Five Summers (7 page)

THE GIRLS’ BUNKS LOOKED EXACTLY LIKE EMMA remembered them. Made of sturdy, caramel-colored cedar planks outfitted with rolled kelly green tarps to keep rain out of the open windows and doorway, they were spaced in two even rows of four within a sunny rectangle a quarter mile from the Green, accessible by a shaded, woody path dotted with tiny clearings of crab apple trees. On quiet mornings, she remembered, deer would poke their downy heads out of the woods along the path and sometimes even wander among the cabins searching for food. One time, Maddie had gotten a doe to eat a granola bar out of her palm.

The cabins themselves were about fifteen feet long and twelve feet wide, but now they felt even smaller than they had when she was a camper. They’d always reminded Emma of the log cabins described in the Little House books she’d devoured as a kid—only, drying on the clothesline outside were damp towels instead of fresh venison, stripped from a deer that had recently been killed by Pa Ingalls. All the Nedoba cabins were named for a different Abenaki tribe, and for reunion the girls had been assigned to Souhegan, where they’d lived the summer they were thirteen. Emma could swear it still smelled like the strawberry-flavored lip balm she’d religiously applied for eight straight weeks just in case she got the opportunity to kiss Adam. She cringed inwardly at the memory of all that wasted hope as she flopped down on the bottom bed of the bunk she was sharing with Skylar.

“Does this take you back?” Skylar asked, hanging her head over the side so that her hair almost brushed Emma’s comforter.

“Yes! We’re even in the exact same beds—look.” Emma ran her finger over a tiny piece of writing on one of the slats supporting Skylar’s mattress:
E + S = BFF
. She’d used a red marker from Skylar’s stash. The graffiti had been the culmination of a nonstop week of rain during which the four of them had spent so much time in the bunk they’d gone stir-crazy.

“You were so scared to get caught,” Skylar said, examining the initials.

“Well, you made me do it in broad daylight!”

“At night would have been too easy,” Skylar laughed.

“I sort of cheated anyway, though.” Emma had refused to use the first letters of their last names so it couldn’t be traced back to her, as if she was a criminal mastermind in an episode of
CSI: Camp Nedoba
.

“It’s okay,” Skylar said, settling back onto her bed. “I knew you weren’t big on dares.”

Emma frowned. She liked to think that wasn’t true anymore. Moving to New York for the summer had felt risky . . . but then again, she had an apartment to stay in for almost no money. Getting the internship of her dreams had been amazing . . . but she’d been there for over six weeks and hadn’t published so much as a sentence. She hadn’t even tried.

“I dare you right now to put a thong on Jo’s bed,” Skylar said.

“No way.” Emma glanced over at the bunk bed that was set catty-corner to theirs. Jo was taking a shower and had laid out a new, almost identical outfit on her bottom bed, which had been made with military precision. Above it, Maddie’s still-unclaimed upper bunk was adorned with a framed photo of the four of them, along with a sprig of Queen Anne’s lace that Jo had picked as they’d carried Emma’s bags up the path from her aunt’s car. The picture had been taken by their counselor Tara at the end of their first summer, and they all had copies. Emma’s was on her desk back home—at least, she was pretty sure it was, buried beneath a precarious mountain of textbooks.

“See? I knew it,” Skylar scoffed.

“That doesn’t prove anything,” Emma said. “I’ve just matured.” She kicked the underside of Skylar’s bunk and laughed.

“So how come there’s no hot hipster New York boyfriend?” Skylar teased.

“I don’t know,” Emma said. “My internship is nine to six and then at night I have to do SAT prep and work on my college essays.”

“Dude, it’s
summer
.”

“A Brown early decision applicant’s work is never done!” Emma declared with mock cheerfulness. “Plus I live with my brother, which kind of cramps my style.” Kyle was twenty-two and spent his days either playing video games in his boxer shorts while eating stale Chinese food straight from the carton or “working on his screenplay”(an activity that did not, sadly, require a wardrobe change), which was a sci-fi action saga set in a dystopian universe in which the sun became toxic and people had to live underground in tunnels. (Emma called that “unemployed,” but she kept her mouth shut because according to their mother, Kyle was feeling “extremely emotionally vulnerable right now.” Maybe that was why they kept sending him checks.)

“Maybe you could find someone at work,” Skylar said.

“It’s a feminist teen magazine, so the boys are scarce,” Emma sighed.

“Well, maybe you’ll meet someone on the subway or some- thing.”

“Ew, have you ever taken the subway? The most eligible bachelor I’ve ever seen was an old guy clipping his nails.”

“Was he cute?” Skylar joked. Emma kicked her bunk again.

“You know, you don’t need to play matchmaker for me anymore,” she said. “I’m fine by myself.” It was actually kind of annoying how Skylar seemed to be suggesting that she needed a boyfriend.

Skylar got quiet for a minute.

“Did you feel anything when you saw Adam again?” she finally asked.

“Sky,” Emma sighed, “if that’s what this is about, you don’t have to worry. I’m not here with some kind of grand plan to seduce Adam Loring.” Of course, the thought had crossed her mind, and Emma couldn’t deny that old feelings had been stirring ever since he had hugged her in the gazebo. But no one needed to know that. Yet.

“Good,” Skylar said. “Because . . . there’s some stuff . . . I don’t know, I feel like we need to talk.”

“About Adam?” Emma asked.

“What about Adam?” Jo breezed in from the bathroom complex with her head wrapped in a towel.

“Don’t look at me,” Emma said. “She brought him up.” Jo turned to Skylar with raised eyebrows as she slipped off her shower shoes, keeping the towel around her body firmly in place with one arm.

“Nothing,” Skylar said. “Just that he’s frustrating as usual.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.” Jo somehow managed to shimmy into her underwear and bra without dropping the towel. She looked at Emma. “Please don’t tell me I have to hear about him all weekend. It’s bad enough we’re going to have the Sunny Sherman show over there.” The other four beds in Souhegan were empty, but Emma knew it was only a matter of time before Sunny, Aileen, Jess, and Kerry lugged their enormous suitcases up from the Green.

“Give me some credit,” Emma said defensively. “I didn’t drive six hours to see Adam.” Old friends were great, she thought, except when they refused to see you as anything other than your old self.

“Good,” Jo said. “So let’s make this a girls’ reunion. No boy drama.”

“Sounds great,” Emma agreed. (It didn’t mean she couldn’t
talk
to him, she told herself.)

Jo leveled her gaze at Skylar. “That goes for both of you,” she said, drying off her hair.

“What about
me
?”

Emma sat up to see Maddie standing in the doorway. She was as tiny as she’d ever been, barely five feet, maybe ninety pounds soaking wet. Her hair was pulled into a tight bun, but one rebellious curl had fought its way out of her headband and bounced merrily alongside her face. She grinned and put her hands on her hips.

“Is that a
shrine
?” she asked, pointing to the framed photo. “That’s kind of creepy, you guys. No offense. I know you missed me and all, but show some restraint.”

Jo, still pantless, got to her first and wrapped her in a bear hug, almost knocking Maddie down in the process. Skylar climbed down from her bunk and she and Emma wrapped themselves around the other two.

“Hey,” Skylar whispered in her ear, “sorry if I was weird. I’m so glad you’re here.”

“Me too,” Emma smiled.

Everything felt instantly better now that they were all in one place. She felt sure that any tension she’d picked up on from Skylar and Jo had just been a side effect of the heat and the chaos of reunion arrivals. Besides, they would need a few hours to adjust to being around each other again 24-7, like friendship jetlag.

She tried not to speculate on what Skylar had wanted to talk to her about before Jo interrupted them. Whatever it was, she figured, if it was important enough it would come out eventually.

“MAIL CALL!”

Maddie propped herself up on her elbows and peered through the thin gap between the rolled-up tarp and the top of the window, the most scenic view possible from her top bunk mattress. It looked out on the picnic table in the cluster of trees near the bathroom entrance, which meant that on Tuesdays and Fridays it gave her a view of the milk crate full of envelopes and care packages that the girls’ side head counselor, Adri, doled out to the assembled masses at the end of rest hour. Every week Maddie held out hope that someone would decide it was much more efficient to deliver mail by individual cabin—or maybe even not at all. They had to live without cell phones; couldn’t they learn to live without letters? Think of all the paper cuts it would prevent! But every week, twice a week, Maddie was forced to climb down from her bed and face the speculation she had come to dread.

“I bet you’ll get something today,” Jo said as they slipped on their shoes and walked the twenty feet to where all the girls were starting to gather on the grass. The littler kids played hand games and pointed excitedly at the biggest packages, wondering loudly who they were for, while the older girls feigned uninterest and braided each other’s hair.

“Maybe,” Maddie shrugged. She’d gotten really good at pretending she didn’t care.

“Where is she now, anyway?” Emma asked. “London?” Maddie racked her brain to remember the last lie she had told about her mom, who had been promoted from real-life grocery clerk to imaginary “executive consultant”—when she’d made it up on the spot at age ten, Maddie had no idea what that job meant, but she’d heard it on the radio and thought it sounded pretty good—and who spent a lot of her time traveling. In the course of four summers, Maddie had sent her mother to more far-flung countries than most diplomats visited in a lifetime. Her fictional father was a surgeon who spent his fictional time running back and forth between fictional operating rooms saving fictional lives amid highly dramatic fictional circumstances, like the doctors on TV. It was a great way to explain why they didn’t have time to drop her off or pick her up in person, or reach out to her in any way. For instance, with a care package.

Care packages were like status symbols at camp. Getting a lot of them made you automatically popular since it meant you had outside goods that other people wanted. Money, electronics, and homemade food weren’t allowed (Jo said that last one was because of allergies, but Maddie always pictured some evil stepmother coating candy apples with poison), but packaged cookies, gum, and chips were the highest denomination of social currency. Next came magazines and Mad Libs, followed by flavored lip balms and roll-on perfumes. Clothes were good, too, but it all depended on the style. Everyone had wanted to borrow the tie-dyed leggings Skylar’s mom had sent from a sample sale, but no one looked twice at the fleece windbreaker Emma’s mom had sent after she’d read about a cold front passing through.

Even though they’d never bothered to spend the eighty-two cents it would have cost to send a postcard, sometimes Maddie idly entertained the possibility that her mom and Eddie would put together a care package for her. Realistically, it would probably contain final sale dry goods, like taco shells and cake mix, that her mom got at an even better employee discount, and maybe some old copies of
TV Guide
, with warped rings on the cover from where Eddie put down his beer. It would be embarrassing, but it would be something.

“No,” Maddie said as she sat down cross-legged in what she hoped would become the back row. “I think she’s in Paris this week.”

“I
love
Paris!” Skylar practically swooned.

“I wish my family went someplace cool,” Emma said. “We haven’t taken a vacation in forever.”

“This
is
my vacation,” Jo said with a smile.

“Me, too,” Maddie said. “It’s my Paris.” Skylar laughed pretty hard at that. She didn’t realize Maddie meant it.

Adri always did the regular letters first, picking them out of the box at random like one of those models that did the PowerBall drawing on the news. Maddie’s mom played the lottery so often that Maddie had grown up watching little ping pong balls with numbers whirl around in big plastic drums and had learned that the anticipation was always the best part. Every single time, until the numbers came up, it was easy to believe that they would finally be the right ones. Watching the news before the PowerBall came on was the happiest and most hopeful the Ryland family ever got.

“Skylar MacAlister!” Adri called out.

“I hope it’s from Cole,” Skylar said as she abandoned the waterfall braid she was attempting to weave into Emma’s hair and leaped up to collect her prize. Cole was Skylar’s boyfriend, and he sent her awful love letters every week that Maddie and Jo secretly read when Skylar wasn’t around.

To all of their disappointment (Cole’s recent acrostic poem had been the highlight of Maddie’s month), it was just a postcard for Skylar’s father’s new art opening.

“‘Imagined Light.’” Emma read the type on the back as all they examined the image on the front, of what looked like a smudge of Wite-Out on a black square. “‘An exploration of negative space by Jason MacAlister.’”

“That sounds weird,” Jo said.

“My dad
is
weird,” Skylar sighed.

“He wrote something, too, but I can’t read his writing,” Emma said, handing the card back to Skylar, who chewed on a strand of hair as she parsed out words from what looked to Maddie like a series of wavy lines.

“‘Skylar, too bad you missed this one, some of my best work. Hope leaf rubbings are keeping you busy. Dad.’” She made a face and tossed it aside.

“That’s . . . nice,” Maddie said carefully. She was kind of jealous, even though the message was less than warm. At least he had thought about her.

“No, it’s passive-aggressive,” Skylar said. “He likes to remind me that my art is kid stuff and his is soooooo important.” She pulled a strand of Emma’s hair a little too hard.

“Ow!” Emma cried.

“Don’t braid angry,” Jo warned. “Maybe there’ll be something from Cole, too.”

But there wasn’t. Adri moved on to the care packages. There were only three, the largest of which went to a first-year who squealed as she unwrapped what seemed like enough stuffed animals to fill Noah’s Ark.

“Jo Putnam!”

“Oh, great,” Jo groaned. “It’s here.” Jo was the only person Maddie had ever seen pissed off to get a care package. Jo’s mom sent her a box of makeup every summer, and Jo took it as a personal affront.

“Aren’t you at least going to open it?” Skylar asked when Jo sat back down clutching a shoebox wrapped in brown paper.

“Maybe later,” Jo said with a yawn.

“And last but definitely not least, Emma Zenewicz,” Adri called. She had been the girls’ counselor their very first summer and still always found the time to catch up with them. She was also studying to go to med school and had lots of questions about Maddie’s imaginary doctor dad, which Maddie was actively avoiding.

“My parents didn’t tell me they were sending me anything,” Emma said brightly when she got back to the group. She tore open the thick padded envelope and pulled out a stack of magazines.

“Yes!” Skylar cried. “Did they send
Us Weekly
?”

“Or
Sports Illustrated
?” Jo asked.

“Nope, even better,” Emma said. “The
U.S. News & World Report
college ranking issue!” She held it up like an ugly Christmas sweater. “Just what I’ve always wanted.”

They picked themselves up and trudged back to the bunk. It was the same twenty-foot distance, but on the return trip Maddie felt like she was dragging twenty extra pounds. Every week she told herself not to get her hopes up, and every week she failed. She wondered if it would be any easier if she just played sick. Would it be like that old saying about the tree falling in the forest? If no one wrote to her, but she wasn’t sitting around to find out, would it still hurt?

She kicked off her Keds and climbed the five steep rungs that led to her bed, hoping she had a few minutes to sulk before the dinner bell rang. But she couldn’t lie down . . . because her mattress was strewn with postcards and candy bars.

“Surprise!” Jo yelled.

“What’s this?” Maddie asked, laughing. She picked up one of the postcards, which said “
Greetings from New Hampshire!”
on it, alongside a photo of a moose. On the back was a message in Emma’s neat cursive. She turned over another postcard to see Skylar’s loopy scrawl; sure enough, Jo’s slanted print filled a third—she’d written so much, the sentences got miniature at the end as they struggled to fit on the card.

“Sorry all the postcards are the same,” Emma said. “That’s all they sell around here.” Maddie started to flip them over. There were at least two dozen of them, all filled with writing.

“You guys . . .” Maddie stared down at them. “What
is
this?”

“It’s your care package,” Skylar smiled. “You never get them. And we know your parents are busy, so we decided to take matters into our own hands.”

Maddie shook her head in grateful disbelief. She didn’t know what to say. She only knew that she was going to have to tell her mom to stop buying those stupid PowerBall tickets, because her numbers had finally come up. She felt like she’d won the lottery.