What It Was Like

by Peter Seth

  One of the counselors stopped short. Did they hear us? Were we caught?

  Rachel inhaled, making a tiny frightened noise. I winced, wondering if they heard her. Of course, there were crickets and all kinds of forest sounds all around us, but we had made human sounds. A moment passed when I heard nothing but my heartbeat, Rachel’s breathing, and the crickets.

  “What’sa matter?” said one of the counselors.

  The other guy paused for a long, aching moment, and said, “Nothing . . . I farted.”

  Rachel and I held each other tight, trying not to laugh. The other counselor – I recognized them by now: Jeff and Warren, the guys from Bunk 15 – swatted the farter on the arm, and they walked on, laughing and crunching through the wet night grass and out of Inter Circle.

  We breathed again, but it was a close enough call for us to start getting ourselves together.

  “We better go,” I whispered, and she nodded in agreement.

  “It’s cold,” she said.

  “Sssh!” I said, pulling on my shirt as I helped her. “More guys’ll be coming back soon.”

  “I know,” she said. “Jerry is kind of insane about making curfew.”

  “Great!” I said to myself. I stood on one leg, putting on my shoe, and Rachel, unable to resist a mischievous urge, gave me a little push, and I fell over, right into the bush.

  A ripple of her musical laugh just came out of her. I’m sure I was funny, falling over, but it wouldn’t have been funny if somebody had heard us.

  “Are you completely crazy?” I whispered harshly, as I pulled myself up and out of the branches.

  She giggled, “Only when absolutely required,” helping me get my balance.

  And she kissed me again before I could say anything else. And since kisses are better than words, I forgot what I was going to say. When we came up for air, I pulled the hood of her sweatshirt back up over her head and tucked in her soft, long hair.

  “You are insane,” I said. “To come here to see me.” She looked so pretty and proud of her dangerous mission.

  “No, I’m not,” she said. “Wasn’t this fun? Sometimes the right thing to do is just right there in front of you.”

  “I absolutely agree,” I said, and I drew her back to me for one more, strong kiss. She was cold, and we were both shaking, but it didn’t matter.

  “Be careful going back,” I said.

  We held on for one last moment, and then I let her go.

  “Don’t let anyone see you.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said, blowing me a sweet, soft kiss. “I’ll fly back!”

  Then she turned and disappeared into the woods toward Girls’ Campus, down a path through the trees that I didn’t know existed. I guess that, from coming to Mooncliff for so many years, she knew some short cuts. I watched her until she disappeared into the forest, knowing/hoping that she’d make it back to her bunk safely.

  I picked up the blanket, shook it out, and folded it up as best I could as I walked back to my bench. Remarkably, there wasn’t a sound coming from any of the bunks. Not one kid cried out, no one made a fuss, the whole time that Rachel was there. No other counselors were walking by; there was still a little time until curfew. It was as quiet and peaceful as night should be. I sat down on the bench, leaned back against the trunk of the tree, and ate the rest of the Doritos. How, I wondered, did I suddenly get to be the luckiest guy on the planet?

  Record of Events #6 - entered Friday, 6:17 A.M.

  ≁

  We weren’t caught that night. We got away with it cleanly, just as Rachel said we would. At Line-Up the next morning, Rachel stood behind her girls across the big circle, cheerful and happy. She only looked at me once, but her Mona Lisa smile said, Didn’t I tell you we’d get away with it?

  After breakfast, she was waiting for me, sitting on the low wall in the corner of the front porch.

  “Nice morning,” she said to me as I approached her.

  “Nice night,” I said back to her.

  We couldn’t really talk because she had a couple of her girls around her, and I had two Doggies in tow. But our eyes connected.

  “What do you have this morning?” I asked her.

  Her eyes, even bluer in the morning light, never left mine. “I have no idea,” she said. She seemed really happy to see me, her co-conspirator.

  “Riflery!” her girls brayed. Which made us laugh.

  “Who are these kids?” I asked Rachel, trying to find The Zone through the chaos of our campers pulling at us.

  “We’re the campers you love!” said the Smart Doggy who was pulling on my arm along with the Doggy With Braces.

  I shook them off with a laugh, “I’d love it if you’d clean up the bunk for a change! Instead of Doggies, we should call you ‘Piggies’ instead!”

  Rachel’s girls laughed at that and started making pig noises at the boys who retaliated with noises of their own.

  “Let’s go, campers!” Harriet shouted from the front steps. “And Inter counselors!” – she looked right at us –”Everybody back to the bunks for cllllllean-up!”

  I don’t know why Harriet seemed to single us out. We weren’t the only people hanging out after breakfast; there were lots of counselors getting in one last smoke or one last joke. Who really wanted to go back to the bunk and watch a bunch of kids clean toilets badly? But we waved our goodbyes as our campers dragged us back to our respective bunks.

  But before we went our separate ways, one of her campers, the pudgy one with frizzy hair from the rowboat, shouted to me, “She’s still in love with Eric! . . . She gets letters from Eric!”

  I turned to see Rachel swatting at the little girl who darted laughingly away, just out of her grasp.

  “You little snoop!” screamed Rachel, chasing her, and not in fun.

  I watched as Rachel caught up to the little girl, twisting her T-shirt in her grasp and holding her tight. She marched the little girl away, obviously giving her a good talking-to. Rachel didn’t take any lip from her kids. Good for her.

  But that name couldn’t stop reverberating in my mind: “Eric.”

  ≁

  I got Sid from Marcus’s bunk to cover for me at Swim Instruction, and I surprised her at the rifle range, which was on the far, far side of the baseball fields.

  “You sweet thing!” she cried when she turned around after I had snuck up on her and put my hands over her eyes. She had been standing with her back to me, watching with her girls as Gil, the riflery counselor, loaded a BB gun.

  All the girls turned and looked at us.

  “You girls watch Gil!” Rachel ordered. “Now!” Instantly, all their heads swiveled back to face the BB gun demonstration.

  Delighted by the automatic obedience she commanded, I took Rachel by the hand and led her away from the rifle range toward a flat boulder nearby.

  “I can’t believe you came to see me!” she said.

  “It seemed like the right thing to do,” I said. “Right?”

  I checked to make sure that all her girls were watching Gil before I pulled Rachel into a deep, warm kiss.

  I released her and whispered, “That’s for last night.”

  She smiled dreamily and kissed me back, even more deeply.

  “And that’s for right now,” she said.

  I tried to pull her into even another kiss, but she turned away.

  “We should stop,” she said.

  “We should never stop!”

  But she laughed, pushing me away with both hands, and I let her. It really wasn’t the right place, or the right time. She giggled that musical little laugh as I took her by the hand and sat her down on the flat boulder in the sun. I sat next to her, very close.

  We didn’t say anything for a while. We just sat in the sun, feeling its warmth like that great Beach Boys song, our shoulders touching.
And it was OK, being silent together. It was surprisingly . . . comfortable.

  I whispered to her, “I can’t believe they let these little girls shoot guns.”

  “They’re only BB guns,” she said. “And it’s really fun. And it teaches them gun safety. I’ve been doing it my whole life here, every summer.”

  She jumped up from the boulder and demonstrated. “‘Load, cock, aim, fire. Load, cock, aim, fire.’ I’m actually a great shot. I have medals.”

  “So let me get this straight,” I said. “You’re strong, and you can shoot a gun?”

  “You don’t think I can shoot?” she said, her voice rising once challenged.

  “I bet you’re Annie Oakley,” I said with a smirk that I just couldn’t keep off my face; she was so damn cute.

  “Better. My father has a couple of guns,” she said. “He says it makes him feel safer, in our neighborhood. Besides, he says a girl like me has to learn to take care of herself.”

  “Oh, I have no doubt that you can take care of yourself,” I cracked, which made her smile and poke my arm. “My parents are not what you’d call ‘gun people,’” I said, thinking of my father with a gun. “They’re more like . . . Formica people. Linoleum people.”

  Which made her giggle out loud, earning us a disapproving cough from Gil.

  “Can we have a little quiet back there?” he twanged. “We are dealing with a dangerous firearm here!”

  The Inter girls all turned as one and looked at us with dark accusatory looks.

  “Sorry,” I said. “We’ll shut up.”

  I got up from the boulder, took her hand, and walked her a little ways away from the rifle range.

  “C’mon,” I whispered.

  “Y’know, I got a big fat earful from big fat Harriet this morning,” she said. “About spending too much time with you on the Mess Hall porch after meals. The old bag. She’s just jealous. She only wishes a man would look at her without gagging!”

  “What did she say?” I asked.

  “Oh, just the regular control thing,” she said with a dismissive twist of her mouth. “‘You must consider your priorities more caaarefully, Rachel.’ She’s always hated me, hatchet-faced old –”

  I had to smile, so fierce was her condemnation of Harriet and so dead-on was her imitation.

  “What?” she said. “You don’t think people want to control you? Everyone wants to control someone! My parents want to control me.”

  “But no one controls you,” I teased her.

  “Not unless I want them to,” she flirted back, but I could tell that she really didn’t like the idea of anyone controlling her.

  It was as good a time as any to ask the question that had been eating away at my brain.

  “So,” I said. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “You can ask me anything you want,” she said, looking straight into my eyes without a hint of fear.

  “Who is Eric?”

  I think the name made her flinch just a little, but she kept her eyes locked on mine.

  I waited until she spoke. I wasn’t going to let her off the hook.

  “Eric?” she said with a slight stammer. “Where did you get that? Eric is . . . nobody.”

  I didn’t say anything else. I let her talk.

  “That’s just something from home,” she said haltingly. “Oh, I know what it is! I have this big reputation around here as a tease and everything, but that isn’t me anymore. Don’t listen to anybody; I’m really not the same person I used to be.”

  She paused and her eyes narrowed as she thought of something that troubled her.

  “I’ve learned a lot of things lately,” she reflected. Then she took my hand in her two hands.

  “And,” she said, pausing for just a second. “I’ve been developing certain plans. Things that I’ve been thinking about seriously, for a long, long time. You want to know them?”

  “Go on,” I said.

  “OK,” she said in a lower voice, choosing her words carefully. “What I feel is . . . that . . . you don’t have to live the way that other people live; you can make different choices. We can live different lives.”

  “I know we can,” I smiled back.

  “No!” she said sharply. “I’m serious.”

  I saw that she was and said, “Keep going.”

  She got quiet for a long moment, and I saw that she was telling me something that obviously meant a lot to her.

  “So you know I’m going to be a senior this year at Oakhurst High.”

  This, I did know. The little town of Oakhurst was about a twenty-minute drive from my house, but a world away, income-level-wise.

  “And this is the year I’m supposed to be applying to colleges and all that,” she said.

  “I know,” I said, coaxing her to continue. “So?”

  “Well,” she said, her eyes fixing on me. “What if I didn’t do all that? What if I didn’t go to college like everyone else? My grandmother left me some money that I inherit when I turn eighteen, which will be next January.”

  “Well, happy birthday to you,” I said, impressed.

  “No, listen to me!” she said fiercely. “I’ve decided. I’m going to take that money and move into the City and get an apartment and just live for awhile. I am finished with school, at least for now. And I am finished with unhappy, hostile people telling me what to do. Why should I listen to my parents? They’re miserable! I don’t want to be like them. And so if I refuse to be put into a mold –”

  “I won’t put you into a mold,” I said, but she went on, ignoring me.

  “Some people say I’m selfish and naïve and everything, but I don’t care what people say. I’m going to get this money and do what I want to do with my life. At least for now, while I can. And now with you going to Columbia” – she pointed at me, her two index fingers aimed directly at my heart – “it’s like it was planned. I so didn’t want to come here again this summer, but now I see it was for a reason. It’s like Fate brought you here, to the Moon-shak, so that we would meet. And now I’ll have you in the City, waiting for me, when I make my move. It’s like it was meant to be!”

  She smiled, hopeful and a little uncertain, wanting me to respond.

  “Well?” she asked me. “What do you think?”

  I admit it: I was a bit dazzled. I had been flash-daydreaming about her virtually from the moment we met, fantasizing about how I could make this girl mine – and there she was, two steps ahead of me, making plans for us to be together in the fall and beyond!

  “Wow,” I said. “When did you think all this up?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “It all just came together. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, about doing something with my grandma money –”

  “Your ‘grandma money’?” I repeated with some amusement: I mean it did sound funny.

  “But meeting you” – she leaned forward, ignoring my wisecrack, and poked my thigh, right above my knee – “crystallized everything. It’s like a sign that I’m doing something right.”

  “But –” said the Realist/Puppet in me. “Don’t you want to go to college?”

  “No!” she shot back. “Not right now! I’m sick of school, aren’t you? Oh, I used to get all As, but then after a while, I decided what’s the point? I used to sit in the front row and flash my teachers a big, big smile and get all As. So then one day I stopped smiling and started sitting in the back row and all the As magically disappeared. It’s all just a big game, and I stopped caring about it a long time ago.”

  “I’m sorry . . . I never really thought about it that way,” I said, realizing that I sounded a little foolish. “College was always such an . . . an inevitability,” I continued. “It’s all that anyone ever expected of me. And it beats going to ‘Nam. I mean I need the student deferment, or I’m gonna be face-down in some rice
paddy somewhere.”

  “OK,” she conceded. “You’re right about that. At least I don’t have to think about going into the army.”

  “Maybe you could join the WACs,” I joked. “You look great in green.” But that was the wrong thing to say.

  She grabbed my wrist tightly and said, “No, I’m really serious about this. I want something different out of life.”

  I could see that she was more than serious. The intensity in her eyes stood me still. This was no idle thought with her: this was a long-contemplated, life-or-death escape plan.

  “Do your parents know about this?” I asked.

  “My parents have totally screwed up their lives,” she said. “Why should I take their advice? . . . I’m not saying anything new; I’m just going to be the one to do something about it.”

  “OK,” I said, nodding, trying to show that I understood her. “I hear you.”

  “But do you believe me?” she asked, her blue-blue eyes burning into mine, asking me for the truth.

  “I believe you.”

  I hustled down to the Boys’ waterfront, my head spinning with thoughts of Rachel. I’m such a “good boy,” with hardly a rebellious bone in my body, and here was this girl who seemed to have everything (looks, brains, money, confidence), everything the typical suburban princess possessed, and yet she wanted something different out of life, something more. Rachel was becoming more and more interesting by the moment.

  ≁

  By the time I got down to the Boys’ waterfront, I had missed the big hoopla of the Redheaded Doggy passing his swim test to get into Area #3, the deepwater area. He was the last Doggy to pass into Area #3, which removed from his head the social stigma of having to buddy up with a lowly Junior during General Swims. I was sorry I missed his triumph, but made it up to him and the rest of the Doggies that night. I gave them a pizza from the Snack Shak after “Taps” and the long-postponed recitation of The Raven in my best fake-Boris-Karloff accent, postponed “nevermore.”