1
Bowl Cut and Chickenlips
June 6, 1983
Corryn
Summer truly starts the minute you can no longer see your parents waving goodbye.
I wave longer than anyone else. A dark thought runs through my mind. This is the last time I’ll see them together. They’re standing there with these big lying smiles. I can see the white of their teeth from a hundred yards away. Like everything is fine—better than fine! It’s not.
It’s not fine.
We used to go to Grandpa’s farm in the summer. Back then, we’d wave and wave goodbye, long past the time the old house became a bird-sized speck on the horizon. Now I’m going to camp. And my parents think I don’t know it’s because they’re getting divorced. I wave because I have to, but I don’t miss them. I’m not going to miss them either. They don’t deserve it.
Elliot on the other hand? Elliot, I’ll miss.
The night before we left, I even gave him a kiss. It wasn’t our first, but it was the longest and saddest one we’ve shared. I felt tears pop up in my eyes as I kissed him, and believe me, I’m not the kind of girl who cries easily.
My friend Joy from school will cry if she forgets her homework or gets a B on a spelling test. I didn’t cry even when I wiped out and sprained both my wrists. Plus, I always get As on spelling tests. Consistent. C-O-N-S-I-S-T-E-N-T. Consistent.
But nine weeks away from Elliot, that’s worse than a million sprained wrists. That’s like spraining both my wrists and both my ankles and splitting my head open on a rock. Oh, I’m gonna miss him so much! So . . . the night before camp I bent down and leaned in and kissed him.
Right on the handlebars.
I can’t believe they won’t let me bring my bike to camp! Why can’t you bring a bike to camp? Elliot doesn’t take up much room. He can sleep in the corner! Or he can have the sleeping bag and I’ll sleep in the corner!
Alas, no. I’ll be out here for nine weeks without him. I hope I don’t forget how to ride.
Elliot really is a beautiful bike. He’s matte black and bright gold, with twenty-inch mag wheels, racing tires, and a slick silver stripe down the side. It’s a BMX racing bike, just like you see Danny Stark riding in all the magazines. He’s been the world BMX champion for three years running now (although his 1981 win was controversial).
All I’m saying is, if a quad reverse bunny hop over the finish line is wrong, I don’t want to be right.
I literally had to beg on hands and knees for Elliot. Hands and knees. Mom and Dad were not cool at all about it. Not cool at all. It was like they were trying to outdo each other with who could be more uncool. I’d have to say that particular contest ended in a tie. It’s too dangerous, they said. Too expensive. They had a million reasons. What they really meant is that it’s not for girls.
They’re wrong. But I finally got Elliot (note to self: Was Elliot a divorce-guilt present?) and now I have to leave him for a whole summer. He couldn’t even ride all the way to camp with me.
All the kids going to Camp Sweetwater got dropped off at the rest stop parking lot. We stood around trying to look cool while we waited for the camp transport to roll in. It was wall-to-wall kids and parents and weepy goodbyes, so there was no cool.
There were little baby primary kids, and in-between kids like me, and teenagers, like that guy with the almost mustache. I don’t know who he’s kidding. It’s going to take him fifty years to turn that thing into a Tom Selleck.
Five buses, badly painted white and squeaking like no tomorrow, trundled into the parking lot. Somebody has stenciled CAMP SWEETWATER on the sides in red. The paint had run, leaving the words dripping down the sides like blood.
I tried to point this out to my parents, but they were too busy making sure I had plenty of underwear and suntan lotion and pretending to be totally, completely, absolutely not about to break up our home. Well, whatever happens, at least I’ll have custody of Elliot.
Counselors poured off the buses and sorted us by grade. After granting us one last farewell, they herded us into our sketchy rides in grade order.
The lineup is simple: two buses each of little kids and middles, and one for the teens. When I jump into my seat, it pukes up crumbly, gritty foam. Awesome.
The road to camp twists its way through the trees, and it feels too narrow for the bus. The bus bounces and rattles and shakes like we’re driving over the surface of the moon. What kind of shocks are on this thing? The noise shakes up the swarm of butterflies in my stomach.
I don’t know anybody here and I don’t think anyone else does, either. It’s weirdly quiet. Not like going to school, where people trade seats and lean over to talk and throw stuff when the driver’s not looking. Here, we mostly stare at each other, then look away real fast.
A couple kids seem like they’re just barely holding back tears. There’s a girl with a huge cliff of bangs towering over her forehead, a style my dad calls “case of hairspray.” She’s scribbling furiously on some stationery. Is she writing a letter to the people she just saw twenty minutes ago?
There’s a boy with dark hair and dark eyes and a big smile, nose in a book, reading intently like there is going to be a test. Is there going to be a test? I try to sneak a glance at the cover but get interrupted.
A very tall teenage girl—one of the counselors, judging by the name tag on her Cure T-shirt—hops up and starts shouting at us from the front of the bus. She has a megaphone, like a cheerleader would use.
“Right, then,” she says in a heavy British accent. She sounds like a lady in a James Bond movie. I figure she’s doing a funny voice so I shout back “Right!” in my own British accent. Unfortunately, I’m the only one who does. My cheeks burn a little. Whatever.
She continues. “My name is Mary, innit? And some of you lot are lucky enough to have me as your counselor for the next nine weeks. I know I look like a sweetheart . . .”
Okay, not doing an accent. Actually British. Got it.
Here she pauses and blinks her big, blue-mascaraed eyelashes at us. “I’m a counselor. I’m not your mum and I’m not here to wipe your bum.”
The kid with the book laughs loudly, but no one else does. This Mary is a little scary. Scary Mary.
“Which one of you lot is Corryn?” she asks.
Now I really feel my cheeks burn. I raise my hand and feel the eyes of all the campers lock on to me.
“That’d be me,” I say.
“Take better care of your things, Corryn,” she says. “These fell out of your sack when you were getting on the bus.”
She holds up a pair of underwear. My underwear. The ones with blue bunnies on them. The ones my mom had written CORRYN QUINN on with permanent marker across the elastic. Great, now she’s trying to ruin my life two different ways.
Scary Mary fires the undies at me like a kid shooting rubber bands in math class. They land in the next seat, right in the lap of the kid with the book. He hands them to me like it’s no big deal. Like he’s just passing a stack of papers back in class.
“My mom writes my name in my underwear too,” he says with a shrug. Then the goober introduces himself. “I’m Tez. Tez Jones.”
“I’m Corryn,” I say, feeling like my throat is on fire. “But you already knew that.”