The Lost Summer (8 page)

“I'll be right back,” Winn grumbled. She took off running—something we were never supposed to do on the docks—toward the cabins. I could hear her footfalls retreat down the path.

Sarah and I turned to the guys, who were watching us, greatly amused.

“Y'all come here often?” joked Buzz.

Sarah sneered. “Nice, Buzz.”

“We got you good, though, right?” said Nate.

“Oh, it's
on
,” replied Sarah, looking to me for backup.

“I hope you know what you've gotten yourself into.” I leveled my most menacing stare at Ransome.

He returned it with a lopsided smile. “I think so,” he said, not breaking my gaze. I wasn't sure he was talking about the prank war anymore.

It felt like an eternity before Winn returned, but the guys didn't leave until we were safely out of the water and wrapped in our towels.

“Ranny will bring your clothes back tomorrow,” Buzz assured, still beaming proudly as we quicky stole off the dock and up the path to our cabins.

“We'll be looking forward to it,” Winn shot sarcastically over her shoulder.

The boys laughed, and we disappeared into the darkness of the trees, thoroughly beaten but newly determined. The other counselors would hear about this. It was time to mobilize.

“Katie Bell,” I whispered. “Katie Bell.”

I was panting from the run up to the cabins and afraid the sound of my breathing might wake the whole cabin. I had even left my shoes at the door to avoid creaking on the old wooden floor.

“Katie Bell.” I shook her gently. Like me, Katie Bell was a champion sleeper.

I shook her harder. “Katie Bell,” I whispered more impatiently this time.

“Huh?” She stirred. “What?” She raised her disheveled head and looked at me with heavy-lidded eyes that popped open in alarm as she came to.

“Shhh.” I laughed. “It's me. It's Hel. Come on, I have to tell you about tonight.”

Katie Bell's brain finally focused. Nodding, she pushed her covers aside and yawned. Her ponytail was matted against her head, half of it pushed up and looking like a bad hairpiece, and the other half falling out of its rubber band. I gestured with my head at the door, and Katie Bell grabbed her bathrobe off a nail and followed me out to “our spot” at the softball diamond behind the cabins. It was our unspoken rule that if one of us couldn't sleep, she would wake the other up to come talk on the bleachers. It was usually me who did the waking. Katie Bell and I had spent several nights out there the summer my parents split, and the following summer when Katie Bell first got her period.

She padded quietly behind me now through the rows of dark cabins. We didn't speak until we were both seated on the metal bleachers. They were so cold they felt wet. I was glad I had stopped quickly at my cabin to trade Winn's towel for flannel pajama pants and a long-sleeve T-shirt before retrieving Katie Bell.

“Sooo,” she said when we were surrounded by nothing but field and pine trees. Her hands were sandwiched between her knees for warmth. She was awake, and all ears. “What happened?”

“It was awesome . . . we went skinny-dipping . . . I saw Ransome naked, Katie Bell . . . and they took our clothes!” It all came rushing out in one breath. My body was buzzing with excitement, from my feet to my fingertips—one long twisted rope of kinetic energy.

“Skinny-dipping?”

I nodded, my eyes mirroring hers and growing wide.

“Like, naked?” she asked.

“Yeah.” I laughed. “What other way do you do it?”

“I don't know . . . It's just that . . .
You
? Skinny-dipping?”

Katie Bell knew I wasn't exactly an exhibitionist. She might have grown up running around naked and wild in the country, but in my house, they were called “private parts” for a reason. Last summer was the first I would even take my bathing suit off in the showers. Still, her tone bugged me.

“Yeah,” I said again. “Me. Skinny-dipping . . . with Ransome. Did you hear that part?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Just Ransome?”

“No,” I said, wishing she would just understand. “Remember how I told you about last time at the riflery range? Ransome said he was going to take me skinny-dipping for the first time—or said we were all gonna go before camp was over—whatever. You remember?” Katie Bell nodded. “Well, we did it!” I laughed again. “Me, Winn, Sarah, Buzz, Nate, and Ransome.”

“And you saw him naked?” Katie Bell asked, crossing her arms against the chilly mountain air.

“Yes! Well, actually I just saw his butt.”

“Did he see
you
naked?”

“No! I made him turn around in the water while I got in . . . but then—oh my God, Katie Bell, it was so embarrassing—some of the other Brownies snuck out to the dock and stole our clothes!”

Katie Bell was confused. “All of your clothes? The guys' too?”

“No, just Winn's and mine and Sarah's. Winn had to run up to the cabins in Ransome's shirt to grab us towels.”

As I said it, I couldn't believe it had all actually happened.

“That's crazy,” Katie Bell agreed, with a small chuckle.

“I know. I guess the prank war's on. But the campers can't know about this one,” I added quickly. “Just the counselors—and you, of course.”

“Of course.” Katie Bell nodded. There was a moment of silence. It was awkward, but I couldn't put my finger on why.

I almost didn't say it, but then I had to. “Katie Bell, I think . . .” I hesitated. “I think Ransome was flirting with me tonight.”

“Really?” Katie Bell asked. One of her eyebrows went north. She was finally getting as excited as I thought she would have been when we started this conversation.

I crinkled my nose and shrugged. “Yeah. At least, I think so. . . .”

There was something about Ransome that was very self-contained. I could tell he wasn't one of those guys like Buzz, who prodded and teased to get your attention, like the little boy pulling pigtails on the playground. He hadn't taken the small opportunities that I know had been there to touch my arm or my leg or to whisper in my ear. Still, I'd felt something between us tonight, the same electric current I'd felt the first night at the riflery range. I wondered if anyone else had noticed, if it was obvious . . . or if it was nothing more than a crush's deluded imagination.

“Hel, that's awesome,” said Katie Bell. In the moonlight her pale face was almost luminous. “You're totally gonna hook up with him.”

“It's just so crazy,” I said, replaying the night in my head, unable to let it go. As if I stopped thinking or talking about it, the moment would cease to exist. “All these things go on that we never knew about, you know? It's like camp—grown up.”

Katie Bell nodded in agreement but seemed distracted, looking over my shoulder at the dark shapes of the cabins hunkered to the ground under the weight of the night sky.

It was late. I groaned. “I'm gonna be so freaking tired tomorrow.”

“Yeah, I'm freezing. I gotta go back to bed, Helena.”

“Okay,” I sighed, hopping off the bleachers.

We parted at the door to Katie Bell's cabin. “Good night,” I called in a whisper.

Hunched against the cold, she paused in the doorway as if she was going to say something. But she just said “'Night” and disappeared into the shadows.

As I walked between the cabins, I sighed and tipped back my head to search the sky. The stars had disappeared behind a gauzy cover of clouds. It was strange being the only person outside the cabins at night—scary and exhilarating, completely exposed and totally free.

T
he sweet tang of rotting hay tickles my nose, threatening to make me sneeze. Soft exhalations and the stamping of hooves come from the stalls. Saddles and halters, reins and leads, so many leather straps, burnished black-brown.

Shovels are propped against the wall, not where they're supposed to be—the stable girls knew that but didn't care when they ran off for free time. They also missed a trail of manure, brown turned black and hard, covered by drunk flies. The smell is pungent but not exactly unpleasant. This is a barn, after all.

In her stall, a horse whinnies and paces from wall to wall, impatient for a rider. One will come soon enough, and then she'll shake her head against the reins, wanting to canter when she trots, and trot when she canters. But now, as she whinnies, motes of dust dance in shafts of sunlight that pierce through the old boards, and the sun begins to set.

F
ive girls hovered around one trunk in the middle of Winn's cabin as Winn and I watched the feeding frenzy from her bed. The owner of the trunk, a camper named Hannah, was apparently the only one who had come prepared for a dance. It was therefore her duty to outfit her entire cabin. That's just what sisters did.

“I don't know why I didn't pack any cute clothes,” a fry named Thea lamented as she picked a striped tube top from Hannah's trunk and went to stand, pouting, before the cabin's one mirror, which had been tilted to offer a full body shot. “Will horizontal stripes make me look fat?”

Thea resembled a beanpole and couldn't have looked fat if she wore a tube top made of puffer vests.

Another girl, Jordan, rolled her eyes. “Of course not, Thea. You've got, like, the hottest body.”

Winn and I had to exchange glances and smother a laugh. Thea was eleven. If anyone thought her body was “hot,” he was a certified perv. Except, I guessed, for eleven-year-olds from Brownstone, which was exactly the point at your first camp dance.

It was early Saturday evening, which meant in a couple of hours, all of Brownstone would load on to buses and drive around the tip of the lake for a cookout and dance on our tennis courts. Fred always hired the same DJ from town, who thought we still listened to 'NSync and called himself “Dr. Spin.”

The day of the boys' arrival was always frantic. There was the complicated matter of finding the perfect outfit, the bigger issue of hair when there were no hair dryers because there were no electrical outlets, and, of course, important decisions regarding which boys would be danced with and which would be shunned for no other reason than that was the consensus that week. The younger girls watched the older ones for cues, and the very youngest either watched in awe or ignored everyone, wondering what all the fuss was about. They were just happy for the free time to catch frogs in the shallow creek by the footbridge or, if they were of the girly type, to play with their counselor's makeup. Which was why Ruby appeared suddenly breathless in the door of Winn's cabin as we watched Jordan consider whether a tube top did anything for Thea's “figure.”

“
There
you are!” Ruby huffed, as if a search party of hounds had been combing the camp grounds. Her small hands locked around my wrist and yanked. “Come on! You said we could use your makeup before the dance.”

In order to get my cabin to keep quiet at rest hour, I'd had to promise they could play with my makeup.

“All right, all right,” I said, letting Ruby drag me off of Winn's bed. “I'll see you in a few?” I asked, glancing back at Winn.

“You still want an S.C. before the dance?” she confirmed, with a furtive look.

I nodded. “S.C.” was Winn's code for “secret cigarette.” At home I never smoked. I didn't hang out with people who did. My friends, including Katie Bell, declared smoking “gross” with squinched faces and upturned noses, but somehow in the past week, I'd kind of picked up the habit. I never asked for a cigarette, but if Winn volunteered one from her pack or asked me to go with her, I never turned her down. Her “P Funks” left a taste in my mouth like dirty socks steeped in crap, and the smell of the lotion we had to slather on afterward to cover the smell made me slightly nauseous, but the thrill of sneaking away because we were counselors and not every minute of our day was accounted for made smoking seem glamorous in a way I'd never understood before.

Having promised to meet Winn later, I let Ruby drag me by the hand back to our cabin. My makeup, which I usually kept stashed high on the shelf in my cubby, was already scattered across my bed. Beneath the shelf, a pink Tupperware trunk had been pulled up—a telltale sign of a nine-year-old snoop.

My girls were inspecting the various tubes, compacts, and bottles, like archaeological artifacts. I was surprised to find Katie Bell there too. She sat on my bed, about to apply a lip-plumping gloss to the puckered lips of my camper Abby.

“Wait—” I started to grab the applicator from Katie Bell's hand, but it was too late.

“Ow, ow, owwwww!” Abby danced in a circle, her hands flailing like two spider monkeys at her sides. Both Katie Bell and Ruby looked at me, bewildered.

“That stuff stings,” I explained. “Abby, are you okay?”

She stuck out her lips in an exaggerated pout, her eyes crossing as she tried to see her own mouth. “Aw ma wips pwumpa?”

“Absolutely,” I assured.

“Sorry, Abby.” Katie Bell laughed, tossing the gloss back on my bed. “I didn't know Helena kept controlled substances in her makeup bag. Hey,” she said, turning to me, “are you gonna help me pick out an outfit?”

Katie Bell was a self-admitted fashion victim. Workout shorts, a T-shirt, and tennis shoes were her camp uniform. Not giving a monkey's ass what you looked like was part of the beauty and point of camp. But since we'd started actually caring about dances—when we'd first realized the Brownies were more than just extras—come Saturday night, I was Katie Bell's personal stylist.

“Um, yeah,” I said distractedly, but I was worried about the time. I still had to set up the refreshments table and get back to meet Winn for our S.C. before clothing check at the flagpole. We had to vet our campers' outfits for enough fabric in the appropriate places.

“Why don't you wear that cute green sundress Pookie gave you last summer?” I offered.

Katie Bell wasn't convinced. “It's too short now. Can't you tell I grew three-quarters of an inch last year? I've legally surpassed the designation of ‘little person,'” she joked.

“Well, did you bring that yellow tank top?”

“Yeah, but I wore that to, like, every dance last summer,” she whined, her head lolling to one side.

“I don't know, Katie Bell,” I answered, my impatience showing as I straightened my bed and put the makeup back into its polka-dotted plastic pouch.

“Can't you just come look in my trunk real quick?” Katie Bell's indecision was slowly being replaced by irritation and confusion at my reluctance to help her.

I was annoyed too, but not sure why. It was a perfectly reasonable request. But the tiny gears on my watch were ticking loudly. I had to get down to the tennis courts to help Pookie with the folding tables and big orange Gatorade coolers, and then back to meet Winn.

And for some reason, I didn't want Katie Bell to know about our secret cigarettes.

“I'm sorry, Katie Bell, but I have to help with the drinks and stuff. I think you should wear the yellow tank top.” I grabbed a rubber band and rolled it onto my wrist. “I have to run, but I'll see you at the dance.”

“Okay,” Katie Bell mumbled, obviously ticked off.

I gave her what I hoped passed for an apologetic smile and hurried out of the cabin and down the path past the Mansion to the tennis courts.

Getting back for an S.C. with Winn wasn't the only thing making me anxious. I was already on a heightened state of alert knowing Ransome would be at the dance tonight. Thinking of the last time I saw him, naked as the day he came into the world, I laughed to myself. I wondered if he would be able to read it on my face tonight as clearly as if it were stenciled in black Sharpie across my forehead: helena luvs ransome.

I also
did
feel bad about leaving Katie Bell, but Pookie was already lugging a huge orange cooler across the tennis court by herself, so I pushed my nervousness and guilt aside and jogged to help her. Maybe an S.C. with Winn would calm me down.

Off a never-used path behind the softball diamond, there was a small outcropping of rock that was the perfect spot for two counselors to sneak away for a cigarette. Winn had shown it to me the first time she asked me to come with her, and this was where we found ourselves before the dance.

Without asking if I wanted one, she flipped open the top of her pack, revealing three rows of white filters lined up nice and neat like little tar soldiers, and held it out to me.

I slid one from the pack and fumbled with the lighter as I held the cigarette in my lips. I didn't have the smooth, practiced mannerisms that Winn did. She inhaled deeply and exhaled impressive plumes of smoke, while I took short, shallow puffs and managed to get ash everywhere.

Winn draped her arms over her tanned knees, bare below a pair of short army-green shorts. “Thanks for coming with me,” she said.

“Sure.” I rubbed my foot where the rock had left an indent in my ankle, and repositioned myself so that I was sitting like Winn, feet flat on the rock and knees up.

“Sarah and Buzz are totally gonna hook up again this summer,” Winn said out of the blue, picking a fleck of tobacco from her tongue.

“You think?” By now, I knew all about Sarah and Buzz's fling the year before.

“Sarah says she's not interested.” Winn rolled her eyes. “But . . . come on. They're totally gonna hook up.”

I'd hesitated in saying anything to Winn until now. I was afraid it would seem stupid to her, but suddenly I
had
to spill about Ransome.

“Can I tell you something?” I asked, gnawing at my lower lip.

“Sure.” Her blue eyes fixed on me.

“So, I kind of have a crush on someone, and I know it's ridiculous, but . . .”

Winn's eyes lit up. “Who?!” she cried, suddenly riveted.

I smiled and held back for a second. I thought her eyes might pop out of her head from the suspense.

Finally I spit it out. “Ransome,” I said, and quickly buried my head in my arms.

“Ransome?”

“Yes.” I groaned. “I know it's ridiculous. He's, like, three years older and probably sees me as just this dorky JC, but I've had a crush on him since I was, like, nine.”

“I think we
all
did at some point,” Winn said, almost to herself.

Her statement made me feel silly rather than better. I was trying to tell her this was more than just a camper's crush now. I really liked him.

I took too big a drag on my cigarette and immediately started coughing like I was going to eject a lung.

“You okay?” Winn laughed.

Cough, cough.
“Yeah.”
Cough
.

“That's what you get for hittin' the hard stuff,” she joked.

“What? Black lung?” I laughed.

“Yeah.” She stubbed out her cigarette, already down to the filter. Mine was only halfway done, but I put it out anyway. It had already left a nasty metallic taste in my mouth.

“Shoot,” Winn said, checking her watch. “We better get down there soon. Do you want some?” She held out a travel-size bottle of mango-coconut lotion that she kept in the makeup bag she used to stash her cigarettes, a lighter, and Listerine strips.

“Thanks.” I let her squeeze a blob of the odorous lotion into my hands and rubbed it in between my fingers. I knew they'd still smell like burned tires, which made me wish I hadn't smoked. Would Ransome notice? I hoped my hair and clothes didn't reek too.

As we stood and brushed the dirt from the butts of our shorts, I had an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach that I knew wasn't just the cigarette.

“Hey, Winn . . .” I started.

“Yeah?”

In the dappled light of the woods, Winn looked really pretty. Next to her, I felt suddenly gawky. Too tall for myself.

I held my breath. “Will you promise not to tell anyone about Ransome? I mean, that I like him?”

“Yeah.” She nodded as if it went without saying. “Of course.”

“Thanks.”

“Sure,” she said, and headed for the edge of the clearing. “That's what friends are for.”

From the rickety bleachers that lined one long side of the tennis courts, Winn, Lizbeth, Sarah, Pookie, and I surveyed the scene. The smell of charred hamburgers still hung like a cloud in the air. Dr. Spin was in the middle of a playlist of the Top 40 songs . . . of 2003. And we were armed with Super Soakers.

A few summers ago, Fred and Abe had decided the counselors should uphold the decorum of these mixers by spraying any couples who were dancing too close with water guns. It was a joke more than anything, as still—with the exception of the youngest girls, who unself-consciously shimmied and shook like little booty dancers in the center of the court—most of the campers refused to even mingle. The tennis nets had been taken down for the dance, but their poles provided a clear-cut boundary. On their respective sides, the girls and boys congregated in tight clusters, pretending to ignore each other as they stole furtive glances. Only when night fell would they come together and actually dance.

At the edge of the court, where determined clumps of grass cracked and poked through the pavement, I noticed Katie Bell talking with Molly and Amanda. She was wearing the yellow tank top. I felt a rush of guilt about brushing her off before.

As I watched, Katie Bell whispered in Molly's ear, and both girls glanced over their shoulders at a group of Brownstone boys before collapsing in hysterics. A weird feeling suddenly came over me. I had the impression that I was watching Katie Bell and the others on a home video. It was a moment's mental snapshot, and I knew every time I would recall this frame of my life, this summer, I would feel just the same as I did right then. It was strange—a nostalgia for something that was still happening.

Unsettled by this feeling of being telescoped through time, I looked away from Katie Bell and focused on the conversation next to me. The tone had changed. Winn, Sarah, and Pookie were intently discussing the three Brownies scraping the grills from the cookout. Buzz was one of them, and Winn and Pookie were interrogating Sarah, as well as pumping her for information on Ben, the Brownie that Lizbeth, who had momentarily slipped away to the bathroom, liked, but who the other girls thought was kind of a dud.

I tried to pay attention, listening carefully for anything about Ransome. He had just disappeared into the Mess. But my attention was drawn back to Katie Bell. She and some other cubbies were snapping pictures now, taking turns making goofy or seductive faces at the camera and then eagerly checking to see if the picture was save-worthy or should be instantly erased and reshot.