I pulled the Band-Aid off my chin
as soon as I heard the other girls
coming up the steps of our cabin.
Because that Band-Aid looked ridiculous.
It turned out all those other girls
were friends from the summer before.
Dylan, Montana, Kylie, Amelia, and Gwen.
“Look!” one of them said,
pointing out the window
as the rest were walking in.
“You can see our cabin from last year!”
“Where?” the others said.
They all leaned over my cubby
and knocked over my bottles of
sunscreen.
“Yes! I see it! There!”
“That was the best cabin.”
“Didn’t you love that cabin?”
I wanted to make them pick up my sunscreen.
Because that sunscreen
was important to my mom.
But I’d only just met them.
I didn’t want to be bossy.
They probably wouldn’t have heard me anyway.
They were still talking.
“Remember,”
one of them said,
“when Dylan was standing on that rock?”
And then
for some reason
they all started singing.
Something about a desperado
from the wild and woolly West.
“What’s a desperado?” I asked Joplin.
“And why’s the West woolly?”
She shrugged.
“Most of the songs here make no sense,” she said.
That stupid woolly song was catchy.
I couldn’t get it out of my head.
Even after those other girls stopped singing,
and Hope hurried us across camp for lunch.
