The Lost Summer (15 page)

“I know,” I said quietly, wishing again I hadn't brought it up.

“Look, Hel.” His voice was gentle. He lifted my chin, which I still couldn't bring myself to raise so that I was looking him in the eyes. “We don't have to do it again if you don't want to. I wasn't trying to trick you into it or anything. I thought you wanted to.”

“I know,” I repeated, my concern dissipating in the sincerity in his voice. “I know you wouldn't do that. I don't know why I said anything. I was just thinking about it the other day. . . . I don't want you to think I'm the kind of girl who—”

He stopped me before I could say it. “I know you're not that kind of girl, Hel. That's one of the reasons I like you.” He made sure I was looking in his eyes as he said it, so that I could believe him.

“What are the other ones?”

“Do you want a list?”

“Yes.” I smiled. “But we only have an hour.”

Ransome laughed. “All right then, reason one . . .”

We didn't have sex again. We just kissed until I settled into the familiar crook between his shoulder and his chest. Before long, Ransome was breathing so steadily I didn't know if he was awake or asleep. I couldn't sleep, partly because I pictured us waking up in the morning with a circle of gaping little boys standing around us, but also because I had a nagging feeling like I was missing something. Like I'd forgotten a
thing
, left my keys or my wallet somewhere—but bigger.

All I'd wanted tonight, what I was asking for, was some understanding, someone to listen and nod and say, “I'm sorry,” and mean it. Someone not to try to fix things, or tell me to blow it off, or gloss over it; just someone to say, “I know what you mean.”

Lying there, I realized all I wanted was a girlfriend. Because for the first time in my life, surrounded by my Southpoint sisters, I couldn't find one. How had things gotten so complicated, I wondered, at the most uncomplicated place on earth?

I
t was Trip Day, and I'd been assigned to the creek walk with the littlest girls, who were too young for the sailing trip to the far end of the lake, and not yet interested in hiking one of the nearby mountains because Brownstone boys would be there. Instead we trudged through water that resembled chocolate milk in the creek that snaked through camp. It filled our shorts and weighed down our tennis shoes. The girls didn't know it, but the waste of farm animals in the area, including our own horses, filtered down into the creek every time it rained. Essentially, we were wading waist-high in horse shit. Considering my current frame of mind, that felt about right.

My fights with Katie Bell and Winn, and my frustration with Ransome's inability to make me feel better, had created a gloom like a cloud around me, totally unbefitting of camp. It descended in the mornings and didn't lift until sleep. An undeniable guilt had started to seep in as well. I hadn't meant to turn Winn on Katie Bell. And while I would stubbornly maintain that it wasn't my fault I was a counselor and Katie Bell wasn't, a sinking feeling told me she was at least partially right. I hadn't been a good friend the last couple of weeks. I had left Katie Bell behind.

Katie Bell was my best friend, and that's not the kind of thing that changes just because one of you still counts team games as the highlight of her day, and giggles at boys at the dance. These were things campers were supposed to enjoy—things I'd enjoyed just a year ago, until things became so complicated. Part of me envied Katie Bell. Why hadn't I begged Fred to be a camper one more year with her, instead of Katie Bell begging to be a counselor?

The result of my pushing ahead? Wading behind twelve eight-and nine-year-old girls who still got immeasurable pleasure out of splashing in a muddy creek, while all I could think about was whether the cow pee would turn my tennis shoes yellow.

After a scalding shower before the hiking trip got back and used all the hot water, I felt better, but only on the outside. I decided to kill the time before dinner by finishing my summer reading. At the start of camp I'd barely made a dent in our required reading for AP English, but in the few days since Winn and Katie Bell had stopped talking to me, I'd managed to finish two books and start a third. What had murdered my camp social life was working wonders for my academics.

By the time Soupy blew for dinner, I had just one chapter of
A Separate Peace
left. It was an easy read. I pitied and envied poor Phineas, whose name I loved and who'd done nothing wrong but love life and be a good friend. Sickeningly, though, I felt more like Gene, the narrator, a character too old and jaded for his age. He took his friendships for granted. I cried when Phinny died, and hated Gene. I wouldn't be Gene, I decided as I walked alone down the path to the Mess.

I urged my campers to eat their broccoli as I pushed my own around the plate, and let Pookie at the other end of the table decide who would stack and clear the plates. She initiated a stacking game called Viking, in which the campers had to pretend to row to one side and then the other, until someone messed up and was singled out for duty. I forced a smile as we played, but it wasn't real.

After dinner I lingered, wiping down my table extra slow, and even getting the broom out to sweep under and around it. When there was nothing more to clean, I wandered out of the Mess, careful not to let the screen door slam behind me. As I left I noticed the Spirit Award plaque nailed above the door. The green letters of Winn's name leaped out at me. I wondered who would get the award this year and hoped it would be Katie Bell.

Outside, girls were milling around and waiting for Evening Gathering. With nothing to do, I figured I'd check our cabin's mailbox again. I'd already checked at rest hour, but maybe I'd missed something.

In the cramped, dusty mailroom that was really an old pantry, I ran my hand inside the cubby labeled “Cabin Nine.” Nothing. No letter from my dad, who never wrote anyway, or from my friends at home, who'd forgotten how to handwrite and had been appalled that e-mail and cell phones were banned at camp. Not even a postcard from my mom, who had used my five-week absence as the perfect excuse for a life-enhancing-mind-rejuvenating-relaxation-reflexology-aromatherapy-hatha-vinyasa yoga retreat at some fancy spa in Arizona.

Disappointed, I drifted out of the mailroom empty-handed. Voices floated through the open door of the Oak Room next door. The Oak Room was a rec room on the first floor of the Mansion that was reserved only for cubbies. It was their one official privilege and their unofficial clubhouse. Every year, each cubby carved her initials into the wall, leaving a record of a generation's summer etched indelibly on the Mansion. The summer before, Katie Bell and I had signed next to each other—her initials in big bold bubble letters, and mine in straight neat block letters, followed by the words “Hels Bells.” I wondered if she'd sign again this year and, if so, who she'd sign next to.

The overhead lights were off, but a bluish glow lit the faces of the girls seated around the Oak Room's ancient television. It got no reception but still played VHS tapes. The girls were laughing and talking over one another, so they didn't notice when I slid into the back of the room and sat in a folding chair against the wall.

They were watching an old camp video. Judging from the ages of the girls I recognized on the screen, it was from six or seven summers ago. There were Pookie and Megan limping through the three-legged race at Field Day, and Lila spinning at Dizzy Bat before tumbling over like a sloppy drunk. There were young Molly and Amanda, their first year as campers, dressed up as Tweedledee and Tweedledum on Skit Night. As they watched themselves now, they nearly fell off the couch laughing.

And there was Winn, clapping along as she sang camp songs, and Caroline, not as the counselor I felt like she'd always been, but as a cubby. And Sally McDougal, my counselor my first year at Southpoint, and Sarah and Lizbeth and Marge and Jessie and Lassiter and Mary Price and Mary Katherine . . . so many faces and names. The memories flooded over me. They were too much to catch, like grabbing at water.

Then an image filled the screen that made me suck in a sharp breath. Katie Bell and I stood, dirt smeared across our faces and mouths dyed bright red from Kool-Aid, with our arms slung easily over each other's scrawny shoulders. We were the same height then; puberty was still years off. Our hair was in pigtails, tied with green-and-white ribbons, and we were yelling excitedly over each other, fighting for the camera's attention. Katie Bell had a gap where her front left tooth should have been. I remembered how she'd hated that gap, but loved poking her tongue through it.

“What do you call each other?” the voice behind the camcorder asked, some older counselor now long gone.

On the screen, young Katie Bell and I hollered in unison, “Hels Bells!”

“What was that?” The voice egged us on. “I can't hear you.”

Katie Bell and I scrunched our eyes closed and yelled again, louder this time, as the camera focused in close on our cherry red mouths. “Hels Bells!”

The camerawoman laughed, and in the back of the Oak Room, I sobbed. The tears fell hot and fast, streaking my flushed cheeks. I buried my face in my hands to try to muffle the sound, but the girls sitting on the couches in front of me heard anyway and turned, startled to find me in the back of the room. My shoulders heaved up and down, but I couldn't stop.

“Helena?” one of the girls asked.

I looked up, wiping at my cheeks. I was ashamed to have trespassed on their privacy, ashamed to be crying, ashamed to be a counselor while they were still campers.

“Are you okay?” Amanda asked, alarmed.

I nodded, trying to stop my runny nose with the back of my hand. “Yeah. Sorry.”

I raised pleading eyes to meet Katie Bell's. She was looking at me, perplexed but unmoved.

“Can we talk?” My voice struggled from my choked throat.

Without a word, Katie Bell stood up from the couch and started to walk out of the room. I watched, terrified that she was leaving for good; there would be no mending of friendships here. But when she reached the door, Katie Bell turned to look back, and I understood that she was saying yes.

Leaving the other girls to exchange worried glances, I followed Katie Bell out of the Oak Room.

“Softball diamond?” she asked.

I nodded. On the Yard, campers and counselors were hanging out under the oak trees. I didn't want to make a scene. Turning my tear-stained face from them, I walked silently beside Katie Bell past the Mansion, over the footbridge that crossed the creek I'd waded in that afternoon, past the cabins, and up toward the softball diamond.

From its location on top of a small hill that sloped gently down to the lake, the softball diamond offered a glimpse of the water. When we sat on the bleachers, Katie Bell and I both stared out at the sparkle of the low sun on the glassy surface.

At first neither of us said a word as I tried to stop crying, swallowing down the great hiccups of tears that kept coming. When they finally subsided, I turned toward Katie Bell. Still, I couldn't look her in the eyes, so I stared down at the grainy red dirt of the softball diamond. This was where Katie Bell and I used to search for Indian arrowheads before it had become our place to talk.

“I'm sorry.” The weight of the small words surprised me as they tumbled into my lap.

Katie Bell's feet crossed and uncrossed. “I know,” she said.

I waited for more, but when she fell quiet again, I continued. “Everything's different.” I struggled to find words. “Camp's different. It's not camp anymore. It's like...therealworld, just like theres to four lives.” I stopped, unhappy with how poorly I was expressing myself.

Katie Bell drew in a long breath but still didn't speak.

“I never thought it would be like this,” I said. “Not here. There aren't supposed to be cliques and rumors and guy drama at Southpoint.”

“Maybe not for the kids . . .” Katie Bell faded off.

But I wasn't a kid anymore, she implied. I'd crossed the line and was now looking back from the other side, wondering how I'd gotten here. But how was I supposed to know it would be like this? Like one day you're a kid, and the next you're . . . not? I thought growing up was a process, something you did over years, not a summer.

There was a sickening dread ballooning inside of me. “Oh God, Katie Bell,” I said. I felt like I might cry again.

Finally I looked into her gray eyes. Katie Bell's face was thinner than I remembered. She'd lost some weight at camp. Instead of her usual ponytail, her red hair fell down around her shoulders, and even though the sun had brought out her freckles, especially across her nose, they didn't have the usual effect of making her look younger. They were pretty—that quirky beauty you see in models and foreign actresses.

I searched there for an answer, praying Katie Bell had a rope to tow me back. Her face softened.

“I mean, you're only seventeen, Hel!” She laughed lightly, and her eyes widened. “It's not like life's over . . . but you
are
seventeen.”

I nodded. In a year I'd be going away to college. There would be freedom, independence, new relationships, bigger adventures. That's what they told you. And that's what I wanted, right? That's what I had been looking forward to for so long. So why did it feel like I was losing something in the bargain?

“I'll be seventeen in a few months too, ya know,” Katie Bell reminded me.

“I know,” I replied softly. “I think maybe that's what's been bothering me. You get this last summer and I don't. I guess I'm a little jealous. You get to do whatever you want for activities, and I have to stay at the swim dock with bitchy Winn and Sarah. And you get to do things like the scavenger hunt and tubing and stuff . . .” I faded off.

It wasn't really about the things Katie Bell still got to do as a camper; it was how she felt doing it. That's what I missed. I wanted
that
back.

“Yeah.” Katie Bell gave a reluctant one-shouldered shrug and nodded. “It's fun. But it can't be like that forever, Hel,” she said gently.

“I know.” I picked at the dirt under my fingernails. “Sometimes I just wish we could go back.”

I lifted my head, and both of us stared out at the slice of lake visible over the pine trees. Something glinted on the water, a boat making its way back to Brownstone. Its shiny fiberglass caught the sunlight and reflected it over all that distance to us.

“Me too,” said Katie Bell unexpectedly, after I thought the conversation had been dropped. “Sometimes I wish we could go back too.”

That was the last either of us spoke, although we stayed at the softball diamond until the chill in the air gave us goose bumps, and we were forced to go to our cabins for sweatshirts before Evening Gathering. But while nothing was spoken, everything was said. For the first time that summer, Katie Bell and I stood on the same side of the line, which was on neither side. We didn't know where we belonged. Everything felt like we were giving up something we weren't ready to let go of just yet.