Chapter 3
Someone Else
To celebrate the end of our first week of camp, we went as a staff to the local hangout, a restaurant called Dukes. I watched as my 21 and older coworkers got “chaired.” Well, mostly 21 and older as some of the under-agers like Jamie and Mallory, had fake IDs.
“You don’t have a falsie?” Ahrun asked me from across the table. From his slurred speech, it seemed like he already had more than a few cocktails. “We’re going to a club after this, and you have to be 21 to get in. Or have an ID that says you are 21.”
“I don’t have one. I guess that means I won’t be joining you.” I’d never needed a fake at college—before Jane turned 21 last February, we’d usually find someone to help us out and always drank on campus instead of going out. Frustrated, I turned away from Ahrun. I didn’t want to engage him in conversation because a) I was sober and b) he had a girlfriend.
“Today’s Joshua’s birthday,” Babs told me.
“How old is he?”
“Twenty-two.”
“Oh.”
After another half an hour of staying sober in a roomful of drunks, Shazzer and I decided to go see a movie. I tried to find Joshua to wish him a happy birthday, but couldn’t seem to locate him.
“Do you know where he is?” I asked Babs.
“Nope. And nobody’s seen Mallory either.”
“Whatever. I’ll see you later,” I told Babs as I grabbed my purse.
After the movie, Shazzer and I found Babs reading in the cabin. Finding other things to do besides drinking with the ‘cool crowd’ reminded me a lot of my first semester of college, with Shazzer and Babs like my pseudo Lizzie and Jane.
With one important difference: “Let’s tell sex stories!” Shazz shouted. “You start, Tammy.”
“How about Babs starts?” I was trying to decide whether to let the two of them in on the fact that I had no sex stories.
Babs launched into a story how a cop shined a flashlight in the car as she and her boyfriend were going at it, and Shazzer told us about losing a condom in the filter of a hot tub.
Whoa. I never even did it the normal way—which I assumed constituted a room with an actual bed and all the lights turned off—let alone managing it in a hot tub or a moving vehicle.
“Your turn, Tammy!” Shazz declared.
Damn. It was too late now to go back, so I mumbled a story about a guy in college called Kerr that lived in our dorm sophomore year. Although Lizzie and Jane each had made out with him, it was me that developed a crush on him. I held out as long as I could to not kiss him, but gave in after he insisted on giving me a back massage in his room while his roommate was asleep. For Babs and Shazzer’s sake, I changed the back massage into actually having sex. “As I was leaving, I heard Kerr’s roommate say ‘bye.’ He was awake the whole time!” I faked an embarrassed tone. “And I left my shoes there, and the next morning they were outside my dorm room.”
“So?” Babs asked.
“So, we like went at it while his roommate was in there,” I told them.
“So?” Shazz asked again.
“So that’s it.”
She threw a pillow at me. “You are way lamer than I thought.”
If only she knew the truth. After the massage night, Kerr’s roommate, Adam, told Lizzie, who then told me, that Kerr claimed I had massive cellulite on the back of my thighs and was calling me, “Cottage Cheese and Pantyhose,” behind my back. The offensive nickname hurt even more that just as an insult—I thought I’d actually liked Kerr and that midnight message was the further I’d ever gone with a guy. One night after a few drinks and a lot of bemoaning my luck with guys, Lizzie and Jane helped me stick unused maxi-pads all over Kerr and Adam’s door. I think Adam might have known who did it, but Kerr and I never spoke again. Chalk it up to yet another Blockhead, the kind of guy that Eckhart was famous for.
“Hey, what are you birds up to?” Ahrun called from outside our cabin the next morning.
“Birds?” Shazzer asked as the five of us—including Babs and Mal—started toward the mess hall. Mal had gotten in really late last night, her drunken laughter giving her away. As I walked behind her that morning, I could see the back of her short hair was mussed—the bright blonde highlights tousled, exposing the brown underneath—and there were dark circles under eyes when she turned to look at Ahrun.
“Yeah, you know, girls,” Ahrun said.
“Oh, I get it. ‘Birds’ is the British version of chicks.” Shazzer and I giggled.
“You birds are crazy.” Ahrun replied. “Hey Mal, I saw you and Joshua last night at the bar. Did you shag?”
“No, but we did hook-up.” Apparently Mal needed no translation for “shag.”
Oh well, I thought with a sigh. I suppose that’s that. I felt let down—Joshua turned out to be yet another Blockhead. And I had actually hoped that he might have been different, that he might have been able to resist the lure of an inebriated slutty girl. Guess not.
Shazzer declared after breakfast that she was going to the mall. Like at E-C, having a car on campus was a rarity. But both Shazzer and Babs had one, so they were to become my lifelines. The one thing that could cheer me up that morning was shopping, and I asked Shazz if I could come.
When Babs came back to the cabin after breakfast, she told us that she was taking Joshua to pick up a few things he forgot to bring, and Shazzer invited them on our outing.
As we were leaving, Mallory decided to come too. Hmm, no surprise there.
Even though I made Babs sit in the back with Joshua and Mal, the ride to the mall was miserable. I felt like Shazzer, Babs and I were extra wheels to Mallory and Joshua’s newfound relationship. When we arrived at the mall, I tried pulling Shazzer and Babs away to shop and gossip with me, but Joshua kept following us, and Mal followed Joshua. I made a mental note that they weren’t exactly walking hand in hand.
Shazzer and Babs went into a toy store. I joined them, not looking back to see who else had followed us in. I found myself looking through the stuffed animal section, glad there were no crabs to be seen and wishing someday someone would buy a cute stuffed animal for me.
The song, “How’s it Going to Be,” by Third Eye Blind came on the radio.
“I love this song,” I said aloud.
“Even more than the ‘Down’ song?” Joshua was suddenly standing beside me.
“It’s only my favorite song in the whole world.” I picked up a stuffed horse. I could see Joshua looking at me out of the corner of my eye, so I turned to meet his gaze full on.
“Tammy, I have to talk to you about something,” he whispered.
My hopeful heart started beating faster. Maybe he was going to admit that he liked me. But then, as I remembered what he did last night with Mal, my heartbeat resumed a normal rate.
“I think Mal thinks she’s my girlfriend.”
“Yeah.” Is she?
“I was really drunk last night.”
“You don’t like her?” I asked hopefully, despite myself.
“No,” he replied in that endearing accent. “It was my birthday, and also the first night we all went out together. Ferg and Ahrun bought me a lot of shots, so I was completely trashed. I don’t know what to say to her now. I kind of like someone else.”
“Maybe you should talk to Mal.” If it were me, of course, I would just have ignored her until she got the picture, but Joshua wanted to make sure she didn’t tell anyone that she and him were a couple. Probably because it would scare off the Someone Else, whoever she was.
At our staff meeting on Sunday, Denny made sure to emphasize that the kids were arriving the next day and we would all now have actual responsibilities. He then gave us all our cabin assignments for the next week. My co-counselor was, of course, Mal, which meant that she and I would share a cabin and almost every waking moment for the next five days. We were in charge of the eight-year-old girls—the youngest age group. I could feel Mal’s glare from across the room. I was pleased to note that Joshua had sat as far away from her as he could while still being in the same room. He was assigned to the eight-year-old boys, which meant that we’d be at adjacent tables during meal times.
On Monday, after a quick breakfast, it was time to meet our campers. As Shazz was not an actual counselor, she slept in the now mostly empty Girls’ Cabin, along with Babs and Katie. She stood at my side while we waited for the busses full of campers to arrive.
“So Mal, I take it you and Joshua are not a couple?” Shazz asked casually.
“Not yet,” Mal replied. She shielded her eyes from the sun as she looked down the empty road.
“You guys ready for this?” Babs called, coming to stand by us as a train of yellow buses appeared on the road. “Eight seems really young to be away from their parents for a whole five days.”
I shrugged uncomfortably, feeling my nerves kick in. The busses pulled up and Mal and I went to our assigned number. The girls getting off did indeed look awfully young. A stocky, dark-haired girl stood in front of me, her hands on her hips. “I have to take my medicine every six hours.”
“You must be Shelly.” The nurse had already briefed Mal and me about Shelly’s ADHD medication needs, and we divided the days for when one of us was going to wake up at three o’clock in the morning to administer it. “Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.”
That seemed to satisfy her as she grabbed my hand in a sticky embrace and didn’t let go until we arrived at our cabin.
That week I only saw Ahrun when it was swim time for my group, except for meeting his occasional gaze at meal time.
Joshua, however, was another story. Our schedules were an hour off, so we’d be arriving at Arts and Crafts as his group was leaving. We’d exchange pleasantries, although I noticed he never talked more to Mal than necessary. Sometimes I would feel someone poke me in the side, but when I’d glance around, he’d be just out of arm’s reach.
On Friday, one of Joshua’s campers came up to me and handed me a crumpled piece of paper. It said, in badly written crayon “I, Joshua, Love Tammy.”
I grinned and put in the pocket of my cut-offs.
After lunch, Joshua approached me. “You didn’t happen to get a gift today, did you?”
“By gift you mean this?” I asked, pulling out the valentine.
“Yeah. See, Jorgie kept asking who my girlfriend was, and I told him I didn’t have one. I guess he somehow decided that I needed one, and you were his first pick.”
“Hmm. Imagine that.” I told him, replacing the note in my pocket.