As I Am (2 page)

“You two are early this year. Come to stake claim to the
best rooms in The Lodge?” he questions as he loads our bags in the back of the twelve-passenger van.

“Yep! There are only bunk beds in the other cabin and I am
not
sleeping on a bunk bed this year. Last year MaryAnn Hodge slept on the top bunk and tossed and turned all night. I was awake half the night, scared that the whole thing was going to come crashing down on me. This year I’m getting a bed in one of the two-person rooms,” Addison says with conviction. I agree. It will be nice to have just two people in a room, and even better for it to be just Addy and me. We’ve shared a room forever and she’s the only person I feel like I can change in front of with total freedom.

It only takes a few minutes of rolling up dust on the dirt road before we’re pulling up to the Lodge. The Lodge was built about
ten years ago when the camp grew so much that the Fellows had to hire twice as many college student counselors to keep up with the increase in campers.

The Lodge is gorgeous! It has six bedrooms, four bathrooms, a common area, and a little kitchen, not that any of us are doing any cooking. The Fellows make sure that they don’t serve stereotypically disgusting camp food. It’s made for the masses, but it’s all really good.

At about three thousand square feet, The Lodge is just slightly bigger than the cabin for the adult, lead counselors on the other side of the camp, closer to the student cabins. It sleeps sixteen: two rooms with two bunk beds and four rooms with two single beds. Eight boys and eight girls. Mr. and Mrs. Fellows have a smaller, private cabin, just two bedrooms, also on the other side of the camp near the lead counselor. They thought it would be good to flank the students with counselor cabins to help keep the nighttime shenanigans to a minimum.

The first
-year counselors’ cabin didn’t have a name until last year when we tossed out ideas over one of the last campfires of the summer. One of the second-year counselors joked that the first-year cabin was the gateway to the awesomeness of The Lodge. It seemed fitting, and Gateway Cabin was created.

“What the?” Addy cries.

“Oh, did I forget to tell you that some folks beat you here?” Jim laughs. Sitting on the front porch of The Lodge are Matthew and Pete. They roomed together last year and clearly had the same idea as we did.

“When did you guys get here?” I call, stumbling out of the van.

“About an hour ago,” Matthew says. “The early bird gets the worm!”

“Well, you better not have taken the corner room with the perfect view of clearing!” Addy demands with a smile. “We called dibs on it last year!”

“Oh, no, you were very clear on that last summer and I had no desire to put my life at stake. It’s yours!” Pete tells her.

We exchange hugs and the guys help us bring our bags upstairs. The light wood throughout the cabin is shiny from varnish and the whole house smells fresh and clean, just like I remember. All the counselors stay a few days after the kids go home at the end of the summer to do things like strip beds and wash and fold sheets, clean bathrooms, sort lost and found items, but the Fellows bring in a cleaning company to give all of the cabins a good scrub
-down before everyone arrives so they look and feel fresh.

“How was your year
?” I ask the guys.

“It was great, actually,” Pete says. “I took an extra class each semester so I’ve only got
eighteen credit hours to finish out my senior year. The schedule isn’t out yet, but I’m hoping to do nine and nine each semester to keep things as stress free as possible.” Pete is Mr. Outdoors. Anything having to do with nature and fitness, he’s your man. He’s getting his degree in health sciences and is really passionate about teaching these kids about how they can be healthy and fit through fun. It’s nice that there are actually a few of us here who care about the experience these kids have. Most of the counselors aren’t that invested.

“My year wasn’t as academically exciting, but Jeffrey and I
made things official,” Matthew says with a face-splitting grin.

“I’d like to think I played a part in that,” I tell him. He looks at me sideways. “Hello! How many times did I walk into my room to find you sitting on the floor chatting away with Jeffrey in there so you could have some privacy?” We aren’t allowed to have our cell phones with us when we’re with the kids, but at night it’s total
ly okay and Matthew took full advantage of that.

“Ok
ay, okay … I’ll give you some credit!” he laughs. “Alright … here we are. I’d hold out my hand for a tip but I know Addison only pays in booze, so …”

“Yes, I’m sure you’ll get more than you’re due at tonight’s bonfire,” she quips.

“I knew we could count on you!” Pete says. “Alright, man, we better get back down there. We
are
the official welcoming committee.”

“See you later,” Addison and I say together, then laugh. It’s a twin thing.

“This view is amazing, Addy! Way to go calling dibs!” I tell her as I stare out the window. The rooms in all the cabins are simple. This room has two single beds with white sheets and navy blue comforters. There’s a dresser next to the door and a nightstand with a small lamp in between the beds. There’s also a closet, but we don’t hang anything up. With a summer wardrobe of shorts and T-shirts during the day and jeans and a hoodie at night, there’s nothing nice enough to hang, so we just store our suitcases in there.

“Which bed do you want?” I ask her, eyeing the one closest to the window. I’m sure it’s the one she wants but I’m hoping she’ll let me have it.

“I was actually going to talk to you about that,” she begins. “I think we should
not
room together.”

“What? Why not?” I ask with confusion. “We always room together.”

“That’s why. Because we
always
room together. We’re twenty now, Kinley. Don’t you think it’s time we start doing some things separately from each other?”

“We do
… I mean, we have different majors, so we don’t do
everything
together,” I say in defense.

“C’mon, Kin. We room together at school, we have the same class hours so we eat breakfast
and dinner together. You hang out with me and my friends …”

“They’re my friends, too, aren’t they?” I
protest.

Addy breathes a heavy sigh and looks at me with sad eyes. “You can do this. We
need
to do this, and I thought this would be a good place to start. We made our friends together here last summer, so they’re
our
friends.”

I would argue Addison’s thoughtlessness in making me think we were rooming together, that I was going to get a premium room with her this year, but … that’s Addison. She tends to not always think about how the things she does
affect me. She doesn’t mean anything by it. She just doesn’t think.

“The welcoming committee told me the Carmichael girls were here,” we hear a voice yell down the hall. “What’s up
, bitches?” Amy Geller appears at the door in all her beauty with her shoulder-length, light-brown hair and light-green eyes. I’d have to hate her if she wasn’t also the most fun and the sweetest person I’ve ever known, next to Addy.

“Hey
, Amy! Look, you could room with Amy,” Addy says to me in a perky tone that makes me want to smack her.

“Yeah! Room with me before I get stuck with MaryAnn Hodge, the restless sleeper! We’ll take the other primo room and let the others duke it out for the single beds in the bunk room!” Amy smiles excitedly at me and I think that maybe Addison has a point. We
will
need to start breaking things up a bit, and here seems the best place to do it. The friends we have here are
our
friends. They didn’t become my friends because they’re Addy’s, so it’s not like I won’t have anyone to hang out or spend time with when we're not working. I don’t ever hang out with Addy’s friends if Addy isn’t there.

“You know
… I think it’d be fun. You’re right, Addison. It’s time.” Addy hugs me and smiles sweetly. If we were ever going to start separating, Addy was going to have to be the one to initiate it. She’s always been much stronger than me.

“Awesome! I’m going to snag the room before Jim gets back with more people.” Amy toddles down the hall with her backpack and suitcase while I pull my things together.

“It’s going to be really good for both of us. You’ll see, Kin,” Addison tells me.

“I’m sure you’re right. You’re usually right,” I say with an unsure smile. In my mind I know that Addy is right, but it just feels weird. We’ve never been in the same place and not roomed together. But, I think
it could be great. Amy is awesome. We had a blast together last year and kept in touch since, so I know it’s going to be a ton of fun this year, too.

Addy grabs my suitcase while I put my camera bag and backpack over my shoulder and follow her down the hall. Amy has already picked the bed closest to the door, so that means I get the one by the window, which is a nice sign of things to come.

An hour later the rest of the little group of friends Addy and I made last year have all arrived – Carrie, Bridget, Dave, and Cal – along with most of the group that was with us but that I didn’t get to know too well. Bridget goes to the same college as MaryAnn Hodge and apparently she got an internship at the White House this summer so she won’t be here. Seth Franklin got kicked out of school for a reason so mysterious we’re not even allowed to
mention
him. This leaves two beds available in The Lodge. Mr. and Mrs. Fellows can choose to let a first-year counselor into The Lodge, but only if they’re upperclassmen. I don’t know what the makeup is of the newbies, but we’ll find out in about an hour when they’re scheduled to arrive.

“Hey
, Kinley,” I hear the confident male voice say from behind me in the kitchen where I’ve been organizing snacks while everyone else gets reacquainted. I turn around quickly to find Cal Harper standing there, smiling at me. “How are you?” he says as he initiates a hug. I hug him back in reflex but am taken off-guard by his strong arms. I have to lift up onto my toes to put my arms around his neck.

“I’m great,” I stutter
, thinking back to my conversation with Addison about her surety that the stars had somehow aligned and Cal Harper was now curiously into me. “How were finals? I haven’t heard from you since we both had to go into the study cave.”

“Yeah, sorry about that. I meant to email you before I left campus, but things were nuts and by the time I got home my mom had a hundred things she wanted to do with me before I left for here. Finals were a bitch, but they were good. Hard to believe I’m headed into my senior year. Even harder to believe I’m actually going to graduate in four years!” he laughs and his smile is like heaven on earth. I’m not surprised at all that he’s finishing his degree in four years. Cal is
majoring in engineering at Notre Dame and has been at the top of his class since his freshman year. He’s so brilliant he’s working with some of the leading minds in making wind turbines more efficient under turbulent conditions. He also got a full-ride football scholarship. He puts whatever some people consider “the total package” to shame.

“Oh, it’s ok
ay. I was busy with finals, too, and you know … I figured you were, you know, busy.” I wish Addy had never said anything to me about Cal supposedly being into me. I can barely put together a coherent statement around him now.

“Well, I was thinking I could make it up to you,” he says, shifting his body and resting his hand behind me on the counter. “Maybe we could make up for those lost emails tonight after the bonfire.”

“Um, sure,” I tell him nervously.

“Great! Well, I’m going to go say hi to everyone.” He backs himself toward the doorway into the common area. “Don’t stay in here too long, ok
ay?”

“Ok
ay.” Two syllables are all I can muster. Cal never acted that way around me last year, so Addy must be right. This is insane.

“Hey! You coming? The new counselors are here!” Addy says, poking her head into the kitchen. “I hope there’s a super-hot upper classman newbie they can put in with us!”

Addison grabs my hand and drags me out onto the front porch of The Lodge. It’s customary for the second-year counselors to get here and settled first so we can greet the first-year counselors. I remember pulling up and seeing all the second-year counselors standing on the porch, yelling and cheering for us. It made all the unknown things about Lake Hollis seem a little less intimidating.

Gateway Cabin is smaller but still sleeps
sixteen. With two bunk beds in each of the four rooms, it’s crowded. Eighteen college students file out of the same van Jim drove us down in plus another one. This confirms that the two empty beds in The Lodge will be filled. By whom remains to be seen.

One by one
nine guys and nine girls throw their backpacks over their shoulders and drag their duffle bags or suitcases behind them as we yell and cheer at their arrival. Most of them are smiling and yelling and cheering with us. Some of them aren’t sure what to make of our antics, but all of them seem happy to be here.