If you’re interested, get back in touch with me. I hope to hear from you.

Carson Buchwald

CEO and founder, Box Box

“It’s what’s inside that counts!”

Well. This was a development.

July 7, 1978

7:30 a.m.

THE MORNING’S PA BLAST RATTLED THROUGH THE TREES, STIRRING the birds.

“Good morning, Camp Wonder Falls! Welcome to another beautiful day!”

Brandy Clark shoved her face into her pillow and pressed it against her ears, trying to block out the announcement, the light, the birds, the sound of ten kids waking and laughing. Too soon. Too much morning.

Just a little more sleep. Please.

Brandy had been up five times during the night with Claire Parsons. Claire was eight and scared of going to the bathroom by herself. The bathroom was outside, about thirty feet away from the cabin, and Claire had to pee more than any child alive. Brandy had tried everything—cutting off Claire’s supply of bug juice after dinner, taking Claire to the bathroom three times before lights out, offering to give Claire something to pee into on the cabin porch so she wouldn’t have to go out to the toilets. If you told Claire to go by herself, she would stand by your cot and poke you with a wet finger until you took her. (Why was it always wet? From what?)

Usually, Brandy split this duty with her fellow counselor, Diane McClure, but Diane had never come back from her midnight rendezvous with her boyfriend.

“We’re going to have a beer and a smoke,” Diane had said the evening before. “I’ll be back by two. Promise.”

Sure.

“This morning we have pancakes in the dining pavilion, and it’s softball day, so everyone let’s get up and at ’em!”

“Shut up shut up shut up shut up . . . ,” Brandy mumbled into the pillow. “Shut up and die. Shut up and die.”

“What?”

Brandy turned and looked up to see Bridget Lorde, another one of her campers, standing right next to her. The campers slept in the main part of the cabin; the counselors had a little privacy in the form of a plywood half-wall. The campers weren’t supposed to cross this boundary unless they needed something. Most of them followed this rule, but not Bridget. Bridget was a natural narc with a nose for trouble, and she would quite literally get in your face to find out what was going on.

“Where’s Diane?” Bridget asked.

“I don’t know,” Brandy said, rubbing her eyes.

“Did she stay out all night?”

As much as Brandy was annoyed at Diane right now, there was still a code around here: you didn’t rat on the other counselors. If you wanted to go to the woods for private time, or skip out on a bunk inspection, or cut a few corners with any of the rules, everyone else would look out for you.

“No,” Brandy replied, pushing herself out of her cot. “She probably went to get an early shower.”