Not a Happy Camper Read Online Free PDF Page A

be my final adult height). I was not a beanpole, however. I weighed one hundred-twenty pounds (unaware this would
not
be my final adultweight). My one consolation was that my size and height drew attention away from the braces Dr. Gottlieb had chained to my teeth that year, and away from the nose I’d inherited from my mother’s father.
    Just before the entrance to Boys’ Side, we passed a larger, beautiful wood shingle home, perfectly situated on the edge of the lake. Maddy slowed down as we drove by.
    â€œThis is my dream house,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to live here.”
    â€œMaybe someday the owner will sell it to you,” I offered.
    â€œMaybe,” Maddy smiled. “It’s Saul’s.”
    Kin-A-Hurra’s Boys’ Side was older, larger and more spread out than ours. The first building we came upon was the Social Hall, a big square block from the early 1900s with a high-pitched roof and a stage at one end. That’s where we met the Foxes.
    At your first school dance—or your first Bar Mitzvah party—there is usually music and there is awkwardness. We didn’t have any music. My bunkmates and I entered slowly, in a tight, giggly, nail-biting cluster. The eight Foxes, already inside, moved away, as if we were the plague or some evil apparition. They stopped only when their backs were literally up against the wall and then they stood there, wordlessly staring at us.
    Only Autumn Evening was immediately comfortable and only because she didn’t care. (“I’ve had boyfriends in all of my past lives,” she’d explained earlier. “Frankly, I’m a little burnt out by men.”)
    Breaking free from the group, she announced, “Hello, Foxes! This is us. This is it. We’re all you get this summer.”
    I wished I’d brought a book so I could join Betty Gilbert, who quickly found a spot backstage in which to hide.

    Maddy and the boys’ counselor stood by the door, trying not to laugh at us as they motioned to our two groups to move closer together. After ten minutes of this agony, Maddy announced, “We’ll see you guys a little later,” and the two counselors left.
    At Autumn Evening’s suggestion, we all sat down in a circle. Dana struck up a conversation with the boy next to her which made me think,
That’s what I need to do. Talk to the boy next to me. Just chat like it’s nothing. Like I’m an interesting person. Like I know I’m an interesting person. Like I’m doing him a favor talking to him. Hhmmm. How does witty banter go?
    No need, though. The boy on my right looked past me and addressed Autumn Evening, interrupting her conversation with Philip Selig, a short, scrawny kid in a Mets baseball cap, the kind of boy I was trying not to notice.
    The Fox I couldn’t take my eyes off was Kenny Uber, seated across the circle. He was cute with wavy light brown hair and a rugged look about him, like he shopped at the Army-Navy store because he actually used the stuff. I pictured him fishing and hunting and conquering the land, the drawing on the far right of Darwin’s Dream Jew chart. He was perfect.
    â€œLet’s hold a séance,” Autumn Evening proposed.
    â€œWho would we conjure up?” one of the boys wanted to know.
    The votes were equally split among Bluebeard the Pirate, Harry Houdini and the guy who invented gum. Unable to reach a compromise, we decided instead to hold a levitation, gathering around a person, saying a bunch of mystical-sounding mumbo-jumbo and lifting them high in the air.
    Dana was chosen and lay down on the floor as ten of us crouched around her and placed our index and middle fingers under her body. I was directly across from Kenny, but he wasn’t looking at me. I wanted to say hello or at least say something, butthere was no time. Someone hit the lights. In the near pitch-blackness, Autumn Evening began the incantation. We went