When my mom had finished her oatmeal the next morning, she stood up and dumped her bowl into the basin we used to wash dishes. She poured hot water from the kettle over it and, with our one knife, scraped flakes off a bar of soap. I felt my throat closing up. After seeing the food I was eating—the oatmeal—floating around in that gray hot water slop, I couldn’t eat another bite.
My dad finished his, took a last swig of coffee, and stood. “I’ll be getting out to the clearing,” he said.
“What clearing?” my mom said
“I’m calling the woods the clearing now,” he explained. “Because I’ve cut down nearly a hundred trees at this point. So as I see it, I have just as much right to call it a clearing as to call it the woods.”
My mom laughed. “All right,” she said. “Gen, can you work on the butter while I get the washing started?”
“Want me to pick some corn?” Gavin said. “There’s real cobs now.”
“They’re not big enough,” said my dad. “You can come with me and help carry wood.”
Gavin groaned. He hated this job and had splinters up and down his arms.
But at least he didn’t have to make butter. Next to laundry, making butter was the worst job the frontier had to offer.
Here’s what you need to do to make butter. After you get a bucket of milk, you let it sit on the counter for a day. Before long, some stuff starts to collect on the top—a skin—and then if you leave it, it gets thicker. That’s how you get cream. I know, totally foul, but you spoon that into this big wooden bucket with a paddle in it called a butter churn. Then you sit there using the paddle to mix up the cream stuff until your arm feels like it’s about to fall off. You lift the lid on the churn, check to see if you’ve got butter, and see that no, it’s not even close. So then you get really depressed. Being depressed is an enormously important part of the process; you can almost tell how thick the butter is just by how defeated and miserable you feel personally. But you keep stirring it some more anyway. It takes about five hundred million years before the stuff in the churn turns to butter, and by the time it has your arms are trembling, you have blisters on your hands, you hate your mom, and you promise that, to make it last longer, you will hardly eat any of this butter yourself. But it’s so good, that’s kind of a hard promise to keep, especially when everyone else is slathering it on everything like it’s free.
My mom once went through this phase of making us all eat I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter! I texted Kristin and Ashley:
Week 4 – Monday
11:56 am
I Can’t Believe (I know how to make) Butter!
I hoped they got the joke. In case they didn’t, I sent a second post:
Week 4 – Monday
11:57 am
Making butter is the stupidest waste of time in the world, considering you can go buy butter in any grocery store in the world any day you want. But stupid or not, I know how to do it and in fact I’m getting kind of good.
Tuesday night after dinner and chores, I found Ka waiting for me as we’d planned on the path that led from our house into the woods. I could hear my dad hacking away at the trees not too far from us—I’d watched him and knew that he was repeating the same cycle of motions over and over: pull back, swing, chop, dislodge the ax. Pull back, swing, chop, dislodge the ax. He was going fast too, chopping at a sprint. My mom rubbed grease on his hands every night now and he was wrapping them in rags while he worked, but still, they were blistered and sometimes even bleeding by the end of the day.
Ka whispered so my dad wouldn’t hear. “I just went by Ron and Betsy’s and didn’t see Nora anywhere around. I think she’s going to be there.”
“Okay,” I said. “Are you scared?”
“A little,” said Ka.
“Me too,” I said. “Nora’s so mean.”
“There’s nothing she can do to us,” Ka reminded me. “She can’t tell her parents about what you’re doing without their finding out that she had a part in it too.”
I didn’t point out that if my parents found out I’d brought the phone out here, Nora’s getting in trouble would do nothing to change what would happen to me.
When we reached the clearing, Ka and I snuck around the back of the electricity shack and looked in the window before trying the door. Nora was there, and so was Caleb. Ka raised her eyebrows, took a deep breath, and knocked. Ka, I was learning, is very brave.
“Hey, Nora,” she said. She sounded as calm and unruffled as if she were talking to friends in the computer lab at school. “Mind if I check my e-mail? Hey, Caleb.”
Although maybe “unruffled” is not the best word. Because Ka was still twelve, all her dresses looked like the ones the little girls wore, with ruffles up and down the front. Ka was totally ruffled.
Nora, who had been openly staring at Ka, not knowing what to make of her surprise visit, now focused her narrowed eyes on me. “You told her?” she said. “Didn’t you hear what I said the other night?”
“Um,” I said. I wished I had a snappy comeback, something a girl detective from a TV show might say. Instead, I came up with “I heard you say that you would get in trouble if anyone found out camp families are in here. So I’m pretty sure you’re not going to breathe a word.”
“Are you threatening me?”
I didn’t answer her because just then Nora and I were both looking over at Caleb, who had started to laugh. “This isn’t funny,” Nora said to him. “I could get in a lot of trouble here. We all could.”
“So don’t say anything,” Caleb said. “No one needs to know.” I heard the slightest trace of his dad’s Southern accent in his voice.
“They’re gonna know,” Nora sulked, but she had stopped looking at me and leaned back against the wall. “Five minutes,” she said. “Check your e-mail and get out of here.”
Ka sat down at the computer and started to type. “Oh, my gosh,” she said after a few minutes had passed. “I have five hundred and sixty-two e-mails!”
Just then there was a knock on the door, and Ka’s stepsister Katie poked her head in. “Ka?” she said. She saw Nora and Caleb. Then her eyes moved to the Diet Coke in Nora’s hand and she was like, “Oh…,” her voice filled with undisguised longing. Caleb immediately started to laugh again. Matt peeked his head in behind Katie’s.
“You told them?” I said to Ka.
“They must have followed me,” she said.
“We did,” Katie answered. “You keep sneaking off and we wanted to know where.”
Ka threw up her hands. “You’re spying on me now?” she said. “I don’t believe this. You guys need to get lives.”
“We have lives,” Katie snapped. “We were trying to keep you from getting in trouble with your mom.”
“It’s true,” Matt said. “We’re sick of your sad, angry rebel act. Get over it.”
“You get over it,” Ka said. “I’ll take care of myself.”
“So what is this place anyhow?” Matt asked, taking in the computer, the iPods, Nora’s Diet Coke.
Nora looked at Caleb and I almost felt sorry for her, there was such clear panic in her wide eyes. “I’m going to get in so much trouble,” she said.
That’s when Erik Puchinski filed in behind Matt.
Nora wailed, “Did you have to invite everyone?” She didn’t even seem angry now—she looked like she was going to cry. Before I could protest that I hadn’t invited anyone but Ka, Nora stood up. “Everybody out!” she said. “Show’s over. Yes, there’s a computer here. Big deal. But this building is off-limits. Employees only.”
No one was listening.
“Whose iPod is that?” Erik said.
“Where can I get a DC?” Katie asked, tucking her blond hair behind her ears and standing on tiptoes to see over Matt’s head.
“Out!” Nora said. But Matt had already opened the mini-fridge.
“This is totally stocked!” he said.
“Caleb, help!” Nora said.
Caleb just smiled and shrugged. “Cat’s out of the bag,” he drawled.
And then Caleb gave Nora a big smile, turned to a cabinet behind him, pulled out a box with everyone’s iPods in it, and said, “Okay, people, help yourselves.” He put an arm around Nora’s shoulder. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Your folks are never going to find out.”
I could see that she was too glad to have his arm around her to say anything. Not that it would have done any good.
Within minutes, it was clear no one was going anywhere. Diet Coke was flowing. Music was playing out of the computer’s speakers. Katie was sitting on the desk next to the computer, swinging her legs so you could see past her boot lacings to her tights; Caleb was in the chair, playing videos of his favorite comedians on YouTube; Nora was draped across the back of his chair, watching them; and Ka, Matt, and I were on the floor, where Matt was dialing through Ka’s iPod.
“Dude,” he said to Ka. “You must have been so mad when your mom made you put all Katie’s lame music on here.”
“Your screamer garbage isn’t any better,” Ka said. “I hope I don’t have to put up with it next year.”
“Next year?” he said. “I thought you said you were going to find a way to get out of moving to our house.”
“I am,” Ka said. “Don’t worry about it.”
“So,” Matt tried again. “You don’t like screamer?”
“I like screamer,” Ka said, and then, “Except when I don’t. Which is, like, oh, yeah—always.”
He laughed. “You’re funny, Ka.”
And I had a thought that I knew Ka would kill me if I ever voiced—she and Matt were starting to sound like actual siblings.
Katie took a swig of her soda. “Sorry your mom made you take stall cleaning for the rest of the week,” she said to Ka. “I didn’t tell her it was you who took the cheese.”
“I don’t care what you do,” Ka said, but I wondered. Didn’t she?
I felt too good to wonder for long about Ka, or about anything. Even Nora looked like she was having a good time.
Week 4 – Wednesday
8:47 am
I’m exhausted. I drank so much soda last night that I lay in bed staring up at the rafters. It must have been until at least three o’clock.
I didn’t go back to the electricity shack until a week later, when I needed to charge the phone. Ka had said she would meet me there after she finished her chores. I was nervous, but also excited, hoping I’d find Caleb again. Only this time, alone.
Unfortunately, when I got to the shack, it was just Nora and me.
I said “Hey” to her like I was going to be civil but not try to act like I was friends with her or anything. I was surprised she even let me in, so before she could tell me to go, I plugged in the phone so it could charge.
Nora looked up from the computer. “That’s your own cell phone, right? You don’t use your parents’?”
“Yes,” I said. “This is a phone, but also a camera, and you can play music but I don’t have any downloaded yet. You can go online on it.”
“I already know that,” she said. She was supersnippy about it too.
“Okay,” I said. I thought the conversation would end there, but she kept going.
“I’ve been watching all the gadgets my mom collects from the people who come here changing over the years. They all have keyboards on them now.”
“I guess that’s right,” I said. I showed her how you could type on mine.
“I always check what people put in those bags my mom collects,” she went on. “When I don’t know what they are, I look them up online. So if you’re thinking I’m some bumpkin who doesn’t know anything about the world you live in, you’re wrong.”
“Okay,” I said, hoping that silence would do all the work of pointing out that I hadn’t said she was a bumpkin. (I would never use the word “bumpkin.” There is something so, well, bumpkin-y about it.)
Ka rushed in a few minutes later, and before long Caleb, Erik, Matt, Katie, and even Gavin—I guess news that Ka and I were braving the shack again had spread. “What is he doing here?” Nora complained when Gavin showed his face. “I told you guys, no one else can know.”
“Sorry,” Erik said, ducking his head. “We were supposed to go fishing, so I had to tell him where I was going instead.”
“Okay, fine,” Nora grumbled. “Have a Diet Coke.”
Caleb came and sat next to me on the floor in front of the minifridge.
“I liked what your mom said at that meeting a while back, about women voting and stuff,” he said.
“Really?” I asked. “She’s not much of a women’s libber at home or anything.”
“I’ve been raised on it,” he said. “But I think this place will bring that out of you.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s not really fair that Gavin and I both do all the outdoor work, but whenever it’s time for an inside chore, it’s always, ‘Gen, can you wash the dishes,’ ‘Gen, can you whip up some butter?’ “
“You know how to make butter?” he said.
“It’s no big deal.”
“I wish you would teach my mom.”
I laughed. “I mean, I love her and everything,” Caleb went on. “But she is about to organize a feminist uprising, she’s so sick of the kitchen, and still she won’t admit she’s no good at it. And the sad part is, she’d be good at organizing a feminist uprising. At her job, she’s always holding everyone’s feet to the fire making sure the women lawyers aren’t getting shafted.”
“She really can’t cook at all?” I said.
Caleb shook his head. “The only thing she made that’s been any good are pancakes. Once. But she didn’t know how much batter to make, so we each only got one.”
I laughed some more and then suddenly I was feeling nervous. I couldn’t think of anything else to say. Ashley always knows what to do around boys, but I get tongue-tied.
If I didn’t come up with a thought, a question—anything—he was going to talk to someone else. I looked at the walls, the windows, the carpet for inspiration. There was nothing.
Until I saw the computer. And I don’t know what I was thinking except that I had to say something to Caleb to make him understand that I did indeed want to talk to him. So I blurted out, “Hey, want to see the blog my friend Kristin is making about my time here at Camp Frontier?”
“Blogs are cool,” he said. “Especially funny ones. Is yours funny?”
“I don’t know,” I said, thinking back to all the texts. What had I written? Then I remembered one in particular and laughed.
“What?” he said.
I couldn’t think of any way to make what I was laughing about sound less embarrassing, so I just said it. “One of my first posts was about peeing on my stockings.”
He laughed too. “Seriously? Come on,” he said. “I’ve got to check this out.”
I typed in the URL Kristin had given me, and was shocked to see a real live Web page load, with a polka-dot background and all the dates. The idea that Kristin had created a blog, that my words were out there somewhere—it had never felt real. But then, there was my face, grinning from the top left corner of the page.
“Is that you?” Caleb said.
It was a picture I hadn’t seen before. But yeah, it was me. I could tell from what I was wearing that it must have been taken at our last soccer game of the year—the game that had clinched our undefeated season. I had my hair pulled back in a ponytail and this huge smile splayed across my face. I was wearing a bandanna and my arms were around the shoulders of people I couldn’t see because Kristin had cropped them out. I looked so… clean. And… modern. And… normal. “Yes, that’s me,” I said.
“You look so buff,” he said. “Are you some kind of jock?”
“I play sports,” I started.
“Soccer, right? Aren’t you missing camp by being here?”
“Yeah,” I affirmed. “Soccer.”
“You should talk to Matt,” he said. “He’s huge into soccer.” I blushed. I didn’t want to talk to Matt. I wanted to keep talking to Caleb.
“May I?” Caleb said. He took the mouse in his hand and started scrolling down through the entries. He chuckled a little as he read, but then he stopped reading and just started to scroll.
“Gen,” he said. “Did you know you’re getting a lot of comments?”
“Really?” I said, leaning over to see.
“Yeah. Like, here, you have sixty-three comments. That’s pretty huge for a single post.”
“Really?” I said again. “Kristin said people in her computer class were forwarding it to their friends. She keeps going on and on about the comments. I think the commenting was part of the assignment.”
“How many people were in the class, though?” Caleb asked. “Look, you’ve got eighty-four comments here. That’s no assignment.”
“Wow,” I said.
“You should get your friend to look up the counter and see how many hits this is getting a day. I think a lot of people are reading it.”
“Really? Can I see what they say?”
Caleb clicked on “view comments” but then, just as I was about to start reading the first one, the computer monitor died, the lights went off, and the noise in the room came to an abrupt end. All I could hear was Nora’s hoarse stage whisper: “My dad, my dad, he’s coming!”