11. Becca
“You want some bacon?” Vivien holds her fork out, a slice dangling from the tines.
I shake my head, shuddering slightly. “Nah. Bacon and I don’t get along.”
Vivien looks personally offended. “Bacon is delicious.” She pops the meat in her mouth with a satisfying crunch.
Breakfast is usually my favorite meal of the day. There are sweet and savory options, and all of them come with coffee. Win-win. French toast is my favorite, with the crisp edges and soft inside and buttery taste like heaven when you bite into it. I like almost everything breakfast-related. Pancakes. Cinnamon rolls. Eggs and toast. Cereal, even.
Just not bacon, and the smell of it is enough to dampen my excitement of the whole meal.
Bacon is one of those classic foods that everyone seems to like. It’s fatty enough that it’s a little taboo to eat too much of it. And the people who don’t eat it usually have some reason, like keeping kosher and avoiding pig products, or being plant-based and avoiding all animal products.
I, on the other hand, just… don’t like it. It’s one of those small things that just sets me apart from the crowd, and not in a good way. I’ve tried enjoying, but I just can’t. Sorry.
I take a sip of my orange juice to get the scent of bacon out of my nose as Vivien swallows the last of hers.
“So,” she says after washing her mouthful down with water, “what do you think about door decorations? You want to do something with camper names, yeah?”
The other staff at our table are also engrossed in one-on-one conversations with their co-counselors, too. Since we got our cabin assignments last night, the focus has shifted to the imminent arrival of campers and getting ready. Other than interrupting my alone time this morning, even Miller has been scarce, spending his time planning with Dave.
I nod as I swallow and place my cup on the table. “Yeah, I always love doing that, and changing it up each week. Any thoughts on theme for this week?”
Vivien taps her empty fork against her mouth. “I feel like we should do something that represents us, you know? What do you do for work? Or are you in school?”
At the breakfast table wasn’t exactly where I’d hoped to spill my guts on all this. But Vivien is a grad student, too—she’s in a PhD program, and this is the last summer she managed to wrangle a few weeks off to come to camp. She’d probably understand more than most about the stress of failure.
Carefully, I force the words out, “I’m in grad school. Kind of a long story, actually. I’ll tell you more when we’re fixing up the cabin.” I cross my fingers under the table that she lets it go.
Vivien picks up her water glass. “Kay. You want to drive us to Target after breakfast or should we take my car?” she asks.
Topic changed. I breathe a sigh of relief.
* * *
We definitely should have taken my car. Vivien isn’t exactly a bad driver, but she sees road signs as loose suggestions rather than binding rules to be followed.
“Oops!” she says again, throwing the car into reverse. “Didn’t realize this was one-way.”
I bury my head in my hands as she backs down the row of the parking lot, the driver of the oncoming car looking directly at us. “Just park somewhere, Viv. I think Brett will be pissed if both of us die and he has to find more counselors by tomorrow.”
She laughs as she pulls into a spot. “Fine. We can walk a little. Think we should stock up on snacks or candy for the campers, too?”
We both slide out of the car. I round the sedan to stand beside Vivien as she clicks the key fob twice to lock the doors. “A little candy, sure. I have a plastic bin that we can store it in to keep the squirrels out.”
We spend an hour browsing the store. Ultimately, we end up buying construction paper, markers, and tape to make decorations for the cabin, candy and some dried fruit, two sets of matching t-shirts, and a pack of bandanas for the campers.
“Ooh!” Vivien picks up a stuffed bear, giddily holding it out for me to see. “Talking bear?”
The idea of ‘talking’ anything is to have a way to keep all the kids from talking at once. One person holds the talking stick—or talking bear—and they’re the only ones who should be speaking.
I consider the bear, pursing my lips in thought. It could work, but I have visions of it covered in mud and the other gunk that seems to accumulate on everything in the cabins. Resigned, I shake my head.
“Let’s do a talking stick instead. I bet we can get Bridget to give us some glitter and feathers and stuff to decorate it,” I suggest.
Vivien claps her hands after putting the bear back. “YES. Love it. So much glitter.”
We toss ideas for the week back and forth as we drive home. Vivien ignores the NO TURN ON RED sign as we swing onto the road that leads toward camp.
“Oh!” she says as we make another turn onto the dirt road. “Did you want to talk about grad school now that we’re alone? Is everything okay?”
Leave it to the PhD candidate to sniff out trouble.
I let out a sigh. I can’t keep this to myself forever, and if you can’t trust your co-counselor, there’s no one at camp you can trust. “Sure, but I’d kind of like to keep this between us, okay?”
She nods seriously.
“I’m in med school. I’m supposed to be starting my third year, but I failed a couple classes, so I have to repeat the year. I’ll start up again in August, but I just needed some time away from it all.” I feel a little of the weight lift as I say the words out loud.
“Oh my God,” Vivien exclaims, and my stomach drops. “You know what this means?”
That I’m a failure. That you’re smarter than me. Probably any number of things I’ve told myself over and over, but she doesn’t wait for my answer.
“We’re both science-y people. So we have to have a science theme for the week!” Vivien looks at me expectantly.
I just blink. That’s what she took from my revelation?
She returns her gaze to the road, slowing as the CAMP WINNIE sign comes into view. “What do you think?” she presses.
“I-I love it, Vivien. I just figured you’d have something to say about the failing part.”
She pulls into a parking spot that’s as close to the cabins as we can get in the staff parking lot. “Dude, grad school is tough as shit. I can only imagine how tough med school is. I’m impressed that you got in, because God knows I wouldn’t make the cut. And having to repeat some stuff isn’t a big deal. It’s only a big deal to you because you’ve spent your whole life being the smartest one in your class.” She laughs at my expression as we get out of the car, her hair falling around her shoulders. “Let’s go make some beakers and test tubes to put campers’ names on.”
* * *
Our cabin looks flipping amazing. The door is decorated with ten cutout pictures of a variety of science things—an atom, a beaker, a test tube, lab goggles. We tried to make a Bunsen burner, but that pushed our artistic skills a little too far.
The back wall boasts a poster on which we’ve written the rules in multi-colored, swirling handwriting, reminding campers to keep their feet on their beds during rest time and to use kind words. Along with the talking stick, the candy bin is also decorated with glitter, thanks to Bridget in the Art department, and is now tucked under my bed.
Vivien sets an old-school CD player on the floor next to her trunk. “Look what I found at Goodwill! No internet required.” She piles some CDs next to it with a wink.
I look through the options, picking up a Beatles CD. I slide it into the machine and hit play.
Vivien and I sing along to Come Together as we organize our clothes by the beds that will be ours for the next few weeks. I stack a few books under the bed, then line up my sunscreen, bug spray, and moisturizer along the shelf above the pillow.
As Octopus’s Garden starts to play, Vivien grabs a broom. “Care to join me in cleaning?” she asks, twirling around with a laugh.
I grab the other broom, giggling as we sweep away the dust that’s accumulated since last year. Vivien stops every few minutes to sing along to the chorus, using the top of the broom as a microphone. On the last chorus, I join her.
This is the person I want to be all the time. This carefree woman whose only concern is the cabin being all cutesy for a bunch of eight- and nine-year-olds. Who isn’t worried about passing pharmacology or what impact a bad grade will have on the rest of my life.
I set the broom in one corner and adjust the pillows on one of the bunk beds as another song starts.
Vivien sets her broom next to mine. “So, what’s up with you and Miller?”
I focus on making sure the pillow’s corners are unwrinkled. Who cares that the campers will all bring their own pillows and that these will end up under the beds by tomorrow?
“Nothing,” I finally say, when I turn around and find her staring at me.
“Hmm,” she says, refolding a wool blanket that’s likely to meet the same fate as the pillows. “It seems like there’s something there.”
There is nothing there. If anything, there’s an annoying guy who won’t leave me alone.
I move to the next bed and focus all my energy on this pillow. “He’s not my type,” I insist, smoothing a hand over the pillowcase. “I think he just likes annoying me, honestly. He’s like my complete opposite. He doesn’t take anything seriously. I don’t trust him.”
“Yeah, but he’s hot,” Vivien says, like I don’t have eyes of my own, and like his physical attractiveness somehow negates his entire personality.
When I don’t answer, she moves on to another topic.
“Let’s go over the camper list and figure out the best get-to-know-you games,” she suggests.
I give up on the pillows and join her on her bed, where we sit cross-legged and pull out the packet of papers Brett dropped off earlier. There are eight pages, one for each of the girls that will be in our cabin this week, with a list of names on the front. All ten-year-olds.
Vivien splits the pile in half and hands me four pages. I leaf through them quickly.
“I have four two-week campers here,” I say, holding them up.
The families have the option to sign up for one- or two-week sessions when they register for camp. Most of the younger kids end up doing only one week to start, so this many two-weekers is a lot.
“I have two in my pile. Looks like in total we have six two-weekers, and only two staying for one week.” Vivien holds up two pages.
I look more closely at mine. “Probably because they’re on the older side. One is almost eleven,” I remark, glancing back up at Viv.
“I kind of expected younger in Cabin 2, but I’ll take it,” Vivien says, turning a page over. “Ten-year-olds are usually sweet as pie.” She grins.
Usuallyis the key word here, and we both know it.
We read through the information provided by the parents and the campers themselves, then swap pages and continue reading. There are three that are first-time campers, five that have been here before. Two from the same hometown and requested to bunk together.
I start to form a picture in my head of the dynamics I’m expecting from the descriptions.
“Hey, did you see this?” Vivien holds out one page. It’s one of the first ones I read, a girl named Maya. From the information she supplied, she seems young for ten, even though that’s the age listed at the top of the paper.
“What?” I ask, reaching for it.
“Look at the bottom of the page. The part the parents filled out.” Vivien points.
I follow her finger. I’d skimmed the parent information, focusing more on what the girls think of themselves and how they want to present themselves.
The parents have an idea of their children that are formed from watching their kids grow, and sometimes campers want the chance to reinvent themselves.
Maya’s parents seemed overprotective when I skimmed through their sheet, focused on making sure their daughter would be supported. It seemed a little out of proportion to her age, but when I see what Vivien is pointing at, I realize what I skipped over and why they came across that way.
“She has Down Syndrome?” I say. It comes out as a question, even though I’m just reading the information on the sheet.
Vivien taps a finger against her lips. “Let’s go through some of the games we have planned after this. I want to make sure she can participate in everything and we don’t end up excluding her.”
I’m thankful, for about the hundredth time since we got our assignments, to have Vivien as a co-counselor.
When we finally drop into bed that evening, the last night with a quiet cabin for a while, I’m filled with excitement for the week coming up. I focus on the crickets chirping outside the cabin window as I drift off.
This time, I don’t wake up until the morning bell. But I don’t need my alone time at the lake today or an extra cup of coffee to wake me up before breakfast.
The excitement alone is enough to get me going.
Campers come today.