My aunt had sent me off to summer camp when I was eight, claiming that it would be good for me to "get away." I see now maybe she was the one who needed the relief. She told me I'd have a wonderful time and meet lots of girls my own age. She said we'd swim and ride horses and go on nature walks and sing songs around the campfire at night. In dizzying detail, memories passed across my mental screen. It was true about the girls and all the activities. What was also true was that after half a day, I didn't want to be there. The horses were big and covered with flies, hot straw baseballs coming out their butts at intervals. Their muzzles were as soft and silky as suede with little prickles embedded in it, but when you least expected it, they would whip their heads up quick and try to bite you with teeth the size of piano keys. Nature turned out to be straight uphill, dusty and hot and itchy. The part that wasn't dry and tiresome was even worse. We were supposed to swim in a lake with an Indian name, but the bottom was vile and squishy. Half the time I worried there'd be broken bottles buried in the ooze. One false step and I knew my tender instep would be slashed to the bone. When I wasn't worried about slime and sharp rocks, I worried about the creatures gliding through the murky depths, tentacles trailing languidly toward my pale skinny legs. The first night around the camp-fire, after we sang "Kumbayah" about six times, they told me about this poor girl camper who had drowned two years before, and one who'd had an allergic reaction to a bee sting and nearly died, and another who broke her arm falling out of a tree. Also one of the girl counselors had been parked with her boyfriend necking when the radio announcer told about this escaped raving maniac and after they rolled the car window up and drove away quick, there was his hook right in the window. That night I cried myself to sleep, weeping in utter silence so as not to disgrace myself. In the morning, I discovered that I had all the wrong kind of shorts and I was forced to endure a lot of pitying looks because mine had elastic around the waist. At breakfast, the scrambled eggs were flabby and had white parts this girl in my cabin said were made out of unborn baby bird. After I was sick and got sent to the infirmary, there was a twelve-year-old girl who was bleeding, but they said wasn't really hurt. It was just a dead baby coming out of her bottom every month. At lunch, there was carrot salad with dark spots. The next day, I went home, which is where I wanted to be now. I slept poorly.

Chapter 20

Chapter 20