What Is It About a Dyke at Summer Camp?

When a girl Miss-Mary-Macks with you, it’s like you share a birthday for a full breathless sixty seconds.

Eleven: Meredith

I mean, it’s not me. It’s KT with the shaved head and the million rings in her face. She’s eighteen and I’m twelve so it’s not like we’d ever hang out, but if we did, I’d be GBA, Gay By Association. So I hang out with Meredith. She’s fifteen and smokes cigarettes, but she’s trying to quit. We stay up in her tent talking or not talking and sometimes she looks me right in the eye but mostly she’s looking at the floor or through a door I don’t see, but when she does, look at me, I mean, her eyes are so grey it hiccups me. Literally, I’ve gotten the hiccups every time we’ve hung out and my friends want to know why I’m always with Meredith all the time. Ali was like “she’s weird” and Elena was like “what do you two do anyway?” which was a gay question, I knew it, I’m not daft. I said “cards,” which is how you get out of anything here. Cards are required at camp—Six Jack, Old Man Pete, Pass the Buck and hand games too, but we just call it “hands,” and there’s like a thousand ways to happily slap a girl five or ten. Hands is like a nickname. When a girl Miss-Mary-Macks with you, it’s like you share a birthday for a breathless sixty seconds.

I’ve never used a laundry line before. I hang my laundry right on it, on the line, that is, but the way I do it is I fold my wet clothes and then hang them, and Ali is all like “That’s not how you do it” and Elena is like “Duh,” and I’m so mad that I’ve done it that way that I just keep it up there, defending it or whatever, but the thing is, Meredith walks by with a very illegal cigarette dangling from her bottom lip and she just starts laughing, she puts her dumb pretty hands on her dumb knees and is really dying, you know, not like at me, but like she’s seen a very tiny pony being ridden by a very serious man, like we can all agree, this is funny, and I say “Shut up,” and she helps me take it down. It is sopping, everything. We put it back up. Night is coming—which is just code for campfire, impending. Songs, sweatshirts, smoke, girls huddling then breaking into threes then into twos then into bed.

Meredith has a mole above her top lip and everyone always says “Like Marilyn” and she hates that. It doesn’t look pretty to me, like a moon or a star. It looks like a very, very, very small cup of Coca-Cola, but I mean, I like it okay. It’s true she kind of looks like a movie star. Tired eyes, full lips, an attitude problem to be enjoyed with popcorn.

Night is coming—which is just code for campfire, impending.

“Sit with me,” she commands, patting the log beside her, while the air flits with cinder or whatever. I sit with Meredith while Gabby and Chelsea and Elena and Ali throw sand at each other and scream.

“What are you thinking about?” she asks. I was thinking, but I didn’t wanna tell her about what. I was thinking about when I gave her advice about Theo, the guy she liked back home, and she said, “How are you twelve?” I wasn’t even thinking, really. I was just replaying those words in my head: Twelve. You. Are. How. Are you twelve. But not even the scrambled eggs of her words, but the feeling behind them, especially behind the how. How. How. It sounded like a jar finally snapping open.

Fourteen: Chrys

Chrys is not gay. Even though her name is Chrys. But I mean, it’s with a y not an i, which is like sticking a flower behind the ear of a bison. She’s a Junior Counselor and she’s in charge of the mail. When it comes, when it goes, Chrys sorts it with her elegant, long fingernails painted fuchsia or turquoise or once, starry with glittery jewels. How you keep nails like that while raising a sail or chopping wood is beyond me. Chrys is not beyond me. She sits on the dock, a foot away, chewing gum and whistling and singing something in Spanish.

“Is your name short for something?” I ask, because it’s just the two of us, and the ocean isn’t saying anything.

“Christopher,” she says, popping a bubble, barely looking at me. Chrys is not usually funny, it’s not her angle. She’s a Pretty Person, capital P capital P. The only other person she hangs out with at camp is Renée, the thirteen-year-old model. Chrys is sixteen, but beauty bonds you. At dinner, Renée counts the cookies on her plate while Chrys scarfs down five. Together, they look like a shampoo commercial. I know that in just a few years they will advertise the most brutal, Olympian form of femininity: razor thin high heels and razor thin inclusion, so that if you somehow fought your way into the clique, you’d still always feel on the precipice. And it’s a long way down.

“Chrysanthemum,” she says, looking at me now. “Like the flower. My mom fucked a hippie.” I clear my throat. “Cool cool cool,” I say too many cools. It’s okay. A seagull screams bloody murder and we laugh. The ocean corrects everything.

Objectively speaking, Chrys has a perfect mouth. She paints it plum every morning. She’s always chewing gum, the flicker of her tongue unreasonably pink. I feel it sees me, like another eye, or like that snake in the grass last weekend. Everyone ran, but I was locked in place. It was leaving anyway, on its way to its own life, which had nothing to do with a gaggle of teenage girls who like boys who don’t even have hair in their armpits yet. The snake was pinkish with white gleaming underneath and it moved like hot ice, unfathomably cool. I talked to it. It’s embarrassing, I mean, I wouldn’t tell anybody, but it just came out.“Hey, buddy,” I said, like a child. It paused for a moment, something ancient in it recognizing something foolish in me.

That’s when I hear the tearing sound. Chrys drags a long nail along an envelope’s mouth, releasing a letter. “It’s for me,” she says, even though she’s breaking code. No mail is to be opened during sorting. Not even your own.

She tosses the envelope to the side; its jagged lip scrapes my ankle. Its entire outside is scrawled in angular script. She doesn’t notice me trying to read what it says. She’s full-on smiling, the effect is like high beams. I want her to slow down, she’s too bright, but I’m not even here now. She’s in someone’s arms.

I make out some of the chicken scratch on the envelope: baby, Chrys, baby, missin’ you, wet dreams. My whole being tenses and I feel my face flush. Maybe my arms flush. Maybe my heart, too—I don’t know how it works. Boys can reel in girls in any language. They could be jokey, they could be crass—those two modes are their main arsenal. What was mine? Muddy brown hair with buck-teeth, I’m no shampoo model.

Chrys plays with her cross necklace, swinging it softly this way, then that, before she looks up. As soon as we lock eyes, I become greatly invested in sorting.

“Whew,” she says, “steamy,” and slips the letter into her pocket, forgetting the envelope in all its lusty exterior.

“What’s that?” I ask, pointing to her thermos, hoping to change the subject. Chrys narrows her eyes, as if reading me from a distance, before saying in a tone I can’t quite pin, “Chrysanthemum . . . tea?”

With that, she hands it to me. Not a cloud in the sky. Not a bird. Where her mouth has been, I take a sip. I may not be sixteen or beautiful, but I know what it is. It’s lemonade. And rum.

Sixteen: First Kiss

It’s lemonade. And rum. It’s “Shut up.” Sopping, everything. And hand games, too. I had never, but one day, I fold my wet right on the line and she helps me take it down. Up in her tent talking or not talking. But beauty bonds you. Like a flower, swinging softly this way, then that. Like a flower, I become greatly invested. Objectively speaking, there’s like a thousand ways to happily slap a girl. Objectively speaking, like “Duh.” Like “cool, cool cool, cool cool cool.” Baby. Missin’ you. Wet. Not a cloud in the sky. Not a bird. That’s when I hear the tearing sound, releasing a letter and she just starts laughing. Not, like, at me. Lips scrape my ankle. I may not be beautiful but I’m not daft. “It’s for me,” she says, even though she’s breaking code. Like a flower, it’s pinkish with white gleaming underneath and it moves like hot ice. Like a question on its way to its own life. Like a flower, it’s smoke. Slow down, too bright, I’m in someone’s arms.