By one o’clock, I am wondering about lunch. I’m not so much hungry as bored. The supplies are running out. All the crepe paper is gone, except for one yellow sheet, not enough to do anything with. The green tape ran out with the last coat hanger stem. Except for our own leis, the job—the supposedly all-day punishment—is done.

Carole sticks her head in the door and then calls outside, “You gotta see this, Sue. You want to come in here?”

They come in together. “Goodness gracious!” Sue is smiling in spite of herself. On every cot and footlocker, piled up in nutty profusion, are lurid bouquets, puffy pastel garlands. Margie’s clean floor is dotted with confetti.

“Gather everything up,” Sue says, “They’ve brought down the golf cart to take everything to the lodge.”

Margie helps load the flowers. She comes back with boxed lunches stacked on her steady arms.

Sara says, “Sue, could you please ask the golf cart guy: What are they saying about us in the outside world? That we’re exiled in Siberia?”

Margie guffaws. What does she know about Siberia? Sue’s face darkens above the flowers she is struggling to contain in her grasp.

The counselors go outside to the picnic table. I half want to join them and see if there’s a breeze out there, but being trapped indoors is part of the punishment I’ve resolved to accept. It really is hot now. The humming fans serve only to mash the thick blanket of air against my body. My sweat has soaked through my clothes, and I’m stuck to my plastic seat.

Denise holds my sandwich to my mouth. I take a bite. It’s cheese on Wonder Bread, but mainly what I taste is the smell of Denise’s baby powder and perspiration. I think about Peggy Jo’s asthma that doesn’t bother her, because I feel like my chest is getting tight.

Peggy Jo tears Dolly’s sandwich into bits and pushes them to the back of her mouth. Even with the lumps of bread in her throat, Dolly is trying to blab. The mess around her mouth makes my stomach reel.

“What about the apple?” Denise asks me.

I can’t bite an apple. “No way.” It’s the first thing I’ve said for hours.

Margie starts to tidy up and goes for Mary’s trash. On Mary’s lap the food lies untouched. She probably doesn’t know it’s there. She’s rocking on her cot and rubbing her earlobe.

“Mary, ain’t you hungry?” Margie takes the sandwich out of the wax paper and gently touches it to Mary’s lips.

The sandwich shoots across the room and rings against the screen opposite. Mary screams, like someone’s beating her.