I can’t believe I’m going to miss the smell of spicy fries. There are days I take two showers—one to wash off the sweat from a day spent teaching kids volleyball, and one to wash off the smell of grease from these very fries—and yet. When I am 120 years old and lying on my deathbed, I am either still going to smell like Camp Ilan canteen spicy fries or wish I did.
I mean, they are good, and by the time I hit up the canteen at night, I’m hungry enough to devour them even if they weren’t. Camp Ilan is big on sports—bigger than pretty much all the other Modern Orthodox Jewish sleepaway camps—and between 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. I show almost a hundred kids how to serve, bump, set, and spike on a near-daily basis. (Well, except the youngest kids, who play Newcomb instead. There’s not a lot to teach when the entire game is throwing and catching over a volleyball net, but definitely a lot of Shira didn’t hit you on purpose, Zoe, and We’re gonna give Rachel one more chance, because the sun was in her eyes on top of judgments about whether or not a ball hit the net, was in bounds, has enough air, was too wet from landing in that puddle, et-cet-er-a.)
The most important thing about spicy fries, and the accompanying smell, is that they mean that I am firmly among people my own age. The canteen only makes and serves them at night, which means strictly to staff, i.e., those of us recovering from a whole day of wrangling children all over the age and energy-level spectra.
When I enter tonight, the rest of the girls’ sports staff is already there, crowded around a table dotted with bags of chips, paper boats of fries and mozzarella sticks, and bottles of water. I slide in, tapping Yael Ruben’s hip with mine to nudge her over and getting a mouthful of long brown curls in the process. “We were just starting to worry about you, Azi Bean,” she says as she sweeps her mass of hair over her other shoulder, promptly hitting Zeva Oppenheimer in the face and nearly knocking off her glasses. “Thought maybe you were still practicing that serve.”
“Ha ha.” Okay, so I’ve been a little hyperfocused on perfecting my jump serve. But in my defense, with high school now behind me and camp about to follow, my volleyball-playing days are numbered. If I don’t nail it now, I don’t know when I’ll get another chance to try. Still, with four days left in the summer, I certainly wouldn’t miss one of the last chances to hang out with my friends. “I went back to the courts to help Naomi clean up.”
“You really don’t need to kiss her butt,” says Zeva, dragging a mozzarella stick through a blob of ketchup squeezed into the corner of one of those red-and-white paper boats. “It’s not like she’s going to replace you for next year.”
“You’re basically the one person she’s doesn’t have to replace,” Michal Liebovitz adds, and it feels like she’s rubbing spicy fries into my skinned knees.
I don’t need a reminder that none of them are planning to return, that none of them want to come back from seminary or freshman year to still be making almost no money at a job that doesn’t have a thing to do with any of our academic or professional futures. Even Michal, who runs basketball and is so in demand for private lessons that she’s probably taking home five times what I am, has no plans to even try out in college.
Still, I can’t let go. Not before I have to.
So why can everyone else?
“I’m not kissing her butt. I’m being helpful because the rest of you are deadbeats. Seriously, the courts were a mess.”
“Don’t look at me.” Rachel Glaser runs her omnipresent Sharpie through her fingers at a speed that shouldn’t be humanly possible. “My tweens begged to use the hopper to pick up all the tennis balls at the end of the day.”
“This might shock you, Rach, but a bunch of eleven-year-olds did not do a stellar cleanup job. And just for that, I’m taking a mozzarella stick as commission.” She doesn’t stop me, but it’s so greasy and good I may need to go get my own order of them anyway.
“I really don’t think that’s what commission is,” says Yael. She takes a long, noisy drink from her can of Diet Dr Pepper, shakes it to confirm its emptiness, then fiddles back and forth with the top, muttering under her breath until she finally yanks it off.
“Lemme guess.” Jordana Weissberg smirks. “An R? Again?”
“How’d you know?” Yael flutters her lashes, long and dark like the curls that hang almost down to her butt.
“I don’t think you get to lecture me on things that make sense when you still play that ridiculous game,” I point out as Yael slips the top into the pocket of her jeans. “I’m pretty sure you can’t actually predict the name of your future husband by reciting the alphabet at a soda can, and if you could, I don’t think cheating to make sure you land on Ronen would, you know, work.”
“You find your bashert your way, and I’ll find my bashert my way,” she says coolly, patting her pocket. She plucks the marker from Rachel’s fingers and uncaps it, all of us knowing what she’s going to do before she even scrawls her fifty-millionth heart on the glossy wooden canteen table and puts her initials right over those of her crush of a million years.
There’s nothing illicit about writing on this furniture; it’s all absolutely covered in at least a decade’s worth of similar hearts, song lyrics, idly drawn band logos, and stuff like So-and-so was here in ’16. I have a little corner on one of the walls by the service window where I write Azi Bean followed by the year every single June, and at this point, it’s quite the column—2013 right up through 2023, with a sad little gap for 2020, when the camp was closed for COVID.
I don’t know what’s worse—that next year will be my last time writing it, that no one who traditionally documents me doing it with a picture (usually Jordana or Zeva) will be there with camera phone in hand next year, or that it’s a nickname everyone here recognizes instantly but will mean absolutely nothing to people in the future who have no idea a Camp Ilan lifer named Azriella Bienenfeld once existed.
Or maybe it’s that none of that matters, because the only mark I’m leaving behind is one showing me all by myself.
Packing to come to camp is stressful—am I bringing the right stuff for everything from waking up at dawn to sing the national anthem at the flag to sweltering-hot days playing sports in the sun to Shabbos clothes for every Friday night and Saturday?—but packing to go home is so much worse. How many pairs of socks have I lost to the communal washing machines? Do I save every single Shabbatogram or just the ones that say more than the baseline Have a great Shabbos! Love, [insert name of friend who sends them to literally everyone every week, because the brightly colored paper greeting cards are three for a quarter so why not]? My mom, who was also a lifer at Camp Ilan, tells me I don’t know how good I have it, because in her day they didn’t have email or ebooks and they listened to music on CDs (which she’s shown me, but I cannot believe are real), and blah-blah so many things taking up so much space. But I know for a fact she keeps a box of all those old handwritten letters in the attic, so I take her complaints with a grain of salt.
I wasn’t planning on spending the morning packing, but it’s raining outside—our third-to-last day and it’s freaking raining—so there’s not much else to do while the schedule shifts around to accommodate it, meaning all sports are cut for the first period of the day.
The phone rings as I’m trying to decide whether the T-shirt I just found behind my cubby is worth bringing home or bound for the trash. Naomi doesn’t bother with opening pleasantries; no one else would be calling the sports staff room at this hour. “Azi and Michal, you’ve each got half the new gym for volleyball and basketball. Zeva, you’re in the binyan for GaGa; Yael, you’re in the old gym for BBK; and Rachel and Jordana, you’re in the bayit for machanayim. Meet up in the lounge when you’re done.”
Michal and I groan simultaneously, both of us knowing full well that we’re in for an annoying hour of balls flying everywhere. Yael’s delighted; she’s new to the world of Jewish summer camp, and still thinks that BBK—a mash-up of kickball and basketball—is the most hilarious sport (largely un)known to man. Zeva just shrugs and grabs a book; kids hitting balls at each other’s feet doesn’t exactly require a ton of supervision. Rachel and Jordana are probably in the worst position—a game that’s basically dodgeball on steroids is a guarantee for a head injury, jammed fingers, or both—but they complain the least, so they get stuck with it the most. Secretly, I think Rachel lives for the potential of bloodshed.
I swap out the sweats I slept in for a new pair that look exactly the same, replace my Camp Ilan sleep shirt with a macaron-printed tee, slide on flip-flops so I won’t destroy my sneakers in the muddy path to the gym, and pull on my poncho, using it to shield both me and a gym bag packed with socks and sneakers so I won’t get reamed by Naomi for not wearing proper footwear. Then I weave my long brown hair into quick pigtail braids and Michal and I trudge outside, both of us grumbling about having to go out into the nasty weather despite both of us also knowing that the counselors have it way worse today. (And every day, tbh, but that’s why they get tips at the end of the summer and we don’t.)
As expected, we lose the entire first ten minutes to simply splitting the girls up into the two halves of the gym, but at least I end up with almost all of my favorites. Not that I have favorites, of course, but if I did, they might be Ayelet, the best athlete in her division of rising sixth graders and the only girl in it who can serve overhand; Kayla, who always compliments me on my pastry-print clothing; Liviya, who doesn’t have the strongest athletic skills but tries her heart out anyway; and Ruchama, who … well, okay, who has a hot brother that she introduced me to on visiting day. I know that really shouldn’t make me favor her, and yet.
With everyone divided into two sports when they’d ordinarily be split into three, there are way too many girls on the court for a six-on-six, so I squish in a middle row and pray they manage not to collide too often.
“Okay, everybody!” I clap my hands for attention, and get it from maybe half of them, but with the noise coming from Michal’s half of the room and the rain pounding on the roof, I’ll take what I can get. “We’re gonna skip drills and go right to the game. Everyone, into position. Reichman, you’re serving first.”
I toss the ball to Ayelet, and smile when she catches it with ease between messy orange-painted fingertips. She didn’t know a single thing about volleyball when she came this summer, and now her serve is a thing of beauty. Her loud grunt as she smacks the ball over the net with an open palm always cracks everyone up, but everyone also knows that if the yeshiva league had volleyball in junior high, she would absolutely be its star. I can’t wait to see how good she’s gonna get by high school, especially if she keeps growing like a weed.
And then it hits me with a pang that I won’t see how good she’s gonna get. I’ll see her rock one more summer, but I’ll be long gone from Ilan by the time she hits ninth grade.
The girls still struggle with returning serves, so Ayelet gets three aces before Kayla Fechter finally bumps it back over. The ball does skim the net, but Kayla’s team erupts into so much joy that no one even notices, and I quietly let it go, even as I feel bad ending Ayelet’s serving streak.
And then I gradually feel worse, because not a single other girl manages to get a successful serve off, even after I demonstrate an underhand for the millionth time that summer. Aliza Gutman gets close, and her twin sister, Nava, gets even closer, but after ten minutes of going back and forth to both teams, there’s not a single other success.
Which means I am a failure.
“Okay,” I say with a clap of my hands, trying to keep spirits up even though we can all tell that the basketball girls on Michal’s side of the room are watching us and giggling, as if they’re any better when I have them on Mondays. “Maybe we shouldn’t have skipped the drills. Let’s go over serves again. Nava, why don’t you go first? Try again with that sidearm.”
“Seriously?” One of the Lilys—there are no fewer than four—huffs out a breath. “We can’t do it. What’s the point? Can we just play Newcomb?”
“Ooh, yes!” says the Lily next to her. “Newcomb!”
It quickly becomes a chant, and though I’m really not supposed to crack when they ask for Newcomb instead—which happens at least once a week—I look at the rain streaking the windows, realize that at this time three days from now, these kids will all be on a bus home, and I think the hell with it. “Fine.” I toss the ball to Nava. “You still start.”
Newcomb’s a fairly autopilot game, so I grab one of the folding chairs from the corner of the room and drop my butt next to where Michal has already done the same, periodically yelling things about not dribbling out of bounds. “Please don’t tell Naomi I let them play Newcomb,” I say with a sigh, uncapping my water bottle and taking a long drink.
“Hell, I’m surprised you lasted until now.” She jumps up, her blond ponytail nearly smacking me in the face. “Biller! You cannot just walk with the ball! If you’re not dribbling, you’re traveling!” Then she sinks back down. “God, I can’t wait to be done with this,” she mutters.
“But don’t you feel bad? Like, look at these kids.” I gesture to where Kayla is hurling a ball over her shoulder in an inelegant throw that smacks Lily #3 in the gut. “They’ve been with us for an entire summer and they’ve barely learned a thing. My kids can’t even play the sport I’ve been teaching them all summer. At best, they can bump around in a circle and set for me to spike. I’m a total failure.”
“Oh please, Azi. You’re not a failure. Look at them.” She gestures with her whistle at the girls in their colorful T-shirts and shorts, taking turns alternately hurling as far as they can and gently tossing it just over the net and forcing the front row to run. They’re taking it so seriously for what’s basically a game of catch, but it’s clear they’re enjoying it, and I’m glad I consented to it. “They’re having a great time, and that’s what they come for. My neighbor, Andi? She goes to freaking archery camp. Like, archery is all they do. I’m sure it feels like a ton of pressure to get it right, and yeah, if they come away from a whole summer not knowing what they’re doing, someone is definitely failing. But here? It’s not that deep, and that’s okay. They’re enjoying what they have while they have it, and sometimes, that’s all it is.”
“Is that all it is for you?” I ask, because the thing is, Michal is really good. And maybe she’s just Jewish summer camp really good or maybe she’s actually really good—I’m not sure I’d know the difference—but it does feel like it might be just a little deep, for her.
“I don’t know,” she says, fiddling with the whistle around her neck. “I hadn’t really ever imagined playing it past high school, but if I went to Stern, I’d probably have a decent shot, and that’s kinda cool. But I didn’t wanna pick a school solely based on where I could maybe play basketball for a few extra years.”
I watch as the ball slips right through Lily #2’s hands and slams on the glossy wooden floor of the gym. She’s the proudest of the Lilys, and I know that one’s gotta hurt. She tosses the ball under the net to the other team with the kind of aggression that comes from feeling painfully embarrassed, and turns away even before Aliza scoops it up.
“Is that such a ridiculous thing to do?” I hedge. “If it were an option for me for volleyball, I’d probably do it. Being on the team was probably my favorite thing about school. I’d love to be able to hold on to it a little longer, if I could.”
Her mouth quirks up in a teasing little smile. “Yes, Azi, we’ve met. We all know there’s nothing you wouldn’t hold on to a little longer if you could.”
“Hey, I—”
“Kayla!” There’s a slam of the ball on the ground, a wail as hands fly to nose, and then any response I might’ve had is drowned out by the fight that immediately erupts. I blow my whistle, jump up, and run over to make sure there’s no blood.
I don’t need to say it, but we both know that this part is something I would very, very happily let go of as soon as possible.
The rest of the day is rainy, slow, and full of girls who whine about wanting to hang out and be lazy in their bunks with snacks, magazines, and music rather than trudging through the mud to play volleyball in the gym. By the time the rain lets up around dinnertime, I’m so drained of energy and enthusiasm that I’m not sure even having barbecue for dinner can fix it.
It isn’t just exhaustion, though. There’s something more, nagging at the edges of my brain, and it has been ever since my conversation with Michal. It’s making me feel restless, making my palms itch, but for what?
And then, sometime after we’ve had another night of spicy fries and doodling on tables and a Taylor Swift listening party and we’re all lying in bed with our reading lights shining down on our bedtime books of choice, it hits me.
“We’ve gotta play.”
Michal closes the Leigh Bardugo fantasy novel she’s already read at least twice this summer over her finger to keep her place. “Play what?”
“Volleyball. Come on.”
“What? Now?” Yael sits up and shines her light at me, forcing me to squint. “It’s after midnight, Azi Bean.”
“I know, but tomorrow night we’ll have to pack and we’ll be stressed and exhausted, and this is our last shot. Please?” I’m trying not to sound desperate, but I feel desperate. “It’ll be fun.”
“Or, you know, it’ll be us getting our asses kicked for being out after midnight,” says Zeva.
“It’s the second-to-last night of camp and none of you are coming back next year anyway,” I point out. “What are they gonna do? Send you home a whole day early?”
“The courts are probably still muddy,” Jordana says. “It rained for hours today.”
“And it also stopped hours ago, and was like eighty degrees afterward. They’re dry.” I have no idea if that’s true, but it feels like it’s probably true, and honestly, who cares if they’re a little muddy?
“Aren’t you tired?” Michal asks, yawning as if to illustrate her point.
“Do I sound tired?” Truthfully I’ve never felt less tired in my life, a serious 180 from the rest of my day. I realize I’m never going to get them out of bed if I don’t lead by example, so I shine my reading light on my cubbies, grab a sweatshirt, and slip it over my head. “Come on. It’s basically our last night together.” I pull on socks and sneakers, knowing that even if they refuse to come with me—which they won’t—I’m still heading down to the courts no matter what. “Don’t you wanna go out on a sports high?”
“Oh, is that what we’re gonna be getting?” Zeva asks with a snort, even as she pulls on her own sweatshirt.
“You know I suck at volleyball,” Yael mutters, sweeping her long brown curls into a ponytail. “Somehow I don’t think this is going to be equally joyous for everyone.”
“Good news,” I tell her with a bright smile, tweaking the long tail that streaks down her back. “I can teach you.”
“Come on, Azi Bean! Woo!”
“Stop cheering on the other team!” Michal berates Emma, one of the lifeguards we dragged out of bed to give us an even four-on-four.
“She just got two aces,” Emma reminds her, shaking out her hands. “I really don’t think a cheer is gonna be the reason we lose tonight.”
“Not the point!” She turns back to face me, her blond hair gleaming in the lights that loom over the court, the lights we absolutely do not have permission to turn on after midnight but did anyway. “The point is that she’s not getting any more. Look alive, people!”
I’m feeling particularly smug about one of those aces being off a jump serve; clearly, all my practice has been paying off. But this time I go for a simple overhand, aiming straight for Michal. She smirks as she bumps it right back, midway between Jordana and Yael. I can already tell each one thinks the other one’s going for it, and Maya, the lifeguard on our team, is too far away, so I dive for the dig, taking a face full of sand as I boost it just high enough to reach Yael. “Aw crap!” she yelps, but in all her flailing, she manages to unintentionally set for Maya, who slams it at Emma’s feet with a “Spike, baby!”
Our team immediately starts whooping and victory dancing over the sound of Michal’s groaning, and Jordana’s trying to keep us quiet so we won’t wake up the staff that sleeps in nearby cabins. “Rabbi Richton and his wife sleep right there,” she reminds us in a fierce whisper, “and that woman can yell loud enough to shake the walls. Do not ask me how I know that.”
We try to keep it down, but it’s just impossible. We need to cheer when Yael gets her first kill. We need to scream “Ace!” every single time one happens. They need to ooh and aah every single time I nail a jump serve, and we need to crack one another up, howl at every near-miss, randomly break into Color War songs, and run victory laps around the court when we absolutely crush them.
In the cool summer night, with a blanket of stars twinkling overhead and the chirping of crickets in the air, the smells of damp sand and grass mingling together in the breeze, who could blame us?
Well, as it turns out, Rebbetzin Richton absolutely could, and the second we see the lights flick on in her cabin, we take off in a run to the sports shack, the room where we store our stuff and hang out in between periods.
“Oh, crap, I didn’t bring my key,” Michal says, her hand flying to her neck. Everyone else does the same; we’re so used to having whistles and keys around our necks all day that I feel naked to realize I don’t have my stuff with me, either, and it’s clear everyone else feels the same.
“Well, we’ll just hide here, then, until her light goes back off,” Jordana suggests, and that’s what we do, clustering behind the water fountain as if it’ll protect all eight of us.
We all go silent but for the sound of our breathing and the familiar clicking sound of Rachel’s Sharpie as she flicks it through her fingers.
Without thinking, I grab the pen from her and uncap it. There’s enough light to see the new replacement wooden beam on the outer wall that still hasn’t been painted, and I promptly write Azi Bean ’23 on it. Then I close up the pen and hand it back to Rachel.
She smiles, and instead of going back to flicking it, she uncaps it again and writes Rachel Glaser ’23 right next to my name. One by one the girls pass the pen around, adding their own names to the beam until we’ve officially left our mark. As Jordana leaves the final date, the funny feeling that’d been building in my chest crawls into my throat and sits there like a lump.
Afraid I might cry, I turn away from the group and promptly knock over a garbage can. It lands with a crash, and there’s a shout from the direction of the Richtons’ cabin, and I know we’re screwed. I quickly right the can and then chase after my friends, who are all laughing and leaping back to the bunks we’re calling home for the last time as the rebbetzin’s holler carries on the air behind us.
“I still can’t believe you risked getting into trouble tonight,” Michal says when we’re safely back inside and slipping off our sandy socks and sneakers. “You know if they figure out who was on the courts tonight, we’re toast.”
“I do know.” I take a deep breath, unable to believe I’m about to say what I’m about to say. “I thought about it before I made the suggestion to go. What I would do if we got in trouble and they forbade me from coming back next year, I mean. And I think…” I smile, thinking of Yael’s ducking away from the ball like an absolute coward, Jordana’s Go Bean! when I blocked a spike from Emma, and my absolutely god-awful rendition of “We Are the Champions.” “I think that if this were it for me, that’d be okay.”
“Seriously?” Michal’s jaw drops. “Since when?”
“Actually,” I tell her as I rinse my hands of all the accumulated grit, “since you shared your wisdom with me this afternoon. You were right—you don’t always have to make your mark, even with sports. It’s okay to let fun be the endgame.”
“So that’s why you were so desperate to play in the middle of the night.”
“That’s why I was so desperate to play in the middle of the night,” I confirm. “I wanted to leave on a note of fun, and now I am. That was the best night I’ve had the entire summer. And if that’s what I remember about being here, well. That wouldn’t be so bad.”
“It wouldn’t.” She gives my hand a squeeze. “But I’m still pissed you won.”
“Please, like there was ever any doubt I was gonna win volleyball?”
“Next time, basketball. I will absolutely destroy you,” she says sweetly, a trash-talker until the very end.
“You won’t, but it’s okay if you do.” We head into our shared room, which is filled with darkness and the sound of Yael’s soft snoring, and slip into bed. “A friend once told me it’s not that deep.”