The Lost Summer (4 page)

Fred handed the torch to Marjorie and walked to the top of the fire pit, so that the lake was at his back. We watched expectantly as he raised the dented brass bugle to his lips. He puffed out his cheeks and launched into a familiar tune. We cheered as his face turned red and his chest expanded for each rolling refrain.

At the end, a breathless Fred lowered the bugle. “Camp Southpoint's fifty-seventh summer is now officially in session!” he called proudly to the tops of the pines.

“Wooo!” Girls whooped and yelled and clapped. Katie Bell put her fingers in her mouth and let out an ear-piercing whistle.

Fred traded Marjorie the bugle for the torch and raised the orange flame high above his head. “As most of you know,” he said, smiling out at ninety-three campers and twenty-one counselors—his one hundred fourteen daughters for the summer, “we like to start our Southpoint summers with a ceremonial bonfire. Marjorie and I”—Fred glanced back at his wife, who smiled as she rubbed Butter's grizzled old head—“expect this camp session to be the best yet. We hope and pray that it will be happy and healthy and full of fun. And we like to take this night to remember—and to show our first-year campers—what it is that makes this place so special: friendship.”

Though Fred never asked—it wasn't a religious camp— we bowed our heads as if we were at church. I suppose, in that moment, in a way we were. For me, this ground was more hallowed than any pew I'd ever been forced into.

Fred continued. “Mother Nature, thank you for holding us in your embrace as we come together for another camp session. We ask that you keep us safe, shelter us from the storms, and lift us up in the spirit of friendship and family.”

“Amen,” a few girls murmured reflexively under their breath.

Silently, Fred took the torch and very slowly circled the firewood stacked like a teepee in the center of the clearing, touching the flame to the dry wood. As it crackled and hissed, gray smoke curled up into the clear sky. Katie Bell and I both held out our arms to compare goose bumps.

When the bonfire had caught and was starting to burn strong, Fred threw the torch into the flames and went to stand again next to Marjorie. In her hand she held a metal pail with the words “Camp Southpoint” stenciled on it, filled with seeds and dried corn kernels. We knew the routine. Wordlessly, the entire camp lined up in front of Marjorie, so that every camper and counselor could reach into the bucket for a handful. One by one, we would file past the fire and reverently toss our seeds into the flames. We were “sowing our dreams for the summer,” Marjorie said. I always thrilled at the snap-crackle-pop that they made.

After sacrificing my seeds to the fire, I took my place next to Katie Bell in the circle that was forming around the bonfire. By now it was burning brightly against the lowering dusk.

When the last girl had gone, Fred and Marjorie threw their seeds into the fire and took the hands of the campers next to them so that the entire camp stood hand in hand in an unbroken circle.

The older counselors nodded and, as one, we began to sing. First we would sing Southpoint's official song, the one written by Fred's father when
his
father started Southpoint. Southpoint girls had sung these lyrics at every opening and closing ceremony for fifty-seven years.

“Hailto Camp Southpoint, near our hearts to thee!” Our voices grew stronger and louder as we sang and the words flooded back from the corners of our minds, where they'd been stored all year. “The place where our hearts abide, a haven from the rising tide. Oh Southpoint, oh Southpoint, your friendship comforts me. . . .”

First-year campers watched and listened, absorbing the words as the older girls sang by heart, making faces around the circle at their friends, and squeezing each others' hands.

When the final solemn verse was sung, it was time for the tearjerker—the other song we sang at both opening and closing ceremonies, “Friends.” Only, at the end of camp, the song's words would be much more poignant, because we'd know it would be another year before we sang them again.

Our volume swelled as the chorus started. Lips were trembling. My vision blurred as the tears welled, and when Katie Bell squeezed my hand, I was a goner. One lone tear tumbled down my cheek, followed in quick succession by a river of its fat siblings.

If it had been only me blubbering like an idiot, I would have felt stupid, but directly across the circle I saw Winn, Sarah, and Lizbeth, all hand in hand and all crying. Knowing that others felt the same happiness and relief and sadness—that in just five short weeks it would all be over for another forty-seven—made me feel okay.

At the end of the song, the circle broke as girls turned to one another, hugging and laughing and wiping the tears from their cheeks, reminding each other that this was the
happy
time we sang this song. We had a whole Southpoint summer ahead of us.

It was growing dark now. The night was almost velvety around us. We took our seats again around the light of the campfire. A few counselors, including Winn, bunched close to the fire so we could see them as they led us in other, more boisterous, camp songs. We sang “Boom Chicka Boom,” “Do Your Ears Hang Low?” “Titanic,” “The Song That Never Ends” (it did, finally), “Have You Ever Gone Fishin'?” “A Boy and a Girl in a Little Canoe” (I loved that one), and “The Cutest Boy I Ever Saw.” All songs I knew by heart.

Across the still darkness of the water, through the trees, I could just make out a twin to our fire, burning alluringly on the opposite side of the lake. It was Brownstone's opening ceremony, and I found myself thinking of Ransome. I wondered if he had, like me, made a wish as he threw his handful of seeds into the fire. My wish, of course, cast him in a starring role, although I couldn't imagine I'd play even a bit part in his. I wondered if the boys were also singing songs. I wondered if Ransome was leading, or if he sat, content like me next to his best friend, letting the familiar words and the night wrap around him like a soft old blanket.

After Evening Gathering, Katie Bell and I sat on my cabin porch talking and watching the campers wander up from the Bath. We were already a good way into the candy stash that Katie Bell had brought from home and that was supposed to last us five weeks.

Katie Bell was convulsing, she was laughing so hard. “And then,” she gasped, remembering the time I'd been cast by my cabin as Austin Powers for an Evening Gathering game of “Guess Who,” although I'd never even seen the movies, “you did this awkward pelvic thrust when you said, ‘Yeah, baby.'” She stood up for a wildly spastic impersonation of me doing a spastic impersonation.

“Stop!” I pleaded. My stomach hurt from the deep silent laughter shaking my body. That Evening Gathering had been one of the more mortifying moments of my life.

We were wiping our eyes and catching our breath, when Tattoo blew. Almost time for lights out. Heaving a dramatic sigh, Katie Bell tromped off to Cabin Nine with a “G'night, Hel.”

She had just left when Winn, passing by on the way to her cabin, stopped in front of my porch.

“Hey,” she said.

Behind me I could hear the scrape of my campers' trunks and the squeak of their bedsprings as they got ready for bed. I had lit the old-fashioned kerosene lantern that hung from the center rafter so they could see, and Winn was bathed in the yellowish glow that escaped through the cabin's open doorway and screened windows.

“Hey,” I said. “What's up?”

“I wanted to let you know that a few counselors are going down to the riflery range tonight,” Winn whispered in a low, confidential voice.

“The riflery range?”

“Sometimes we meet Brownies there to hang out after Taps.”

We'd always wondered what the counselors did when they left us sleeping under the watchful eyes of the CODs (Southpoint code for Counselors on Duty—the two counselors who had to stay around the cabins after Taps in case something happened or a camper got sick.) But it was like thinking about what your parents did before you were born. You wanted to know, but maybe you kind of didn't either.

Now that I thought about it, the riflery range was the perfect rendezvous point. It was at the edge of both camps, where their boundaries met, and far enough away from the cabins and the Mansion that you wouldn't have to be afraid of Fred or Abe or the campers hearing you.

“If you wanna come,” Winn offered, “I'll swing by your cabin later. . . .”

My heart spazzed in my chest.
Of course
I wanted to go. Ransome might be there.

“I gotta get to my cabin,” Winn said, hesitating for my answer.

“Yes! Yeah, I want to go,” I stammered. “Will you come get me?”

“Sure. I'll be by after Taps.”

I nodded, and Winn slid away into the darkness.

A
s my hiking boots slushed through the field toward the riflery range, my stomach churned. Other than camp dances, which totally didn't count, this would be my first time hanging out with Brownies.

I had guy friends at home, of course. And there were boyfriends. John, and Tyler before him, and a boy named Alex who lived in my neighborhood. But they weren't Brownies. Brownies were a different species of male entirely. They were a lost tribe of boys who were much cooler, much hotter, and much more elusive than the ones who roamed the real world. They were more desirable for the fact that they were always present but out of reach. At least they had been—until now.

Slightly ahead of me, Winn and Sarah bushwhacked their way through the overgrown grass. We'd left a jealous Lizbeth behind as a COD.

In the near distance, under the squat silhouette of the riflery hut, red pinpoints of light danced in chaotic circles like drunk lightning bugs. It took me a second to realize—as the muffled conversation became clearer and unraveled into individual voices, male and female— that the dancing red lightning bugs were cigarette butts. If Fred caught us sneaking out
and
smoking, he'd surely have no choice but to kick us out. The risk was both nauseatingly scary and electrifying.

“Hey,” a low male voice said as we approached. In the watery moonlight I could make out the owner of the voice as Buzz. It wasn't his real name, obviously, just a nickname, and the only one he used at camp. He was one of the waterfront counselors who came to South-point to take the girls out on the motorboats. He was short and muscley with cropped brown hair, close-set eyes, and a square jaw that reminded me of a bulldog.

He was sitting on the dusty riflery hut floor next to Ransome. My eyes rested on Ransome and then quickly darted away.

“What took y'all so long?” Ransome asked us.

The self-assurance behind his question—the implication that Ransome knew what it took to sneak out of camp late at night, having done it so many times himself he could calculate how long it should take and how easy it should be—kind of thrilled me.

Winn and Sarah settled into spaces left between the guys and the handful of older girl counselors who'd gotten there before us. I suddenly felt like the last one standing in Musical Chairs, turning around and around in my little spot as I hunted for a place to sit. Seeing me spinning like a top, Ransome slid over on one of the rotting, water-stained mattresses we used for campers who had to lie down to shoot the heavy guns.

“Here ya go, Helena,” he said as he readjusted, leaving a tight wedge where I could just barely fit my butt.

I froze, my cheeks burning at the discovery that Ransome knew my name. Was I still wearing my name tag from opening day? I panicked and looked down. I wasn't.

“Thanks,” I stammered, and smiled sheepishly as I squeezed myself onto the mattress. I pulled my knees in tight to keep from crowding him.

“Welcome to the range. It's kinda tight, but we manage.”

I'd seen Ransome a thousand times before, but I realized I could count on two hands the number of times I had heard him speak. His voice was deeper than I'd remembered. He smelled like sweat, but the good kind of sweat—the kind you work up from being outside in the sun all day carrying little girls' trunks for them. There was another smell mingling in there too, and I realized it was dip. A wad of the pungent black stuff, which had always reminded me of mulch, protruded from his bottom lip. As I watched him out of the corner of my eye, he raised an empty Gatorade bottle to his mouth and spit, the brown juice oozing down the side of the bottle. It was gross, but I ignored it. There was not much Ransome Knowles could do that would turn me off. Possibly farting the “Star Spangled Banner” while kicking puppies. Possibly.

I think it was Winn who had the idea to play “Never Have I Ever.” I hadn't played before, so Sarah filled me in. We'd go around the circle, each person saying something he or she had never done, and those who
had
done it had to raise their hands. Normally, Winn explained, it was a drinking game, the purpose of which was to get the “worst” players drunk.

Half an hour later, an older counselor named Marge cocked her head as she tried to think of one no one had said yet. “Never, never have I ever . . . made out in the Craft Shop.”

Since we didn't have alcohol, the purpose of our game was apparently just to call each other out on embarrassing stuff we'd done. Not all of us at the riflery range, however, were so easily embarrassed. A Brownie named Will threw up his hand, followed by Buzz and, grudgingly, Sarah. Winn and a few of the other counselors busted out laughing. I wished I could see their faces better. They knew something I didn't.

“All right. I've got one,” said Winn. She arched an eyebrow and smirked at Ransome. “Never, never have I ever been busted by Abe while hooking up on a camp boat.”

Buzz elbowed Ransome in the ribs, and he reluctantly raised his hand.

“It wasn't during camp!” Ransome protested.

“Are you sure about that?” Buzz goaded.

“I promise.” Ransome was laughing now. I could feel his body shaking next to mine.

It was ridiculous to feel jealous, but I didn't like knowing that Ransome had hooked up with someone— anyone. Even stranger was knowing that everyone else, like Winn, knew about it.

As the game went on, I started to feel like a prude. The exploits admitted by everyone around me were like badges of honor, not scarlet letters. It made me wish I was one of those girls who bent the rules more often, who snuck out at night and answered dares with an attitude that said, “Watch me.” So I got a little carried away in the laughter and once—maybe twice—raised my hand for things I'd never come close to doing. In the moment it didn't seem to matter that I was lying. Out here at the riflery range that smelled like gunpowder and was littered with spent bullet shells, we were a band of thieves creating our own legends.

But it was something I
didn't
raise my hand for, chickening out at the last minute, too scared I might get caught, that got Ransome's attention.

“Lumberjack, you've never been skinny-dipping in the lake?” Winn asked when I was the only one who didn't raise my hand to Sarah's “Never, never.”

I shook my head, my face flushing at Winn's use of the less than flattering nickname in front of Ransome. Never, never had I ever been in the lake after dark. After sundown the waterfront was strictly off-limits to campers.

Now everyone was looking at me. “No.” I heard my voice falter. “Never been skinny-dipping.” I tried to recover with confidence.

“Well, Lumberjack,” Ransome said, raising an eyebrow and spitting again into his dip bottle, “we'll have to change that before the summer's over.”

I thought—but couldn't be sure without seeing his face—that Ransome . . . was flirting. Oh my God, my mind raced. Why? How? What?! I couldn't be making it up. There was an unmistakable attraction or electricity or
something
that flowed across the short space between us.
Say something
, I commanded myself. Don't let this chance slip away.

“Better hurry,” I joked. “We only have four weeks and six days left.” Oh, it was lame—so lame—and a few seconds too late, like I'd been formulating my response too long, but thankfully Ransome laughed anyway.

He turned to grin at me—a huge, beaming smile. For some reason, in the moonlight, what I noticed were his teeth. They were perfectly white and straight, except for one on the side, which stuck out at an angle, disrupting the whole symmetry of his mouth in an adorable, approachable way.

“Well, all right then,” Ransome challenged. “I didn't realize we were on a timetable. Next time we're going skinny-dipping,” he announced, turning to confirm this with the other counselors still there.

My heart thudded so loudly in my ears I was afraid everyone could hear it. “All right then,” I said.

“Got one!” Winn interjected suddenly. “Never, never have I ever . . .”

The night slid by until the game wound down and the cigarettes ran out. People drifted back to their respective camps and cabins, complaining that Reveille would blow in just a matter of hours. Already I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep even for the few precious ones we had left.

Using a flashlight I'd borrowed from Ruby, I helped Winn pluck the cigarette butts from the cracks in the riflery hut's plank floor. Even a single butt left behind would be a giveaway to the first activity group in the morning, so we had to be thorough. Looking for something to put the stinky butts in, I searched the floor and ledges around me.

“Here,” Ransome said, offering his dip bottle. When I reflexively squinched my nose at the disgusting inch of brown viscous liquid in the bottom, he laughed and instead held out his hand. As I tipped my palm to let the butts fall into his, our fingers touched. It was only a second, but again I felt the current pass through me.

“Thanks.” I smiled and quickly looked away, embarrassed at how obvious I felt my attraction had to be.

Ransome put the butts one by one into the dip bottle and, after tightly screwing on the top, slid the bottle into the pocket of his baggy, stained khakis. Buzz was waiting for him on the path back to Brownstone.

“Good night, y'all,” Ransome said, ducking to clear the roof of the hut and loping toward Buzz.

“Sleep tight.” It slipped. It was the last thing my father used to say to me before bed. While my dad had left me, the habit hadn't. I cringed now at how childish it sounded.

But again Ransome surprised me. “Don't let the bedbugs bite,” he called before being swallowed up by the pines and dark. My heart nearly exploded.

“You ready?” Winn asked. Sarah had already left, bored with the final rounds of the game.

“Yep,” I answered, still unable to wipe the smile from my face. Without thinking, I swung the beam of the flashlight around to light our way back to the cabins.

“No,” Winn startled me by saying sharply. She jumped to switch the flashlight's power button off. “Campers might see it,” she explained, sounding apologetic for her brusque tone.

“Oh, right.” My head was swimming with the crazy notion that Ransome wasn't someone I had to just admire from afar anymore. “I wasn't thinking. Sorry.”

“Don't worry.” Winn sighed, entwining her arm in mine and turning us toward the shadowy path back to the cabins. “You'll learn, little grasshopper.”

The only thing I was worried about was seeing Ransome again, but I hoped she was right. As a counselor, there was still a lot I didn't know.