“Barbara,” said Tracy.
From the bunk above, a stirring.
“Yes?” said Barbara.
“I was wondering how you’re liking camp.”
A pause. “Oh,” said Barbara. “It’s all right, I guess.”
“What’s your favorite part about it?” Tracy asked.
“The food,” said Barbara, unswervingly. “I like being able to eat as much as I want.”
The next line in her script read: That’s interesting. Mine is being in nature. But Barbara’s reply was so heartfelt, and mirrored her own emotions so precisely, that Tracy said, “Me too.”
Before she could continue, Barbara’s head popped down from the upper bunk and into the space between. Tracy slammed her journal shut—too late.
“Are you interviewing me?” asked Barbara, grinning.
“No,” said Tracy. She shook her head vigorously. “I was just writing something else.”
Barbara looked at her thoughtfully for a moment. “Can I come down?”
Tracy nodded, shifted to her right, while Barbara lowered herself from the top bunk with agility, rejecting the ladder in favor of a reverse pull-up. She managed to do this while holding in her hand a magazine that Tracy didn’t recognize. After Barbara had settled herself on the bed next to her, Tracy snuck a glance at its cover: Creem, it said, in red balloon letters. And below the word was a picture of a woman dressed something like Barbara had been dressed when she first arrived at camp.
Now, with all the swimming they daily undertook, the black of Barbara’s hair had faded. In the absence of hair dye and red lipstick, she looked younger.
“What’s that about?” Tracy asked. She gestured to the magazine.
Barbara looked down at it. “Music,” she said, speaking the word with real reverence.
Then she looked up at Tracy.
“You know,” said Barbara, “I’ve been here a week, and I think this is the first time you’ve talked.”
“That’s not true.”
“No, I mean, you talk,” said Barbara. “But only when someone else talks to you first. You’re really shy, aren’t you?”
Tracy considered this. She wasn’t always, in every context; with her mother and her mother’s friends, she could be reckless and loud. Aside from that, she had a secret talent: she could sing. She was a showy alto belter, a shower singer; in the car she harmonized with her mother, who complimented Tracy frequently on the timbre of her voice.
“A young Patsy Cline,” said her mom, whose taste—cultivated in a former life as a barrel-horse rider at third-tier New England rodeos—ran toward country music.
But this facet of Tracy’s personality—the way she was with the grown women she loved and trusted—was too difficult to explain, and so instead she said nothing.
“You shouldn’t be,” continued Barbara. “You’re more interesting than everyone at this camp. I can tell that about you. I bet you’ve got secrets.”
Did she? Not really. But once again, this misapprehension seemed to be working in her favor, and so she said, “Maybe I do.”
“See, I knew that about you,” said Barbara. “I could tell it right off the bat.”
The two of them fell silent. And then, from outside: the sound of distant guitar chords. Barbara looked up, enchanted.
“Come on,” she said.
“Where?”
“Let’s go. We’re always the only ones in here. Let’s go outside.”
• • •
A moment later, she was trotting to keep up as Barbara walked swiftly in the direction of the music, growing louder now.
Rounding a corner, they came face-to-face with a little crowd that had assembled on the porch of Pine. All of their cabinmates were there, alongside two dozen other campers. And in the middle of the crowd—the guitar player himself—was Lowell Cargill.
Tracy took a step backward, her face reddening. He was singing a song she knew—one her mother liked. “You Were on My Mind,” by Ian & Sylvia. She knew all the words. She froze her face, so that she did not mouth them.
And through the crowd—was she imagining it?—she caught the gaze of Lowell Cargill, and forced herself to hold it, hold it, to not look away until he did.
• • •
They stayed for the whole concert. Past sunset and into darkness. When, finally, the announcement was made that all campers should return to their cabins, Barbara and Tracy walked side by side, silent, both under the spell of the music, the cool night air, the fireflies.
“I missed that,” said Barbara.
“What?”
“Music.”
