Enjoy MISS CAMP!
Miss Camp
1980 – The Year of the Woodchuck
Ann
She shouldn’t be here. Derek kisses her and Ann pushes him away, doing the sneak-a-glance-at-the-door-while-still-trying-to-look-cool routine. It’s hard to pull off, though, since she’s half-choking on the stink of moldy canvas and eau-de-dirty boy-clothes. He wants to make out. She knows it, she’s just not into it. What if they get caught?
Derek’s bunkmate has life guard duty until four, but Ann eyes the screen door like it’s about to burst open Kool-Aid man-style.
His enormous bangs block her view and she shifts around. She has to be able to see the door.
Something on the far side of the mountain of sweat socks and stockpile of BooBerry cereal catches her eye. It’s a large ceramic…woodchuck?
Derek, floppy hair falling into his face, asks, “Something the matter, babe?”
“What’s that?” Ann points to the statue. “You a big fan of Caddyshack or something?”
“Just my good luck charm. Don’t worry about it.”
He makes like a rabbit and nibbles at her ear, leaving a thin trail of slobber dribbling down her neck. Do guys drool on Brooke Shields, too? She fakes a cough, using the chance to wipe off the drool with the back of her hand.
His roommate could walk in, or worse, her sister-
Placing her palms against his chest, she pushes him back and hops off of the cot. Picking her way around the piles of clothes and old tennis rackets, she grabs the little woodchuck.
“No, babe, don’t-“
“Why does he have such big teeth?”” She runs her fingers along the faded paint.
Derek lunges at her from across the bunk. “Put it down!”
She jumps. The statue falls. It shatters. She gasps and bends to pick up the shards. Way to go, she’s ruined her boyfriend’s good luck totem and now-
Her hand freezes over a piece of ceramic woodchuck.
“Let me explain,” Derek says, his voice high.
Her fingertips numb, she sees a piece of bright pink cotton cloth on the ground. And another, this one blue. Her throat tightens. Panties. Tons and tons of panties, strewn about the pieces of broken woodchuck like confetti. No, no this can’t be.
Quick, someone tell her it’s not true.
Her stomach twists. Her eyes fall on a pair of pale orange briefs with little pink flowers. Oh my God.
He has her panties, hers! Stuffed inside his good luck charm? Her breath comes in quick little fits.
Did he sneak into her cabin? Or worse, did he take them the other night when-
Gross!
She grabs her panties in her fist and grinds her teeth, “You steal panties and stuff them into a woodchuck! What’s wrong with you?”
“It’s a beaver, actually.” He says, his voice small.
She screams so she doesn’t punch him in the face.
Ballads will one day be written about her remarkable self-restraint, she’s certain.
Panties in hand, she races from the bunk. Dodging campers on their way to the lake, her half-tied Keds pound into the dirt, trees and kids and flags and canoes blur in her stinging eyes as she bolts past.
Her heart rockets into Steve McQueen power-mode. Her sister will know what to do. Elise, she has to see Elise.
Kicking the door to her sister’s cabin open, a group of kids in a circle startle, campers and counselors alike, throwing money into the middle of the folding table. Elise stands up, sure to hide her cards.
“You okay?” Elise asks, her eyes wide.
“No, I’m no where’s near okay. Panties, Elise, he has my panties and blue panties and pink and there were so many panties.” Ann chokes on her words, gasping for air that just won’t come.
Kids sitting around the table giggle. Elise gives them all a look. “Everybody out. Now.”
“But who keeps the pot?” One kid with a crooked nose and a David Cassidy haircut asks, his hand crushing his cards.
“It’s poker.” Elise swipes the cards off the table and motions for the kid to go. “The only one who ever wins at poker is the house. Now go.”
“But-“
“Go or you’re going to be dealt out on Thursday’s game.”
The kids shuffle out and Carmine, the seventeen-year old camp dreamboat, gives Elise his trademark sly grin. “I really enjoyed the game, Elise, maybe you and I could-“
“Go, Carmine. If I’m in the mood, I’ll come by later and you can give me your pitch for a make-out session, but now, you have to go.”
Stunned, Carmine smoothes his black curls away from his face and blinks as Elise hustles him out the door.
“Damn that Carmine and those eyelashes, maybe I should have kept him for later.” She turns to Ann, shaking by the cabin door. “Now tell me what happened.”
Ann rushes into her sister’s arms, sending cards flittering over the cabin floor, and tells her everything.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Ann asks as she crouches in the dirt, mud sticking to her hands.
“Define good.” Elise shakes her flashlight and then smacks it. A thin beam of light cuts through the darkened camp.
“We should, like, totally forget it. C’mon, let’s just go back to the cabins before someone reports us.”
“Annie, this dipwad stole your underwear. And the underwear of countless other girls. He deserves this.” Elise gives Ann the grin that usually leads to the two of them getting grounded for months. “Besides, no one’s going to report us, we’re the counselors, remember?”
“Sharon will totally tell the director. She’s just waiting for an excuse to nail me on something. The girl’s had it out for me since her ex asked me out last summer.”
“Say totally one more time and I’m shoving this flashlight up your butt.”
Ann jolts.
“I mean it. And forget about Sharon’s ex, that was on you, I have plenty of exes, you should’ve just picked one of mine. Now let’s go.”
Elise is not the kind of girl that deals well with being denied, so Ann swallows down the lump forming in her throat and wipes her hands on her pajama bottoms, following her sister into the night.
The camp is divided by gender, the male and female sides of the camp on far ends of the lake, with the activity centers and mess hall placed between the two on the lakefront and at the far end of six sports fields that lead from the parking lot to the camp.
“Stop breathing, it’s freaking me out.” Elise, grease paint beneath her eyes, snaps as she smacks her sister on the hand.
“How am I supposed to stop breathing? Wouldn’t that be, like, totally counter productive?”
“Annie, I swear to you, I will hit you with this flashlight. Across the face. Stop talking like you’re a surfer or something.”
“I’m not talking like a surfer. I’m scared. I’m scared and my sister just told me to stop breathing.”
“Place your head against that tree and smack it a few times for me, would you?” She sighs. “Look, this guy collects panties. It’s sick. We can’t just let that sort of thing go unpunished.”
“You sure this won’t hurt him?” Ann twists her hands together, stepping from foot to foot.
Elise says nothing, she just walks down the path towards the mess hall. Okay, so that’s not exactly comforting.
The path winds through the darkened woods and Ann knows every exposed root, every pothole like it’s the hallway at home. They’ve been coming to this camp since they were in third grade, Ann was afraid of everything. Each sound at night, each odd smell that would waft across the water on a hot day, each look the counselor’s would give her when she shot her arrows that landed well before they even reached the target. It was Elise who slept next to her in her cot when she was scared. Elise who grabbed her hand and walked with her to the bathrooms at night, telling her which sounds were owls, which just the wind, Elise who would joke about the source of the bad smells, and Elise who would always make sure Ann got picked for a team at field games.
Elise is maybe the only person in the world that Ann knows she can trust, the person who knows her every secret, and Ann loves her more than anyone, even if some days she’d like to smack her. It’s just, well, family.
So she ignores the trembling in her legs and follows Elise across the camp.
They reach the boys side of the camp and the trails become less familiar. Ann places a hand on Elise’s back, but Elise snatches Ann’s hand in hers. “Hold on, we don’t want to trip and let everyone know we’re coming.”
Waiting until two hours after lights out, it’s a pretty safe bet that everyone’s asleep. Ann’s heart races as they pass the first cabin. “You sure no one’s going to wake up?”
“No. I’m not, but I’m sure our chances of no one waking up will be improved if we stop talking. Try and relax, think of I don’t know, John Travolta or something.”
“John Travolta? How is that supposed to make me relax?”
“You’re right. Not relaxing, just stop talking okay.”
“You’re the one that brought up Travolta.”
“Annie.” Elise mimics their mother’s admonishing tone. Funny how Elise is all rock-and-roll at home and at camp she’s the one that turns into their mother.
Keds to the ground, they move with way too much noise for Ann’s liking, stopping for a second each time one of the crunches a twig, listening. After what feels like light years, well, no, not light years, maybe light years? Are light years really long or really short? Ann can’t remember. Goodness knows she’s seen Star Wars so many times she should have that all figured out. After what feels like a really long time, they reach Cabin 16.
Peeling paint on the sign over the cabin door make the 6 look like a zero, but Ann knows it’s the right one because Derek’s favorite Mork and Mindy tee hangs over the outside window to make up for the big hole in the mosquito screen they made when they decided to play basketball inside the bunk last Tuesday.
“They just need to get some glue and fix the stupid thing,” Elise whispers as she drops Ann’s hand and turns off the flashlight, placing it in her bag.
Ann gives her a nasty look that she’s sure Elise can’t see, and pulls back the edge of the tee to peek inside the cabin. Derek’s asleep on the right bunk, on top of the covers, and his roommate, a burly fellow with mohawk, sleeps under the covers on the other side of the room.
“Where does he keep his bath kit?” Elise asks and she smooshes her face next to her sister’s at the window.
The bath kit holds everything they need for taking showers and things, for girls it’s a lot of shampoos and toothbrushes and retainers, for guys, it’s a bar of soap, maybe a toothbrush and lots and lots of hair gel.
“There” –Ann indicates a shelf on the back side of the cabin- “he uses an old Mighty Mouse lunchbox from the lost and found.”
“Damn. How many boxes of BooBerry cereal does one kid need? How the hell are we going to find our way across that floor?”
The moldy smell of wood and canvas tickles Ann’s nose as she thinks about the question. Swatting a mosquito off her leg, she says, “I guess we just have to hope that they’re heavy sleepers.” An owl cries out and a cool wind stirs the underbrush around them. “Maybe we should just forget it.”
“No way. This is going to be fun, besides, what’s the worse that can happen?”
Ann reaches out to grab Elise’s hand, but she’s gone, slipping through the door to the cabin.
Fear rises in her stomach and she thinks she might just die but she follows. Grabbing the thin strip of pine on the door, she places it in the doorframe behind her as she sneaks into the cabin.
It smells like sweat and boy and sugary cereal and spilt soda. Elise winds her way across the floor, her Chuck Taylors pounding across the floor, elephant-style, as she makes her way past hundreds of puffs of cereal and at least a dozen discarded sneakers and hiking boots and flip flops.
Elise reaches the far end of the cabin and reaches into the Mighty Mouse lunchbox. Ann can’t breathe. Totally can’t do anything but sweat as she toggles between Derek’s sleeping face and her sister pulling a bottle of Nair out of her bag.
“Oh no.” Elise’s whisper sounds like a cannon shot across the cabin.
“What?” Ann’s heart in her throat, she studies Derek’s face. Then his roomate’s, then Derek’s. “What is it?”
“I forgot the empty bottle.”
“The empty Tab bottle you left on the bench? I threw it away.” Oh my God she’s going to pass out. Like definitely pass out. Derek groans. No. Please no, don’t wake up.
“I needed that!” Elise’s voice slices through the funk in the air and now the roommate stirs, his leg falling off the bunk, blocking the narrow path between Elise and the door.
“Just forget it, okay? We have to go.”
“No. I’m not forgetting anything, you’re the one who threw out the bottle.”
“It was a can and I can’t believe you’re doing this now, you’re going to wake them.”
The roommate groans and they stop. Ann’s pretty sure that even the bead of sweat building on her forehead pauses mid-drip.
He turns over, his sheets twisting in his leg still on the bed, and drifts back off.
Elise holds her hands out to Ann, like she’s a child that is not understanding some really basic concept, like, say, crime and punishment.
“Look, I need someplace to put his hair gel. I can’t just dump it on the floor, then they’d know someone was here.”
“Um.” Ann stares at the roomate’s leg, wondering how Elise is going to-
“Annie, move his leg, I’m going to look for something.”
“You want me to move his leg? Are you mental? He’ll wake up for sure.”
Elise ignores her and rustles through the mess on the floor, looking for-
“I found it.” Elise grins, holding up the remains of a tattered copy of PlayBoy.
“Ew.”
“Ew is right. Watch this.” Elise takes the copy of playboy and slips it into Derek’s bed. Careful not to graze the hair on his legs, she then empties the clear, goopy hair gel onto the bed in a big pile. “He’s not going to want to examine this mess to carefully, and rumors, sweet, glorious rumors will be all over camp by morning.”
“Shh, please don’t wake him.”
“Oh, I don’t think they’ll be too easy to wake up. I drugged their hot cocoa.”
“You what?” Heat drains from Ann’s face. “Oh my God, Elise, we’re, like, totally going to jail.”
“Only if you use like or totally again and I get arrested for battery.” She shakes out the last of the gel and wipes the rim of the now empty bottle on Derek’s sheet. “Relax, I used valerian tea. The one mom sent me last month because I told her I wasn’t sleeping. Tastes awful, but the cocoa is so thick I doubt they even noticed it was there. It won’t hurt them.”
“You weren’t sleeping because you were up all night gambling.”
“She didn’t know that, now did she? Now move that guy’s leg so we can get out of here.”
Mom really needs Wonder Woman’s lasso of truth. It’s not fair, having a daughter like Elise. Ann hopes she never has daughters like her sister, they’d drive her to an early grave.
Elise moves back to the lunchbox and slowly pours the bottle of Nair into the empty bottle of hair gel. When she told Ann about her idea, Ann was sure it wouldn’t work because Nair smells and it can burn, but Elise said that it was worth a shot. And it might work, now that they’re inside the cabin, because it smells so vile in here anyway, the Nair will probably just blend.
I can do this. I can move that guy’s leg. Ann takes two steps further into the cabin, hating that her back faces Derek. It’s like he’s watching her, his stare like a million little BooBerry-loving ants crawling up her skin. She takes a deep breath and bends down.
Holy smokes this guy’s leg is huge. It’s bare, she thinks, though it’s hard to tell with the massive amounts of hair on his legs. It’s like Eric Estrada-level thickness. She reaches out an unsteady hand. Her fingertips graze a hair. “I can’t.”
“Can’t what?” Elise holds the empty bottle of Nair in one hand, her other hand rests on her hip.
“I can’t move it. It’s gross.”
“Gross? It’s a leg? Weren’t you making out with Derek the other night?”
“Yeah, but-“
“Scratch me, mommy.” A low, male voice sounds thought the cabin like a bullet.
Silence.
Ann’s heartbeat moves faster than Travolta’s hips on the dance floor as she waits to hear that strange voice again. Is she hearing things? Tears sting her eyes and she might lose her bladder control as the deep, penetrating voice sounds from Derek’s roommate.
“Scratch my back, it itches!”
Elise’s face pales and she holds her hand up to her forehead. Not a great sign.
“Scratch me.”
Ann looks to her sister, and then at the door, and then at her sister, trapped on the far side of the cabin by the leg of this hairy, itchy, were-beast of a boy.
She could run. Could bolt through that door and be gone, flying through the night and racing back to her cabin before anyone was the wiser.
She could.
But she won’t. Elise’s eyes, wide for the first time tonight, plead with her sister.
“C’mon, Mommy, please.”
Elise motions with her hands that she should-
Oh. Oh no. No. Ann is so not scratching any part of this guy’s body. She didn’t even want to touch his leg and Elise wants her to-
“Scratch. His. back.” Elise mouths, and pantomimes the motion, in conjunction with the moving of a leg.
“No! You’re the one with all the boyfriends, why do I have to do the scratching?” Ann risks a whisper as she hisses at her sister.
“So help me I’ll dump this Nair over your head in your sleep. And your eyebrows.”
“Why do I have to do-“
“Mom?” The boy asks, his face towards the wall.
Ann holds her breath and Elise freezes, gel bottle full of Nair pointed in menacing fashion at Ann.
“Can you scratch my back? I think the rash is back.”
Oh you have to be joking. Gag me.
“Mom?”
Elise’s hands clench and Ann gulps down a lungful of air through a fear-numbed chest. “Yes.” Oh no, what does his mom call him? Sweetie? Snookums? Poopsie? What do I do? “Yes, it’s me. I’m here.”
Ew, ew, ew. Ann reaches out with the tips of her fingers and grazes the tee on the top of his back, just beneath his neck.
“Lower. That’s not where the rash is.”
What kind of rash? Is it contagious? Ann’s going to vomit. Without question. Bile rises as she moves her hand lower and scratches his mid-back. He wiggles.
Wiggles.
This is so nasty, but she scratches a little bit harder, hating her sister and hoping that whatever the rash is, that it stays firmly on his side of the tee which she scratches.
Elise, empty bottles secured in her bag, steps forward until she’s just on the far side of the leg.
Ann looks down at the leg. Why can’t Elise move it?
As if reading her mind, Elise holds up her hands, hair removal cream smeared all over them.
So it has to be Ann, then. Wonderful. She can do this. With one hand still scratching his back, Ann moves her other hand down the side of the bed and then, before she can think too much of it, she thrusts her fingers through the forest of leg hair and throws his leg back up onto the bed.
“Mom?” His voice more alert now, terror flashes through Ann’s nervous system like a bolt of electricity.
Elise rushes past her and flies out the cabin door, Ann racing behind.
They run. No flashlight, barely a moon, they fly through down the path. Ann’s feet beating the ground and her legs and her lungs and her arms all on fire she could laugh and she could scream but she can’t do anything but move.
“Hey! Where are you girls going?” The voice of a security guard slices through the night.
Elise shouts, “Girl problems! Need tampons quick.”
Girl problems? Dear God, only Elise. He coughs like he’s got a wad of garlic caught in his throat but Ann just keeps running.
Past the sleeping cabins and around the front of the mess hall and across the entrance to the archery fields and back through the winding trails leading back to their own cabins.
When they reach the large maple in front of Elise’s cabin she stops, bending over, adrenaline making her feel sick and feel amazing and then sick again as her heart rate drops.
“I stink so bad right now that not even mosquitos would bite me.” Elise grins, holding up her palms still greased thick with Nair. She falls to her hands and knees on the path, wiping the cream off on some leaves and dirt. “More. Like that. Perfect. Scratch me. I thought I was going to die. The look on your face! And the rash!”
Hysterics. Elise is in hysterics.
“I could have gone to jail! Arrested for trespassing and you think it’s funny?” Ann says, her voice high and wound tight.
“Arrested for trespassing?” Elise cackles. “Do you even hear yourself?”
Ann puts her hands on her hips. “Why do you do this? Pretend like you care and then mock me? I could have left you, Elise, I wanted to, I could have run and left you and your Nair hands trapped! But I didn’t, I toughed it out, for you, and now you have the nerve to make fun of me?”
“Honey, you’re something of a tightass. It’s fine, it’s just who you are, it’s just, your face when he talked about the rash. And who sleep-talks to their mom? And that guard? Just mention the word tampon around a guy and they let you do anything.”
“This is all some game to you.”
“It’s camp, Annie, lighten up.”
“I don’t want to lighten up. We could’ve gotten in real trouble. We’re getting paid to be here, Elise, we’re supposed to be the responsible ones. I should’ve gone right to the director about Derek stealing my underwear and instead I listen to you and almost lose my job! Do you know how hard it is to find a job after you’ve been fired?”
“You didn’t almost lose anything.” She straightens. “Except maybe your dinner when he asked you to go lower.” She erupts into another series of cackles.
“You don’t understand anything, do you? I don’t know why I even bother to tell you anything.”
Ann rips the bag off her sister’s back, gives Elise one last good glare, fills it with rocks and throws the bag in the lake to cover any evidence of their crime.
By the time she heads back to her cabin, Elise’s cabin is silent, and Ann heads back to her own bunk, to lie awake and stare at the ceiling until dawn.
The problem with working as a camp counselor is that the day has a routine that’s unbreakable. So when Ann rises with her alarm, instead of racing to the mess hall to face the consequences of her actions, she has a list of tasks she has to perform.
She walks with her roommate to the bathrooms where they shower and put on their uniforms. Elise is there, her hands red and chapped and swollen. Oh no, Ann completely forgot that Elise is allergic to Nair.
Her legs inch closer when Elise winces while she washes her hands, but instead of throwing her arms around her sister, she turns without saying a word and exists the bathroom, leaving nothing but shampoo-scented steam and the sound of flip flops hitting concrete floors in the space between them.
Then she wakes up the cabins of her assigned campers, hustles them off to the bathrooms, makes sure they get dressed and make their bunks, and finally, after an eternity, hustles them off to the mess hall.
Smells of stale coffee and fake syrup and overcooked eggs hit Ann in the face as she enters the busy room. The boys cabins are always late, and only one group of girls made it here before them. Getting in line for food and half-listening to the giggles of her campers, she sets her tray on the table before her and pushes her French toast around the plate with her fork.
The boys start to file in about ten minutes later, and Ann watches for Derek and his roomie with the mohawk.
At long last, Derek walks in, his eyes swollen and red, hair missing in large, uneven patches along his scalp. It worked! She looks down at her plate, but instead of vindication, her stomach ties itself into knots and another look at his bleary eyes and patchy scalp makes tears prick her own eyes.
Derek sits at a far table, glaring at her with undisguised rage. Ann pushes her French toast a bit more. There’s no way he can know it was her. But-
The door to the hall opens and regular moose of a man struts inside. The director.
Ann’s heart gives a kick and her stomach falls to her toes.
He searches the faces in the hall, and at last, his gaze lands on her. Pointing his knobby, hoof-like finger in her direction, he motions her outside.
The knife, as it is, drops in one great swoop. The second she sees Mohawk outside standing with the director and camp nurse she knows it’s over. “It has to be her. She’s Derek’s ex, he says he dumped her yesterday and she’s mad-“
“That’s enough gossip,” snaps the nurse, a walrus-shaped woman who has no patience for tomfoolery.
“Did you sneak out of your cabin last night and place hair removal cream in Derek’s hair gel?”
Staring at her feet, Ann says nothing.
“That’s got to be her, no one else would want to hurt Derek like that,” Mohawk says, and Ann can’t help but sneak a look at the back of his shirt, wondering if he really has a rash or if it was just a dream.
The director speaks and Ann tunes out everything he says. Why listen? She hears enough. She’s fired. The lecture about breaking rules and lack of responsibility and disappoint she figures she’s going to hear in various forms from at least three different people, so she stands there, eyes burning, chest tight.
“Was anyone else with you?”
She takes a deep breath. “No. It was just me. I was alone.”
The director takes a step back, like he doesn’t believe me, but he lets it drop and she’s dismissed so she can gather up her things.
It doesn’t take as long as she would have thought to pack up her summer. Two dufflebags of stuff. That’s it. She leaves her half-full bottles of shampoo and body wash in the bathroom for campers that might run out, along with her toothpaste, because no matter the amount of punishment she’s about to undergo, mom would never keep her from brushing her teeth.
She sits out beneath an old pine tree by the parking lot, the sticky needles making the skin on her legs itch, playing with a bit of stick that she rips into little bits.
Mom should be here soon, at least that’s what the nurse said when the nurse has called her mother. Mom was going to be livid. Her whole face can turn this wild shade of crimson when she’s either mad or laughing at her shows. If you catch mom after an episode of Laverne and Shirley, her face will stay red for a good fifteen minutes.
Ann hears the sound of footsteps on the trail coming up behind her, but her eyes stay fixed on the cars of the half-empty parking lots, the dandelion fluff wafting through the air, the sounds of crickets and summer bugs calling to each other as the sun warms.
“You can just go back, you know.” Elise. Was there any doubt?
“No, I can’t, I’m fired.”
“Annie, you’re not fired. I am.” Elise throws her own duffle on top of Ann’s two. “I told them it was all me, and I even have the rash to prove it.” She holds up her hands, covered in red bumps from the Nair.
“Well, that was stupid.”
“I know.” Elise sits down next to her in the pine needles, the sun through the needles making dappled shadows over her face, her long hair pulled back into two braids running down either side of her back.
Ann grabs another twig, picking it apart until the green of the bark sticks to her fingers.
“Why are you still here, Annie? Go back, the job’s still yours if you want it. And you have to see Derek’s hair.”
“I did.” She smiles. “He looks totally ridiculous.”
“Totally.” Elise echoes.
Ann doesn’t move, and when a familiar old wood-paneled station wagon pulls into the lots, she stands, holding out her hand to help her sister to stand. “Come on, let’s go home.”
Duffles in hand, they walk to the car, side by side.
Miss Camp
1980 – The Year of the Woodchuck
Ann
She shouldn’t be here. Derek kisses her and Ann pushes him away, doing the sneak-a-glance-at-the-door-while-still-trying-to-look-cool routine. It’s hard to pull off, though, since she’s half-choking on the stink of moldy canvas and eau-de-dirty boy-clothes. He wants to make out. She knows it, she’s just not into it. What if they get caught?
Derek’s bunkmate has life guard duty until four, but Ann eyes the screen door like it’s about to burst open Kool-Aid man-style.
His enormous bangs block her view and she shifts around. She has to be able to see the door.
Something on the far side of the mountain of sweat socks and stockpile of BooBerry cereal catches her eye. It’s a large ceramic…woodchuck?
Derek, floppy hair falling into his face, asks, “Something the matter, babe?”
“What’s that?” Ann points to the statue. “You a big fan of Caddyshack or something?”
“Just my good luck charm. Don’t worry about it.”
He makes like a rabbit and nibbles at her ear, leaving a thin trail of slobber dribbling down her neck. Do guys drool on Brooke Shields, too? She fakes a cough, using the chance to wipe off the drool with the back of her hand.
His roommate could walk in, or worse, her sister-
Placing her palms against his chest, she pushes him back and hops off of the cot. Picking her way around the piles of clothes and old tennis rackets, she grabs the little woodchuck.
“No, babe, don’t-“
“Why does he have such big teeth?”” She runs her fingers along the faded paint.
Derek lunges at her from across the bunk. “Put it down!”
She jumps. The statue falls. It shatters. She gasps and bends to pick up the shards. Way to go, she’s ruined her boyfriend’s good luck totem and now-
Her hand freezes over a piece of ceramic woodchuck.
“Let me explain,” Derek says, his voice high.
Her fingertips numb, she sees a piece of bright pink cotton cloth on the ground. And another, this one blue. Her throat tightens. Panties. Tons and tons of panties, strewn about the pieces of broken woodchuck like confetti. No, no this can’t be.
Quick, someone tell her it’s not true.
Her stomach twists. Her eyes fall on a pair of pale orange briefs with little pink flowers. Oh my God.
He has her panties, hers! Stuffed inside his good luck charm? Her breath comes in quick little fits.
Did he sneak into her cabin? Or worse, did he take them the other night when-
Gross!
She grabs her panties in her fist and grinds her teeth, “You steal panties and stuff them into a woodchuck! What’s wrong with you?”
“It’s a beaver, actually.” He says, his voice small.
She screams so she doesn’t punch him in the face.
Ballads will one day be written about her remarkable self-restraint, she’s certain.
Panties in hand, she races from the bunk. Dodging campers on their way to the lake, her half-tied Keds pound into the dirt, trees and kids and flags and canoes blur in her stinging eyes as she bolts past.
Her heart rockets into Steve McQueen power-mode. Her sister will know what to do. Elise, she has to see Elise.
Kicking the door to her sister’s cabin open, a group of kids in a circle startle, campers and counselors alike, throwing money into the middle of the folding table. Elise stands up, sure to hide her cards.
“You okay?” Elise asks, her eyes wide.
“No, I’m no where’s near okay. Panties, Elise, he has my panties and blue panties and pink and there were so many panties.” Ann chokes on her words, gasping for air that just won’t come.
Kids sitting around the table giggle. Elise gives them all a look. “Everybody out. Now.”
“But who keeps the pot?” One kid with a crooked nose and a David Cassidy haircut asks, his hand crushing his cards.
“It’s poker.” Elise swipes the cards off the table and motions for the kid to go. “The only one who ever wins at poker is the house. Now go.”
“But-“
“Go or you’re going to be dealt out on Thursday’s game.”
The kids shuffle out and Carmine, the seventeen-year old camp dreamboat, gives Elise his trademark sly grin. “I really enjoyed the game, Elise, maybe you and I could-“
“Go, Carmine. If I’m in the mood, I’ll come by later and you can give me your pitch for a make-out session, but now, you have to go.”
Stunned, Carmine smoothes his black curls away from his face and blinks as Elise hustles him out the door.
“Damn that Carmine and those eyelashes, maybe I should have kept him for later.” She turns to Ann, shaking by the cabin door. “Now tell me what happened.”
Ann rushes into her sister’s arms, sending cards flittering over the cabin floor, and tells her everything.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Ann asks as she crouches in the dirt, mud sticking to her hands.
“Define good.” Elise shakes her flashlight and then smacks it. A thin beam of light cuts through the darkened camp.
“We should, like, totally forget it. C’mon, let’s just go back to the cabins before someone reports us.”
“Annie, this dipwad stole your underwear. And the underwear of countless other girls. He deserves this.” Elise gives Ann the grin that usually leads to the two of them getting grounded for months. “Besides, no one’s going to report us, we’re the counselors, remember?”
“Sharon will totally tell the director. She’s just waiting for an excuse to nail me on something. The girl’s had it out for me since her ex asked me out last summer.”
“Say totally one more time and I’m shoving this flashlight up your butt.”
Ann jolts.
“I mean it. And forget about Sharon’s ex, that was on you, I have plenty of exes, you should’ve just picked one of mine. Now let’s go.”
Elise is not the kind of girl that deals well with being denied, so Ann swallows down the lump forming in her throat and wipes her hands on her pajama bottoms, following her sister into the night.
The camp is divided by gender, the male and female sides of the camp on far ends of the lake, with the activity centers and mess hall placed between the two on the lakefront and at the far end of six sports fields that lead from the parking lot to the camp.
“Stop breathing, it’s freaking me out.” Elise, grease paint beneath her eyes, snaps as she smacks her sister on the hand.
“How am I supposed to stop breathing? Wouldn’t that be, like, totally counter productive?”
“Annie, I swear to you, I will hit you with this flashlight. Across the face. Stop talking like you’re a surfer or something.”
“I’m not talking like a surfer. I’m scared. I’m scared and my sister just told me to stop breathing.”
“Place your head against that tree and smack it a few times for me, would you?” She sighs. “Look, this guy collects panties. It’s sick. We can’t just let that sort of thing go unpunished.”
“You sure this won’t hurt him?” Ann twists her hands together, stepping from foot to foot.
Elise says nothing, she just walks down the path towards the mess hall. Okay, so that’s not exactly comforting.
The path winds through the darkened woods and Ann knows every exposed root, every pothole like it’s the hallway at home. They’ve been coming to this camp since they were in third grade, Ann was afraid of everything. Each sound at night, each odd smell that would waft across the water on a hot day, each look the counselor’s would give her when she shot her arrows that landed well before they even reached the target. It was Elise who slept next to her in her cot when she was scared. Elise who grabbed her hand and walked with her to the bathrooms at night, telling her which sounds were owls, which just the wind, Elise who would joke about the source of the bad smells, and Elise who would always make sure Ann got picked for a team at field games.
Elise is maybe the only person in the world that Ann knows she can trust, the person who knows her every secret, and Ann loves her more than anyone, even if some days she’d like to smack her. It’s just, well, family.
So she ignores the trembling in her legs and follows Elise across the camp.
They reach the boys side of the camp and the trails become less familiar. Ann places a hand on Elise’s back, but Elise snatches Ann’s hand in hers. “Hold on, we don’t want to trip and let everyone know we’re coming.”
Waiting until two hours after lights out, it’s a pretty safe bet that everyone’s asleep. Ann’s heart races as they pass the first cabin. “You sure no one’s going to wake up?”
“No. I’m not, but I’m sure our chances of no one waking up will be improved if we stop talking. Try and relax, think of I don’t know, John Travolta or something.”
“John Travolta? How is that supposed to make me relax?”
“You’re right. Not relaxing, just stop talking okay.”
“You’re the one that brought up Travolta.”
“Annie.” Elise mimics their mother’s admonishing tone. Funny how Elise is all rock-and-roll at home and at camp she’s the one that turns into their mother.
Keds to the ground, they move with way too much noise for Ann’s liking, stopping for a second each time one of the crunches a twig, listening. After what feels like light years, well, no, not light years, maybe light years? Are light years really long or really short? Ann can’t remember. Goodness knows she’s seen Star Wars so many times she should have that all figured out. After what feels like a really long time, they reach Cabin 16.
Peeling paint on the sign over the cabin door make the 6 look like a zero, but Ann knows it’s the right one because Derek’s favorite Mork and Mindy tee hangs over the outside window to make up for the big hole in the mosquito screen they made when they decided to play basketball inside the bunk last Tuesday.
“They just need to get some glue and fix the stupid thing,” Elise whispers as she drops Ann’s hand and turns off the flashlight, placing it in her bag.
Ann gives her a nasty look that she’s sure Elise can’t see, and pulls back the edge of the tee to peek inside the cabin. Derek’s asleep on the right bunk, on top of the covers, and his roommate, a burly fellow with mohawk, sleeps under the covers on the other side of the room.
“Where does he keep his bath kit?” Elise asks and she smooshes her face next to her sister’s at the window.
The bath kit holds everything they need for taking showers and things, for girls it’s a lot of shampoos and toothbrushes and retainers, for guys, it’s a bar of soap, maybe a toothbrush and lots and lots of hair gel.
“There” –Ann indicates a shelf on the back side of the cabin- “he uses an old Mighty Mouse lunchbox from the lost and found.”
“Damn. How many boxes of BooBerry cereal does one kid need? How the hell are we going to find our way across that floor?”
The moldy smell of wood and canvas tickles Ann’s nose as she thinks about the question. Swatting a mosquito off her leg, she says, “I guess we just have to hope that they’re heavy sleepers.” An owl cries out and a cool wind stirs the underbrush around them. “Maybe we should just forget it.”
“No way. This is going to be fun, besides, what’s the worse that can happen?”
Ann reaches out to grab Elise’s hand, but she’s gone, slipping through the door to the cabin.
Fear rises in her stomach and she thinks she might just die but she follows. Grabbing the thin strip of pine on the door, she places it in the doorframe behind her as she sneaks into the cabin.
It smells like sweat and boy and sugary cereal and spilt soda. Elise winds her way across the floor, her Chuck Taylors pounding across the floor, elephant-style, as she makes her way past hundreds of puffs of cereal and at least a dozen discarded sneakers and hiking boots and flip flops.
Elise reaches the far end of the cabin and reaches into the Mighty Mouse lunchbox. Ann can’t breathe. Totally can’t do anything but sweat as she toggles between Derek’s sleeping face and her sister pulling a bottle of Nair out of her bag.
“Oh no.” Elise’s whisper sounds like a cannon shot across the cabin.
“What?” Ann’s heart in her throat, she studies Derek’s face. Then his roomate’s, then Derek’s. “What is it?”
“I forgot the empty bottle.”
“The empty Tab bottle you left on the bench? I threw it away.” Oh my God she’s going to pass out. Like definitely pass out. Derek groans. No. Please no, don’t wake up.
“I needed that!” Elise’s voice slices through the funk in the air and now the roommate stirs, his leg falling off the bunk, blocking the narrow path between Elise and the door.
“Just forget it, okay? We have to go.”
“No. I’m not forgetting anything, you’re the one who threw out the bottle.”
“It was a can and I can’t believe you’re doing this now, you’re going to wake them.”
The roommate groans and they stop. Ann’s pretty sure that even the bead of sweat building on her forehead pauses mid-drip.
He turns over, his sheets twisting in his leg still on the bed, and drifts back off.
Elise holds her hands out to Ann, like she’s a child that is not understanding some really basic concept, like, say, crime and punishment.
“Look, I need someplace to put his hair gel. I can’t just dump it on the floor, then they’d know someone was here.”
“Um.” Ann stares at the roomate’s leg, wondering how Elise is going to-
“Annie, move his leg, I’m going to look for something.”
“You want me to move his leg? Are you mental? He’ll wake up for sure.”
Elise ignores her and rustles through the mess on the floor, looking for-
“I found it.” Elise grins, holding up the remains of a tattered copy of PlayBoy.
“Ew.”
“Ew is right. Watch this.” Elise takes the copy of playboy and slips it into Derek’s bed. Careful not to graze the hair on his legs, she then empties the clear, goopy hair gel onto the bed in a big pile. “He’s not going to want to examine this mess to carefully, and rumors, sweet, glorious rumors will be all over camp by morning.”
“Shh, please don’t wake him.”
“Oh, I don’t think they’ll be too easy to wake up. I drugged their hot cocoa.”
“You what?” Heat drains from Ann’s face. “Oh my God, Elise, we’re, like, totally going to jail.”
“Only if you use like or totally again and I get arrested for battery.” She shakes out the last of the gel and wipes the rim of the now empty bottle on Derek’s sheet. “Relax, I used valerian tea. The one mom sent me last month because I told her I wasn’t sleeping. Tastes awful, but the cocoa is so thick I doubt they even noticed it was there. It won’t hurt them.”
“You weren’t sleeping because you were up all night gambling.”
“She didn’t know that, now did she? Now move that guy’s leg so we can get out of here.”
Mom really needs Wonder Woman’s lasso of truth. It’s not fair, having a daughter like Elise. Ann hopes she never has daughters like her sister, they’d drive her to an early grave.
Elise moves back to the lunchbox and slowly pours the bottle of Nair into the empty bottle of hair gel. When she told Ann about her idea, Ann was sure it wouldn’t work because Nair smells and it can burn, but Elise said that it was worth a shot. And it might work, now that they’re inside the cabin, because it smells so vile in here anyway, the Nair will probably just blend.
I can do this. I can move that guy’s leg. Ann takes two steps further into the cabin, hating that her back faces Derek. It’s like he’s watching her, his stare like a million little BooBerry-loving ants crawling up her skin. She takes a deep breath and bends down.
Holy smokes this guy’s leg is huge. It’s bare, she thinks, though it’s hard to tell with the massive amounts of hair on his legs. It’s like Eric Estrada-level thickness. She reaches out an unsteady hand. Her fingertips graze a hair. “I can’t.”
“Can’t what?” Elise holds the empty bottle of Nair in one hand, her other hand rests on her hip.
“I can’t move it. It’s gross.”
“Gross? It’s a leg? Weren’t you making out with Derek the other night?”
“Yeah, but-“
“Scratch me, mommy.” A low, male voice sounds thought the cabin like a bullet.
Silence.
Ann’s heartbeat moves faster than Travolta’s hips on the dance floor as she waits to hear that strange voice again. Is she hearing things? Tears sting her eyes and she might lose her bladder control as the deep, penetrating voice sounds from Derek’s roommate.
“Scratch my back, it itches!”
Elise’s face pales and she holds her hand up to her forehead. Not a great sign.
“Scratch me.”
Ann looks to her sister, and then at the door, and then at her sister, trapped on the far side of the cabin by the leg of this hairy, itchy, were-beast of a boy.
She could run. Could bolt through that door and be gone, flying through the night and racing back to her cabin before anyone was the wiser.
She could.
But she won’t. Elise’s eyes, wide for the first time tonight, plead with her sister.
“C’mon, Mommy, please.”
Elise motions with her hands that she should-
Oh. Oh no. No. Ann is so not scratching any part of this guy’s body. She didn’t even want to touch his leg and Elise wants her to-
“Scratch. His. back.” Elise mouths, and pantomimes the motion, in conjunction with the moving of a leg.
“No! You’re the one with all the boyfriends, why do I have to do the scratching?” Ann risks a whisper as she hisses at her sister.
“So help me I’ll dump this Nair over your head in your sleep. And your eyebrows.”
“Why do I have to do-“
“Mom?” The boy asks, his face towards the wall.
Ann holds her breath and Elise freezes, gel bottle full of Nair pointed in menacing fashion at Ann.
“Can you scratch my back? I think the rash is back.”
Oh you have to be joking. Gag me.
“Mom?”
Elise’s hands clench and Ann gulps down a lungful of air through a fear-numbed chest. “Yes.” Oh no, what does his mom call him? Sweetie? Snookums? Poopsie? What do I do? “Yes, it’s me. I’m here.”
Ew, ew, ew. Ann reaches out with the tips of her fingers and grazes the tee on the top of his back, just beneath his neck.
“Lower. That’s not where the rash is.”
What kind of rash? Is it contagious? Ann’s going to vomit. Without question. Bile rises as she moves her hand lower and scratches his mid-back. He wiggles.
Wiggles.
This is so nasty, but she scratches a little bit harder, hating her sister and hoping that whatever the rash is, that it stays firmly on his side of the tee which she scratches.
Elise, empty bottles secured in her bag, steps forward until she’s just on the far side of the leg.
Ann looks down at the leg. Why can’t Elise move it?
As if reading her mind, Elise holds up her hands, hair removal cream smeared all over them.
So it has to be Ann, then. Wonderful. She can do this. With one hand still scratching his back, Ann moves her other hand down the side of the bed and then, before she can think too much of it, she thrusts her fingers through the forest of leg hair and throws his leg back up onto the bed.
“Mom?” His voice more alert now, terror flashes through Ann’s nervous system like a bolt of electricity.
Elise rushes past her and flies out the cabin door, Ann racing behind.
They run. No flashlight, barely a moon, they fly through down the path. Ann’s feet beating the ground and her legs and her lungs and her arms all on fire she could laugh and she could scream but she can’t do anything but move.
“Hey! Where are you girls going?” The voice of a security guard slices through the night.
Elise shouts, “Girl problems! Need tampons quick.”
Girl problems? Dear God, only Elise. He coughs like he’s got a wad of garlic caught in his throat but Ann just keeps running.
Past the sleeping cabins and around the front of the mess hall and across the entrance to the archery fields and back through the winding trails leading back to their own cabins.
When they reach the large maple in front of Elise’s cabin she stops, bending over, adrenaline making her feel sick and feel amazing and then sick again as her heart rate drops.
“I stink so bad right now that not even mosquitos would bite me.” Elise grins, holding up her palms still greased thick with Nair. She falls to her hands and knees on the path, wiping the cream off on some leaves and dirt. “More. Like that. Perfect. Scratch me. I thought I was going to die. The look on your face! And the rash!”
Hysterics. Elise is in hysterics.
“I could have gone to jail! Arrested for trespassing and you think it’s funny?” Ann says, her voice high and wound tight.
“Arrested for trespassing?” Elise cackles. “Do you even hear yourself?”
Ann puts her hands on her hips. “Why do you do this? Pretend like you care and then mock me? I could have left you, Elise, I wanted to, I could have run and left you and your Nair hands trapped! But I didn’t, I toughed it out, for you, and now you have the nerve to make fun of me?”
“Honey, you’re something of a tightass. It’s fine, it’s just who you are, it’s just, your face when he talked about the rash. And who sleep-talks to their mom? And that guard? Just mention the word tampon around a guy and they let you do anything.”
“This is all some game to you.”
“It’s camp, Annie, lighten up.”
“I don’t want to lighten up. We could’ve gotten in real trouble. We’re getting paid to be here, Elise, we’re supposed to be the responsible ones. I should’ve gone right to the director about Derek stealing my underwear and instead I listen to you and almost lose my job! Do you know how hard it is to find a job after you’ve been fired?”
“You didn’t almost lose anything.” She straightens. “Except maybe your dinner when he asked you to go lower.” She erupts into another series of cackles.
“You don’t understand anything, do you? I don’t know why I even bother to tell you anything.”
Ann rips the bag off her sister’s back, gives Elise one last good glare, fills it with rocks and throws the bag in the lake to cover any evidence of their crime.
By the time she heads back to her cabin, Elise’s cabin is silent, and Ann heads back to her own bunk, to lie awake and stare at the ceiling until dawn.
The problem with working as a camp counselor is that the day has a routine that’s unbreakable. So when Ann rises with her alarm, instead of racing to the mess hall to face the consequences of her actions, she has a list of tasks she has to perform.
She walks with her roommate to the bathrooms where they shower and put on their uniforms. Elise is there, her hands red and chapped and swollen. Oh no, Ann completely forgot that Elise is allergic to Nair.
Her legs inch closer when Elise winces while she washes her hands, but instead of throwing her arms around her sister, she turns without saying a word and exists the bathroom, leaving nothing but shampoo-scented steam and the sound of flip flops hitting concrete floors in the space between them.
Then she wakes up the cabins of her assigned campers, hustles them off to the bathrooms, makes sure they get dressed and make their bunks, and finally, after an eternity, hustles them off to the mess hall.
Smells of stale coffee and fake syrup and overcooked eggs hit Ann in the face as she enters the busy room. The boys cabins are always late, and only one group of girls made it here before them. Getting in line for food and half-listening to the giggles of her campers, she sets her tray on the table before her and pushes her French toast around the plate with her fork.
The boys start to file in about ten minutes later, and Ann watches for Derek and his roomie with the mohawk.
At long last, Derek walks in, his eyes swollen and red, hair missing in large, uneven patches along his scalp. It worked! She looks down at her plate, but instead of vindication, her stomach ties itself into knots and another look at his bleary eyes and patchy scalp makes tears prick her own eyes.
Derek sits at a far table, glaring at her with undisguised rage. Ann pushes her French toast a bit more. There’s no way he can know it was her. But-
The door to the hall opens and regular moose of a man struts inside. The director.
Ann’s heart gives a kick and her stomach falls to her toes.
He searches the faces in the hall, and at last, his gaze lands on her. Pointing his knobby, hoof-like finger in her direction, he motions her outside.
The knife, as it is, drops in one great swoop. The second she sees Mohawk outside standing with the director and camp nurse she knows it’s over. “It has to be her. She’s Derek’s ex, he says he dumped her yesterday and she’s mad-“
“That’s enough gossip,” snaps the nurse, a walrus-shaped woman who has no patience for tomfoolery.
“Did you sneak out of your cabin last night and place hair removal cream in Derek’s hair gel?”
Staring at her feet, Ann says nothing.
“That’s got to be her, no one else would want to hurt Derek like that,” Mohawk says, and Ann can’t help but sneak a look at the back of his shirt, wondering if he really has a rash or if it was just a dream.
The director speaks and Ann tunes out everything he says. Why listen? She hears enough. She’s fired. The lecture about breaking rules and lack of responsibility and disappoint she figures she’s going to hear in various forms from at least three different people, so she stands there, eyes burning, chest tight.
“Was anyone else with you?”
She takes a deep breath. “No. It was just me. I was alone.”
The director takes a step back, like he doesn’t believe me, but he lets it drop and she’s dismissed so she can gather up her things.
It doesn’t take as long as she would have thought to pack up her summer. Two dufflebags of stuff. That’s it. She leaves her half-full bottles of shampoo and body wash in the bathroom for campers that might run out, along with her toothpaste, because no matter the amount of punishment she’s about to undergo, mom would never keep her from brushing her teeth.
She sits out beneath an old pine tree by the parking lot, the sticky needles making the skin on her legs itch, playing with a bit of stick that she rips into little bits.
Mom should be here soon, at least that’s what the nurse said when the nurse has called her mother. Mom was going to be livid. Her whole face can turn this wild shade of crimson when she’s either mad or laughing at her shows. If you catch mom after an episode of Laverne and Shirley, her face will stay red for a good fifteen minutes.
Ann hears the sound of footsteps on the trail coming up behind her, but her eyes stay fixed on the cars of the half-empty parking lots, the dandelion fluff wafting through the air, the sounds of crickets and summer bugs calling to each other as the sun warms.
“You can just go back, you know.” Elise. Was there any doubt?
“No, I can’t, I’m fired.”
“Annie, you’re not fired. I am.” Elise throws her own duffle on top of Ann’s two. “I told them it was all me, and I even have the rash to prove it.” She holds up her hands, covered in red bumps from the Nair.
“Well, that was stupid.”
“I know.” Elise sits down next to her in the pine needles, the sun through the needles making dappled shadows over her face, her long hair pulled back into two braids running down either side of her back.
Ann grabs another twig, picking it apart until the green of the bark sticks to her fingers.
“Why are you still here, Annie? Go back, the job’s still yours if you want it. And you have to see Derek’s hair.”
“I did.” She smiles. “He looks totally ridiculous.”
“Totally.” Elise echoes.
Ann doesn’t move, and when a familiar old wood-paneled station wagon pulls into the lots, she stands, holding out her hand to help her sister to stand. “Come on, let’s go home.”
Duffles in hand, they walk to the car, side by side.