She didn’t actually see Lowell anyplace. Perhaps he had gone outside for fresh air.

“I hate slow songs,” someone next to her said.

She turned her head.

There next to her was someone she recognized as a kitchen worker, a good-looking twentysomething man she’d seen walking, from time to time, with her counselor Louise. Lee, his name was.

“Me too,” said Tracy.

“They’re so embarrassing,” said Lee. “One minute you’re out there having fun with your friends, and then the band decides to make things difficult for everyone by slowing it down. It’s sadistic, actually.”

Tracy wasn’t certain she knew what sadistic meant, but she nodded anyway.

“I gotta get back to the kitchen,” said Lee. “You look great, by the way. Cool dress.”

“Thank you,” said Tracy. And then he was gone.

It was only after he left that she saw Lowell, across the room, wearing the type of absurd broad-collared polyester suit that the boys brought for dances and that still, despite everything, made her heart speed up.

He stood still as a statue against the opposite wall. He was looking at a couple in the center of the room: Barbara Van Laar and her partner. And on his face was an expression of pain.

•   •   •

Outside. That’s where she wanted to go. Out to the fresh pine and the soil and the smell of the lake. Out to the light of the moon on water.

When no one was looking, she seized her moment, and left.

She walked into the dark. There were surprisingly few lights across the grounds of Camp Emerson at night.

Suddenly, in the dim night, there was movement. Someone walking across her path—someone she recognized. Annabel, their CIT, dressed in her clothes for the dance, was heading north.

There was nothing up there, thought Tracy, except the main house. Barbara’s house. Annabel’s parents were staying there this week, Tracy knew; maybe that’s why she was heading in that direction.

Tracy for a moment considered calling out—Annabel was supposed to escort them back to Balsam at the end of the dance—but the determination in her stride gave Tracy pause. Better not to say anything.

•   •   •

And then her own name was called, interrupting her thoughts.

She turned. Walked in the direction of the voice that was repeating her name.

On the beach, in the moonlight, she saw Lowell’s best friend. Walter. He was sitting on the sand, looking dejected.

She sat down next to him, lowering herself toward the earth. Until that summer, she had never felt at home in the house of her body. Never felt graceful, like Barbara, like the Melissas, like Lowell Cargill.

“You too?” said little Walter. His arms were around his knees; his chin was on his arms.

“Me too what?” said Tracy.

“Sad?” says Walter.

“Oh,” said Tracy. “No, not really. I’m fine.”

Walter was silent.

“Are you?” said Tracy.

He nodded. She could barely make it out. But she knew, without asking, why he was.

“You know,” said Walter, “he asked Barbara to the dance. But she said no.”

Tracy sat very still, letting his words settle over her. She had known ever since the Survival Trip that Lowell wasn’t interested in her, whatever she might have thought before. It was Barbara whom he loved. Still, hearing it knocked the breath out of her all over again.

“He was torn up about it,” Walter continued. “When she said no, I mean. People like Lowell aren’t used to being rejected.”

He wasn’t trying to be cruel; Tracy was certain of this. Most likely, he assumed that Barbara would have told Tracy already. They were, after all, a pair at Camp Emerson. Just like Walter and Lowell were.

The silence between them persisted awhile, until Tracy heard Walter sniff loudly, once. He was crying, she realized.

“He’s amazing,” said Walter. “Isn’t he.”

Louise

1950s | 1961 | Winter 1973 | June 1975 | July 1975 | August 1975

She saw everything. She sat on the edge of the stage that overlooked the community room, watching her campers in all of their triumphs and failures, the ones having genuine fun, the ones pretending to have it.

If she believed in a God, it was in one who functioned something like Louise in this moment: rooting for her charges from afar, mourning alongside them when they were rejected, celebrating every small victory that came their way. She noticed the lonely ones, the ones at the edge of the crowd; she felt in her heart a sort of wild affection for them, wanted to go to them, to stand next to them and pull them tightly to her side; and yet she also knew that to intervene in this way would disrupt something sacred that—at twelve and thirteen and fourteen years old—they were learning about themselves and the world. And this, too, was how she thought of God.

•   •   •

At a certain point she began to play a game in her mind, counting each one of her charges, picking a name and scanning the crowd until she found the person in question. With every name she chose she was successful, until she got to Annabel.

She couldn’t find her counselor-in-training anyplace in the room.

In retrospect, this would make a different kind of sense to her; just then she chalked it up to her suspicion, that session, that Annabel had met a boy.

Earlier, she had noticed that Annabel was getting ready with particular care. In theory, the dance was for the campers, but in prior years Louise had often seen counselors and CITs pairing off there, too. Going out into the dark woods for a few minutes, or an hour. Coming back flushed.

This, she suspected, was where Annabel Southworth had gone. And from her place on the stage she smiled, happy that Annabel, too, had found love, or at least infatuation, at Camp Emerson.

Judyta

1950s | 1961 | Winter 1973 | June 1975 | July 1975 | August 1975: Day Three

Who’s everyone?” asks Denny Hayes.

It’s noon already, and this is the first time she’s seeing him. He’s half in and half out of his car when she launches into her updates, the new theories she’s formed since this morning.