I sat on our beach all morning, getting hotter and itchier. I went up to the house for my lunch and didn’t say a word to anyone and no one even noticed. In the afternoon, I read on top of my sleeping bag in the hot loft, fell asleep by accident, and woke up feeling even worse than the worst. I climbed down and went out to the porch, where Dad and Uncle Frank were playing backgammon. I could see our canoe tied up at the dock, but Angelica had not come home.

“Who brought the canoe back?” I asked Dad. He told me that after lunch, he and Aunt Ess had driven over the bridge together, and then Ess had paddled the canoe home. The mother of the girls from cabin 11 had picked them up at the waterslide and taken them and Angelica to the arcade.

I pretended not to care.

Dad asked me if I felt like swimming.

I said, “Those girls aren’t coming for dinner again, are they?”

Dad said he thought they were stopping for burgers on the way home.

That meant they were going to Burger Base.

Burger Base was on the other side of the lake, and it reminded me of Mom. (It still does.) Mom loves their onion rings. She used to say that a burger with onion rings and a Dr Pepper from Burger Base was “the perfect all-brown meal.”

At bedtime, Angelica still wasn’t home. Next door to Burger Base, there are go-karts, and I lay on top of my sleeping bag just knowing that she was there, driving around in circles. I loved the go-karts way more than Angelica did. She always complained about the gas smell.

By the time Angelica came back to the cabin, I was about as far from sleep as I have ever been. I felt cold. My whole body, even my skin, was listening for her. When the door finally opened, it was like a gun going off.

I heard her drop her stuff on the floor, probably a bag full of Skee-Ball prizes and candy wrappers. And then she started up the ladder.

Oyster

I cried a lot, so it took a while to tell Miriam the whole story. But finally, I finished: “She was crawling across the edge, to her sleeping bag, and she put her knee down on top of my foot, and I kind of—kicked. And she went off the side.”

Miriam’s expression didn’t change.

“It’s horrible,” I told her. “I’m horrible. But I pretend I’m not!”

“Bea, you did something hurtful. But you are not horrible.”

“What’s the difference?” I cried.

“Everything you just told me makes a difference. Everything we have talked about in all the hours we’ve spent together makes a difference. Bea, I know you. You are not a bad person. You are a wonderful person.”