The Names They Gave Us(14)
“Sure.”
“Great. And here we are!”
“Here” is Cabin 3A, squat and standard with a screechy screen door. Inside already smells like the camp bunks that I help my parents clean before each new church arrives—damp towels, sunscreen, and bug spray. It looks, comfortingly, like elementary school: blue and green tie-dyed pillows, cartoon character T-shirts balled up on the shelves, glassy-eyed stuffed animals poised in waiting for their owners to return. It’s hard to be intimidated by little girls who tuck into pink-speckled sheets, cradling plush dogs as the lights go out.
Nine bunks for campers, three for counselors. I try to imagine falling asleep in a room full of people, their tossing and turning or fitful sighs. I’ve never shared a room. At Holyoke, the church counselors who accompany the kids stay in the cabins with them, and I stay in the cabin with my parents, a tiny home away from home.
“You’ll be right here. One of your co-counselors, Simmons, is on the top bunk.” Rhea wheels my suitcase to a stop and taps the lower bunk to the immediate right of the door—the only one with a bare, waiting mattress. “Anything I can do for you now? Anna will stop by to give you a tour in about an hour, and she can also help you with any questions you come up with.”
“That sounds good.”
“Oh, and I put a waiver in the binder pocket. Your mom signed, but it’s something we have all campers and counselors cosign. If you want to read over the materials and get that back to me this evening or tomorrow, I’d appreciate it.”
“No problem.” Fortunately, my mouth seems to be working. But I can’t wrangle the other parts of me—my tear ducts, my nervous stomach, my racing mind. Faced with the details of my new life, they’ve gone wobbly on me.
“Welcome to the fray, Lucy,” Rhea says. Her lips form a crescent moon, the slightest of smiles. “It’s not an easy summer job—and some days, it’s tremendously hard. The pay is next to nothing. But I wouldn’t trade it. I hope it’s the same for you.”
“I hope so too.” I make my voice peppy, so she’ll leave.
Instead, she shakes her head—barely more than a twitch. Not in disapproval but in . . . marvel, I think. “My. You really do look just like your mother. It’s arresting.”
“Oh. Yeah.” I push back a few curls. “Thank you.”
When the sound of her hiking boots fades away, I examine my space. The top bunk is already someone’s home, and I don’t just mean the bed is taken. I mean someone fully lives there.
The bed is covered by rosebud sheets, a thin quilt, and a purple silk pillowcase. Pictures sprawl across the wall space behind the pillow like a headboard. The centerpiece picture was clearly drawn by one of her campers. It’s a single name— Keely—drawn in purple pencil, with flower vines growing up each letter. The rest of the pictures form a collage: A span of stars with the words “Not All Who Wander Are Lost.” Ripped-out magazine pages of tall redwoods, an Airstream trailer glinting like a silver bullet.
There are a few photographs, one of a little girl with plastic barrettes in her black hair. Another with two guys and two girls crammed together on a retro couch. I’m not sure which person my bunkmate is: the blonde with her mouth open in laughter or the dark-eyed girl with a lips-pressed smile, so content that she looks like she might close her eyes. The four of them sprawl and overlap like puppies. Like a pack, raised together from birth.
Whoever she is—Keely Simmons—she belongs here.
That’s how my tiny room at our Holyoke cabin is. There’s a picture of the three of us, art projects I’ve made at camp, a driftwood cross on the wall, a framed photo of Lukas and me on my bedside table. Here, I have one duffel bag, one suitcase, and one massive binder.
But I know cabins like these. I know the ebb and flow of camp life, these same trees and this swishing water, and I’m still Lucy Hansson. Even if this isn’t my camp, and I’m a sort-of-single girl whose mother is possibly dying on the other side of the lake. It’s like a dream where all the details are present but rearranged—it’s your classroom, but the Target cashier is your teacher. It’s your bedroom, but monsters from that movie you watched are attacking, smacking against your windows.
I unpack, convinced I can wrestle the details back into order. My hands stretch the fitted sheet around my new mattress, smooth the flat sheet and duvet down, cram the pillow into its case. I stack T-shirts and shorts on my designated shelf, organize my makeup and shower products in the soft-sided basket I brought. I leave my Bible out on the bed next to my oldest Holyoke T-shirt—too small now, forest green with cracked white letters.
When I survey my completed bunk, it looks transient and spare. Heck, half these girls have their possessions strewn around like it’s their own bedroom at home. Only one other bunk is neatly organized, bed made and a little pink suitcase still on the shelf.
It’s all so daunting that I almost reach for my inhaler. I have mental pictures of all the worst times I’ve hyperventilated from stress: In middle school gym, where the teacher thought running laps was useful physical education. Before my seventh-grade piano recital, convinced everyone would somehow know I was wearing a tampon for the first time when I walked up to the piano bench. In the science-hallway bathroom, failing to control my breath on the first day of freshman year and public school. I am sincerely uninterested in adding to that little photo album.