I barely pay attention in swim class, and at lunch, when Hudson asks what Connie wanted, I just tell him she told me my form on the obstacle course was getting better, and that must be enough to account for my dazed look, because he doesn’t ask anything else. I giggle more than I should at things that aren’t that funny. The lightness continues all day, through making “friends from stones” in A&C to touch football in sports and through free swim, where I keep wanting to pick everyone up and spin them around, I feel so happy.
After swim, I tell Hudson I can’t hang out because I need to write my parents, and he nods and says he doesn’t mind, he has to do something, too. We walk up the hill and I leave him in front of my cabin, and then, when no one is looking, I walk over to cabin four and casually pull the door open and go inside.
There are several empty cabins on the hill—the camp is only a hundred or so campers, and the cabins hold a dozen each, so we don’t need all twenty of them—but I’ve never been in an empty one before. There are no beds. Connie has brought a plastic folding table and five folding chairs and has set them up in the middle of the cabin, but I can see where she dragged them through the dust on the floor.
“That’s two,” Connie says. She’s sitting at the head of the table. Next to her is a camper a year older than me, but whose name I don’t remember. He’s got unwashed black hair and a goatee, and is wearing a torn T-shirt that’s too big on him and cargo shorts. “Del, you know Jimmy?”
“Sure,” I say. “I’ve seen you around.”
“Yeah, man,” Jimmy says, extending a hand. “Jimmy Mendoza. Del, is it?”
“Yeah,” I say, sitting opposite him.
It occurs to me suddenly that Hudson must be a captain, too. Sure, he was one last summer, but people can be captain twice in a row. That must be why he didn’t mind my not spending time with him. He’s going to be so surprised to see me when he comes in.
The door swings open, but it’s not Hudson who enters. It’s Charity Levine, from cabin eight. Charity is usually in charge of the costume department. She’s in A&C almost all day long. Everything she wears she handmade, including, I’m assuming, her current outfit, an A-line summer dress in pink-and-white check, with lace at the square neckline and a matching pink ribbon choker. Her brown hair is parted down the center and falls in perfect glossy sheets to her shoulders. Seeing me, she smiles brightly.
“Randy,” she says. “I was wondering where they’d hidden you away. Cabin four, I guess.”
The thing with Charity is I can never tell if she’s being mean or if her voice just sounds like that, so I don’t know if that’s a joke or an insult.
“Wait,” Jimmy says. “Is it Randy or Del?”
“Del,” I say to him, then turn to Charity. “It’s Del now.”
“Right.” Charity nods and sits next to Jimmy, smiling at me in a way that again—is she friendly or a bitch? I try to assume it’s friendly, but something about her eyes makes it so hard to tell. “Sorry. The plan, the plan. Del, not Randy. It’s very exciting. Is it going well?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Haven’t you heard me talking to George and Ashleigh in A and C?”
“Oh, I try not to eavesdrop. Especially not when people are talking about sex and relationships. I have no interest in those. I just focus on my crafting. And you.” She turns to Jimmy. “Jimmy, right? Tom’s boyfriend, but he was too old to come this year?”
“Yeah, it sucks,” Jimmy says. “I miss him. And now I gotta get my T injections from Cosmo. I mean, I’d do them myself, but I can’t stand looking at needles.”
“I can do them,” Charity says. “I’m great with needles.”
“But, like, you mean sewing needles, right?”
“It’s about sticking the pointy end in the right place either way, right?”
“I guess …”
“Charity, it’s generous of you to offer,” Connie says, “but I think Cosmo should be handling any injections at camp.”
“Yeah,” Jimmy says, looking relieved. Charity shrugs.
The door opens again, and Paz walks in. She looks at everyone, her eyebrows raising when she comes to me. It’s not Hudson, but I’m still glad to see a friendly face. She sits down next to me.
“Hey,” she says. “So, this is our crack team?”
“It is,” Connie says, standing. “We are the Blue team. You’ll meet the captains of the Red team tomorrow so you can plan your big entrance together. For now I want to show you how the cabins will be divided and the schedule for the weekend so you can start planning which cabins should participate in which activities.”
So no Hudson. I bet he’s on the other team. I can’t imagine he’s not a captain. I hope he won’t be jealous if he isn’t. Maybe he’ll be on my team, though, and I can be his captain, make him do some push-ups, maybe do a dance for me ….
“So here are the teams,” Connie says, her voice taking me out of my daydream. She hands out clipboards to each of us with a list of cabins and campers on our team, and then the schedule. Friday is the big opener, which starts with a game of capture the flag after dinner. Then on Saturday we have the egg race, swimming races, a pie-eating contest, a relay race through the obstacle course, and a kickball game. Sunday is queer trivia and a talent show before the final ceremony, where the judges add up the points we’ve earned in each challenge and present the award—which is a plaque that goes up in the dining hall for the rest of the summer, and bragging rights, mostly. I look over the list. Hudson’s cabin is on the other team. Oh well.
“Oh, my cabin should do the pie-eating contest,” Jimmy says. “We’re, like, always hungry.”
Connie raises an eyebrow at that. “Remember, you get points for team spirit, too. So you’ll need to lead your team in cheers and songs, especially when they’re not the ones participating in the event. So start thinking of rhymes.”
“True Blue,” Charity says. “Don’t be Blue, we’re better than you. Kill Red dead.”
“Let’s try to keep away from violence,” Connie says.
“Put Red to bed?” Charity tries.
“Good.” Connie nods. “But let’s look at the activities and make sure you get them so you can start figuring out which cabin to assign to which game ….”
We spend some time going over everything, and trying new cheers (“We’re Blue, we’re Blue, guess what we’re gonna do? You’re Red, you’re Red, we’re putting you to bed” was my favorite, probably because I constructed it from Charity’s slogans). By the time Connie tells us to meet back here tomorrow at the same time and sends us down to dinner, I’m even more excited, but also kind of nervous.
“This is wild,” I tell Paz as we walk down to dinner. “Right?”
“Yeah,” Paz says. “I think it’ll be fun.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Does Charity hate me?”
Paz laughs. “Nah. She’s like that with everybody. Super friendly, but with those intense eyes. And I think she’s a little defensive here, because there’s always one kid who tells her it’s a queer camp, and being ace and aro isn’t queer.”