Don't Ever Change (27 page)

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

“WHAT SHOULD WE
talk about?” I ask the girls. We’re sitting around a circular wood table, squeezing puffy paint onto a giant poster board.

“Coyotes,” Jenna says.

“Not coyotes.”

“Mountain lions,” Maggie says. “Or, um, bobcats.”

“How about our par rents?” Alyssa says, pointing to the sign, which I now notice reads
PARRENTS DAY
; another error, another omen of the curse.

“Lila wrote a poem,” Renee says, and then Lila says, “And Renee wants to read it out loud.”

“You wrote a poem?” I say, clapping glitter all over my lap.

“It’s called ‘Bad Day,’” Lila says, and then Renee says, “No, it’s called ‘
The
Bad Day.’”

“Don’t read it,” Alyssa says.

I shoot her a look. “Alyssa!”

“What? It sounds upsetting.”

“Wait—
is
it upsetting?” I ask Lila, a little worried myself.

Lila shrugs.

“Read it,” Zoe says. “Read it, read it, read it,” and then all the girls are chanting.

Renee stands and pulls a folded piece of blue construction paper out of her pocket. A poem on blue construction paper? It’s sad already. Renee clears her throat, shakes the bangs from her eyes, takes a small sip from her water bottle. The girls watch and wait, and I watch and wait too, afraid to give any constructive construction paper criticism.

I’ll just lie. No matter what, I’ll lie.

“Okay,” Renee says. “Ready?”

This is true suspense, actually—the kind I’ve never been able to write myself.

“‘The Bad Day,’” she begins, “by Lila Kissling.”

Lila claps.

Renee goes on: “Camp is a place where the kids all race. Where the sky is sunny and the counselors are funny and it’s green like money on the dodgeball field.”

Alyssa starts giggling a little, so I step on her toe.

“But on a bad day the sky is gray and there’s nothing to say and there’s nowhere to play and it feels like May when we were still in school.

“We walk but don’t talk and think about the clock and wish we had chalk to draw on the sidewalk or be like birds in a flock, flying far, far away.”

“Jesus,” Alyssa whispers, and I whisper back, “Oh my God.”

“What do you do when you feel so blue but can’t go to the zoo? How do you smile when it takes a while like running the mile or crossing the Nile like in the Bible?”

The Bible?!

I can’t deal. I start to spin out, remembering Courtney and the poetry she used to scrawl in secret in her black leather notebook.

“What’re your poems about?” I asked once.

She bent down so we were eye level and said, without any feeling, “Whores.”

Whores! I was eight. The word alone gave me nightmares.

If only Lila’s poem was about whores. Whores would be much less devastating than this Biblical torture.

Renee continues, “You’d rather be alone or on the phone or giving your dog a bone or licking an ice cream cone or—”

“Renee,” I interrupt, at my limit. “You have to stop.”

“Why?” Renee asks, and Lila says, “It’s only halfway done.”

“
Because . . .
I want the ending to be a surprise for everyone when they read it in our zine. This was like the movie preview: you give us a little bit as a teaser and leave us wanting more.”

“Pbbth,
more
,” Alyssa says, with an overdose of sarcasm.

I ignore her and turn to the rest of the group for affirmation. “Right, you guys?”

Their eyes are empty, drained by rhyme.

“Curl Powder,” I say, but no one says it back.

This is what it feels like to try and
not
succeed, to try and to fail. To utterly bomb. I scramble for ideas on how to turn this around.

“Free play!” I shout, but still no one moves. “Free play!” I shout louder, and finally the girls lurch to life and hustle outside. I can’t do anything but bury my head in my arms, which are covered in dried glue and paper scraps.

Alyssa puts her hand on my shoulder. “Crying through confetti,” she says, “like Gatsby in
The Great Gatsby
.”

It’s kind of a profound thing to say. I tell her so.

“That book is dumb,” Alyssa says. “The twentieth century was so
emo
.” Then she walks away, phone in hand, texting.

I take out my phone and call Foster’s number.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hi.”

“Where are you?”

“Craft Shack. Where are you?”

“We’re not supposed to be on our phones,” Foster says.

“I know.”

“Eva.”

And I know he doesn’t mean to, but the way he says my name sounds somehow sensual, like he’s reclining, lying down.

“Can you ditch the boys for a minute? Leave them with Corey.”

“Okay, but only one minute.”

“Meet me in the break room.”

Then I run, faster than I’ve run in my life, a real Camp Champ, a real Camp Tramp, ready to repair and reroute the Eva/Foster Arc. When I get to the break room, Foster’s already there, in the dim light, clicking and unclicking a pen. He doesn’t say anything but instantly I feel it—true sexual tension—the kind we’ve never had, not as rivals, not as frivals, not as archenemies, not as co-counselors or friends. This is the daydream stuff; the heart of so many young adult novels, where first love blossoms outside the bunkhouse, after a sweaty three-legged race. Everything’s hot and dizzy and everyone’s loose and lusty, and touching him is like two liquids joining to form one warm black puddle. . . .

“Will you take your shirt off?” I say.

Foster shakes his head no, and then he lets out a depressed sigh, which comes out all heavy and weirdly is almost as good, almost as poetic, as taking off his shirt. I reach behind me for the doorknob and feel for a lock. It has a lock! I lock it.

“Fos-ter,” I say, pronouncing both syllables, then command him one word at a time: “Take. Off. Your. Shirt.”

I take mine off too, for encouragement, fully aware that my sports bra is stained with perspiration and a crude, half-finished pink and turquoise lanyard is hanging from my neck, drawing attention to the starchy white of my untanned stomach. What’s next? I wonder, sliding my shorts off to reveal a mismatched bikini bottom, still crunchy with sand from Courtney’s beach bag. I slip my fingers under the elastic.

“Don’t,” Foster says. He hesitantly steps closer, reaches a hand toward me.

I grasp it, guide it to my sports bra. But instead Foster pulls his hand away, then begins picking bits of confetti off my skin.

“Stop doing that,” I say.

He wipes disinterestedly at some glitter on my cheek.

“Lick it off,” I say, then laugh because it sounds corny and desperate, and not kinky at all.

“Should I even ask where your group is?” Foster says. He’s unamused, still brushing at my neck and cheeks, peeling off sparkly shreds of paper.

“They’re off on their own.”

“You are a bad counselor.”

“Definitely bad,” I say, laying my head on Foster’s shoulder.

“What are we doing here?” he says.

“Well, we’re never going on a real date,” I say, feeling more emo than Fitzgerald, more emo than the twentieth century. “Did you ever have a crush on me in high school?” I ask.

“No.”

“Just say yes.”

“Because it’s better for your story?” he asks.

I nod.

“Then fine,” he says. “Write down: since freshman year.”

“Do you want this one?” I ask. This is the stuff good short stories are made of. The stuff Shakespeare and the other classics skip over because it’s too stupid, too sad, too tragic.

“You can have it,” Foster says. “You’ll write it how you want to remember it anyway.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

AN HOUR LATER
I’ve got my shirt back on, and I’ve gathered the girls by the drinking fountain.

“We’re going to finish strong today,” I tell them. The girls look tired. Alyssa looks extra tired.
Eat a cheeseburger!
, I think, not because I want to, but because it’s the only professional advice I’ve been given by someone whose job it is to know how to improve people.

“Shake it off!” I say, throwing my arms in the air, shaking them like crazy.

“You’re so weird,” Alyssa says.

“
You’re
weird,” I say, then grab her arms and shake them. Soon the whole group has joined in, shaking, jumping, flailing like little crazies, giggling.

An instant later Jessica starts crying, swearing she got stung by a bee. But now I’m invigorated, I’m
on
this problem. “Alyssa,” I call out, “take the girls up to the stalls for horseback riding, I’ll come there once we’re done with the nurse.” I stoop down and let Jessica climb up on me, promising she can piggyback all the way to the first aid station.

But Alexis Powell wants to come too.

“No horses,” she says. “Uh-uh.”

Jessica whimpers in my ear, wrapping her arms around my neck, moaning how much it stings.

“Alexis,” I say, as stern but sympathetic as possible, “it’s just a horse, okay? You’re going to be fine.”

She shakes her head.

I swear to her I’ll be there in ten minutes, less even, but as I shoo her off to catch up with the others, an expression I don’t fully recognize—of what, pure dread?—flashes across her face.

“Go on,” I tell her, gently but with a counselor’s insistence. Finally she goes.

By the time we’re at the nurse’s station, Jessica’s stopped crying, but she starts up again when the nurse pulls out some tweezers to remove the stinger.

“It won’t hurt, sweetie,” the nurse says, rubbing iodine on the wound, which is small but swollen and red.

For a second Jessica literally faints—not from the pain but from the anticipation.

“It’s too hot today,” I tell the nurse, trying to sound like I notice these things. “Maybe she should stay inside and cool off, avoid heat stroke?”

The nurse agrees, but Jessica shakes her head no, gripping the sleeve of my shirt until her knuckles are white. It feels good to be needed, but we’ve been gone twenty minutes; I’ve got to get back to the group.

“Stay and rest,” I tell her. Amazingly, she obeys.

I jog across the lawn, past the water fountain, the basketball court, a younger girls’ group finger painting. It’s only when I reach the foot of the hill that I hear screaming. I sprint to the top of the ridge, and then I see the scene: two counselors, plus Macy and Rico, the horse trainers, all trying to heft Alexis onto a spotted brown Clydesdale. She’s screaming, pulling up her camp shirt to cover her face, her little fat stomach exposed for all to see. There’s laughing, plenty of it, and some horrified faces, some concerned faces, some bored, blank faces.

It’s yet another moment of realizing that I need to be more like Foster, more clued in. I should
know
who’s allergic to what and who takes karate and who has a celebrity mom and who needs an insulin shot before lunch and who has a twin brother in another group and who, absolutely, with the
fear of God inside of her,
does
not
want to ride the horses.

I rush over to the Clydesdale and rip Alexis out of the saddle, stretching her shirt back down. She sobs into my chest, inconsolable. I position her fat little body behind me, sheltering her.

“What were you thinking?!” I yell at Macy and Rico, at Alyssa and the rest of my girls. “What were you thinking?!”

Then I heft Alexis into a sloppy piggyback position and hike her down the hill. It takes some serious effort; by the bottom, I’m definitely out of breath. I march her to the shady spot she likes—the one she wanders off to during free play, close to the sandbox under the big elm—and give Alexis two juice boxes: hers and the one for Jessica.

I tell her she doesn’t have to do anything she doesn’t want to do.

“I swear,” I say. “If you don’t want to do it, I won’t make you.”