Chapter 1
Getting Tabled
And that’s how I found myself climbing a giant hill to arrive at the staff cabin of the camp in early June. I paused on the porch, my hand on the door handle. I could see the dark shapes of three people inside, my coworkers for the summer. I tried psyching myself up. The love of my life could be one of those seated on the couch. Or not. At any rate, none of them knew anything about me. Here goes nothing. I opened the door.
The screen door slammed shut with a loud bang that reverberated through the log structure. I could feel three pairs of eyes on me as I sat in the only unoccupied seat, a green armchair with the stuffing come out of it. The silence seemed deafening as I turned toward the guy on my right and held out my hand. “I’m Tammy.”
“The name’s Aaron. Welcome.” His sleeveless shirt revealed tan, muscular arms and his brown hair was spiked in a way that only looked good on foreign guys, which I figured he was, given his strong English accent.
“Nice to meet you, Aaron.”
He glanced at the guy sitting across from him. “It’s not Air-RON,” he said, exaggerating my Michigan accent.
“Aaron,” I said again.
He shook his head. “Open your mouth and say AHHH.”
I mimicked him, opening my mouth more than was strictly necessary.
“Now say ‘run’.”
“Run.”
“Now put it together.”
“Ahh-run.”
“Right. That’s my name. Don’t get it wrong again.” His liquid brown eyes twinkled as he flashed me a grin. Wait, was he flirting with me? Was it really going to be that easy to get a summer boyfriend?
The shorter guy seated next to Ahrun leaned forward. “I’m Fergus, but you can call me Ferg.” He had flaming orange hair, which, added to his overly Irish accent, reminded me of a leprechaun. Albeit a ruggedly handsome one.
The girl on my other side nudged me. “Are all our coworkers going to be this cute?” she asked quietly with an American accent.
“I hope so,” I whispered back to her.
The screen door slammed again as a tall blonde girl with short hair and large breasts entered the cabin. “I’m Katie,” she declared to the room.
I met the glance of the girl next to me. She rolled her eyes at me before scrunching her black curly hair.
The small cabin quickly filled with staff. Unfortunately, most of the new arrival were girls. So far I’d met Sharon, the curly-haired girl, who was renamed Shazzer by the British boys; Mallory, another blonde; and Jamie, a small-boned, freckled little wisp of a thing.
“Do you guys want to play Truth or Dare?” Mal asked after a few more people strolled into the cabin.
“Truth,” someone shouted.
“Who here has a significant other?”
I was saddened to see both Ahrun and Ferg raise their hands. I glanced over at the only guy in the room whose hand was not up in the air. Rob was from Ohio. He was cute, but a little young-looking.
“How old are you?” I asked Rob, my voice booming across the small room.
He looked over at me. “I just graduated from high school.”
Damn. Perhaps my summer wouldn’t be so promising after all.
Shazzer and I trudged back to the girls’ cabin together. During training, all the staff would be staying in a same-sex cabin, and then, when the kids came, counselors like myself would be placed with our charges. Shazzer was the Arts and Crafts director, and she would be staying with the other support staffers, such as Babs, who ran Theater.
The interior of the cabin looked much like you would expect: log beams crisscrossing the ceiling above two rows of twin beds covered by sleeping bags. I’d claimed a bed near the door earlier—the bathrooms were located outside and I wanted to have the smallest hike possible to get to them in the middle of the night. Shazzer moved her stuff to the empty bed next to mine.
The other girls filtered in, chattering loudly. Jamie sat on the bed across from me and began brushing her hair. Katie changed into tiny shorts and a tank top that barely covered her massive breasts. I had a sudden flashback of the all-girls dorm I’d lived in my first year of college. It was nicknamed The Virgin Vault. The only difference, besides the fact that my co-counselors probably weren’t virgins, was that there were no doors to close when you wanted a bit of privacy.
“Do you have a boyfriend?” Shazzer asked me in a whisper after Katie had shut out the lights.
“No.” I didn’t tell her that I’d never had one, that I was the very definition of a virgin. Virgin: a person who is naïve, innocent, or inexperienced, especially in a particular context. And, one that has never copulated.
“You?” I asked Shazzer.
“Nah. Guys suck.”
“Agreed,” I said, thinking of Ahrun’s brown eyes.
Despite the hard bed and midnight trip outside to use the restroom, I slept well that night.
It was pouring rain the first full day of staff training. Instead of getting a tour, we were holed up in the main cabin. Our camp director, Denny, a tall, thin black man, told us our first task was to play Two Truths and a Lie in order to get to know each other.
I pondered what I would use as my truths. Truth: I was literally a founding member of the V-club at Florida’s teeny-tiny Eckhart College, population 1400, the place where everybody knew your name/ everyone else’s business; I’d been obsessed with an apathetic (or just plain pathetic) Horseboy my freshman year of college, the roommate of the Blockhead that stood me up the first week of college; I had an unnatural obsession with both the real-life Luke Skywalker and the subject of a four hundred-year-old painting whose identity had been lost to time. But then again, no one here knows any of that, I reminded myself. I breathed what must have been an audible sigh of relief, which resulted in Denny picking me to go first.
Cursing this latest cruel play by my guardian angel, I stated, “I have a twin sister, I love dolphins, and have seen Star Wars more than 50 times.”
The room was silent. I could feel my coworkers’ eyes on me, trying to suss out the lie based on my appearance. I tucked my shoulder length blondish hair—now tinted slightly orange from Sun-In—behind my ear and smoothed down the seam of my denim shorts.
“Star Wars?” someone tentatively asked.
I shook my head.
“Do you have a twin sister?” Ferg asked.
“Yes,” I replied.
“Does she look like you?” Ahrun asked, eyebrows raised again.
“No, we’re fraternal.”
“I see.” He seemed disappointed.
“How can you hate dolphins?” Babs, the Theater Director asked.
I held up my pinky finger. “One of them bit me at Sea World.”
“Oh.” Most people in the room nodded. Although, as a shark lover, I’d always had a distaste for dolphins, the incident in question was strictly my own fault. And Corrie’s. On a trip to Sea World when we were ten, my mom went to get lunch and my dad took Drew, my younger brother, to the bathroom, leaving my twin Corrie and me by the dolphin pool. It was one of those places where you could pay a quarter and feed them fish, but neither of us had any money. Corrie dared me to stick my finger in the pool to get a dolphin to come near us. The dolphin swam over and taste-tested my pinky before I knew what was happening; as soon as it figured out it wasn’t a sardine, the dolphin left with one stroke of its fluke. I pulled my bloody finger out of the pool, and, true to form, Corrie laughed. We told my parents I got a splinter from the picnic table and they didn’t question it. My mom retrieved a bandage from her purse, and that was that.
At lunch, I found myself sitting across from Ahrun. “I bet I am hungrier than you are,” he told me. I was so nervous to eat in front of him that I couldn’t finish my sandwich.
“Aha, I knew it. I was hungrier than you,” he said when I finally pushed my plate away. His eyes still held that mischievous twinkle, and I wondered how serious he and his girlfriend were.
I got up to grab a chocolate milk from the milk bin located across the cafeteria. Ahrun followed me. Visions of him swooping me off my feet and kissing me by the milk cooler entered my head until I realized what his real goal was. I quickened my pace, but he still got to there before me and grabbed the last chocolate milk. I cast my eyes into the near-empty bin and reluctantly chose a plain milk.
“Jerk,” I told him as we walked back to our table. I hated white milk.
As I sat down, the chocolate milk appeared beside my plate. “Here, Tammy, you can have it,” Ahrun said, suppressing a grin.
“I don’t need your chocolate milk,” I said, flicking the carton across the table in his direction. It fell on the floor, but he picked it up and tossed it back at me.
I thrust my chest out as I started to open the milk. A nasty habit of nail-biting, developed from six semesters of struggling in a difficult major, meant I had no fingernails. I could feel Ahrun’s grin reappear as I struggled with the flaps on the milk carton.
“Want me to open it for you?” Ahrun demanded.
“No.” I turned to Shazzer, who was across from me. She conceded by sticking a long fingernail into the middle of the carton and pulling out the triangle.
The sky finally cleared up after lunch, and Denny told us to go around to each of the special programs, just like the campers would be doing. In the Arts and Crafts room, Shazzer started to give us directions on how to make butterflies out of construction paper. I was sitting a table with Ahrun, Fergus, and Katie, who, as head lifeguard, was Ahrun’s direct supervisor, although that didn’t stop Ahrun and Ferg from hooting loudly when Shazzer dropped the basket of scissors on the floor. Shazzer and I had become fast friends, and consequently I ignored them. I reached across the table for a piece of construction paper.
“Whoa. Ferg, did you see that? I saw Tammy’s cleavage.” Ahrun said.
“Tammy, you do have the nicest boobs on campus.” Fergus stated. He and Ahrun were staring at me lasciviously.
I felt my face grow red as I hauled up my tank-top. “Shut-up, both of you.”
Ferg burst into laughter, but Ahrun feigned a hurt expression. “Tammy, that was mean,” he said in an offended tone. “I think you should apologize. In fact, you should write me a letter of apology,” he added.
Shazzer approached our table and suddenly everyone at the table was absorbed in creating the construction paper butterflies. I glanced over at Ahrun after Shazzer moved on. He shot me a grin, and I looked down at my butterfly, newly aware of the ones fluttering in my stomach.
When I got back to my cabin before dinner, I decided to write Ahrun the apology he asked for. I grabbed a piece of paper and a pen and wrote, “I’m sorry you are so immature, Ahrun.” I folded it up into an even square and stuck it into my shorts pocket, intending to give it to him while we were in line waiting for the cafeteria to open.
But when I delivered it, he merely tucked it into his pocket without opening it. The familiar feelings of insecurity—well developed after years of rejection—surfaced and I felt self-conscious. Visions of Johnny—the Giant Behemoth who’d called me a stalker my sophomore year—entered my head. I’d only memorized his mailbox number because my work-study was in the mail room. Still, it’d taken me a while to live down the night I’d decided (drunk) to flash him with the words, “Screw You!” written in red lipstick right above my best Victoria’s Secret bra.
As soon as I entered the mess hall, I headed to the cooler to get a chocolate milk. I sat down next to Shazzer, deliberately ignoring Ahrun who took a seat across from me and immediately bogarted my chocolate milk.
“There’s more in the bin,” I told him, grabbing it back.
“I want that one.”
I picked it up and pitched it at him. Although part of me felt like we were in 6th grade again, the other part of me was pleased that this game had led to Ahrun sitting at our table. He tossed it back at me one more time before getting up to get his own. Again, I had trouble opening it.
“What are you guys doing tonight?” Ahrun asked when he came back to the table.
It was Friday, which meant we were technically off for the weekend. “I guess everyone’s going to dinner at Duke’s but I don’t have a car,” I said.
“I can give you a ride,” Shazzer told me. “Babs and I are going together.”
“Are you going to get hammered?” Katie asked Ahrun from the other side of Shazzer.
He looked at me. “What does hammered mean?”
“To get drunk,” I replied.
“Why in America do you have such stupid expressions for drinking? Like ‘getting hammered’ or ‘being plastered’?” Ahrun asked.
“In America, you can take any inanimate object and make it a euphemism for drinking.” I said knowingly. “As in, I’m getting tabled tonight.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Wanna get wallpapered?”
“Well, technically, I’m not 21 yet.” Having a birthday at the end of August meant I had to spend the entire summer underage.
“You Americans and your late drinking age,” Ahrun replied, opening his own chocolate milk without any outside help.
“How old are you?” I asked.
“I turned 21 in April.”
“Oh.”
As we were walking out of the cafeteria, I spied a rubber band on the ground. I picked it up and pretend-aimed it at Ahrun. He held up his hands, but I ended up snapping my finger instead of hitting him.
“No, Tammy, you shoot it like this,” he said, coming around behind me and placing the rubber band between my thumb and forefinger. He was close enough that I could smell his cologne. I tried shooting it again, but his proximity made me nervous and the rubber band slipped from between my fingers.
“Try again,” Ahrun told me.
After ten tries, I finally got it right.
The next morning, Babs-the-Theater-Major burst into the Girls’ Cabin. “Did you hear that Ahrun hooked up with Jamie last night?”
“No,” Shazzer said, glancing at me.
I tried to shrug nonchalantly. Jamie was a sorority type with no boobs whatsoever.
“I heard Ahrun has a red-head fetish,” Shazzer commented.
“Hmm,” I said bitterly. “Maybe that explains why he and Ferg were such good friends.”
Damn, I thought, rolling over in my bunk. I really thought Ahrun and I had something between us, with all of those private jokes. Having “earned” the distinction of having the “best boobs at camp,” I was finally a big fish in a small pond. Although E-C was a very tiny school, I always felt like I was an outcast. Here nobody knew about Dallas and the tape, and nobody I was crushing on was desperately in love with my beautiful—and also red-headed—roommate, Jane. And even though Ahrun had a girlfriend back home, I still felt like I might have had a chance. Foiled by a Ginger again.
I fingered my own hair, which now had a reddish—okay, maybe orange—tint to it.
“Speaking of Ferg, I heard he and Katie also hooked up last night,” Babs continued.
“Did all of this happen after we left?” Shazzer asked. Not being of age, Shazzer and I had left the restaurant early when the bar turned over at 9 pm.
Babs nodded.
“So I don’t get a summer hook-up because I’m underage?” I asked them.
Shazzer frowned. “Well, who else is there to hook up with?”
“Alex?” I offered with a giggle. Alex was a pale, skinny Russian who wore Speedos to the community pool.
“Or Serge,” Shazzer continued. Serge was also Russian, but with dark hair and a uni-brow.
“Well, I think that Joshua guy is arriving on Sunday. He’s from England too. Maybe he’ll be cute,” Babs offered.
“Whatever,” I said, rolling back over. It was Saturday, and I intended to glean every amount of sleep I could before camp officially started on Monday.