Читать книгу Almost Crimson - Dasha Kelly - Страница 14

NINE

SPIDERS

CECE CLENCHED HER FISTS UNTIL the crunch of gravel beneath the school bus’ tires gave way to smooth, paved road. CeCe braced for a forgotten shoe or dental retainer, flat tire, anything that might turn them back. She exhaled after three highway exits, certain they all were finally free. CeCe leaned back, closed her eyes, and promised herself never to look forward to anything so desperately again.

Eight weeks earlier, CeCe and four dozen kids had ridden on another yellow bus along this stretch of highway from Prescott and onto the gravel road leading to Camp Onondaga. At that first sound of stones popping and spraying from beneath bus tires, CeCe had trembled with excitement. The bus rocked and bumped, all the kids’ heads and shoulders moving in a wobbly choreography. This was the first day of summer camp for them all, and CeCe’s first time away from her mother.

With her small, nervous hands gripping the seat beneath her knees, CeCe looked through the front windshield, taking in the approaching view. Brilliant bars of liquid sun reached through the canopy of forest, and the trees seemed to salute their passing bus in curved formation. Pushing deeper into the forest along the narrowing gravel road, the bus reached an open glen, where four handsome young people in matching blue T-shirts stood around a flagpole. They were the staff of camp counselors who, CeCe would learn, were mostly college students earning money for the summer. That they weren’t driven to create lifelong memories for each camper—like the brochures said—would be the least of CeCe’s disappointments.

CeCe had been skeptical about the idea of camp at first, mirroring her assessments of her newest social worker. She especially didn’t like the way this one, Ms. Petrie, tried to scrape about by asking the same questions in six different ways. After one of their meetings in the second room of the guidance office, CeCe went directly to Mrs. Anderson with the Camp Onondaga brochure.

CeCe wanted to feel excited, but she was suspicious of Ms. Petrie. Or maybe she felt uneasy with the tendrils of guilt snaking around her ankles. Ms. Petrie said her mother would be in a special hospital and arrangements had been made for CeCe to have an extended registration at summer camp. Mrs. Anderson helped her decide what to do with the thoughts and feelings she couldn’t name.

“I know it will be hard to think about having fun,” Mrs. Anderson had said, leaning closer to CeCe, “but your mother will be getting the help she needs while you’re gone. Having fun will be perfectly acceptable.”

CeCe had come to rely a lot on Mrs. Anderson over the years. Books about puberty, recordings of Motown artists, decoding the condescension of some of her white teachers, and advice on how to keep the curl in her bangs. If it hadn’t been for her reassurance, CeCe might not have made the bus. CeCe absorbed every one of those earliest impressions, because she wanted to tell Mrs. Anderson everything about her summer. CeCe filed away mental pictures of huge wooden stumps, big enough to sit on, and clusters of wood cabins situated on top of slats and stilts beneath voluptuous oak trees.

She’d tell her mother, too.

CeCe would remember the sound of creaking springs and slamming screen doors, as well as cheerful, young white people in matching polo shirts and whistles. CeCe’s young white person was named Hoot. Or, that’s what CeCe and the other five girls she’d been clustered with were instructed to call her. Other groups were led by Trout, Blaze, S’more, Bambi, Foxy, Rainbow, Mudslide, Whiskers, Thunder, and Moss.

Once Hoot had shown them to their cabin and around the grounds, the small troop made their way to the mess hall for the camp’s official opening session. There were a hundred kids, all grouped by age. Most of them would board for a week or two. CeCe’s extended registration would have her at camp for eight. By her third welcome session, however, the experience felt less like a sweet treat and more like repeated loops.

Back at the cabin, CeCe studied the other girls while Hoot chirped on about buddy systems, lights out, water safety, poison ivy, and keeping the latrine clean. All six of them were nine or ten years old, but the similarities ended there. They were African-American, Samoan, and white. Suburban, rural, and hood. They were broken. Naive. Jaded. Faithful. Each on her separate way to becoming debutante, valedictorian, underachiever, bully, innovator, and lost.

She listened to their banter while building the courage to join in and take initiative, like Mrs. Anderson had made her promise to do. Mrs. Castellanos had given her a winding lecture about using this summer as her time to bloom. Though CeCe liked the notion of being compared to a flower, she felt more like a radish or, maybe cabbage, nothing overtly beautiful, but still something that emerges from the earth completely intact and completely without interference.

“I have those same pajamas at home!” the Samoan girl said excitedly, spying the Smurfette PJs in the redheaded girl’s open duffel bag.

“They’re my favorites,” Redhead said.

“I don’t like the Smurfs anymore,” said Portia, one of the other black girls. “I like the Care Bears. I got a Care Bear lunchbox at home.”

From there, the conversation swirled around which of Strawberry Shortcake’s friends was the best, which Super Friend was smarter, and whether Ghostbusters were real. They were unpacking their toiletries and sheeting their cots, while CeCe followed the bounce of their chatter from Ninja Turtles to New Edition to ET.

“You’re awfully quiet, Crimson,” Hoot said as she walked into their small cabin. “I think I could hear everyone talking about their favorite things except you. I’d like to hear about your favorite shows.”

“CeCe.”

“I’m sorry?” Hoot replied.

“I go by ‘CeCe,’” she said.

“Oh,” Hoot said, a relieved smile lighting her face. “CeCe, it is! What’s one of your favorite things, CeCe?”

The other girls perched onto the ends of their cots, waiting for her to speak.

“Um . . . ,” CeCe began, uncomfortable with the twelve eyeballs pointed her direction. “I don’t watch much TV,” she mumbled. “I like to read, mostly.”

“Ain’t you got a TV?” one asked.

“Yeah,” CeCe said, lying. “I just don’t watch it much, is all. I like books better.”

“You like Judy Blume?” asked another from the next bunk.

CeCe hesitated, looking to Hoot. “I’ve read all of her books.”

“Me, too,” her bunk neighbor said.

CeCe felt optimistic. She hadn’t been around unfamiliar kids since starting kindergarten at Neil Armstrong Elementary. She was a fourth-grader now, with years of compiled lessons on which classmates might turn their smiles on and off from day to day, which ones would mock her mix-and-match thrift-store clothes, and which ones would always call out a goodbye to her as their class spilled from the cloakroom. She couldn’t yet know which labels to assign these new cabin mates and she felt anxious.

By the end of that following day, their first full day at camp, CeCe was convinced she’d boarded a big, yellow school bus to heaven. There was a brand new experience almost every hour; she engaged with kids from every walk of life. Hoot and the other counselors were unwavering in their excitement, and CeCe was stunned by the scenery around her. Her visits to the park were wholly unremarkable compared to this immersion in nature.

By the end of the second week, however, CeCe accepted that the other campers had not been eager to experience nature in the form of lilting wind songs, blinking jewels of sunlight, or sky-reaching trees. When the third arrival of cabin mates assumed the clique-ish and tittering obsessions of the departed first two groups, CeCe realized that other kids came to camp with an interest in the nature of boys.

“You should sit next to Brian at the campfire tonight,” one girl said to another on their group’s walk from the lake. “My brother is in his cabin and said Brian thinks you’re cute.”

CeCe considered herself average-looking and there were a fair number of boys her age, black, white, and a few Latino, for her to join her fawning peers. Instead, CeCe’s skin tightened whenever the topic of boys came up, which was constantly. None of their bodies were blooming behind their shorts and tank tops, yet these other girls who occupied bunks each week all around CeCe were already painting their fingernails, wearing curlers in their hair and boasting encyclopedic knowledge on all things boy.

With each cohort, CeCe was one of a handful of other social misfits who actually poured effort and attention into weaving their dream catchers, roasting s’mores, discovering leaves on a hike, learning to wrap an ankle bandage. CeCe learned to maneuver around their giggling huddles in the arts-and-crafts tent, by the canoe docks, before and after meals. She let the crunch of twigs and leaves drown away their chatter as she walked another clipboard to the main office for Hoot or escaped into the quiet of a wooded path.

Befriending the girls made CeCe equally anxious. She couldn’t tell when she was having a conversation or being sized up. CeCe was uncertain of Hoot, and the other counselors, as well. They didn’t ask questions of her, the way Mrs. Anderson did. When they hugged her, the insides of their arms weren’t warm, like Mrs. Castellanos’. They delivered spirited but unvaried welcomes at the camp kickoff week after week.

By CeCe’s sixth week, she was all brood and silence. She was lonely, unhappy, and stuck. Hoot had given up on trying to legislate CeCe’s good cheer and simply allowed her to wander the grounds, choose her own activities and exist along the periphery until their summer sentence could come to an end.

On a trek to retrieve oversized Band-Aids for Hoot, CeCe stopped along the trail to watch a rabbit. She stood in the middle of the pathway, quiet and still, when a boy’s voice made her spin around. She knew his name was Dwayne, one of the most-discussed boys in her cabin. Two other boys flanked him, but CeCe didn’t know their names.

“Chill out,” Dwayne said. “We’re not bears.”

CeCe wanted to run, but forced her legs to settle themselves. It was easy to see why his name had taken root in the mouths of so many of her fellow campers. Dwayne was dark-complexioned and lean, with the promise of broad shoulders one day. His teeth overlapped and his smile glinted with mischief. More boys like Dwayne had started to join her student body at Neil Armstrong Elementary, now that the district was experimenting with expanded enrollment requirements. Boys like Dwayne came to her school with crisp outfits and a fresh haircut every Monday morning. She acknowledged the appeal of a boy like Dwayne in her innermost workings, but simply had no idea what to do about it all.

CeCe intended to slip her hands into the pockets of her shorts but missed. Again, she willed her body not to panic. Instead, she heard herself mumble.

“You’d be some small bears.”

“Small bears?” repeated one of the boys, his eyebrows raised in surprised peaks. “Man, she said we’d be small bears.”

Her chest seized. CeCe had seen how easily one lightly tossed joke could detonate into playground wreckage. Dwayne looked to his friend and back at CeCe.

“We’d be cute bears, though,” Dwayne said, winking that smile at her. “Girls like cute bears, don’t you?”

She shrugged her shoulders, held her breath, and looked for an escape.

“Where you going?” Dwayne asked as CeCe resumed a more deliberate march toward the medical cabin.

“Med. We need Band-Aids.”

“Somebody got hurt?” Dwayne asked, his eyes light.

“Portia. A branch poked her in the arm.”

“She bleedin’ real bad?” one of the other boys asked, impish curiosity pushing aside his cool.

CeCe waved away their wide-eyed attention. “Just a flap of hanging skin. She’s bleeding, but not bad.”

The boys were visibly disappointed.

“Tonya is in your cabin, right?” Dwayne asked, taking steps toward the med cabin with her.

“Which one?” CeCe asked. “Tall Tonya is in Whisker’s cabin. Short Tonia is in mine.”

Dwayne looking to the other guys for verification and confirmed, “Short Tonia.”

“Yeah, she has the bunk below me,” CeCe said, taking another step toward the medical cabin. The boys followed.

“You should tell her to meet me by the boating shed after lunch,” Dwayne said.

“I don’t know her like that,” CeCe said, recoiling at the idea of initiating a conversation with one of the girls, let alone relay a message from Dwayne and embroil herself in the subsequent chatterfest.

“Get to know her like that,” Dwayne said. “Come on, CeCe, please?”

CeCe’s head snapped around at the sound of her name trumpeting from Dwayne’s throat. How did he know her name? How had he chosen her of all the people at camp who would willfully do his bidding? Why was he smiling at her that way?

“Well,” CeCe said, giving Dwayne a thin and bashful grin. “OK.”

CeCe returned to their cabin area with the Band-Aids as her group lined up for the cantina. CeCe paced herself behind Tonia as she bantered with another girl.

“I’m having fun,” Tonia was saying, “but I’ll be glad to sleep in my own bed.”

CeCe injected herself in their conversation, asking Tonia what her room was like. One of the nicer girls, Tonia didn’t dismiss CeCe’s fringe status and gave a bubbly description of her matching bedspread and curtains, new Cabbage Patch dolls, and wall posters of Diana Ross, Marilyn McCoo, and Thelma fromGood Times.

CeCe waited for Tonia to exhaust the inventory of her room, so she could submit Dwayne’s request. While Tonia rambled, CeCe wondered why Dwayne had picked this girl. She wasn’t that cute. She definitely wasn’t very bright. Confounded once again by the nature of boys, CeCe half-listened and half-waited while they walked the trodden path.

As they reached the edge of the woods, CeCe glimpsed the shimmer of an enormous spider’s web stretched between two trees. CeCe sidestepped the tree and, before she could open her mouth, Tonia said, “Bread and butter! It’s bad luck to split—”

Then Tonia screamed.

Before they left for dinner, Hoot gathered the girls to slice through the heavy tension of their small group with a discussion on “trust.” The open forum devolved into a sharp indictment of CeCe’s deliberate trick to scare Tonia.

“You know she’s scared of spiders,” one girl barked.

“You were just on that pathway, so you knew the spider web was there,” insisted another.

“What if she had been bitten?” Hoot even asked.

“That’s why don’t nobody even like your weird butt,” concluded another.

CeCe claimed her innocence once more and absorbed the rest of their accusations. She didn’t bother mentioning Dwayne’s request. She didn’t see how it could help her plight. She spotted him outside the cantina when their group finally arrived for dinner and he waved a dismissive hand at her. CeCe was irritated with the girls for swelling the incident and angry with herself for being hurt by Dwayne’s disappointment.

CeCe ate her dinner alone, as expected. She scraped her tray and went outside to sit in the grass. Staying with the group before and after meals was Hoot’s only restriction to CeCe’s camp haunting.

Sitting by herself, pulling blades of grass between her fingers, CeCe watched Tonia emerge from the cantina with Tall Tonya and a collection of other girls. They approached CeCe in a buzzing swarm.

“I heard you let my girl almost crash into a tree,” said Tall Tonya.

“Tried to scare her,” someone else said.

“Almost got her bit by a spider,” called another voice.

“I already said it was an accident,” CeCe said, willed her legs to lift her from the ground.

“I think you lyin’,” Tall Tonya said. She was gangly, with long arms and sharp shoulders.

“I don’t care what you think,” CeCe said, her good sense betraying her. She looked at the underside of the girl’s chin, the color buttermilk, as she approached CeCe with a threatening stance.

“Don’t jump bad,” Tall Tonya said, eclipsing the space between them.

“Don’t get in my face,” CeCe said, mimicking the girl’s neck roll.

“Don’t make me whoop your butt, Crim-Son!”

CeCe cringed at the way her name curdled inside Tall Tonya’s mouth. CeCe’s irritation ignited into fury, swelling every cavern and vessel inside her small body.

CeCe jammed the heel of her hands into Tall Tonya’s shoulders, knocking the girl backwards. Tall Tonya recovered her balance and charged at CeCe with balled fists and flying curses. CeCe responded with flailing arms and a stutter of feet and knees. She was distantly aware of the shrieks and cheers, growing louder and thicker as more campers came out of the cantina to watch them fight. CeCe flung herself at the girl’s neck, mouth, thighs, and felt Tonya’s returning rain of pounds and smacks.

CeCe felt weightlessness between her feet and the ground as muscular arms clamped around her waist. Blaze, one of the counselors for the teen boys’ groups, lifted CeCe and carried her rebellious limbs away from the fracas. He carried her to the far end of the field and dropped her to the ground.

Blaze hovered before her like a barricade, but CeCe had no intention of rushing back into the fray. As her breathing steadied, the brew of campers and counselors slowly dissipated. CeCe took in the aftermath like a spectator, as if she hadn’t been the one to bloody Tonya’s lip. As if she weren’t the one all the counselors were shaking their heads and tsk-tsking about.

“I don’t even know what to say, CeCe,” the camp director said, ending her reprimand. By CeCe’s count, she had been pinned with the word “disappointed” nine times that day.

The adults decided to move CeCe into the six-year-old units for her remaining two weeks. She could be a helper to the counselors there, if she chose, but was not to interact with her age group any longer. As Hoot helped carry out CeCe’s duffel bags while the other girls painted pinecone owls, CeCe looked forward to the preschool chatter and, hopefully, being ignored for the rest of her time at Camp Onondaga.

CeCe also welcomed the fluidity of her anger. She sat on painted rocks behind the archery field where the six-year-olds tumbled and raced in the hot sun. CeCe allowed the rush of bitterness to course around inside her. CeCe didn’t hold her breath to stop it. She didn’t resist its steady leaning against her thoughts. She didn’t reject the way her rage sated her. By the time she boarded the yellow bus departing Camp Onondaga, CeCe had fury tucked beneath her tongue.