you, but did Hailey tell you why we sent her to camp? I’m sure she didn’t mention it was punishment for a certain house party when the police were called. We’re still repairing the damage. Hailey is a liar. If I were you, I wouldn’t believe a word she says, or her mother, either.” He looked away in disgust. “This is a girl who has raised money for the starving children of Darfur and rescues abandoned cats, but treats her own parents like dirt.” He pointed his finger at Hailey. “You are not coming home. You will stay here until the end of the summer. Case closed.”
“Please stay, Hailey,” Eileen begged. “Be good.”
“Why don’t you two just get a divorce? Get it over with.” Hailey spat the words at them. “You hate each other, admit it.”
No one would ever win this argument. I left them to duke it out themselves.
Toward the end of the day, Alexa Rose and her brother T.C. returned to camp with their parents. I immediately recognized their mother and her shrill voice. She was talking in an agitated way to Wendy. I went over to see if I could help.
“Someone stole my daughter’s sunglasses!”
“We can’t take responsibility for valuables brought to camp,” Wendy countered.
“But they were stolen, here at camp. Alexa Rose told me the girls in her cabin have been touching her things. I’m expecting your insurance to reimburse us.”
“Have you looked in your sunglass case?” I asked Alexa Rose. “Your glasses were left out on the bed and I put them in there last week so they wouldn’t get broken or lost.”
Wendy flashed me a grateful look.
Alexa Rose’s mother and father were ready to take her home.
“Baby doll, shall we pack up your things?”
“I want to stay,” she said, surprising us all. It was as if all she needed was that small dose of her parents. She must have decided that camp wasn’t so bad after all.
Her mother put her arm around her daughter and hugged her close. “My girl – she’s a keeper, all right!” Next, she hugged me. “Thank you for taking care of my children! It’s so hard to say goodbye. I’m a Pisces and we have issues with separation.” She gave herself a few drops of Rescue Remedy.<
br />
If this Visitor’s Day goes on much longer, I’m going to need a swig of that Rescue Remedy myself.
Next, I went back to Hailey and her parents, who were now taking up their problem with Coach Carson.
“Hailey takes after her father,” Eileen was saying. “She doesn’t express her feelings, just keeps everything bottled up.”
“She’s been very expressive about her unhappiness at camp,” I said.
“For so many years she loved this camp, and now she’s completely changed. I hardly know her. What’s happened, Hailey?” She turned to her daughter and looked into her pale face and dark eyes.
“Eileen, face it,” Hailey spat out, “when are you going to come clean about the boyfriend? You’re nothing more than a whore. Douglas is an alcoholic.” She turned away from them.
“When you get back from camp, do you want to see the therapist again?” Eileen asked. “The nice one, the one you liked?”
Hailey pointed her chin at me. “Her. She’s the only one I’ll talk to. The nurse.”
Coach Carson told Douglas and Eileen about the prank Hailey had pulled stealing the medications. He warned them that another stunt like that would get her kicked out of camp.
“Why are dangerous medications being left lying around?” Douglas demanded to know. “That’s asking for trouble. Anyone could have taken them, not just Hailey. Why should we be held responsible for your negligence?”
Coach Carson was silent.
“Hailey, you’re staying,” her father said. He pointed his car key at her. “If you come home now, that would just be one more failure.” He jangled the keys. “I paid for this camp for the full session. Case closed. Carson, you keep her here.”
Coach Carson shrugged and offered his handshake as a pledge that he’d do just that.
“I hate you! I hate you both!” Hailey screamed and ran off, sobbing.
“She’s been given everything,” Eileen said to me quietly. “I stayed home, I didn’t work. She’s had trips, private school. I don’t understand.”
Later, Hailey came to find me. Her mascara and eyeliner were smudged and she looked so vulnerable, but she spoke more resolutely than ever.