Summer at Meadow Wood

by Amy Rebecca Tan

  No cell phones.

  No tablets.

  No laptops.

  No smartwatches.

  Nothing.

  Or almost nothing.

  We all knew Jordana had something hidden somewhere.

  She always tried, every year, to sneak a device in. We made a bet each summer, Carly and me, about how many days she’d last before getting busted. The winner got to claim two canteen items from the loser. Last summer I won. I got a grape soda and a Kit Kat Big Kat bar from Carly. But then I shared them both with her anyway.

  “All right,” Chieko said, sounding as bored as humanly possible. “Who wants to go first?”

  Chieko, I realized, was also chewing gum. Her dark black bangs cut across her forehead straight as an arrow, and one small section over her right eye was dyed an electric blue. She was thin and fair-skinned and looked like she would be stunningly beautiful if she smiled.

  But she didn’t smile.

  “I’ll go.” Jordana jumped at the chance to be first.

  Chieko leaned back and stretched her legs out in front of her into the middle of our small circle. The tip of a tattoo peeked out from under her sock on one ankle, but I couldn’t tell what it was.

  “We’re doing from the whole last year, right?” Jordana clarified, and then started without waiting for an answer. “My rose is that I got the lead in the middle school play this year, even though I was only a seventh grader. I was Annie, and it was the most amazing show ever!”

  “Drama. Fantastic,” Chieko said, her voice flat as roadkill.

  Carly laughed quietly while Jordana completely missed the dig.

  “The girl can seriously sing,” I told Chieko, because Jordana really was talented. Her mom was a singer. Her dad was a singer. Jordana was not even the tiniest bit modest about her talent.

  “And my thorn,” Jordana continued, “is that my farty older brother decided to be a counselor at Forest Lake this year, even though he promised me he wouldn’t. So now he’ll be at all of our socials.” Jordana glared at the space between me and Carly, as if her brother was sitting right there with us. “I want to kill him.”

  Forest Lake was our unofficial brother camp. It was a few miles down the road, or straight across the lake if you could travel the way a bird flies. Our senior camp had several socials with Forest Lake’s senior camp every summer.

  “It epically sucks,” Jordana said, all eyes wide and mouth open and hands gesturing for dramatic effect. “I will get no action at all this summer.”

  “Eww.” Carly grimaced. “Gross.”

  “It’s true. No one will go for a counselor’s little sister. It’s like an unwritten rule.” Jordana said this like she might as well pack up now and head back home. “Worst. Thorn. Ever.”

  “It’s definitely not the worst thorn ever,” Carly responded. “There are a lot of worse things than a brother at some socials.”

  “Yes, very true,” Jaida A piped up.

  Jaida A was Jaida Acevedo. We called her Jaida A because there was also a Jaida C: Jaida Cohen. I had never met a Jaida in my whole entire life and then—wham!—four years ago there were two of them right there, sharing a bunk bed, brushing their teeth in the same sink, and folding laundry with me every Sunday afternoon. Even the two Jaidas had never met another Jaida before that summer when we were all thrown together in Violet, the oldest bunk in junior camp. The Jaidas pretended they were twins even though they looked nothing alike—Jaida A had straight dark hair, dark eyes, and olive skin, and Jaida C had light brown curls, blue eyes, and fair skin that managed to turn a creamy tan every summer even though it looked like it should burn after just six seconds in the sun. The Jaidas became inseparable in half a heartbeat.

  “Take SeaWorld,” Jaida A began. “Another orca died there this year!”

  “What the butt is an orca?” Jordana asked, flipping her hair and rolling her eyes.

  “It’s a killer whale, right?” Carly asked.

  “It’s a kind of dolphin,” Jaida C answered, then added more quietly, “I think.”

  Chieko leaned in and folded her arms across her chest, watching us like she was watching TV. She almost looked amused.

  “Dolphin, yes.” Jaida A continued, “This poor orca was kidnapped from his family in the ocean—”

  “You mean orca-napped,” I said.

  Carly chuckled and high-fived me.

  “Orca-napped, yes. Stolen!” Jaida A insisted, her voice urgent. “And they locked him up in a tiny pool and forced him to do tricks every single day for a crowd of screaming people until he died, and that was his whole entire miserable life. That is way worse than your thorn.”

  Jordana huffed a strand of hair out of her face. “Maybe,” she allowed. “Okay, fine. Orca-napping and death is worse.”

  Jaida A was our resident activist. Last summer it was all about fracking. The year before that it was about saving the bees. It looked like this year might be SeaWorld. Or maybe animal rights in general. It was too early to tell.

  “So that’s your thorn then, Jaida?” Chieko asked, trying to move us along. She was looking at her giant watch again.

  “She’s Jaida A. You have to call her that,” Jordana said.

  “Got it,” Chieko said with an eye roll, “’cause it’s so confusing who I’m talking to right now.”

  “I knew who you were talking to,” Jaida C chimed in, “but she’s still Jaida A.”

  “She is always and forever Jaida A,” Jordana sang, wrapping her arms around Jaida A and giving her a big noisy smooch on her cheek.

  Jaida A smooched Jordana’s cheek back.

  “So, Jaida A,” Chieko said, “got a rose to throw on the pile?”

  “Not really. The world’s a mess.”

  “Think of one good thing that happened over the last year,” Carly encouraged her. “Just one.”

  You could practically see Jaida A scrolling through all the environmental sadness and despair she’d learned about over the last ten months. But then she stopped scrolling and said, “My middle school started an Animal Welfare Club, and we did a food drive for a dog shelter and a letter campaign to a dumb company that sells fur. That was kind of rosy.”

  “Absolutely rosy. Terrifically rosy. Thank you, Jaida A,” Chieko acknowledged. “Who’s next? And is anyone else starving?”

  “I am.” Jordana clutched her stomach dramatically and fell onto Jaida A’s lap.

  “Eat your gum,” Jaida A ordered.

  We all cracked up.

  “Why is that funny?” Chieko asked, looking at us like we were nuts.

  “It’s an inside joke,” Jaida C answered, still giggling.

  “Back in Violet,” Carly explained, “Jordana claimed her gum was like the gum from Willy Wonka and had a three-course meal in it.”

  “And that she could just chew her gum instead of eating meals in the dining hall, because her gum food was so much better,” Jaida A added. “For the entire summer, just gum!”

  “You didn’t even last one morning!” Jaida C reminded her. “You jumped that tray of grilled cheese at lunch like a starving zombie.”

  “I was nine!” Jordana defended herself.

  “You’re not helping yourself, Jordana.” I couldn’t stop laughing. “Nine is really old to believe in magic gum.”

  “I had a vivid imagination, okay?” Jordana claimed, smiling now, loving all the attention. “It’s a good thing. It helps with my acting.”

  “Then act like you’re not hungry right now,” Carly challenged her.

  Jordana put her hands to her throat and mimed chewing and swallowing. “There,” she said. “I just ate two pieces of gum. I’m stuffed.”

  “Are all campers at Meadow Wood like you guys?” Chieko asked.

  “Of course not,” Jordana answered immediately. “We are superior Meadow Wooders.”

  Chieko looked unsure. “Whose turn is it? We need to finish up.”

  “I’ll go,” Carly volunteered.

  Carly was my closest
friend at Meadow Wood. Carly was short and thin and had perfect teeth without ever wearing braces. Her skin was a lot darker than mine because she was biracial—her dad was black and her mom was white—but our eyes were practically the exact same shade of deep dark brown. Carly and I never saw each other during the school year because I lived in Pennsylvania and she lived in Connecticut, but we wrote letters to each other—actual snail-mail letters. And we tried to find the most horrible stationery in existence to write on. So far, I was the champion. My last letter was on stationery that had a unicorn roasting marshmallows on his horn over a campfire, but the marshmallows were dripping into the fire and the unicorn had a crazed expression on his face so it looked like he was actually cooking his horn. The caption across the top read Warm Greetings to You.

  It was awful.

  And hilarious.

  “My rose is that I had a steady job all year. I babysat for my neighbor Lola every weekend and made so much money I had to open a savings account.”

  “Ooh, Carly.” Jordana rubbed her fingers against her thumb in that money way. “Sharing is caring.”

  “You can donate to the Orca Project!” Jaida A shouted.

  “I didn’t bring the money,” Carly explained. “It’s all in the bank.”

  Jordana stuck her tongue out at Carly and let out a humph.

  “Except for what I spent on books,” Carly added shyly.

  Jordana turned to Chieko then. “In case you didn’t know, Carly is obsessed with books. She like likes them, the way you like a crush. If you ever can’t find Carly, it’s because she’s off somewhere, alone, making out with a book.”

  Carly didn’t argue, even though she definitely didn’t make out with books. She just read them, new ones and old favorites, constantly.

  “Books are my life,” Chieko declared, sharing something about herself for the first time. She twisted herself around then to reveal a red paperback sticking out of the back pocket of her shorts. It was pretty beat up, the corners rounded and splayed like a paper fan. “I always have one with me.”

  Carly did a seated bow at Chieko, as if she were paying respects to royalty. It made me think immediately of the charades game we had to play every summer for evening activity. I hated it. Jordana loved it.

  “I saw your cubby,” Jaida C said, addressing Chieko. “It looks like you brought more books than clothes.”

  “I did,” Chieko said.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Jordana said in total disbelief.

  “And if we could wrap up this delightful mandatory activity, I might get a chance to read one before the dinner bugle goes off,” Chieko added.

  Carly’s face became serious then and she quickly shared, “My thorn is that my grandmom died in January, and that was the worst thing that happened all year”—she glanced quickly at Jordana when she said it—“and probably the worst thing in my whole life so far.”

  “I’m sorry, Carly,” Jaida C was the first to say.

  “Me too,” Jaida A said next.

  I already knew about her grandmom, because of our letters, so I just pushed my knee against her knee lightly, and she pushed hers back.

  “It’s okay,” Carly said. “I’m okay.”

  Chieko turned toward me. “Victoria, it’s your go.”

  “Vic,” I corrected her.

  “My apologies. Vic,” she repeated.

  “My rose is easy. My rose is today, coming here, back to Meadow Wood.”

  “Woot-woot, Meadow Woot!” Jordana cheered, rocking her head up and down so her ponytail bounced.

  “And,” I continued quickly, “my thorn was bouncing around on a bus for seven hours inhaling the mind-numbing fumes of a dying amphibian.”

  Saying this out loud reminded me to check on Vera after dinner.

  “A dying amphibian?” Jaida A asked, her face softening with concern.

  “Fumes? Ewww.” Jordana grimaced.

  “That’s awful.” Carly took my hand.

  Chieko leaned forward and tipped an invisible hat to me. “Excellent sentence, Vic. By far the most entertaining thorn I’ve heard so far.” Then she stood and looked down at the five of us still on the floor. “Now, for the love of God, go finish unpacking your junk.”

  “I want a maid,” Jordana whined.

  “We are the maids,” Jaida C said, “for the next eight weeks of Meadow Wood, at least.”

  “Welcome to Meadow Work!” Jordana said.

  Chieko smiled at that, her eyes crinkling up under the shock of blue and black bangs covering her forehead.

  And she was really beautiful when she smiled.

  Day 1—Saturday Evening

  Here’s the thing, though: I lied about my thorn.

  My thorn wasn’t the frog smell on the bus, although it was no exaggeration to put it on my top-ten list of awful experiences. But my thorn, my honest and true thorn, was way worse.

  My thorn was that I wasn’t at Meadow Wood this summer because I loved camp so much and I had been looking forward to it all year and I couldn’t wait to see my friends again for a fun two months in the woods of New Hampshire.

  My thorn was that I was at Meadow Wood this summer because my mom dumped me here. I was at Meadow Wood because my mom wanted to get rid of me.

  I was thirteen, and even though I loved my summer friends, I didn’t want to go to camp anymore. I didn’t want to wake up at the crack of dawn every morning to the sound of a blaring bugle and shuffle from one activity to another all day long. I wanted to be home riding my bike every day to the pool. I wanted to be drinking blue slushies so fast the cold made my teeth hurt and my head tingle. I wanted to be watching videos of bad lip syncs and cute snoring baby animals until my butt fell asleep in the chair. I wanted to read magazines and watch old movies and redecorate my room. I wanted to find a babysitting job that would earn me enough money to need a bank account.

  And I wanted to be home for Jamie, my best friend, who had made the biggest mistake of her life and was a complete mess because of it. I wanted to be home for her, to help her and cheer her up, the way a best friend should.

  But my mom used Jamie against me. She said I had to go away for the summer because Jamie was a bad influence on me, which was truly the lamest excuse she could have come up with. My mom loved Jamie. My mom had spent the last six years praising Jamie and pushing me to be more like her. Jamie was a quiet, polite, artistic book nerd who spent every waking moment that she wasn’t with me with her own mom and aunt. Jamie always did her homework. Jamie never called out in class. Jamie was respectful and responsible.

  So my mom did not send me to camp to get me away from Jamie.

  She sent me to camp to get me away from her.

  And I knew why.

  I saw the email.

  I saw it by accident, when she left her computer suddenly, frantically, because the oven caught fire. One second she was typing at her desk and the next the fire alarm was shrieking loud enough to raise the dead. She ran to the kitchen to find billows of dark smoke swirling out of the oven like clouds of ugly lies.

  I read the email.

  It was all there, in black and white.

  That was why she wanted me gone.

  And my eight-year-old brother, Freddy, too, who she sent off to Forest Lake for his first time ever away from home.

  Once she opened all the windows and fanned the house clear and got the alarm to stop shrieking, she pulled the blackened cookies from the oven and tossed them into the sink, pan and all, with a clatter that was more jarring than the fire alarm. By the time she got back to her computer, I was tying my second sneaker, a sick heat flaring inside my body, prickling every inch of my skin from the inside out.

  “What are you doing?” she asked me, a little panic in her voice as she looked at what she’d left up on her screen. “What were you doing?”

  “Getting my shoes,” I said, quick and curt, my breathing short and shallow.

  Then I stood up and pushed the screen door open, stepped out, and le
t it bang closed behind me in that way I knew she hated.

  And then I just ran.

  So that means I lied about my rose, too. Coming back to camp wasn’t my rose.

  I didn’t have any rose at all.

  Day 2—Sunday

  The bugle blared at seven o’clock the next morning and I woke up unsure of where I was, but the wire springs jabbing my back through my mattress accompanied by Jordana’s monologue of curse words about how early it was reminded me pretty quickly.

  Every morning would start this way. The bugle, then resentment at hearing the bugle, then Jordana’s cursing, then an attempt to hunker deeper down beneath my soft, cozy comforter from home to drown out all those sounds. Next, Jaida C would pop up and encourage us all to get out of bed, stretching while she circled the room, giving each of us a gentle shake to help us wake up. Jaida C was the only one who didn’t seem to mind waking up early. She was also the first one to pass out every night, which might have had something to do with it.

  After bugle we had flag, where every camper stood on a bald piece of ground circling the pole while we raised four flags in a row—first the American flag, then the New Hampshire flag, then the Meadow Wood flag, then a homemade burlap flag with the words Nature Nurtures Life surrounded by leaves and flowers.

  Four flags.

  “The raising of the flags gets old by number three, don’t you think?” I muttered to Carly and Jordana, both standing beside me, both yawning.

  “We might as well put a flag up there for world peace while we’re at it,” Carly whispered back, rubbing sleep sand out of the corner of her eye.

  “Or a flag for the orcas?” Jaida A said, clearly missing the sarcasm.

  “We could make one at arts and crafts,” Jaida C said.

  A counselor from the next bunk shushed us, then turned her attention back to Brenda.

  Brenda, the camp director, was wearing her usual white collared shirt tucked into khaki shorts with an old-fashioned black walkie-talkie clipped to the waistband. Her husband, Earl, had the other walkie-talkie. Earl spent his days fixing plumbing, patching screens, mowing fields, and doing every other possible maintenance job that could come up at camp. Earl was quieter than Brenda, but we all knew him and we all wanted a turn driving the golf cart he used to get himself and his equipment wherever he needed to be.