Summer at Meadow Wood Read online

  Dedication

  For Jan and Gayle, the best camp sisters of all

  Meadow Wood Cabins

  JUNIOR CAMP

  Chicory—six- and seven-year-olds

  Daisy—eight-year-olds

  Violet—nine-year-olds

  INTERMEDIATE CAMP

  Goldenrod—ten-year-olds

  Dandelion—eleven-year-olds

  Clover—twelve-year-olds

  SENIOR CAMP

  Yarrow—thirteen-year-olds

  Marigold—fourteen-year-olds

  Aster—fifteen-year-olds

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Meadow Wood Cabins

  Day 1—Saturday

  Day 1—Saturday Evening

  Day 1—Saturday Evening

  Day 2—Sunday

  Day 3—Monday

  Day 5—Wednesday

  Day 5—Wednesday

  Day 5—Wednesday Evening

  Day 6—Thursday

  Day 6—Thursday

  Day 7—Friday

  Day 7—Friday Evening

  Day 8—Saturday

  Day 9—Sunday

  Day 10—Monday

  Day 12—Wednesday

  Day 13—Thursday Evening

  Day 14—Friday

  Day 16—Sunday

  Day 16—Sunday

  Day 17—Monday Night

  Day 19—Wednesday

  Day 20—Thursday

  Day 21—Friday

  Day 21—Friday

  Day 21—Friday Evening

  Day 21—Friday Evening

  Day 22—Saturday

  Day 23—Sunday

  Day 24—Monday

  Day 25—Tuesday

  Day 26—Wednesday

  Day 27—Thursday

  Day 28—Friday

  Day 29—Saturday

  Day 30—Sunday

  Day 32—Tuesday

  Day 34—Thursday

  Day 35—Friday

  Day 36—Saturday

  Day 36—Saturday Evening

  Day 39—Tuesday

  Day 41—Thursday

  Day 42—Friday

  Day 44—Sunday

  Day 46—Tuesday

  Day 46—Tuesday

  Day 47—Wednesday

  Day 48—Thursday

  Day 49—Friday

  Day 50—Saturday

  Day 50—Saturday Evening

  Day 51—Sunday

  Day 52—Monday

  Day 53—Tuesday

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Books by Amy Rebecca Tan

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Day 1—Saturday

  We realized the frog didn’t make it somewhere near the Massachusetts/New Hampshire border.

  The smell was what gave it away.

  I could only describe it as the smell of a decaying frog in a cardboard box on a hot bus moving north at sixty-five miles per hour.

  It was a unique odor.

  Poor Vera Simon. She took the seat in the first row as soon as we boarded the bus and clutched that shoebox on her lap as if it contained Cinderella’s glass slipper. Her two blond braids were pulled so tight on either side of her head you could practically see her mom working on her hair earlier that morning, combing and twisting and locking them in place like her life depended on it.

  It had worked, though, because her braids still looked perfect.

  Little Vera.

  Someone had to tell her about the frog.

  And because I was her designated camp sister, it was going to have to be me.

  Every junior camper was assigned a senior camper to be their “sister” for the entire eight weeks at Meadow Wood. This gave the juniors a safe person to go to any time they felt homesick or had a problem in their cabin or had questions about evening activity or mail or canteen.

  If you had a good camp sister, it made all the difference in the world.

  If you had a bad one, well, it could get pretty ugly. I should know.

  When I was nine years old, starting my first summer at Meadow Wood, my camp sister was Jennifer Maskers. Jennifer was fifteen, wore sparkly eye makeup, and had hair so long she could sit on it. She was also a Meadow Wood lifer. She had started camp in Chicory, the youngest bunk, and had returned every summer until reaching the oldest one, Aster.

  The Aster girls were the queens of Meadow Wood. If an Aster knew you, you got popularity points immediately. If an Aster hugged you or gave you a piggyback ride to the dining hall or bragged about how cute you were, you were golden. Jennifer Maskers did all that for nine-year-old me. I thought I’d hit the jackpot.

  Until the Byars Beach field trip in July.

  Only senior campers went on that trip, but Jennifer brought a gift back for me: a gigantic rainbow-swirl lollipop the size of my head. It was almost an inch thick and weighed way too much for a piece of candy, but I wanted Jennifer to keep thinking I was adorable and someone worth spending money on, so I put on a show and bit greedily into it.

  I just meant to bite off a small piece to suck on while she showed me the other treasures in her shopping bag.

  Instead, a solid chunk of my top front right tooth snapped off with a crack as loud as a campfire twig popping.

  Jennifer’s face went from shocked to horrified to hysterical laughter so quickly I didn’t even have time to react to the pain. I was focused on her face—her glamorous fifteen-year-old face—to figure out how I should feel about the jagged piece of tooth in my hand and the sharp edge my tongue kept running over inside my mouth.

  After an uncomfortable drive in the camp director’s car to the closest town (twenty-five minutes away) for an emergency dentist appointment, I had a repaired front tooth. I also had new feelings about my camp sister.

  Not good ones.

  And that’s why I always told myself that I would be the best camp sister ever, when my time came.

  And that time was now.

  On this bus.

  With that smell.

  I was sure Vera had no idea she was cradling the corpse of her pet frog. She was only seven years old, after all.

  I had just met Vera minutes before boarding the bus when one of the counselors paired up all the camp sisters for a photo. I didn’t know if she was the kid who cannonballed straight into the pool without testing the water first or if she was the kid who eased in slowly, an inch at a time, letting each new bit of skin adjust to the temperature. So I didn’t know if I should just blurt out the bad news or approach carefully.

  I unbuckled my seat belt, walked up the aisle, and stopped at the first row on the bus where Vera was seated alone, next to the window.

  “Mind if I sit here?” I asked.

  Vera gazed up at me with big brown eyes that looked one size too large for her head.

  “Sit down!” she practically ordered me. “It’s dangerous to stand in the aisle at this speed. And buckle up—it’s the law.”

  I quickly sat and clicked my seat belt across my hips. Vera looked relieved.

  “So, how are you doing?” I asked her.

  “I’m fine,” she said, turning her head to look out the window, away from me.

  “Are you excited? To get there and see your cabin and meet your counselors?” I tried to make my voice sound enthusiastic, which took effort, as I was mildly carsick. The dead frog smell wasn’t helping.

  “Excited? Not at the moment, no.”

  “Oh. Well, maybe once we get closer,” I suggested.

  Vera looked at me the way my mom looks at my little brother sometimes, with extra patience. “Maybe,” she said.

  “So.” I shifted in my seat, turning toward her
. “I’m concerned about your frog, Vera.”

  “There’s no need,” she replied without pause.

  “Well . . . I think this trip might have been too much for him.”

  Vera’s eyes opened wide—they seemed to take up half her face. She looked at the box on her lap, then turned her huge brown eyes up at me again.

  “I’m sorry, but that smell,” I said. “I think he’s . . . no longer with us.”

  Vera blinked slowly.

  “I’m sorry,” I said again gently.

  “I know she’s gone,” she replied.

  “You know?”

  “Of course I know. That smell is a dead giveaway.” Her eyes twinkled at me.

  “O-okay,” I stuttered. “Well, are you upset? You must be upset,” I said, even though I couldn’t read her face.

  “I’m fine. I knew it was a risk bringing her. I just rescued her from my neighbor’s pool this morning. I don’t know how long she was stuck in there, but I know chlorine penetrated her skin. Frogs breathe through their skin, you know.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said.

  “She’s a green frog, Lithobates clamitans, very common in Pennsylvania.”

  “How do you know she’s a she?”

  “Her tympana, the circular patch of skin behind the eyes, are smaller in size than her eyes, which means she’s a female. If the tympana were the same size as the eyes or larger, she would be a male.”

  “Oh. Cool.” Vera would probably love the nature hut at camp, with all its pressed flowers, boxes of seeds, bark samples, and posters about indigenous New Hampshire species. In junior camp, nature hut was a daily activity.

  “Anyway, I know she’s deceased. The odds were stacked against her.”

  “Guess so,” I agreed.

  Vera hugged the box closer to her body. There were air holes punched on four sides. You could practically see the dead-frog fumes wafting out of them.

  Vera didn’t look sad, but she didn’t look not sad, either. I tried to figure out what a good camp sister would do.

  “What was her name?” I decided to ask.

  “Happy.”

  I stifled a laugh. It was hard not to laugh at a dead frog named Happy.

  “I’m aware of the irony in her name,” Vera clarified.

  Irony? Did she really just say irony?

  “This is how you think, Vera? Aren’t you seven? Aren’t you in Chicory?”

  “I’m gifted.” Vera sighed, as though she were tired of explaining it to people.

  “Oh.” I bit my lip. It figured—my first shot at being a camp sister and I got the one safety-focused, amphibian-loving, gifted kid in the whole junior camp.

  “I’ve been advanced since the day I was born, according to my mom. She calls me her sponge because I absorb everything. It’s just the two of us, so I’m always with her and her adult friends, which has done wonders for my vocabulary. After only two months in kindergarten, they moved me right to second grade.” Vera paused to catch her breath, and then her tone changed completely. “Don’t tell anyone, though, in my cabin.” Her face was serious as a heart attack. Serious as a dead frog. “I don’t want to seem obnoxious about it.”

  “My lips are sealed,” I told her, and acted out zipping my mouth shut and tossing the key. “I’m sure they’ll never figure it out.”

  She squinted her eyes at me.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I hear your sarcasm,” she scolded.

  How was I feeling like the younger one here? I was thirteen! I was almost twice Vera’s age. I was in Yarrow, in senior camp, finally.

  “Easy, Vera. I’m just making a joke,” I explained.

  She turned away from me and looked back out the window.

  “We really should get rid of that box, though,” I told her.

  Vera took a deep breath and released it slowly. “Okay,” she agreed.

  “Maybe at the next rest stop?” I proposed.

  She nodded.

  We sat in silence for a minute. I stared at the unbending road ahead of us, but Vera could only stare at the back of the safety barrier in front of her. She was too short to see over it.

  Then she asked, “Will you do it for me?”

  She all of a sudden sounded her age, her voice matching her size, her butterfly hair ribbons tied around each braid, and her glitter shoelaces, which had a strawberry-daisy-strawberry pattern on them.

  “Sure, Vera,” I told her. “I’ll take care of her.”

  Vera smiled at me then, for the first time.

  “I’m your camp sister. I’ll always help you when you need it,” I reassured her. “Us Vs gotta stick together, you know. Vic and Vera. We’re the V team.”

  Her smile grew and she let her dangling legs swing back and forth a few times. They didn’t reach the floor. Even for seven, Vera was small. I was glad she’d be in a cabin with other seven-year-olds. She might have been able to fit in easily with kids two years older than her at school, but camp was not school. At camp, she’d stick out like a snowflake in July if she were placed in a cabin with the older girls who matched her school grade.

  Vera took one hand off her box then, reached over to my seat, and placed her hand in mine.

  Her hand was clammy from pressing against the cardboard, but her grip was tight and I felt her whole body relax next to me. It was funny how you could go from not knowing a person at all to holding their hand and making them feel safe in just a matter of minutes.

  Or maybe not funny. Maybe amazing was what it was.

  I held Vera’s hand in my lap and looked out the flat glass windshield in front of me. There was nothing but gray road and blue sky, trees leaving a blur of green on either side. We’d been on the bus for hours, so the chatter and cheering and tone-deaf singing had died off a while ago. Girls in every row were either asleep or completely zoned out, rocked into a trancelike state by the purring motor of the bus.

  I held on to the silence, just the sound of tires whirring and air rushing past, because I knew it was the last time I’d hear this kind of quiet for weeks.

  And I tried not to breathe through my nose.

  Day 1—Saturday Evening

  “It looks like a pharmacy threw up in here.”

  Chieko stood in the doorway that separated the camper room from the counselor room in our cabin, her hands on her hips, her dark brown eyes narrowed as she scanned the space.

  We were unpacking. Badly.

  An explosion of hairbrushes and headbands, shampoo bottles and plastic razors, Q-tips and packages of gum (not technically permitted), bug spray and balled-up socks covered the worn wooden floor.

  “You’ve been at it for almost an hour,” Chieko told us, looking at the oversize black watch that was fastened around her slim wrist. “I find your lack of progress disturbing. Also, somewhat impressive.” She disappeared back to her room, and I heard the springs of her cot screech as she settled onto it.

  Chieko was the only one in Yarrow new to Meadow Wood.

  And she was our counselor.

  The bugle for dinner was going to blow soon, and none of us were ready to go. Jordana was hanging a Hamilton poster on the front of her cubby door with so much duct tape she’d probably never get it off again. Carly was sitting on a mound of her own thick hoodie sweatshirts while trying to open a container of red rope licorice (also not technically permitted). Jaida A and Jaida C were in the bathroom organizing toiletries together. I was trying to wrestle my pillow from home into a Meadow Wood pillowcase. It was like trying to slip a whole baked potato into a piece of pita bread. But I wasn’t giving up. Yet.

  Chieko stuck her head back in our room and said, with no enthusiasm at all, “Time for forced bunk bonding, also known as Roses and Thorns. Move it, campers.”

  She turned on her heel and walked back to her room, muttering, “Good God, what did I get myself into?” loud enough for us to hear.

  “Did she just call us campers?” Jordana asked, already chomping away on the gum she had packed. It was
Big Red. I could smell the spicy cinnamon of it from six feet away.

  “This is senior camp,” Carly joined in, shaking her head. “I will not be referred to as a camper, for Jake’s sake.”

  “Ooh, who’s Jake?” Jordana said, thrusting her hip out in an exaggerated flirty pose. “Is he hot?”

  Carly looked at her like she couldn’t believe this was starting already.

  “Yes, Jordana,” I answered for Carly. “The fictional Jake from Carly’s rhyme is hot. Smokin’ hot. Edge-of-the-sun hot.”

  “Woot-woot!” Jordana hooted. She flipped her mane of amber-brown hair upside down and then whipped it back up, gathering it into a high ponytail. Her skin already had a sun-kissed look from time spent at the pool before camp started, the light sprinkle of freckles on her nose more pronounced from her tan. She cackled like a wild animal and then, in a motherly tone, said, “Time for Roses and Thorns, campers!”

  She sashayed over to me, linked her arm through mine, breathed her hot gum breath on me, and pulled me out to the counselor room.

  Carly and the two Jaidas dropped what they were doing and followed.

  “I’m told you’ve all been here since junior camp, so you know the drill,” Chieko started. “Share one rose and one thorn each and this will instantly make us lifelong friends.” She said this like she was reading the instructions from a board game.

  “Way to sell it, counselor,” I said, crossing my legs pretzel-style as I sat.

  Chieko looked at me, a sparkle in her eye. “Why thank you, young one.”

  We were sitting on the floor in a circle in the front room of the cabin, also known as the counselor room, also known as the meeting room. Only one of the three counselor cots was made up. We only needed one counselor because there were only five of us campers in Yarrow this year, even though the bunk was built to hold up to twelve.

  Jordana, Carly, the two Jaidas, and me. That was it.

  Meadow Wood had seen better days.

  Meadow Wood was a real back-to-nature kind of camp—rustic wooden cabins with only screen doors, campfires by the lakefront, clay tennis and bocce courts, hiking trips with butterfly nets and magnifying lenses, an arts-and-crafts shack to draw native flora and fauna. There were no rock walls, no zip lines, no paintball fields like all the other camps had. Meadow Wood was the fossil of summer camps, so attendance was slowly shrinking, the way a shadow does as the sun rises higher in the sky. What really sealed our fate, though, was the No Devices rule.