But yeah. No one else truly gets our sense of humor, which leaves me kind of screwed, if you think about it. I spent all summer perfecting my act for an audience of one, and that audience has left the theater.
Have I mentioned that I miss you?
You probably remember what I told you about the first (and only other) time I went to camp, the summer before fifth grade. How the girls in my cabin were intimidating and cliquey, and I was always on the edge of what was happening, never in on the fun or the jokes, but I didn’t understand how outside of it I was, or that they all hated me, until the night they hung Ollie.
The week before camp, I thought long and hard about which of my treasured stuffed animals should accompany me. I would miss each one that didn’t make the cut, but it seemed important to only bring one, so as not to seem too babyish, and I felt certain the right choice would make me seem cool. It couldn’t be a teddy bear or anything too well loved or too new-looking. It should be something quirky and interesting, the kind of companion that would make me seem interesting. One pretty enough that the others would secretly want it, but offbeat enough that it would look almost ironic propped against the pillow on my bunk. (Yes, this whole thing makes me cringe now too. I was a total dork.)
Scruffy, long-necked Ollie the baby ostrich won out. She was one of my sweetest animal friends—scrappy and a little awkward, with a trusting but intelligent face. I loved her puffy gray body and cute little beak, and her fuzzy white head felt soft beneath my chin when we cuddled in the dark.
None of the other girls in my cabin brought stuffed animals, or if they did, they kept them hidden in their duffel bags. The cooler, more sophisticated girls brought makeup kits: palettes with eye shadow in a hundred shades; plastic cases filled with polishes, powders, pencils, creams, and brushes. They sat on one another’s bunks and did each other’s faces, styled each other’s hair. Rubbed perfume samples on wrists they held out for sniffs and approval.
I studied the ways they talked and moved, in case I got a chance to be one of them.
I was never invited to the makeover parties, though I was present, just a bunk or two away. I sat, cross-legged, with a book on my lap, trying to look available but not desperate. Interruptible, but not unoccupied. But just like at school, I was an outcast. Invisible. Irrelevant. Unremarkable and ignored.
But one day, one of the girls noticed Ollie and asked me about her. She was curious and complimentary, and other kids gathered around us and cooed over how cute Ollie was. I even let a few of them hold her. My heart beat double-speed the whole time, I was so eager and thrilled to be finally making friends.
The giant bell they used to signal mealtimes and stuff clanged, and we left for afternoon activities. I dipped long wicks into containers of hot wax—lowering them in slowly, lifting them back out. Waiting, then dipping again. I thought about how making candles was like making friends: slow at first—kind of monotonous, even—and requiring patience through the endless early stages. But layer by layer, you could build something solid. My persistence was finally paying off. Maybe that night I’d be invited to join the makeovers. Maybe tomorrow I’d be included in their games.
When I went back to the cabin to grab a sweatshirt before dinner, the girl who’d asked about Ollie was there. She and her friend erupted in giggles and I smiled back full-faced before I saw what they—or someone—had done. Hanging from the rafters, a ratty shoelace around her neck, was Ollie. The sign taped to her chest said “DEAD BIRD” in block letters. Her big feet and little wings flopped above me.
Pain squeezed my heart and I wanted to scale the bunks and save her, but the girls’ expectant gazes froze me in place. I couldn’t show them my devastation. I wouldn’t give them what they craved.
I tried to keep my expression unchanged. “Oh!” I said. “Haha. So funny.”
Uncertainty flickered in their faces, or maybe it was disappointment. “You’re not mad?”
“No!” I insisted. “That’s hilarious. Who did it?”
They swore they didn’t know but agreed it was genius, and I kept my smile plastered on and followed them to the mess hall, leaving Ollie where she was. Inside I was screaming. I wanted to claw those girls’ eyes out, make them wail the way I wished I could be wailing. I wanted to rescue Ollie, cradle her in my arms, and take her someplace safe from this humiliation and awfulness. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.
I deserted her. I was a traitor to the only friend I had.
When we returned to the cabin that night, Ollie was no longer dangling from the rafters. The counselor who’d cut her down returned her to me with some sharp words about “the kind of humor that doesn’t belong at Camp Paddywack,” as if I had done that horrible thing to my own fuzzy friend and thought it was funny. I didn’t correct her. I accepted Ollie back, removed the remnants of her noose, and tucked us deep inside my sleeping bag, where I wished I could stay hidden forever, or at least until the end of camp.
I told Dr. Rita about Ollie in our session yesterday and she waited with that I’m-really-listening face therapists get, then asked, “How did that make you feel?” I burst into tears, not because of the mean girls and Ollie and my failure as her protector and friend, but because when I told you this same story, you didn’t ask how I felt—you knew, immediately, without needing to be told. You exhaled out your nose like a bull blowing smoke, and said, “Fuck those girls. They’re not worthy to pet the soft tufts of Ollie’s behind,” so viciously that the story suddenly seemed funny—not like something shameful I had suffered alone, but a slight you rebuffed on my behalf, a pathetic attempt by those girls to deflate me. An experience we were in on together.
You asked me what Ollie was doing this summer, and I admitted I’d left her propped on my bed with a copy of Anne of Green Gables. You nodded and said, “Good. She deserves some nice R and R.” Then we debated Anne of Green Gables versus Emily of New Moon, Nancy Drew versus Cam Jansen versus Charlotte Holmes versus Harriet the Spy, and Paddington Bear versus Corduroy (a standoff promptly won by Winnie the Pooh).
I’ve never had a friend who gets me like you do. Did.
But I didn’t want to go into that again with Dr. Rita, so I let her think I was crying over the mean girls and Ollie—over what happened way back when, instead of over you. I didn’t mention I had ever even told you that story. Because it’s starting to feel like the more I talk about you, the less anyone understands, and the further I get from you, the real you, even though you’re only two weeks gone. I can’t capture you correctly with words or even memories, can’t keep you present and real through stories (the way you could make anything real in the telling). I don’t want to explain our friendship to other people who weren’t in it. I only want to talk about you with you. But these letters are as close as I’ll get.
There’s another kind of candle-making I learned that summer besides the hand-dipping kind. We also used wet sand to form molds that we filled with hot wax—poured it in smooth and fast, then let it cool and harden around the wick. That’s the way you and I became friends: swift and sudden, no gradual buildup. Overnight, our friendship solidified, as though by some grand design. We burned hot and bright, and I thought the flame would last forever. Then Jackson snuffed it out.