Not a Happy Camper Read Online Free PDF Page B

Hallie wasn’t interested in going, so it was just me, Dana and Autumn Evening. We crossed the lake by canoe and soon discovered why this was not encouraged. Even with the moonlight shining down on Lake Wallanatchee, we couldn’t see the rocks. There were many. In the fifteen minutes it took us to cross, we nearly capsized four times.
    â€œAnyone in particular you’re interested in?” I dared to ask as we paddled, crashed and paddled some more.
    â€œNot really,” said Dana, but I could tell there was someone.
    â€œI just like looking at them when they’re asleep,” Autumn Evening explained. “Gives me an idea what they’ll look like when they’re dead.”
    I looked at Dana. She was looking at Autumn Evening. Autumn Evening was looking at the moon.
    Several hours earlier, meeting the boys at the social hall had been an awkward experience. Roaming into their bunk in the middle of the night was entirely different. Illuminated only by our flashlights, the visit was far more casual, much like the way the boys lived. The Foxes’ bunk was significantly larger than ours, but felt cramped thanks to its state of total disarray. Dirty clothing waspiled up and tossed about, mixed in with crushed potato chips and half-eaten Slim Jims still in their wrappers. Even the beds were all out of order, pulled away from the walls and turned at odd angles, not lined up neatly like ours. We’d been at camp for less than a week, but the boys had managed to give their bunk a lived-in look, as if it hadn’t been cleaned in at least a decade. And everyone was too tired to care.
    Still, I was in the company of two girls who knew how to get a guy and I, their student, tried to remain awake and focused. Autumn Evening made the first move. “I’m cold,” she said.
    Here is the beauty of being thirteen in 1974: if you were naïve enough (and I was) it seemed grown up yet somehow safe to get into bed with a boy you didn’t really know. Autumn Evening got an invitation from Chip Fink and crawled in. Kenny Uber untucked his authentic red and black buffalo plaid blanket and motioned to Dana, but she declined.
    â€œI’m going for a walk,” she said.
    Part of me wanted to go along with her, but more of me wanted to stay right there, wishing and hoping I might be Kenny’s second choice.
    â€œUm, I’m really cold, too,” I said.
    Kenny didn’t seem to hear me. He was too busy watching Dana. I said it again. Louder.
    â€œShoulda brought a jacket,” he said, then paused to look at me. “Were you at the social hall tonight?”
    â€œWell, yeah, I-”
    â€œI don’t remember you.”
    â€œYou’re teasing, right?” Dana yelled from the doorway, on her way out.
    Kenny sighed and pulled a thin rolled-up blanket from the foot of his cot and handed it to me. Not exactly the response I’d hoped for, but still not a total rejection. I wrapped the blanketaround myself, leaned against the side of his bed and tried to engage him in conversation. “So, how many summers have you been coming here?” Kenny snored and rolled over. I was smitten.
    By dawn, I was sore and shivering and in need of a bathroom. When I got up and looked, I couldn’t find one. Philip Selig was also awake and sitting up in his bed.
    â€œBull’s-eye!” he almost shouted, as he successfully shot a rubber band off his braces, hitting a sleeping bunkmate in the face.
    â€œIs there a bathroom somewhere?” I asked.
    â€œUp in there,” he explained in a loud whisper, pointing through a window to a shack on a slight hill. “The toilets, sinks. Everything.”
    â€œEveryone shares?” I asked. “All of Boys’ Side? That’s gross.”
    â€œThink of it as historical,” Philip said, crawling out from under his old wool blankets and reaching for his Mets cap. “Think of it as tradition. Back in the early days