Don't Ever Change (9 page)

“Yeah, but not stupid.”

I hand Alyssa her phone back and call the girls in, and even though I’m telling them to hurry, they’re slow, sluggish or distracted by other sights and sounds: butterflies, a dandelion, animal-shaped clouds rolling by. I call them again and this time I clap, above my head like a coach, and I stamp-stomp too. But the girls don’t react; I have no control over them. Obviously we need a motto that will bring us together somehow. I pull out my notebook and flip through the pages for something I already know, something I’ve already thought of, lived through, and this will work toward solving the Roush Problem too. Motto what you know. What. Do. I. Know.

By the time the girls finally make it back to the rock, they already look bored. I imagine what it’d feel like to hate these girls, and if I eventually did hate them, if that’d make me a terrible person.

“We’re going to have a motto,” I say.

“What’s a motto?” Jessica asks.

“It’s like our own phrase that we say, like a way to say hello or good-bye or good luck or good one or go team, or whatever.”

Hands shoot up; everyone has an idea. Someone says “Boys are toys!” and someone else shouts out, “Wild things!” and then Jenna says, “When you mouth the words ‘F you,’ it looks like you’re saying ‘vacuum,’ so how about Vacuum for our motto, because no one will ever know that it really means F you.”

I look at Alyssa, and she’s trying not to explode laughing. The rest of the girls are scandalized.

“
Orrrr
,” I say, “when you mouth the words ‘I love you,’ it looks like you’re saying ‘olive juice,’ so how about Olive Juice? That’s nicer, I think.”

No one likes Olive Juice.

“But we want it to be secret, right, like how nobody gets what it means but us. Right?”

They all agree, right.

“How about instead of Girl Power we say Curl Powder? We can yell ‘Curl Powder!’ whenever one of us scores at a game or dives off the high dive. And then how about Whirled Peas instead of World Peace, and we can say that when we mean hi or bye or when we all have to meet up back here after free play?”

The girls are silent; they think about this.

“Whirled Peas is cool,” Alyssa says, weighing it. “And Curl Powder is
definitely
cool.”

So that’s what it’s going to be.

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MARCHING THE KIDS
from one recreational destination to another isn’t so bad, but it is kind of exhausting, and not just because it’s ninety degrees and everything’s pretty far apart. It also feels weird for me to encourage anyone to do anything that isn’t brainy or bookish, let alone a bunch of
kids
who just want to
play
. Being at Sunny Skies is forcing me to remember my own childhood, which is the exact
opposite
of what I’m trying to do, which is focus on my future. When I was seven, my favorite game was called Teacher Student, and it involved me crafting long, difficult multiple-choice tests for Ariella Klein, and then only giving her ten minutes to complete them. After the time was up I’d collect her pages, grade them, and stick a glittery star sticker at the top before dismissing her for recess. “The best thing about your job,” my father would say, tossing me a shiny red apple, “is you get your weekends and summers off.” Then he’d wink.

I never got the joke.

I get it now, though. But I’m not teaching anyone. I’m less of a leader than I am just a tour guide for fun, a kid-cattle rancher—which no one in a billion years would’ve imagined me as.

I didn’t really get a chance to talk with Foster during our hour together, or at the pool when our groups swapped places, but when I stop by the nurse’s station to ask for an Advil or three, he’s there and seems excited to see me. He’s waiting for a camper’s insulin shot and makes a joke about me doping for the next big capture the flag game. It’s funny, Foster’s funny, and also sort of calm and caring. I can tell by the way he pours a cup of orange juice for his sad-eyed camper and also by the way he laughs when he realizes I’m digging for excuses not to rejoin my group.

“How are you so good at this?” I say.

“How are
you
so good at
writing
?”

“Practice.”

“I don’t believe you,” he says.

“Foster, how should a counselor be? I’m serious.”

“You’re being it.”

“Yeah, Curl Powder,” I say, without spirit, raising a limp fist in the air. “I just feel like it should come easier, because I’m sort of cool, so shouldn’t a nine-year-old think I’m cool too?”

“Everyone thinks you’re
cool
, Eva,” Foster says, amused.

“I should write about this,” I say. “This is like a real struggle. I’m struggling
for real
.”

“Remember when we read
Heart of Darkness
in Mr. Perry’s class?”

“No,” I say.

“Yes, you do,” Foster says. “Remember that line where Conrad’s like, ‘I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice’?”

“You’re calling camp the
nightmare of my choice
?”

“I guess I am,” Foster says, cracking up.

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen Foster really laugh, like how you laugh around friends—all cackling sounds and contorted faces. When I think back about it, I can’t remember many times Foster let loose and had fun around me. He’s always so self-conscious and, like,
composed
. But maybe that was just Foster trying to impress me, which sounds like it’d be kind of annoying but is actually so sweet. And this is even sweeter: laughing together, away from school, in a totally different
context
, where I can be New Context Eva, seen in a totally new light.

“Anyway,” I say, “I hate that book. I hate all books about ships, and I hate Mr. Perry.”

“You can’t hate that book, it’s a classic,” he says.

“You know what I say to classics? Vacuum! I say Vacuum! to classics.”

“Am I supposed to understand that?”

“Just tell me what you’re writing now,” I say, “because I know you go home and write every day.”

“It’s a short story about a boy who dies on accident.”

“Wait, a boy who dies on
what
?”

“A boy who dies on accident.”

I stop to consider the statement. This is a moment. I’m having a moment, and this is why: Foster says
on accident
, which you can’t say because it’s not correct. The correct phrase is
by accident
, and normally a mistake like that would kill me, drive me insane, but when Foster says
on accident
, I like it. It makes the boy dying seem even more sad, even more accidental, as if there’s this other
kind
of accident and it’s even more horrible and unfair.

But I still can’t stand that there’s a boy dying. Why is anyone dying?! It’s the endless Foster Problem. I guess I like Foster, though, he’s a sympathetic character, and I have to cure him of this ridiculous, endless Foster Problem.

“Listen,” I say, “some people don’t know how to begin things and some people don’t know how to end them.”

“Where would you begin things?”

“In the middle,” I say. “Close to the end.”

“And where would you end things?”

“Not with a death.”

“Why not?” Foster asks, but then his diabetic camper stumbles toward us, holding a cotton ball over the tiny needle hole in his side. The kid is less green but no more coordinated, because he drops his plastic cup of OJ, juice spilling down the front of his Sunny Skies T-shirt. Foster takes him into the nurse’s bathroom, where I can hear him splashing water on the boy, telling him not to worry about getting wet, that now he’ll be nice and cooled off in the sun.
This
is how a counselor should be. I do like Foster! Foster’s a saint! Why were we rivals instead of friends? Why,
on accident
, were we ever such frivals?

“Why not?” Foster says again when he returns with the boy, holding hands, as they follow me out of the nurse’s station into the hot day. “People
do
die,” Foster whispers. “Death
is
an end.”

“Because, Foster!” Then I turn to him and say something I’ve always wanted to say to him, ever since our sophomore year creative writing class with Mrs. Dubrowski, ever since Foster’s first short story about the mailman who gets stabbed in the eye with his own letter opener: “Because aren’t things sad enough already?”

“Your stories are sad,” Foster says.

“My stories are . . .
hard
.”

“And is your life so hard?”

I’m about to answer when Alyssa walks up with the rest of my group. Their hair’s all wet, some of them still wearing bathing suits under their jean shorts. Alexis is holding my clipboard, and Billie’s gripping a clump of rainbow lanyard string, on their way to the Craft Shack. I scan their faces for frowns, dulled senses, disinterest, and notice they’ve all got freckles, every one of them, and a sense of duty floods through me, and I suddenly feel super protective. How many more summers are these girls going to have freckles, and how can
I
make these freckle-filled summers as
fun
as humanly possible?

Alyssa tells me the girls want me to pick out our group’s colors so they can make beaded necklaces in those colors and wear them to the End-of-Day Ceremonies. I suggest pink and turquoise, which they all love, and then, God, I realize I’m actually feeling loyal to the nightmare of my choice. Then Alyssa counts off, “One, two,
three
!” and that’s when they each hold up peace signs and all together yell, “Whirled Peas!”

A few seconds later they wander off, and I feel so sensitive I want to hug Foster because even though I did this, it feels like he did it too.

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AT HOME COURTNEY’S
on the couch arguing with Dad about the same stuff as always, while Mom leans against the counter eating soy chips out of the bag, watching the two of them longingly, like somehow even this aimless afternoon bickering is a precious family moment. When I tell them about the Conrad quote, Dad answers back, “Sure, but that guy will say anything to get on a syllabus,” and Mom chimes in too, something about how the redeeming things in life aren’t happiness and pleasure but the deeper satisfactions that come from struggle. Then she brings up F. Scott Fitzgerald, who wrote about Gatsby and guilt and tycoons and other Classic stuff. Mom actually had a cat when she was little named the Grrr-eat Catsby, and Dad always tells us about his idea for a cookbook called
Recipes for Disaster
. Whenever I think about that, I think about how people always say babies are so cute, but parents can be just as cute sometimes.

Courtney doesn’t think so; when I go upstairs my sister follows me, shutting the door behind us.

“I’ve got two thousand saved,” she says, “but Dad’s making me put it toward that stupid scratch on his car instead of letting me use it for Amsterdam.”

“Mom and Dad were being so cute,” I say. “Did you hear when Dad made that syllabus joke? I could
potentially
miss them a lot.”

“Potentially,” Courtney says. “But Dad’s taking my money.”

“Yeah, but you hit that guy’s speedboat.”

“Like a hundred years ago.”

“Dad’ll forget,” I say. “He’s literally forgotten every single thing that’s ever happened. And Mom doesn’t care. She’s hit, like, thirteen mailboxes just this year, and she hates Dad’s car.”

“That’s actually helpful,” Courtney says, encouraged.

“Hey, I’m on a serious roll today,” I tell her.

Then Courtney leaves for a second. When she comes back she’s holding the Lonely Planet guide to Amsterdam and sits next to me on the bed. As she flips through the pages, showing me stuff, pointing to everything, her whole face lights up—her whole body even. It’s the first time I’ve been able to tell how Amsterdam really means the world to her—the whole lonely planet to her—and the appeal isn’t just that Amsterdam’s exotic and in Europe but because it’s its
own thing
. It’s got its own flavor, which seems obvious—because doesn’t everywhere?—but that’s what Courtney’s attracted to: the substance of what the place truly is.