2. 25 Years Ago
Chapter two
It wasn’t a meet cute.
I mean, it couldn’t be. I was only six years old.
Visitors Sunday at Sound Hollow Sleepaway Camp was so busy that it was easy to get lost in the shuffle. The schedule offered an open house where prospective families could come tour the camp while concurrently giving current campers the chance to go out for lunch with their visiting parents.
From the windows of the Dining Lodge, I watched the parade of parents marching down the long road, eager to see their kids and spoil them for an afternoon.
At six years old, I was one of the youngest campers that summer, and I watched impatiently from the windows, scanning the crowd for signs of my mom or dad.
I searched the oncoming deluge of grown-ups, looking for a single braid of thick, brown hair hanging over the left shoulder of someone who could only be my mother.
The last two weeks had seemed endless, and I’d been so good at camp I just knew that Mom would reward me with a trip into town for a special lunch at Friendly’s or maybe Pizza Hut.
Those were fancy sit-down restaurants, but I hoped they would take me there regardless.
I smoothed my T-shirt, the one with the big yellow sunflower on it that was Mommy’s favorite.
“You are my sunshine,” it read. I saved the shirt especially for this day, hoping that with any luck my parents would realize how much they missed me, call the whole camp thing off, and just bring me home.
The parade got closer, and campers spilled out of the Lodge, pairing up with their moms and dads, exchanging hugs and chatting excitedly.
There were so many bodies it felt like one of those Where’s Waldo?
picture books from the bookshelf in my first-grade classroom.
I examined the families, my eyes darting from one small group to the next. Could they be late?
We weren’t supposed to leave until we saw our parents, so I remained perched on a folding chair, parked earnestly by the window.
I watched as the mass of people thinned, most of them walking away from the Lodge, back towards the girls’ rec field where the cars were all parked.
As the Lodge grew quieter, I felt less at ease, but the counselors were carelessly splashing with the spray of the commercial dishwasher and no one was paying any attention amidst the chaos.
Since staying still hadn’t made my parents appear, I ventured outside and started down the road, following the dirt footprints of intact families, determined to find my own.
“Taylor!” an unfamiliar voice called.
I froze, caught.
“Come on back. The kids with no visitors are going to stay together today. In a little while, we might go down to the beach,” the tall, older girl said. She had to be a staff member because she was wearing a staff shirt, but I didn’t know her name.
“But I’m supposed to have visitors,” I explained, my voice small and strained.
“No, honey,” Tall Girl explained. She had kind eyes, but I knew she was mistaken—my parents were just late.
That happened sometimes, right? “They put you in my group because your parents aren’t coming.
See?” She pointed to my name on a piece of paper mounted to a clipboard.
“You’re on my list. Tell you what. If they do show up, you can go with them. But for now, let’s stick together.”
My shoulders sagged, but the day went on, like all days do.
I didn’t want to go to the beach, so Tall Girl put me with a big, important man named Mr. Pat who cooked hot dogs on an oversized charcoal grill.
The hot dogs were being sold to parents for a dollar, and Mr. Pat let me help by distributing ketchup and mustard packets.
It was boring, and I gazed longingly down the road to see if maybe my mom was looking for me.
But nobody else came that day. I had the same sinking feeling from that time a few months earlier when my mom was supposed to pick me up from school but never came.
I’d stayed with the principal until eventually Mom called the school from a pay phone in the emergency room, where she was awaiting treatment for broken wrist. It was an accident, she told me later. My own fault.
Mr. Pat talked a lot at the grill, filling the air with camp tales.
He was always smiling, his long, curly hair held back in a ponytail.
I didn’t want to be rude, but I wasn’t in the mood to talk.
I listened mostly, trying to disappear as he went on about fishing trips and horses and all sorts of other things.
Smiling at his stories was hard work since my belly was thick with worry, but I tried.
“Mr. Pat,” I eventually asked, when there were no more families waiting to be served, “is my mommy in the hospital?”
“What’s that?” he answered, caught off guard. “No, kiddo. She’s okay. She just couldn’t make it today is all.”
I stared up at him, curiously looking for answers, willing him to say more.
“She called this morning. Said your dad wasn’t feeling up to the drive. But everyone’s fine, so don’t you worry about that.”
“He’s sick?” I asked.
“Pretty sure she just said he was tired is all,” Mr. Pat assured me. “Well, kiddo, looks like our work here is done,” he announced, removing his green apron and wiping the grease from his hands on it. “You hungry?”
I nodded. He handed me a hot dog. I set it on a napkin and put ketchup on it.
“May I please bring this to my cabin?”
“Sure. Just let your counselors know where you’re at. Oh, and by the way,” he said, crouching to look me in the eyes, “you did a good job today. Thanks for helping me out.” Mr. Pat handed me a funny looking coin. “That’s for you. A little gift from me. It’s a real Navajo gold coin, you know that?”
I shook my head.
“Well, it’s very special, so make sure you take care of it.”
I looked at the coin in my hand. It was a little heavier than a quarter and looked sort of like the Hanukkah gelt my mom hid inside my Christmas stocking every December to remind me I was half-Jewish. I stuffed it in the pocket of my shorts. “Thank you,” I replied.
“My pleasure! You go on and enjoy yourself. I’ll see you at dinnertime.”
I carried the hot dog back to my cabin. The area was empty, except for a group of people gathered by the flagpole who were on a visitors’ tour.
It was eerily quiet for a Sunday afternoon.
Everyone was out enjoying family time with their parents, minus the other unclaimed campers who were probably still at the beach for the afternoon.
The tall pines swayed gently in the breeze, empty.
Even the birds had somewhere else to be.
I sat down on the stoop of Cabin One, unsure of how the day went so awry.
I took a bite of the hot dog. A glob of ketchup slid out of the bun onto my shirt.
I wiped at the ketchup with my napkin, but knew it would leave a stain because I got ketchup stains on the living room carpet sometimes when I ate dinner on the floor in front of the television.
The pretty shirt with the sunflower—Mom’s favorite—was ruined.
Angry at myself, I chucked the rest of the hot dog in the garbage beside the cabin, not caring that raccoons would probably come and ransack the can later and might even wake me up in the middle of the night.
I hung my head, feeling my stomach turn and my eyes fill with tears.
I covered my face with my hands and began to sob quietly.
“Psst,” I heard. I raised my head and looked around. A small boy with brown hair wearing very white sneakers poked his head out from the side of my cabin.
I sniffled and looked at him curiously.
“Shh!” the boy implored in a hushed voice. “I don’t want them to find me!”
I looked around. “Who?” I asked.
He jutted his chin out in the direction of the tour group. “You go here?” he asked.
I nodded.
“It’s terrible, right? That’s why you’re crying?”
I shook my head. “My parents didn’t come.”
His eyes widened. “They left you here? Like, forever?”
“No,” I replied. “They didn’t come for visiting day.” Saying it aloud made the pain feel new, like how blood flows after a scab is picked.
He looked at me then. Really looked. “Oh.” He paused. “I’m sorry.”
I considered my feet. My knockoff Nike sneakers were stained with mud, making his white shoes glow even brighter.
“Hey, what’s your name? You wanna play ninjas with me?”
I smiled, grateful for the offer, despite not understanding what he meant.
“Matthew! What are you doing?” a lady called out to him, frantic.
He shook his head, then turned around reluctantly to face the woman. “Just playing, Mom!”
“Get back over here! We have to stay with the group.” She approached him quickly, kicking up dust from the cedar chips that lined the ground. The lady took the boy—Matthew—by the hand. “You can’t sneak off like that,” she reprimanded him.
“But I’m a ninja, Mom!” he whined. “I should be at ninja camp.”
His mother smiled at him. “You can be a ninja when we go home. Not now. Say goodbye to your friend, honey. We have to go back to the group. Daddy’s waiting.”
“Bye, um—” he called over his shoulder as his mom dragged him away.
“Taylor,” I called back.
He looked back and smiled, waving at me as the open-house tour group moved on to their next location.
I didn’t know it then. I mean, does anyone really know when they first meet the person who will become their everything? I suppose in fairy tales sometimes. Or maybe the very luckiest people.
But if there’s one thing I’ve never been, it’s lucky.