In front of them, the presentations continued. Several counselors performed a ritual that involved the chopping of a log; announcements were made about new policies, facilities, events.
Then came skits. One—a dramatic enactment of the rule that had made such an impression on Tracy earlier—involved a large male counselor affecting the voice and gait of a small child and walking around and around the campfire to illustrate his confusion.
“I thought I knew where I was going,” said the counselor, projecting his voice with aplomb—“but it turns out I did not!”
And a female counselor strode forward to goad the crowd.
“What should Calvin do?” she asked, mock-seriously. She placed her hands on her cheeks.
When lost, yelled the crowd, in chorus, sit down and yell.
“Help!” said Calvin. “I need help!” He checked an invisible watch. “One minute has gone by,” he exclaimed, “so I guess I should yell again!”
The reason for this was provided: an attempt to extract oneself from the woods could lead to disorientation, could pull even an experienced woodsman irretrievably into the Adirondack forest. The terrain was dense, with thick underbrush; when the trail was no longer in sight, it all looked the same.
“Sixty-five percent of people,” said Calvin, “are less than twenty feet from a trail when they first begin to feel disoriented.”
Tracy listened, fascinated. She imagined the pull of the woods, the cool, shadowy smell of them, the velvet of moss on rock—and then the gradual realization that she’d lost her bearings. The slow horror of accepting her predicament.
In between skits, the male counselors roughhoused with one another, with their charges. Called out to girls across the semicircle. Kevin thinks you’re a fox!
Then a tall, thin woman strode right into the center of things. She stood in front of the fire, silhouetted by the flames, looking something like the way Tracy had always pictured Ichabod Crane.
Everyone fell silent.
“Welcome,” said the woman. She introduced herself to newcomers: she was the camp director, T.J., and everyone was invited to call her that.
Her age was difficult to discern. At some angles, she looked very young—in her twenties, maybe—but her voice bore a gravelly authority, something Tracy wasn’t used to hearing in women her age. Everyone stopped and listened, even the loud male counselors, who otherwise hadn’t shut up.
The woman—T.J.—took out a piece of paper that seemed to have reminders on it.
She went through them, one by one.
She emphasized and elaborated upon the same rules from earlier. Dispensed a few others, as well: any camper caught outside his or her cabin after curfew would be given one warning and commissary duty for two nights. A second infraction would lead to dismissal from camp.
She paused then, looking up.
Above her, the pine branches were lit orange by the fire. Beyond them, the sky was as black as Tracy had ever seen it, and as full of stars.
“Another thing,” said T.J. “Due to the concern of certain parents, this year’s Survival Trip will look a little different.”
A collective groan.
T.J. held up a hand. “Now listen,” she said. “You’ll still be on your own, in groups. You’ll all be responsible for your own well-being. The only difference is, you’ll have a counselor nearby for those three nights. But they’ll stay about a hundred yards away, unless there’s an emergency you can’t resolve yourselves.”
Silence. And then a solitary voice—male—booed loudly. The rest of the group laughed.
Tracy waited, breath held, to see what T.J. would do. She didn’t look like someone who suffered fools gladly. But she grinned.
“I don’t like it either,” she said. “Trust me.”
• • •
That night, after lights-out, Tracy lay in her bed, looking up into darkness, listening first to silence and then to the low sound of stories told in whispers and laughs.
She was alone. She would remain so. Her only job, she told herself, was to make it through the summer.
Louise
June 1975
In the dark, Louise held her breath, listening. On the other side of the partition: small wet sniffles. Somebody crying and trying to hide it. This happened every session, on night one.
Louise sat up in bed. Tiptoed past Annabel. Drew aside the curtain. Scanned the room, looking at every camper in turn.
Tracy.
There were Tracy’s eyeballs, glinting in the moonlight, returning her gaze.
• • •
Outside, on the steps leading down from the porch, Tracy now sat next to Louise, trying to make herself small. She tucked the nightgown down over her knees. Wrapped her elbows around them, too. She looked, Louise thought, like a large six-year-old.
Again, she sniffed.
“Do you want to talk about it?” asked Louise. Her standard opening—one she’d devised over all four summers—one that left no room for insistence that everything was fine.
The girl shrugged. Embarrassed.
Earlier, at dinner, and then at the campfire that followed, Tracy had seated herself at the end of everything, and then hadn’t said a word. She kept her gaze down. Upon returning to the cabin, she had read a book while the other girls talked, shrieked, ran chaotically about the room, bouncing off every surface like electrons. There was a particular brand of humor employed by twelve- and thirteen-year-old girls, especially when they weren’t in the presence of boys: it was at once disgusting and innocent, bawdy and naive. When it wasn’t being used for ill—when no one was its target—this type of humor delighted Louise. From the wall, she watched them quietly, fondly, recalling what it was like to be in this moment of life that was like a breath before speech, a last sweet pause before some great unveiling.
