My heart sinks. Of course he remembers. He was right behind me on the log when I slipped and took a nosedive into the creek and got a deep scratch on the palm of my hand on the way down. It shouldn’t have been a big deal — wouldn’t have been, if my mom hadn’t found out. The camp nurse got the bleeding stopped and closed it up with a butterfly bandage. Everything was fine until a photograph of me and Will doing crafts showed up on the Outdoor School website. In the photo I was laughing at Will’s dip candle, a lumpy, melty-looking affair upon which he’d drawn a screaming face so it looked like a dying snowman. But god forbid my mother notice that I was having the time of my life — not when the bandage on my hand was in full view.

“I’m still bummed I missed archery,” I say, trying to joke. But really, missing archery was the least of my problems. The problem was Mom driving to camp to take me to the ER, Mom melting down at the hospital in Nowheresville, Oregon and having to get a doctor to treat her for a panic attack, Mom upset to tears that the Outdoor School hadn’t called her about my minor injury, Mom insisting I couldn’t go back to camp because all it would take is one strain of flesh-eating bacteria to enter my wound and kill me, Mom taking the rest of the week off so she could make sure I didn’t die of an inconsequential cut that didn’t even leave a scar.

All of that without what I came home to, which was the smell of bleach so strong it nearly knocked me over when I entered the house, and Mom having gone through my room and thrown out a bunch of old blankets and stuffed animals in my absence because they were “contaminated” and might infect my hand. Later that week I overheard her on the phone with one of her Stitch & Bitch friends telling them how glad she was that I’d come home because she couldn’t sleep while I was gone, even before I got hurt. Guilt rises up fresh. How can I ever leave when that’s what happens in only two days?

“Have you thought about talking to your dad about her?” Will asks.

“We haven’t really talked much since he left,” I say. It seems unlikely that he doesn’t know how bad things are with Mom, but I can’t remember if she was different before he left. Sometimes I wish I had a sibling — someone to compare notes with to build a more complete picture of my family history. A person to lean on and share the burden with when things with Mom get hard.