“Not bad, Spazzo,” Sara says. From across the room, Sue gives her a stern look, but I’m not offended. She winks and keeps on talking.

“The counselors this year seem back to normal. Therapeutic recreation types. You know, in ’68, we were taken over by hippies, with just a few College Republicans, enough to keep the hippies stirred up. It was a trip. On talent night we did protest songs. It was great. Then, last year, it was Jesus Freaks. They were wilder than the hippies. One of my counselors was exactly like that joke that was going around: ‘I used to be messed up on drugs and sex, but now I’m messed up on the Lord.’”

I give a little snort. The joke is new to me. I work my fist around the suitcase buckles, whack them hard, and the suitcase pops open. Then, with a jerk of my sneaker foot, I flip the lid of the footlocker. Inserting fingers into a hole, I hoist up the tray and chuck it onto the bed. One by one, I slam shampoo, soap, hairbrush, and deodorant onto the tray. Hooking the strap of my camera case on my thumb, I swing it, gracefully I think, onto the ledge under the screens. A scrapbook comes next. Then I dump a UNC teddy bear on my pillow. Next I start on the clothes, but all I do is scramble them.

“Margie did a really nice job when she unpacked her stuff,” Sara says, nodding toward the black MR girl. “I think she could get your clothes straight for you.”

Margie looks at my clothes with the corners of her eyes, her close-cropped head bent toward her feet.

“Have you met our new Fearless Leader? I mean Camp Director,” Sara asks. I shake my head no. “He looks like a pretty harmless fellow.”

I’m barely listening. Sara’s talking is getting a bit tiresome. Margie has crept over and is laying out my clothes on the cot, displaying their department-store newness for everyone to see. Careful brown hands smooth the bright white underwear, crisp shirts and shorts, and bouncy T-shirts and lay them in the trunk. She has a system. On the right, panties, shorts, slacks—everything for the bottom half of the body; on the left, bras, shirts—for the top half. The flowery dress befuddles her. After considerable mulling, she rolls it up. In cupped hands, she takes it up, as tenderly as she’d hold a nest of baby birds, and settles it in the gap between the two piles.

“Thank-you, Mar-gie.”